Many of us with websites have been approached by a company trying to sell us search engine optimization. Then you find yourself asking what is it and why do we need it? The salesmen, who is probably a techy, goes in great detail on how it will help your website. The only problem is you have no clue what the guy just said because it sounds like some lost language.   

First you should obviously know what a search engine is. A search engine is a portal like google, yahoo, msn, ask, etc. that allows you to search for websites, products, services, and others by using a keyword string (what you type in the box).   

So let's say we want to sell bikini's world wide on our website. You go to google and type bikinis and something like 36 million websites pop up. How do you get your website up in the top pages so that someone doesn't have to travel to the five hundredth page to find your website. That is where search engine optimization comes in. Search engine optimization is a way to develop your website so that the search engines "index your website". This is done by constantly updating data, adding relative key words and meta-tags to pages and having a well built website. The better designed your website is, the better off your website will do in the searches. There are literally hundreds of ways to get your website to the top of the search engines, but the most important detail is having a well built and structured website to start with. If you have a small internet marketing budget, having a well built site will help push you to the top. Of course updates will have to be added weekly to keep your top position. If you have a $5k a month budget for web placement, it doesn't matter how crappy your website is, you can "buy" your way to the top... money talks.