As quoted by Wikipedia:


Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) which may deal with paid inclusion.


Until a few years ago, it was relatively easy to draw good and effective traffic. Especially if you have a good content-drive website with good products, it is more than enough to get a web site ranked well in Search Engines. But now, the competition has increased by at least a few thousand times over and with billions of web sites popping up everyday, this is a stiff competition in the area of search engine rankings and placement.

Furthermore, this increase in competition has also given rise to many different styles and methods of site optimization. In short, optimization is a method of making a site "search engine fiendly" by use of enhancement that will increase rankings and placements by placing certain sites higher in the Search Engine Results Page.

Everything from computer software to increasing placements and rankings and with many online merchants becoming confused about what or how to effectively use the various services like blog advertising to increase placements and rankings.

Despite the amount of SEO methods that are chosen or even implemented, there is an ongoing campaign of optimization that does really need to exist. And at the same time, as the parameters that are currently used for placements and rankings by Search Engines such as Yahoo Directory keeps changing, research into current methods need to be done routinely. And the whole SEO process id really more about "art than science" and it still continues to change daily at the speed of light.