What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is refer to designing, writing, and coding (in HTML) of your web site so that there is a good chance that your web pages rank well of search engine queries for particular terms, especially with crawler-based search engines.

Why is SEO so important?
Search engines are extremely important for any online business. SEO ensures your website has all of the necessary criteria to rank high in search results. Without high rankings, your website has little chance of gaining search engine traffic. A professional SEO campaign can offer you the best ROI (return on investment) by delivering fresh, targeted traffic to your website that's both free and effective.

How long does it take to get my website "indexed" on the search engines?
It varies with every search engine. In general, most search engines will index NEW websites within 2-8 weeks.

What is keyword analysis?
The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.

What is link popularity?
Link of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher its ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.

Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if it’s important enough for a lot of other sites to link to, it’s important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.

Can I get top ranking in single keyword?
With the growth in the number of websites, getting high search engine rankings with single keywords is very difficult. You are much better off targeting keyword phrases. Keyword phrases are two or three word phrases that your target market is likely to use to search for your site. "Home Business" is better than "Business" and "Home Business Software" is better still. Remember that single keywords usually return the least targeted leads.

Some keywords or keywords phrase are going to be much more competitive than others and it takes time to get in the top ranking.

I am number 3 in Yahoo, but not in the top 2,000 in Google.
Yahoo and Google use two different algos to come up with their SERPs - Yahoo favors on- page optimization such as H1 tags, keyword density, etc while Google favors off page like inbound links. If you have done more on page then Yahoo will rank higher and vice versa. As part of this if you are now addressing your off page then you need more backlinks and time for these links to age.

Would you be happier to achieve a page 1 listing out for 100,000 results or 100,000,000 results?
The number of pages competing for a keyword has absolutely nothing to do with how competitive it is to get a site ranked for that particular keyword. The level of competition has everything to do with it.

Top pages are defined by an algorithm that considers many factors however the *quantity* of competing pages is not one of the factors considered nor should it be. Assuming the code and content are do correctly, the main driver of how competitive is a particular keyword, will be related to links, i.e., how many/how good/how optimized are the links that point to the pages that currently occupy the top spots for that keyword.

How long does the optimization process take?
This depends on the site and the requirements to reach the top positions. A 6 page site in a low competition area will obviously take less time than a 250 page site competing for highly competitive terms. Generally speaking, an average promotion (20 page website with moderate competition) would take approximately 2 to 3 weeks for site-optimization, a month or so for link-building and up to approximately 3 months to attain rankings. You will see improvements after just the optimization alone however the added weight of the incoming links won't be applied for a month or so after they are established.

What is blacklisting?
A site can be blacklisted if unethical search engine positioning tactics have been used or if the search engine algorithm determines that it believes they have been. It can be very difficult to recover from a blacklisting, often it is easier to simply use another domain with a new site and move forward from there after cleaning out whatever spam tactic got you banned.

My competitors are using spam tactics, why is it working for them?
Not all spam is easily detected by the major search engines. Like hackers, every time a method gets detected a new method is created to bypass this. That said, it is usually a matter of time before the algorithm will be changed to detect new spam tactics and further, sites using spam can be reported and penalized individually. If you choose to use spam tactics to attain rankings there is a high likelihood that your site will eventually be penalized.

Finally, what matters are the results!