The importance of search engines cannot be emphasized enough. Search engines offer websites an opportunity to reach a large, global audience. Without search engines, any webmaster might find getting more visitors difficult. If search engines only directed a small amount of web traffic, though, search engine marketing might be less important, but search engines direct a large percentage of web traffic, making search engines very important to increasing traffic.

Again, there are plenty of ways that people can arrive at a website. They can get to a website by going through a search engine, by getting a link from a friend, by linking to a site from another site, by seeing an advertisement with a website address, by manually entering a website address in their browser, or by clicking on an ad they see online. Of those, search engines direct the most traffic by far.

Internet users have found that, as search engines improve, the results they get by typing in only a few keywords gets them to the websites they want to see. This is why search engines direct so much web traffic in this day and age.

Since the vast majority of web surfers use search engines to find web pages, not catering to this traffic could be harmful, even lethal for a web-based business. Since the vast majority of search engine users also prefer organic search listings to paid or sponsored links, page ranking becomes important. A website can use all the paid advertising they can afford, but they just won‘t get huge results unless they combine their paid advertising with SEO techniques to improve search engine rank.

The importance of page rank can be overemphasized by some businesses, however. Some companies want to concentrate almost exclusively on their page ranking for a particular keyword but fail to recognize the other important aspects of the website. The goal of any website isn‘t to increase page rank. The goal is to increase visitors. Concentrating only on page rank, but not taking other aspects of the site into account—for example, design, usability, and functionality—can be detrimental to the site. Remember that users want an all-around good experience from any website they visit. They want content, usability, and good design all rolled into one. Also, not every user that visits a site will be the same, and not everyone that arrives at a website will arrive at the site the same way or using the same keywords. Having a good, overall plan to use many different keywords and SEO techniques helps website owners cater to all users and increase overall traffic now and in the future.

Improving search engine rank is the ultimate goal of SEO, generally. In essence, this rank decides a lot about a site. Since most people choose websites on the first page of results or even just the first two or three results, having a high ranking means increased visibility to search engine users. This can mean more visitors and, ultimately, more business. Websites cannot magically create a higher ranking, nor can they use one single technique to dramatically improve their rating, but taken as a whole, SEO is a combination of several techniques that will ultimately improve a website‘s rating.

Clearpath Technology is a SEO Firm providing Search Engine Optimization, Link Building and Internet Marketing services. For more details, visit http://www.clearpathtechnology.com