Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the marketing strategy of placing websites higher up the search engine ranking to increase exposure and traffic. An SEO firm pays attention to the algorithms that search engines use to fine tune their clients' websites and thus increase the sites' placement on the rankings page. Most search engines use web crawlers that index vast numbers of pages daily. The idea behind SEO is to provide these crawlers with website relevant information that will boost their rankings. A professional SEO company must be staffed with IT professionals, web designers, and advertising and marketing professionals.

Today's cutthroat online marketing world is all about SEO. Web designers often overlook simple search engine friendly techniques in their quest for an aesthetic design. The sad reality is that search engines cannot be ignored. Moreover, the traffic and potential clients that SEO brings to a web site makes it more than just a peripheral service. SEO is no longer for online marketers and the more astute designers have realised that it is a value added service, an important extension of web designing. Since one major aspect of SEO is changing web pages themselves, web developers have a simple starting point to the process.

An uninitiated web designer must approach SEO by looking at the search engine's algorithm. There are general factors that influence web site's result position and these are broadly categorised as on-site and off-site factors. On-site factors are, as mentioned earlier, easy for a web designer to grasp. They include a number of web development procedures such as internal linking, meta tags, targeted keywords, site maps and other HTML or XML based tweaks. Off-site factors are varied and include backlinks from partner sites, article submissions, directory listings and other content based tactics.

Website designers new to SEO make common mistakes. A larger splash page with a banner image and link to enter is considered SEO taboo. Flash embedded links is generally avoided by SEO experts since search engine spiders cannot follow these to navigate through and index a website. The corollary to this is proper internal linking and a site map which exposes each page to the crawler for indexing. Keyword density is another area where caution is advised. Too many keywords, aka keyword stuffing is not recommended.

For established web designers, SEO is a natural offshoot, fast becoming a practice that cannot be ignored. Creating a website and then properly optimising it are really two sides of the same coin.