Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique used to improve a site's performance in search engines. A search engine is a search site like www.google.com, www.bing.com, and www.yahoo.com. According to conventional wisdom, sites that appear near the top of the search results will receive the most clicks.
For example, our demonstration site sells coffee. So we want our site to appear in search results when people search using phrases like "online coffee store" and "mail order coffee". If our site appears in the first ten results for those search phrases, then it will usually be displayed on the first page of results. We would not expect to receive more visitors if our site appeared on the second or later pages.
So let's refine our goal for search engine optimization:
Note
For the search phrases that our potential customers are likely to use, we want our site to appear as high as possible in the search engine results, preferably in the top ten.
There are many books and companies that offer SEO services. Some of them claim to know how the search engines calculate a site's position in the search results, or how to find the most effective search terms for your site. We will keep our claims more modest as compared to that. Instead, this chapter will show you what you can do with Magento to help search engines index your site accurately and completely.