This wiki is managed by Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights to help keep marketers up-to-date with developments in digital marketing

From Marketing Online

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves achieving the highest position or ranking practical in the natural or organic listings on the search engine results pages after a specific combination of keywords (or keyphrase) has been typed in. In search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search, the natural listings are on the left, although there may also be sponsored links above these.

The position or ranking is dependent on an algorithm used by each search engine to match relevant site page content with the keyphrase entered. There is no charge for these listings to be displayed or when a link relevant to your site is clicked upon. However, you may need to pay a search engine optimization firm to advise or undertake optimization work to make your web pages appear higher in the rankings.