Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the discipline of creating or modifying a website so that it is accessible and readable to the search engine spiders (or "crawler bots"). If a website can be properly read and understood by the search engine crawler bots, there is a much better chance that it will achieve good placement in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). In order to achieve good results from search engine optimisation, it is essential to understand what the search engines are seeking and which techniques they give greater credibility to.

Search engines constantly change the way they list websites that they crawl. There are two main reasons for this; to deliver the desired results to the person that entered the search and to eliminate websites that take advantage of technical loopholes to artificially increase their search engine results. For this reason, the very best way to ensure that your website not only achieves but also maintains a good position in the search engine results to provide your website visitors with the kind of useful content that they were looking for in the first place. This does not mean that ethical search engine optimisation techniques such as correct choice of keywords should be ignored, just that unethical techniques such as the use of hidden text should be avoided. Any given "trick" that fools the search engines into giving your site a very high placement today could very well lead to your site being removed from the lists altogether tomorrow.

Exploiting a loophole in the search engine listing algorithm can yield fantastic results for a while but as soon as the search engine developers close the loophole, you're left trying to find another technical loophole to take advantage of. In the mean time your website isn't being found. When your site is optimised for search engines in a good "clean" way, your search engine placement will be built on solid foundations and any changes in the way the search engines list sites are most likely to strengthen rather than weaken your position.