Ask ten different people what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and you may receive many different answers. SEO will be defined as the process of making changes to your site to make it more accessible to search engines and the people that arrive at your site from the search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not about tricking the search engines. It is about understanding what elements search engines look for on a page to help determine the relevance of the page to a search term. By understanding what page elements the search engines take into consideration, and making adjustments to better present your page, you can improve your rank for a search term.

Search engines are extremely important for any online business. Over 85% of Internet users use search engines to find products and services. SearchEngineMasterZ ensures your web site has all of the necessary criteria to rank high in search engine results. Without high rankings, your web site has little chance of gaining search engine traffic. A professional SEO campaign can offer you the best ROI (return on investment) by delivering fresh, targeted traffic to your web site that's both free and effective.

There is really no reason to submit your site to many of the search engines anymore. DO NOT submit your site to any program that touts submitting your site to "1000's of search engines." If you get a link from a decent site, the googlebot will stop by and spider your site, and save you the hassle of submitting. You should spend your extra time submitting your site to the appropriate site at DMOZ.org and asking other sites to give or trade you links. Your site WILL get found if you build it well, and it will get attention if it gives your visitors what they are looking for.

Site ranking tends to be "cumulative" and is dependent on the following factors:

The specific keyword phrases (search terms) that have been targeted 
The overall competitiveness of your industry - how many players are there 
Whether you are targeting a regional, national, or international market 
How well ranking is monitored and the site tweaked over time for SEO
The progress of your reciprocal linking campaign 
Number of competitor sites achieving new ranking themselves

In a word YES. Every page of a website can be a potential entry point for visitors. You can't predict which page or pages will be ranked the best for specific keywords. As such, each page must be individually optimized to for optimal ranking. Collectively, all pages of your website reinforce the common "theme" of the site, which also can help boost ranking. Don't assume that your home page is the most important page on your site.

Most changes will take between a month to two months to take effect. This incorporates the time that it takes to get your web page spidered and then the time it takes to get that page into the database or "index" of the search engine. Sometimes the process may take longer, and with the advances of google and other search engines you may possibly see results quicker in less competitive areas.

First off, there are simply not "thousands" of search engines to which to submit. In addition, these types of automated search engine submissions will most likely not result in the web traffic you are looking for, but they excel at getting you thousands of pieces of unsolicited e-mail. Most of the submissions are to a large number of Free-For-All (FFA) sites. Submitting your site to FFA pages can actually damage your site's reputation in the search engines, because many search engines consider this to be SPAM, and it could actually penalize your website ranking.

Nobody can guarantee a number #1 position or specific ranking for your site for a given keyword phrase. There are simply too many factors beyond anyone's control - the search engines changing their ranking algorithms, efforts made by competitors, and new sites being added to the Web.