Search Engine Optimization Specialists fill an extremely important role in the success of a Web site. About 70% of visitors to a site find that site by doing a search in Google, Yahoo, MSN or one of the other search engines.

These companies work very hard to define their ranking formulas so that the most relevant sites appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). After all, the search engine will be more successful if users find the most relevant sites for their search queries.

The SEO Specialist studies the search engines and learns how to arrange the content and key phrases within each page so that it appears near the top of the results for typical search queries. At the same time, the specialist must be very careful not to employ techniques that the search engines would consider to be misleading.

If a site is not optimized properly, it will generate very little traffic and the site owner will have to spend much more money on advertising or on paid placement.