What do search engines do?

Search Engines try to determine the best sites to show, for a specific search word or phrase.

For example, if you were to type "Dogs" into a search engine, they will tend to return large sites, with lots of information about dogs, dog breeds, dog breeders etc….. sites that they somehow determine are most likely to contain the information you are looking for.

How do they do it?

Search engines have their own formula for testing the amount of content your site has, how good it is, how good the rest of the internet thinks it is and what sort of a job you are doing presenting this data. The filter out results from sites they think are trying to trick them, sometimes placing penalties on sites that are doing so purposely, even accidentally.

OK, what search engines are important?

Google
Yahoo
MSN/Live
to a lesser extent…. 
ASK 
AOL

Do the search engines have different rules?

Yes, obtaining rankings on one search engine, is no guarantee of rankings on another. As a general rule? if you can obtain page one rankings on google, you will also obtain rankings on the other search engines, thus our Mantra "Page One on Google" because achieve this, and it usually means page one on all search engines. Usually we will achive top 10 rankings on Yahoo and MSN, before they are achieved on Google.