Business owners and operators, in every sector of the economy, know that customers increasingly turn to the Internet to shop, and being visible on the Internet is of immense importance to a company’s growth. One of the most powerful tools for enhancing a company’s presence on the Internet is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO – the process of making a web page rank higher in search engine results.

The complexity of SEO strategies, however, and the unfamiliar jargon they are discussed in, can make SEO seem intimidating and frustrating to startups and growing companies with limited resources to devote to Web development. But fear not: Proterra is here to help, with a primer on SEO, and links to online resources that can help make this vital component of modern business accessible to the bewildered SEO novice.

Understanding how to do SEO requires understanding the search engine business model. Success for a search engine company depends on steering surfers to the information they are looking for, and doing so more quickly and efficiently than competitors do.

74% of respondents to GlobalSpecs 2010 Industrial Marketing Trends Survey identify customer acquisition and lead generation as their primary marketing goal in 2010. Similarly, the 2010 Lead Generation Optimization Analysis by CSO Insights identifies new customer acquisition as the top marketing goal of 91% of companies worldwide.

Go figure. In a severe global economic downturn, existing customers will reduce their spending until good times return. So to increase sales and achieve continued growth, you have to find new customers.

The good news is that modern communications technologies offer a thrilling array of new tools, media, platforms, and applications to reach out to customers, each offering a unique set of cost advantages and targeting capabilities. The bad news is that this thrilling array of new tools, media, platforms, and applications is also a bewildering array of new tools, media, platforms, and applications, each connecting with radically different audiences in dramatically different ways.

What’s more, some of the old tools still work pretty well, too.

Search engines assess many different factors in calculating search engine rankings, and if you follow this blog, you’ll get plenty of good advice on which factors are the most important, and what tactics will get the most SEO bang out of your online marketing dollars.

And never forget this: The single most important factor in determining search engine rankings is content quality. Search engines thrive in a competitive marketplace by successfully sending surfers to the pages that have the content they’re looking for.

So over the long term, the most effective Search Engine Optimization technique is to produce high-quality content. This is so important that we’ll be reminding readers of it constantly. Content Is King!

Before you can work on improving your rankings, however, you have to get indexed for the search terms – or keywords - you’re targeting.

You see, search engines do not scan the entire Internet every time a web surfer searches for particular words and phrases – that would take far too long to be feasible. Instead, search engines use sophisticated artificial intelligence programs called crawlers to constantly monitor the Internet, surf from link to link, and periodically “call home” to send information about the pages they find back to the search engine they work for.

It’s a brave new world out there in cyberspace, fast-paced and dynamic, and companies that can’t keep up with the breathtaking evolution of the Internet’s immense marketing potential will quickly fall behind their competitors in revenue and market share.

Search Engine Marketing – defined by Wikipedia as “a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs)” – might be the hottest commercial space on the Internet. North American advertisers spent $13.5 billion on SEM in 2008, up from $5.1 billion in 2005. That’s growth of 164% in only three years.

The range of SEM tactics and techniques and alternatives has grown at similar breakneck speeds, and companies who have come late to the party – like many small businesses and startups – are understandably intimidated by the complexities inherent in building a successful Search Engine Marketing campaign in today’s troubled economy.