The internet is an amazingly diverse marketplace, full of websites intended to draw any niche of consumers imaginable, but nearly all websites gauge success in the same way: TRAFFIC!  Hits, clicks, looks, peeps… in internet business, these words all just mean money, money, money.  So, how can a website generate traffic?  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is undoubtedly the most effective (and cost-effective) tool for generating traffic.  SEO integrates web-design with marketing in order to increase the volume of traffic to a website by using search engine results.  According to Forrester Research, 93% of global consumers use search engines to find websites, and 93% of all internet traffic is generated by search engines. Of course, not all websites are viewed equally by the search engines, because they use very complex algorithms to determine which sites are most appropriate for the search.  The “best” websites are placed at the top of the list, and the “worst” at the bottom… in theory.  According to Avtec Media, 99% of internet searchers do not look past the top 30 results, and 97% of them don’t even look past the top 3 results.  SEO uses various techniques to get a website as close to the top of the list as possible.  How important is Search Engine Optimization?  Let’s just say this… without it, you would do better selling oranges on a freeway off-ramp.