There is much confusion between the two terms, ¡°web optimization¡± and ¡°search engine optimization¡±. Web optimization is the act of making your website's pages smaller in size so that they are faster-loading for your customers, visitors, search engine spiders and robots. If your pages are over 100k apiece, your customers and visitors may not have the patience to let your site load through their 56k modems. If you site times-out when a spider or robot visits it, they will move on and may not visit your site again for months.

When you perform web optimization, you are using tools such as Adobe Photoshop, ImageReady, or Macromedia Fireworks to make your graphics as small as possible in file size while retaining your image quality. If you have too much text on a web page, the slowness may also dissuade people and programs from accessing it. In search engine optimization terms, it is important for your pages to be content-rich and keyword-rich without having either a novel or a picture book on one page. If you have too many graphics or too much text for one page, the spread this over several pages instead of cramming it all into one.

In regards to ¡°search engine optimization¡± or ¡°search engine placement¡± or ¡°search engine positioning¡± which all have very similar meanings, the main goal is to place text on your pages so a search engine will know how and where to rank them. In SEO-terms, you will want to perform web optimization first so that your pages are fast loading, then you will want to perform search engine optimization on them so that the search engines will know where to place your pages in the rankings.

When search engine optimization is performed, the parts of your page that are optimized for the SE's are keyword prominence, density, and the meta tags to name a few. Some search engine optimization websites call themselves web optimization websites in order to try to pick up business from confused web customers. This only adds to the confusion within the industry.

The main thing to remember is that if you want your website to load quickly, choose a good hosting company and perform web optimization on your site. If you want your site to appear high in the search engine rankings, then perform search engine optimization on your site. Simpe enough?