Optimizing websites without first understanding how search engines function is akin to publishing your great novel without first learning how to write. Certainly, a thousand monkeys at typewriters will eventually create something useful (at least this monkey likes to think he does from time to time), but it's a lot easier if you know the core elements of a task beforehand. So we must understand how search engines work to fully understand how to optimize for them. While we will be focusing on organic search, we must first briefly talk about one critical truth about search engines.