How to get more website traffic with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Affordable Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for individual blogger, small and mid-size business means generating more website traffic − of a targeted nature - to your website. Targeted traffic is the key to success; if your website is not what your visitor is searching for, than your business will receive no benefit.

It is estimated that only 2-5% of all websites today have been properly optimized. With a growing number of websites being launched by businesses and individuals every day, the only way to stay visible on the World Wide Web is through effective SEO. Strategic Optimization helps your site to obtain top rankings and thus enjoy more website traffic.

High level, professional website optimization is not inexpensive; in fact, it requires many hours of analysis and investigation by qualified experts. However, the end result can be astounding. Your website visibility and productivity will increase dramatically, saving enormous sums of money that would have otherwise been spent on various advertising campaigns, promotion and strategies that will often be dwarfed by a productive website.

Remember SEO is not using trickery to fool the search engines to produce more website traffic. It is not using spamming techniques that will only increase your chances of being eliminated from search results altogether. It does not involve the use of throwaway domains or shadow domains. Such tricks will cause your company to be removed from the search engines completely and at best it may only work for a short time anyway. Ultimately, it is not worth the risk of using trickery or shortcuts in this arena!

The SEO Process

The first step in SEO is researching the keywords for which your potential visitors will search. Keywords are generally the goods and services your company offers or important wording in your blog post. People search for solutions, not a company or a person. For example, if someone is looking for help with their business, they will generally search for "business consulting" much more often than "business consultant."

Choosing the Right Keywords

Look for phrases rather than individual words. Phrases are more specific and incur more accurate results. For example, someone is very like to search for "how to make money" rather than "money". Use phrases that accurately describe the products or services you offer. Phrases that are less competitive - meaning fewer websites are using the same phrase - will generally gain search engine traction quicker than a more competitive, widely used phrase. Select keyword phrases that generate more website traffic through search engines. The best phrases meet all four tests. Read also Secret keywords on how to make money online

Once the best keyword phrases have been chosen, they must be worked into the website. Use these keywords and phrases with the right prominence and frequency throughout the body text. For best results, you can use these keywords in the domain name, page names, in Meta tags, hyperlinks, and alt tags. Read also How to choose a good blog name

Before building up the pages with these keyword phrases, you need to fix any structural problems that exist within your site. Several common problems include websites constructed in frames, sites built with an online website builder, and websites built with large, slow loading graphics. Debug the HTML code to remove invalid code. We recommend checking your page(s) using http://validator.w3.org

It is very important to get other websites to link to your own. Getting other websites to link to your site has been one of the key elements of SEO for many years. Much like a popularity contest, if your website has many other websites linking to it, then it must be very important and will receive more website traffic. If these links are from highly ranked, major websites then your website must be even more important.

Now you are ready to let the search engines know your site exists. Today, a single submission to the major search engines is usually enough.

Now comes the hardest part... you wait. How do you know if what you did is working? You monitor your site for more website traffic and search engine spiders through a website statistics package offered by high end hosting companies. You should monitor your actual rankings on at least a quarterly basis with all the various engines.

Link Management

Having a solid link exchange campaign is a crucial part of any search engine optimization project to promote more website traffic on a site. Google places their greatest weight on link popularity because on-page elements can be manipulated quickly and easily. Both Yahoo and MSN also place importance on the anchor text and the quantity of incoming links, but not nearly to the level of Google.

Convincing quality, relevant sites to link to your site can be tedious, time-consuming and yes, very frustrating. Link building must be done carefully to avoid link spamming. When you are building links to increase your link popularity and increase online traffic, to whom do we link? The question of where should we link to effectively increase our ranking can be a daunting and confusing task.

The quality of each potential link partner must be analyze to ensure the topic complements your website to achieve the utmost in link popularity in a natural and search engine friendly way. The bottom line is that your link building campaigns get results.