Strategies for Success

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Increases Website Traffic

Search Engine Optimization, referred to as SEO, is one of the main tools available to each website to increase traffic. By developing web pages that are rich with keywords, internet visitors can locate your website in the responses generated by commonly used search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. After all, the best website in the world won't enjoy traffic if no one can locate the URL easily when searching.

SEO is not some sort of magic formula and developing keyword rich website pages is not rocket science. If you failed to develop your website using SEO techniques, you may feel there is some big secret no one is sharing with you when all your friends and even your competitors are enjoying visitors while your website remains unvisited.

SEO and Keywords

In order to create SEO web pages, you must first identify keywords that are being used to search for products or services similar to those offered by your website. The word, words, or phrases which are commonly used to locate a product or service are called keywords. Selecting the right keywords and including these keywords in optimal locations on your website's pages is one of the crucial aspects of SEO.

In order to begin choosing keywords to create SEO-friendly content, simply ask yourself, "What would I type into the search engine if I were seeking this product or service?" The first words that come into your mind are very likely to be high on the list of keywords associated with your website. If you are promoting a dog training e-book, you will probably immediately think of "dog training", "how to train my dog", "training my dog", or other similar words. Clearly, you want people to visit your website who have a real interest in dog training. When phrases such as these are entered, you want your website's URL to appear as high as possible on the search engine's search results pages. Ideally, you want to be on the first page of search results and as near the top as possible.

Once you have identified some basic ideas for keywords, you can narrow down your selection to those that are most frequently being searched for by internet users. There are several tools that help you choose keywords such as Keyword Elite or Google Keywords Tool. Choose exact phrases that are frequently used based on your logical selection made in the step above. For example, if you identified that "dog training" would be a general keyword for your website, you may find that "training my poodle" or "housebreaking my puppy" are keywords frequently entered into the search engines. Those can be used to your benefit in SEO as well.