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Use of Search Engine Optimization
by Desmond Mantor
http://www.havetraffic.com
If you own a website there are essentially three ways for a customer to get to
your site. The first and most direct way is for them to type in your website
address. The only problem with this is that people must already know your
address in order to use it. You are not going to reach many potential customers
that way. The second method is for people to link to your site from another
website. This is actually a great way of generating traffic to your site but the
only problem is that other sites must grant you permission to post a link on
their site. If you don't have much traffic already coming to your site, the odds
are not great that another site will want to be an affiliate. The final method
is for a customer to find your site through a search engine. Enter the world of
search engine optimization.
A search engine is designed to find websites for surfers. Basically, a person
types in a keyword--like "tea kettle". The search engine will then comb through
the web and find every page with the keyword "tea kettle" on it. Search engines
then take the process a step farther and actually rank all of the pages with the
keyword on them. These results are then given to the reader in this ranked
order. Anyone in Internet marketing knows that you want your site to be ranked
in the top ten. Most people are not likely to view the results of the second
page, let alone any of the hundreds that follow.
Search engine optimization is one of the most effective internet marketing tools
available. Consider this: if you get a visitor to your site from a search
engine, he is already interested in your products. While we cannot rule out the
possibility of some high school kid doing an essay on gift ideas, it is more
likely that it is potential customers wanting to buy a gift basket. Your website
simply has to convert this visit into a sale!
On the flip side, the search engines consider dozens of factors to rank sites.
Google says they have more than a hundred criteria in their ranking system.
Basically, the search engine has to be convinced that your site contains the
information that the browser is looking for. For this purpose you need a lot of
keyword rich content. If you have lots of articles with information on tea
kettles but you have not used the keyword tea kettle often enough, you may lose
the battle. Generally, 3-5% keyword density is considered okay, although it
varies from one search engine to another. So, in a 500 word article, you should
use the
keyword tea kettle at least 15 to 25 times. If you use it more often than that
you can be penalized. Apart from keywords, you can boost your search engine
rankings by using links on your site. This convinces the search engine that
yours is an important site therefore more likely to have useful information.
There is no doubt about the effectiveness of search engine optimization as an
internet marketing tool. The key things to remember are lots of relevant content
rich in keywords and lots of relevant links. Your search engine rankings will be
greatly improved if you employ these two strategies and you will be able to
attract more customers to your site.
Desmond Mantor is the Director of Sales and Marketing for
Have Traffic a business
specializing in providing pre-qualified traffic for commercial web sites, proven
to convert to sales at higher rates in comparison to other major pay per click
sources. For more details please visit
http://www.havetraffic.com |
