How to Get More Website Traffic: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

The goal for every website owner should be to appear in the top ten results on Google when someone searches for your services or products. As you may have noticed, when you search for just about anything on Google, you will usually receive tens of thousands of results. Most people scan the top ten results on the first page, find what they need, or move on. If your site shows up on page 2 or 12 or 112, it’s going to be very difficult to get traffic to your site.

Before I launch into a discussion on search engine optimization (SEO), I want to mention some important points. First of all, I believe that blogging on a regular basis is the best SEO you can get. The more content you add to your site, the more relevant it becomes with Google and the more reasons you give Google to find you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you implement just one strategy from this post, it should be a blog.

Second, SEO is a hotly contested topic. You could speak to ten different SEO consultants and get ten different recommended strategies. I’ve decided to stick with the tried-and-true basics here—strategies that I have personally used so I know they work, and strategies that you can easily implement yourself.

SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what you do to improve your website’s organic ranking with the search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.). Since around 70% of all internet searches are conducted with Google, it’s a good idea to focus on how Google ranks your site.

Google uses complex algorithms to determine a website’s relevance and its ranking when a search is conducted. This section covers basic SEO strategies that have proven to be effective for Google and the other major search engines. By implementing the strategies in this chapter, you should see a noticeable impact on the placement of your website pages in the search engines.

Why Text Matters

Google uses technology called spiders to “crawl” across web pages looking for patterns in the text. This is one of the ways it determines what a website offers and how it should be categorized. This is the most basic and perhaps the most important element in gaining better placement in the search engines. So when someone searches for “massage therapist in Seattle,” it is imperative that your site include this key phrase.

Every web page has a place to indicate the keywords, page title, and description. This information gets encoded in the page and is the first data that Google sees. When this data is absent or unfocused, it can hurt your site’s relevance with Google.

This is also one of the biggest errors I see on most websites. Without a keyword strategy to let the search engines know what services you offer and where your business is located, you can’t expect to achieve top placement in search results. There is simply too much competition out there vying for the top ten.

**Watch for a follow-up post on developing a keyword strategy.
This is an excerpt from the book: Own Your Niche: Hype-Free Internet Marketing Tactics to Establish Authority in Your Field and Promote Your Service-Based Business. Need more help marketing your business online? You’ll love this book!

Stephanie Chandler is the author of LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business.
She is also CEO of http://AuthorityPublishing.com, a custom publisher of
nonfiction books, and http://BusinessInfoGuide.com, a directory of resources
for entrepreneurs. Also visit http://StephanieChandler.com

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