Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process or processes used to get links to your web pages into the top returns for people that are looking for something.
The goal of a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program is to drive people to your website from those search engines.
There are three basic ways to drive traffic to your website:
- Buy it
- Earn it
- Invite everyone you know, do business with, have as a friend, or whatever to visit your site.
This third one is not usually an SEO process, and once you have run out of your immediate contacts for driving traffic to your website, you are stuck with the other two.
Buying and earning take markedly different paths toward the same ultimate goal of getting new people to visit your site and ultimately turn into buyers.
When you buy traffic the visitor usually takes a selected action including:
- Clicking a link on a web page somewhere like a text ad or mention in the body of the text;
- Having a banner on a page that when clicked takes the visitor to your site;
- Purchasing a slot at the top of your selected pages;
- And, more
Purchased traffic does not require that you do as much to a web page since you will be at the top of the search results anyway.
You do have to deliver what you are purporting, however, since the search engines are in business too. They don't want a listing that does not produce traffic or does not deliver on your advertisement.
Paid results are purchased in an auction style that means the highest bidder for a select keyword or phrase gets the number one slot.
Earning traffic normally means that you have put enough effort into "optomized" a page so as to cause it to come up within the top returns in a search engine following the paid results. These positions are called "organic".
We are going to pick on Google for the moment since they are currently the biggest fish in the pond as far as search engines are concerned. When you enter a "key word or phrase" in their little box, the system behind it goes out to a gigantic database and locates the words you entered. Then it returns to you the associated links to pages that have those words "optomized" (Or at least those pages that the search engine deems as such.
The search engine presents the links that have paid to be at the top of the page, after which it shows everybody else.
If you have decided to have a page that has the keywords imbedded in it enough times, in the right format, in the right places, and, other people have linked to your page, you stand a good chance of being on this first or second page.
At this point, it is suggested that you keep an eye on what your competitors are doing since they are not going to like being pushed to a secondary page because of something that you did. They will copy you and add an embellishment here and there and knock you off the top spot.
But, if you keep at it, you can have a worthwhile run on the top slots for quite a while and it will help if that traffic also converts to satisfied customers. Then, you will have more folks to draw from to help you keep at the top of the search results.
So now that you know what SEO is and a bit about how it works, the next thing you will want to do is get your pages showing up in those top slots.
We recommend that you either do a whole bunch of research on your own or hire an SEO specialist that will help get you the results you seek.
Keep in mind that to optimize a page requires a good deal of time even for the guys and gals that do it all day long.
