According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization (SEO) “is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the ‘natural’ or unpaid (organic or algorithmic) search results.

What this basically means is that SEO is the preferred, natural method for driving traffic to your web site. While there are other methods in which a site owner can bring traffic to her site (some of which are unethical and can result in your site being penalized by search engines like Google) SEO is still the best way to ensure that people find you on the web.

Why Do You As a Site Owner Need SEO?

It’s natural to think of a web-based business as something different than a brick and mortar store, but in fact, the principles in how the business operates are nearly identical. Your web site is your storefront whereby people can see what it is you have to offer. The only difference is that traffic doesn’t come from people walking along the sidewalk, but rather through people typing into a search engine exactly what they’re looking for.

When people do these kinds of searches, statistics show that the results that appear on the first 2-3 pages of a search are the ones that get the most attention. Those that are lower down on the search rankings often go ignored, which is why it’s so vital to use good SEO techniques to ensure that your site shows up within the first 3 pages.

A Few Words About Web Site Design

When people think about web site design, they often think of the layout, the colors, the graphics and the fonts. And while those are all important to the image of your business, and for visitors to easily navigate your site, the truth is that it doesn’t matter how nice your site looks if no one can find it; that’s where SEO can help.

Every good web site design should employ content that’s optimized to be found when someone types what you’re offering into a search engine. But good SEO and web site design require optimized content such as keyword placement in title tags, heading tags, etc. – things a good web site designer will know how to use to your benefit.

Increasing Sales is Your Goal

If you’re operating an online business then you’re probably doing it to get more clients. While some people have their sites up for information or other purposes, we’re focusing on SEO as a way to bring paying customers to an online business. And if you’re not using good SEO techniques, you might not be getting the clients who are looking for what you’re offering. Unless you have an advertising budget like Amazon, you’re going to have to find other ways to drive traffic to your site, and SEO is the best way to do that.

Good SEO techniques will result in not only more traffic coming to your site, but the kind of traffic that’s made up of people who are searching for targeted keywords, which can help your business in the long run. And that’s what it’s all about.

Want to improve your search engine rankings? Google’s Matt Cutts offers tips on how you can optimize your site so it is ranked high in Google’s search engines.

Read about it here.

Search engine optimization (SEO) might seem like some arcane formula known only to a select few Internet gurus, but I’m going to share some secrets that’ll hopefully demystify the art of SEO.

If you’ve spent any amount of time doing business online, then you probably know about keywords and keyphrases. But what you may not know is how important these are to your page rankings.

When people go online in search of something the first thing they do is type a word or phrase into a search engine like Google or Yahoo. So it’s important to know where the search engines look for those words in relation to your Web site if you want your pages to show up high in the rankings.

Text Links

A text link is a word or phrase that’s constructed to take visitors either to another page on your site or to another place on the web. Some Web site owners make the mistake of using words like ‘click here’ or even a graphic in order to send viewers to another place.

But generic text links won’t help people find you if they’re typing in specific keywords and search engines can’t read graphics. So you need to construct the link so that the keyword IS the link. For example: If you’re offering web site design services and you want someone to go to your page regarding that, you would use the term ‘web site design services’ as the link.

Title Tags

Title tags are the words that appear at the very top of your browser window. Since each page normally contains a title, you’ll want to use keywords and phrases that are popular among searches so that the search engines will find them.

Don’t use generic terms like ‘Home’ or even cute phrases like ‘Welcome to My Business’. Words like these will get you buried in the rankings. Also be sure that each page on your site has a good keyword or phrase in the title.

Description Tags

Description tags are one type of meta tags. These tags are not visible to page viewers, but are routinely seen by search engines. Description tags are information that’s inserted into the head of your page’s HTML code (if you’re not comfortable coding pages then get a web designer for this). You’ll want to use text that describes your page in this tag. Many search engines use the meta description tag as description that appears in their listings.

Keyword Tags

Keyword tags are another type of meta tag, which aren’t visible to viewers. These are also inserted into the HTML code under the head section.

Keyword tags are passed over by the bigger search engines like Google and Yahoo, but you will still need to use these tags because some of the smaller search engines still see and rank them.

Headings and Headlines

Since search engines look at text in order to find keywords relevant to a search, you need to use those popular words and phrases in headings and headlines for content on your pages.

Headline text codes differently than body copy text and ranges in size from H1, which is the largest to H6. Search engines pay more attention to the larger headlines, so again, if you’re not good at HTML coding, ask a web designer to help.

Body Copy

Body copy of web pages is another place that search engines look for keywords so you want to be sure that you’re using good, highly searched keywords within your page’s content.

You can help the search engines by making these keywords and phrases bold and by using them more than once on the page. It’s also wise to place your keywords as early in your copy as possible.

Some people recommend using your keywords 2-3 times per paragraph, but doing this often creates awkward sounding copy that turns readers off. Today’s web surfers are smarter than ever. They know when they’re getting good content and when it’s just words designed to show up high in the rankings.

There’s no sense in getting people to your website and then giving them garbage to read.

Alt Tags

Alt text are words that appear when you place your cursor over an image on your pages - these are sometimes referred to as mouseovers. Having keywords in your alt tags help with search engine rankings.

While there’s more to SEO than just keywords, they are the most important aspect to getting good rankings. They are the words typed in by searchers and they are the words that are going to bring visitors to your site – so choose and use them wisely.