Basic SEO – What You Need To Know To Get Free Traffic From The Search Engines

Internet marketing can be broken down in to two main categories – sponsored links and search engine optimization. Sponsored links involve you paying a third party a flat rate to link to your website, much like placing an advert in a newspaper or magazine, or paying a certain amount of money to them only when someone actually clicks on the link (which is referred to as pay-per-click). The main benefit of this method is that you can buy the exposure you want with immediate effect. The downside is that it can quickly become expensive, and once you stop paying, your prominent positions will disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Search engine optimization (or just SEO) is the process of obtaining rankings in the search engines on the basis of the quality of your website alone. SEO is the preferable method of internet marketing over sponsored links because, after your initial investment, you continue to get visitors to your website for very little outlay, and quite possibly even for free. To succeed with SEO, the first step is to establish what exact search terms, also known as keywords or keyphrases, your potential customers are using when searching for your products and services online. You want to find out which specific keywords will bring the most visitors to your website, for example; nearly 3 times as many people search for kitchen door handles each month as internal door handles, despite them being essentially the same item.

On-site optimization is the next SEO consideration. This involves altering page names, meta tags, headings and the anchor text used for internal links to include your chosen keywords. This is necessary so that any visiting search engine spider or robot is left in no doubt over what your website is about. Content is also rewritten to incorporate the keywords that you want to rank highly in the search engines for, and often you will see individual pages optimized to target one specific keyword or phrase.

Still, the rewritten content must also be well written for any human visitor. Not only will it convince potential customers to buy your product or service, but first class content is often referred to on forums and blogs, and each time your content is referred to you will likely get a link pointing to your website. Each back link from an established, good quality website is seen by the search engines as being an indication that your website is a quality one, and so boosts your search positions accordingly.

SEO never stands still for long. Google, which accounts for the vast majority of search traffic on the web, is continually refining a number of tools to assist you in diagnosing any potential issues with your site, such as Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and with the emergence of new Internet surfing habits, such as the prevalence of social media sites and user generated media content, the field of SEO will never be one in which you can relax and think that you have the job done.