While there are a variety of ways to increase targeted website traffic, every business owner should consider optimizing their website for the search engines. Before you begin, you should understand the core concepts of Search Engine Optimization (and Search Engine Marketing). In order to really increase your website traffic and attract qualified prospects, you need to understand three things: 1. Everything related to SEO starts with an understanding of what a "keyword phrase" is. Anytime someone conducts a search on Google, or another search engine, they enter some text to start their search. In SEO terms, the entered text is called a "keyword" or "keyword phrase." If you know what keyword phrases your prospects are entering when looking for the type of information, products or services you offer, you will know what phrases to optimize your web pages for. 2. Websites as a whole are not ranked, each web page is ranked independent of any other. This is commonly misunderstood but so vital to understand! So, just because you have one web page that ranks really well on the search engines, that doesn't mean that your other pages will also rank as well. Each page of your website must be uniquely optimized for a handful of keyword phrases… keyword phrases that are searched upon and those likely to attract your targeted audience.If you pay close attention to the optimization of each page, you should see a dramatic improvement in terms of search engine placement. 3. Like it or not, you're competing against others! But remember, always look organic. Some have a harder time with this concept than others but the truth remains the truth... in order to get your web page listed on page one of Google, you have to kick one of the currently listed web page's off! This is valuable information because it will help you understand what you must do to achieve the ranking you're after. Thorough analysis of the web pages currently listed for a particular keyword phrase will tell you how hard it will be to overtake one of them. You need to pay close attention to a number of elements including: • How well is their page optimized for the keyword phrase? • How old is their domain (the older the better)? • How many links can be found that point to the page? While there are other elements involved based on algorithms, these three are of primary concern. If you find you can out do your competitor's web page in at least two of the three main areas mentioned, you can probably kick them off the page and take their place. After ensuring you are optimizing for a keyword phrase (or phrases) that are likely to bring you the kind of traffic you want, you'll often find it is the quantity of backlinks that make the real difference. Link Building is the process of establishing links from other authority sites to point to your own. This is one of the most critical components of a successful search engine marketing campaign and the benefits are twofold. First, search engines, Google in particular, give a lot of weight to sites that have a lot of inbound links. Inbound links are one way links from other sites to your site. Second, the more inbound links from good authority sites, the higher a given site could rank - all things being equal. Obviously, having links on other sites pointing to your website can result in the benefit of increased traffic to your site. As mentioned earlier, the quality of the backlinks is important too but if you are going to concentrate on one objective, it should be the building of topic related links. Ensure your text links use the keyword phrases you are optimizing for and you'll find you quickly climb the ranks of the search engines. I hope you found this information helpful and I hope it helps you improve your website's SEO. If you'd like professional SEO help, we're here for you. We are experts in optimizing both websites and Google Places listings and can help you get new business as a direct result. If you'd like to see how we can help, give us a call at: (303) 827-3842 or email our Local Search Team at localseo@graphiqstudios.com. We look forward to talking with you and will do our best to help you increase your web exposure, get new business and outperform your competitors!
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