There is no doubt that
website traffic is critical to your business success. And free traffic beats everything else. And where’s the best place to
get free traffic? Google and other search engines.
How does free search engine traffic work?
The process works in a way that you have experienced many many times. You visit your favorite search engine. Enter in a word or phrase you want to research. And click one of the links that shows up. Well, the link you clicked on just send free traffic to that website owner. So the real question is how you get that free traffic.
If you’re like most people you only click links on the first page or two. In fact, the first page of results receives almost all the free traffic. What’s even more amazing is the the first 3 links get more than 70% of the free traffic.
This means that to get any real traffic you need to be on the first page in Google. To do that, you need to be “ranked” in Google’s Top 10 results. And this bring us to…
What is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization is a measure of how well Google and other search engines think your website matches the search terms people are typing into their search boxes. It’s a complex formula that only people working for Google know exactly. However, we do know a few things that count.
Getting indexed
Before your website can begin gaining ranking, you have to alert Google to it’s existence. This is called getting “indexed.” This is when Google looks at your site and take notes about it, which are stored in their database.
To get indexed, you have to help Google find your site. Getting a link from another site will accomplish this easily. Because Google already knows about these sites, it will follow the new links to you.
A couple of great places to do this are in your Twitter or Facebook profiles. Because these sites are indexed multiple times every day. And follows new links it finds immediately.
Gaining ranking
After getting indexed, you need to work on your search engine ranking. Google has billions of pages indexed, so just getting into their database does not mean anyone will see you.
Here’s what’s important in ranking:
Great content
This is the SEO you do on your site itself. And it means that the content on your page matches the keywords you’re targeting. Clearly this article is about search engine optimization. One reason Google knows this is because the words search engine optimization appear inside it. And another way this is determined is by the other related phrases like traffic generation that are also in the article.
In addition to the content on the page, other things to keep in mind are the title tags on the page, and the domain name itself. These all play a part in helping Google determine what your website is about.
Link strategy
The second factor is your linking. The links to your site, as well as the sites you link to are important. With inbound links, you want to have more coming in than going out. And the more inbound links the better.
One great way to get lots of inbound links is through web 2.0 sites. With this strategy what you do is write an article about the topic you’re targeting. Then create a bunch of different versions of it. And post unique versions to lots of websites that accept articles. The more sites you can do this for, the more links you’ll get back.
Increasing your activity
And lastly, it’s seems clear that Google expects important pages to be actively updated. You can’t just put up a page and leave it alone and expect it to rank well. Google expects you to be updating your site regularly. RSS feeds are an easy way to keep your content changing.
Another great way to keep your page content fresh is to enable comments on it and allow others to discuss your page topic. This means you need to get real live people to your site, as well. Online forums are simple source of real live visitors.
Set up forum profiles with the ones related to your website. And post their often. And link back to yourself in your signature file. This will get your more inbound links. And it also gets people to your web page.
Conclusion
All of the above is important. But let’s face it, writing multiple versions of the same article. And creating a bunch of forum profiles. And visiting all the sites to post up your comments and articles takes a really long time. Which means you probably won’t end up doing it.
The good news is that there are
automated software programs out there that will do this for you. So, use your time wisely and automated to tedious tasks. This way you’ll actually do it. And not doing it means you will never get free traffic from Google.
2:03 AM
zuetraffic
Posted in: 
