Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

You have probably just built a new website, submitted it to search engines and are now waiting wondering where all the visitors are that are going to put hundreds of dollars into your bank account. A few weeks pass by and you are still left wondering where all your website traffic is. Your website is open for business but no-one seems to know about it.
If this situation sounds familiar to you then you have probably thought about giving up and thowing the whole thing away. This is NOT what you should do and this is not how your website is going to rank high in the search engines.
There is one critical first step that you must follow when creating any website. This crucial first step involves picking the best keywords for your on page optimization and the only way you can decide which keywords will get you the highest rankings for your website is by doing some research.
Your first point of call must be at one or all of the following online keyword research tools:

http://www.goodkeywords.com
http://www.digitalpoint.com
http://www.overture.com
http://www.wordtracker.com

Once you create a website for your business, you quickly figure out that people are not flocking to it. When you assess the different ways of driving traffic, your options include advertising your website address, promoting your website address through Public Relations and gaining media coverage, encouraging other sites to link to you and getting placed in online directories.



However, these marketing activities will deliver small and sporadic volumes of traffic. The single biggest thing you can do to drive traffic is search engine marketing. Here is why: it is estimated that 80% of traffic to most websites comes from search engines. There are roughly 500 million searches performed everyday and 88% of that traffic comes from the top 4-5 search engines, Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Of these, Google is by far the largest. Approximately 90% of people searching do not go past the third page of results and few go beyond the first page.




Therefore, if you want to drive traffic to your site it is imperative that you get onto the first three pages of Google and the other top search engines. Surprisingly, the majority of small businesses have not figured this out yet and for those who have, the majority are asking the question, How can I get my site to appear on the first page of Google search results?



Different Options



There are two main methods of appearing on the first page of search results.



Paid for results or Pay Per click (PPC)


This is where you pay to appear in the sponsored links section of the results page. In Google, this is at the top of the page and the right hand side. You decide which search keywords e.g. London restaurant, you would like to appear in. You appear in the search results and you pay for every user who clicks through to your site. The cost will vary by keyword and can range from 10p to several pounds or dollars per click, depending on how many other companies are bidding for that keyword.



Natural results achieved through SEO

Natural results are when you appear in the main list of results. You do not pay to appear or when a user clicks on your link. However, to appear on the first three pages of results, you need to implement a number of design and content changes to your website, which are termed Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.



Which is best?

Both have their merits, but natural results are by far the most preferable because once you have invested in SEO, you do not have to pay for the traffic that is generated.



PPC is a great solution if you:

Have just launched your website and you need immediate presence on the first page of result or if you have not yet successfully optimised your site to appear on the first page. Remember, there are thousands of websites all looking to appear on the first page of search results for certain keywords.




Spiders and Links: The Basics of How Search Engines Work



Without getting bogged down in the technical details of how search engines work, here are a few basics that you should be aware of.



Search engines want to ensure that the most relevant sites are displayed to customers who are searching for keywords e.g. London restaurants.