People dont buy online. -- Corey Rudl.
People who are new to Internet marketing often get that first site up and running, then sit back and relax with the sense of relief that comes from knowing that the hard work is all in the past. Then nobody shows up.
Getting set up on the Web is not like opening up a physical store. There are no curious shoppers walking by and wondering whats inside. People create sites based on this mistaken analogy every day, and wonder where all the shoppers are. They then bend over backwards or hire a designer to make their sites more attractive and inviting, as if this is the problem. The real problem is that Web traffic is not like sidewalk traffic. You have to find it, not the other way around.
Believe it or not, there are literally thousands of ways to get free traffic to your site: Banner ads, traffic exchanges, link exchanges, paper ads, ezine co-registration, solo ads, pay-per-click search engines, article submission, blogging, free-for-all directories, safelists, affiliate programs, and on and on. Pretty much everything you can pay for on the Internet has a free alternative (but you usually have to give something up).
The first and foremost is free traffic from the major search engines. Thats because its the only totally free way of getting traffic, in the sense that the only thing you need to do is the stuff you should have been doing anyway.
But wait, you might say, My site is better than almost all of the ones in my category, but Im not getting any visitors from the major search engines. The reason is simple: Search engines are still pretty dumb and easily manipulated. You have to know what they want and give it to them.
Youre probably all aware of the big 3 search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These became popular for two main reasons:
* They were already popular Web portals to begin with, and then they added Web searching (in the case of Yahoo and MSN).
* They strive to find exactly what people are searching for (especially in the case of Google).
The latter point is the one you can control. Give people exactly what theyre searching for in a way that Google understands, and youll get visitors. What does Google understand
* Content: The text in your pages, title, (sub)domain name, PDF documents, etc. tells Google the theme of your site. Do you have adult content, or phrases associated with illegal activity If your content is too similar to some other page, yours is dumped in the similar pages bin.
* Links out: What other sites are you recommending Google likes it when you only link to quality sites.
* Links in: Are other sites recommending yours How many sites and how popular and on-topic are they How are they describing your site
* Links within: How is your site structured Is it a directory, blog, catalog, forum Are most of your pages content, or something else
* Your sites age: Are you well-established or possibly just playing around
* Content freshness: Have your pages been collecting dust for years or are you continuously updating their content
Theres more, but these are all things that you can control, or at least influence. Here are some things that search engines do not understand:
* Table layout. They can see everything in your table, but they look at it in the order it appears in the HTML document. What they see first is considered more important.
* Client-side content: Java and JavaScript run in your browser, and search engines dont attempt to simulate a browser.
* Images: Obviously a computer program will have trouble looking at a picture and figuring out what it means. Fortunately alt HTML tags can help describe what its a picture of.
* Meaning: Though they might try, search engines dont know English or any other language not designed for computer programs to understand. They only know what phrases are related to others based on peoples browsing habits, i.e. also visited or also linked to kinds of information.
Given how search engines work, its not hard to think of things to do differently in order to attract visitors from search engines.
Appearance doesnt matter, content does. Make sure it contains keywords that people are actually searching for. Write lots of it, and often. To distinguish your site, try to find unique topics that other sites arent writing about. Of course, be careful that your pages arent so optimized that people hit the back button 5 seconds after getting to your site.
Be careful who you link to. If you have a country music site, dont link to a video game site. Dont link to porn or warez sites unless youre in that business. Try to get good sites to link to you, if theyre related to you somehow (that the search engines understand), and have them link to different pages, with different text. You can do this yourself with forum posts and articles, and/or approach Webmasters directly with the attitude that your readers might be interested in my site.
Be creative. You might be able to come up with a strategy that nobody else has thought of! Just be sure that its based on how search engines work, and how they will continue to work in the forseeable future.
Mike Jolley has worked for 8 years as a C++ programmer in the casino gaming industry. Now hes doing Internet marketing full time. A prolific writer and selfless helper of those new to business, he can be found at
What is an SEO
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
Complete SEO process can be divided in Modules
Module 1:
This module is about Initial Site and Target Audience Analysis:
Discussion with client / Q&A about the site, target audience, business etc.
Initial site analysis including Page Rank, link-popularity & search engine saturation analysis
Module 2:
This module is about Search Engine Friendliness Analysis:
Site design, navigation, HTML code and file name analysis.
Module 3:
This module is about Keyword Research and Competition Analysis:
Study of about 200 business specific keywords and short-listing 10 most potential final keyword phrases.
Module 4:
This module is about Content Analysis:
Content analysis based on the 10 finalized keyword phrases.
Module 5:
This module is about SEO Copywriting / Copy Optimization:
SEO copy optimization for existing content of the site including Meta Tags, Alt Text, Title Attributes and Anchor text.
Module 6:
This module is about Site Code Optimization:
Customized optimization of different important pages with 10 keyword phrases.
Creation of targeted, optimized Meta tags. Recommendation of optimized filenames, image names & directory names.
Creation of customized 404 Error Page.
Creation of a search engine friendly site map.
Creation of optimized text-based navigation of the site.
Optimizing inter-linking within the web pages of the site.
Recommendations for controlling content headings through optimized CSS
Addition of robots.txt file for excluded content
Hand-submissions of the Home Page and Site Map to major search engines and directories:
Hand-submissions to Free search engines & Directories Submission Report
Module7:
This module is about Ranking Report:
Detailed Ranking Report after 4-8 weeks of final submission across various Search Engines.
Evaluation of pre-optimization and post-optimization ranking and visibility analysis.
Suresh Krishna
Search Engine Optimizer, Hyderabad, India
More information at