Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best way to get long term targeted traffic from the search engines. But SEO requires hard word and commitment on the part of the webmaster. It may take a few months before results start appearing.
First let me explain in simple terms what SEO is. SEO means that you optimize each page of your website with a title tag, description tag, keywords tag and H1, H2 headers for a particular keyword. The content of the page should not have more than a 4% keyword density.
On page optimization is good but what actually works on the search engines is Off Page Optimization: getting quality backlinks from other authority sites. Search engines like to see thousands of quality backlinks to your site from authority sites before they start ranking your site for high traffic keywords.
Let me be frank, both On Page and Off Page Optimization requires hard work for a few months. There is no shortcut. Google does not like reciprocal links.
Some people fall into the trap of Black Hat SEO Gurus. These gurus will sell their eBooks for hundreds of dollars telling you to do this and do that. Avoid black hat. Search engines hate this stuff. Your site may get penalized by the search engines for using such techniques.
Black Hat SEO short cut is not good. It may work for sometime but the search engines will find it and ban your site. Other people buy SEO software. There are many available online. SEO Elite is one such software.
SEO Elite can only tell you whether your site is being ranked for a particular keyword and how many backlinks you are getting for your site. It cannot help you in On Page Optimization or Link Building. You will have to do this stuff yourself.
So why pay a few hundred dollars when you can get the same information from Google free. Google wants to help you in building a better website that users like. This is what SEO is all about; a user friendly website with good quality content.
Open a Google Account and register your website at Google Webmaster Tools. Submit a sitemap of your site. Within days Google will index your site. When you add new pages, Googlebot will get notified and index that page in a few hours.
In the Google Webmaster tools, you will find the link Search Queries. Click on this link. It will show you the keywords for which your website had been ranked in the past week.
Click on: link:http://www.yourdomain.com on the Google Webmaster Tools page and you will find the backlinks that Google is counting for your site. If Google is not counting a backlink, it has no value.
Isnt this method free and better than spending hundreds of dollars on SEO Software? If you have a Google Adwords account than you can also open a Google Analytics account for your site free.
Google Analytics gives you everything. The number of visitors, their countries, time spent on the site, referral path, bounce rate, pageviews; keywords that give you search engine traffic, direct traffic and referral sites that are giving traffic to your site.
