December 14, 2007

SEO: Traffic

Getting traffic to your website or blog can be as difficult as getting hundreds of backlinks or as expensive as taking out ads at popular websites. It can also be as simple as using a few SEO techniques to make sure your site is getting the traffic it needs through popular search engine searches. By using the principles of search engine optimization, you can get a better placement in the search engine results and more traffic to your site. This traffic is known as organic traffic, and the search engines are not paid for these placements. The search engines benefit by giving their users the information they’re seeking, bringing them back to the same search engine again for the next search.

So, where are the search engine placement rules? In a perfect world, perhaps they would be written out for all to see and benefit from. But search engines keep these secret, leaving site owners to speculate about what has worked for them and what has not. By drawing on all of that experience, you can see what the best techniques are for getting high placement to bring in more traffic to your own site.

Keywords

One of the easiest SEO techniques is to master the use of keywords. The keyword density is the percentage of the article made up of the keywords you have chosen. While most search engines won’t say exactly what percentage they are looking for, there is an optimal percentage range for each search engine. For this reason, the recommended keyword density will vary, depending on what SEO resource you read. Most sources recommend a keyword density of anywhere from 1.5 to 5 percent.

Getting the keyword density you need can be done in one of two ways: counting the words in each piece and placing the keyword enough times, or using a keyword density tool. If you choose to count, just divide the number of times a keyword appears by the number of words in the entire piece. The answer is your keyword density percentage. If you use a keyword density tool, you can paste the copy directly into a box, click a button to calculate the density, and be given the answer. Either method is reliable, so it’s just a matter of personal preference which one your choose.

Original Content

To get good search engine rankings, you also need good, original content. If the item has been printed elsewhere, it will not rank as well as if it were original to your site. Getting your original content should be an ongoing process, however. If you put all of your content on a site at one time, never adding to it, you will not rank as highly as if you added to it often. Search engines like large sites, and they like sites that continually add to their content. A stagnant site is not one that is likely to be looked at again and again, and search engine owners don’t want their users being turned off by them.

If you can implement some basic SEO techniques, you have a much better chance of getting one of the coveted top spots in the search results. And, these results aren’t dependent on your ad budget or whether your backlinks stay in place.

Mark

Posted by Mark at December 14, 2007 7:50 AM

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