Getting Free Traffic To Your Site Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In Evaluating Your Online Advertising Options we looked at two popular methods for driving traffic to your site. In this post we’ll be looking at the underlying concepts that allow you to capitalize on getting advertising for free.

The Internet became popular in the 1990s. One of the reasons for that was that there were so many companies giving things away for free. For a short time it was believed that if a marketer gave away valuable stuff he could build a loyal customer base. There was a small amount of truth to that but prudent marketers found much more effective ways to use their marketing budgets.

There are, however, still lots of legitimate ways to get free stuff online. And getting large numbers of targeted visitors to your Website without paying for them is one of the freebies still very much available for people who are willing to learn the ropes. The primary method is through the use of search engine optimization or SEO for short. And the search engine that virtually all marketers want to impress is the 800-pound gorilla, Google.

What Is SEO?
To put it simply, SEO is a combination of strategies whereby a marketer presents his Web pages to search engine software so the engine assigns the pages a high ranking. In other words, so the site shows up in the first few pages appearing relative to the keyword used in the search phrase.

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it. It would be simple except for one thing. The search engines are always changing priorities with regard to what they are looking for to assign a page a high ranking.

But just because the search engines don’t always make it a walk in the park to get a top position doesn’t mean you can’t benefit by optimizing your site as best you can. In fact, if you’re willing to do a little studying for what Google likes to see and what they frown upon with regard to the way a page is presented, you can get lots of targeted traffic to your site. By the way, targeted traffic refers to visitors who are looking for the stuff you’re selling.

Keywords
In Evaluating Your Online Advertising Options of this series we looked at choosing a product wisely and one that has a strong demand. Products that have a high demand carry with them a lot of competition. Previously we used two sample searches to illustrate how pay per click advertising works. The first was ‘work from home.’ If you were to do a Google search using those keywords you would bring up the first of approximately 326,000,000 pages relative to your search. The other search phrase we used earlier was buggy whips. If you searched Google using that phrase you’d see the first of 156,000 pages. That’s quite a difference.

So what does this mean to you? People looking to market products online would be wise to see both how many searches occur for their potential product and how many competitive pages appear for that search. With ‘work from home’ you find 326,000,000 pages. Even the most skilled SEO expert would have trouble getting his site to the head of the line in such a crowded field. But that does that mean he shouldn’t try? Not really. There are other keyword combinations people use that won’t be nearly as popular yet will still drive visitors to your site if you incorporate them into your pages.

For example, if you were marketing a guide on work from home opportunities and wanted to optimize your site to drive potential customers there you’d want to look for other keywords they might use when searching. One of those might be home ‘based business.’ If you searched Google for that phrase you’d find 214,000,000 competitive pages. Still a lot, but better by more than a third.

Alternative Keywords
What if you searched ‘work from home typing?’ You’d find an amazing drop in pages down to 10,200,000. Granted, that’s still a lot of pages, but you’re starting to get to a manageable number and with more research might be able to find a phrase where you could actually compete. And in case you’re wondering, Google offers free tools to help you determine what the popular keywords and search phrases are.

Many people simply stay out of highly competitive markets and look for products that have a moderate demand. This is a wise strategy because if you take the time to learn what the search engines are looking for you can optimize your site to deliver that. And if you are of the mind to get really good at it, you can actually gain very high page ranking for your market. That will bring targeted visitors to your site and if your offer is presented in a compelling way, you’ll be making sales. Multiply your efforts for other markets and you just might end up an Internet tycoon.

Make sure you take a look at Overview Of Free Traffic Techniques where we’ll go into more detail on getting free visitors to your site.