Creating and publishing a website is no longer a mysterious, cryptic task that is reserved only for computer geeks. Nowadays, virtually everyone and their dog has their own website.
Anyone wanting a piece of the virtual pie can easily sign up for a free Blogger blog in about five minutes. In addition, there are lots of WYSIWYG editors available that make creating a beautiful, interactive website a very simple drag & drop process.
So that's the easy part. The difficulty lies in getting your website seen! With the internet's estimated 20 billion webpages, how on earth can you attempt to rise above obscurity and become well-known and famous in your niche?
The answer lies in search engine optimization. SEO can be defined as the process of driving traffic to your website organically (unpaid) from the search engines. In order to get the search engine bots to notice your site and include
it in the results pages, you'll need to work on these three components:
1. Making sure your content is relevant to the keyword phrases being searched
2. Optimizing your website with keywords and linking structures
3. Building powerful inbound links to your website from others in your niche
If you want massive exposure for your website, you need it to rank on the first page of Google for several different keyword phrases. 90% of internet users do not browse beyond the first page of results, so don't settle for being on the second or third page and only getting a tiny sliver of the traffic that you could be getting.
Unfortunately, no one makes it to the #1 spot on Google overnight (unless there happens to be no competition whatsoever – which is highly unlikely for any keyword phrase that gets a decent amount of searches).
Unlike “instant” methods like PPC (pay per click), search engine optimization takes a lot of time and effort. Think of PPC as the hustle and bustle of the big city. SEO on the other hand, is like a rural Southern town where progress moves slow and steady like molasses.
Marketers who choose to focus on SEO rather than driving traffic through PPC or other means acknowledge the fact that it takes time.
If you are impatient or give up easily, perhaps SEO may not be the right method for you to drive traffic to your website. No worries!
But for those of you that want to learn about SEO, read on. The fundamentals are really quite simple. The first step is learning. The second step is implementing. If you can do those two things, you've got it made!
