Get Free Website Traffic through Free Website Promotion Strategies
Search Engine Optimization or SEO strategies are geared towards getting free, or organic, traffic from search engines, that you don't have to pay for. (Actually, for strategies which are supposedly 'free', you do pay, but with work instead of money.)
You get this free website traffic by getting your website to appear in the first few results pages for search queries related to your site, in search engines such as Google or Yahoo or MSN.
Example:
Fig 1: Example of Search Results : Sites getting Free Website Traffic
The bulk of web surfers visit websites listed in the first 3 results pages. So the higher a web page ranks in the Search Engines, i.e. the closer it gets to the first results page, the more you increase website traffic.
These visitors are very good to have for 2 reasons: they're free, and they're highly targeted. This is definitely the way to go if you're operating on a shoestring budget, and want to increase website traffic but don't have money to spend on paid advertising.
To achieve this, you have to design the website to – eventually - rank highly. It will not happen overnight. Once achieved however, it becomes a goldmine of free website traffic.
The practices needed to optimize a website to rank highly in the search engines for related queries is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is itself a huge area, covering many website SEO algorithms, and even the keyword research that we discussed earlier.
It involves steps which try to satisfy whatever is known of the ranking algorithms of the search engines. These algorithms determine which websites are listed in response to search queries, and the order in which they appear.
The ranking algorithms are kept secret, and constantly fine-tuned. Nobody outside the search engines knows the exact formula for sure –- it's too complex a mesh, of many factors. (Google's algorithm considers over 400 factors; Yahoo's over 600.)
There're however, a number of website SEO algorithms that are known, and based on them, experienced internet marketeers have been able to get good rankings.
There are companies that specialize in doing SEO for websites. They will do it for a fee, but it has to be constantly maintained which can be expensive. You'd be better off buying a detailed tutorial that teaches you how to do it, such as John Reese's
Traffic Secrets 2.0
which hand-holds you through the many free website promotion methods.
There are 2 parts to search engine optimization: on-page and off-page. On-page optimization refers to those things you can do on your web page itself, to make it search engine friendly and increase website traffic that you get free. Off-page optimization involves things you do outside your website, such as getting backlinks to it, so as to push your website up search engine rankings.
On-page website SEO algorithms need to be incorporated right into web pages themselves, and weaved into each page as you build it. Try to read through and understand at least this aspect of search engine optimization before building your web pages.
