As the Internet continues to grow at a daunting pace, it has become a very competitive place to conduct business. It is no longer optional for businesses to have a website, it is expected. Consumers navigate through the huge volume of websites by using search engines. Your potential customers are searching online using Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com. The companies that succeed online are the ones whose websites are the easiest to find. There are many different strategies for driving traffic to your website. The one most people think of when it comes to search engines is search engine optimization, or SEO for short.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

There are many parts to a search engine listing. The three most common listings are paid search listings, found at the top and right hand side of the results page, local search listings, which are found next to the map on geographically specific searches, and the organic, or free listings, that appear under the map. SEO focuses on the organic or Free listings. Wikipedia defines Search Engine Optimization as, “ the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via “natural” or unpaid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) which may deal with paid inclusion.”

Onsite Search Engine Optimization

There are two parts to an SEO strategy, onsite and offsite. Onsite SEO involves making your website search engine friendly. This involves using valid code, incorporating your keywords in the right places and at the correct ratio, ensuring that your website is easily crawled by the search engine spiders, and making it very obvious what the theme of each page is to the search engines.

Offsite Search Engine Optimization

Offsite SEO is just as important as onsite SEO. Offsite SEO is the process of building links back to your website from credible high ranking websites and directories. Google created an algorithm called Page Rank that is a measurement of site credibility. Page Rank takes into consideration the quantity and quality of the websites that link back to your site.

The logic behind this is if high credibility websites see your site’s content as important or relevant enough to link to, then your website must be providing better content than sites that do not have these links. Google has always been focused on providing the most relevant search results to its users. It believes that sites that have high quality back links have better content, so these sites deserve to rank higher.

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