You Need Traffic

Any new owner of a website knows that having a website with great content is not enough - the site needs people to find it and visit it in order to be successful. That’s where SEO (search engine optimization) comes in.

How Visitors Find Your Site

Most sites get most of their new visitors from search engine results. People go to the search engine to find answers, and your site needs to be on the first page of the listings in order to get those people to click on your link. And Google is the main site you need to worry about since it receives more than half of the search traffic on the web today.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (or SEO) is simple the attempt to get a website and its pages placed well for relevant keywords in the major search engines - especially Google. So, if your website provides a market timing service for exchange traded funds (ETFs) for example, you would want your site to be near the top of the list in Google (and on the first page) when a web visitor types “etf timing system” into the Google search box.

Two Types of Search Engine Optimization Exist

On site, or on page, SEO is the first type. Off site, or off page, SEO is the other type.

On Site Search Engine Optimization

On page SEO is simple the attempt to provide content on your web pages that the search engines will index quickly and will put high in the search results for your most important keywords. On page SEO is accomplished primarily through using the key words you are attempting to attract traffic from in your headlines and the text of the page.

What is Off Site Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

One word defines off site SEO - links. The search engines, especially Google, place great stock in having keyword rich links that come into your site. The anchor text for such links is the most important part of the link’s structure. The most important part of the linking strategy itself is obtaining links from quality sites, especially sites that are linked by theme to your site.

Which Type of SEO is Most Important?

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this question. Although you can get a lot of visitors to your site with a comprehensive linking strategy, it is important that you have quality content that is related to what the visitor is seeking or else the bounce rate (the visitor clicks away from your page without visiting any other page on your site) will be high and getting the visitor to come to your site to begin with won’t mean anything.

SEO of both types must be done to get the most out of your websites profit potential.

Dividing your time between off site and on site SEO will probably profit your site the most.