What is Search Engine Optimization?

Traffic generation via SEO or search engine optimization is one of the least understood, yet effective traffic generation strategies in online marketing these days.

Are you using a website to promote your online business?  (If you said no, stop right here and go set it up NOW – your online business is useless without a lead capture/landing page!!!)

If so, you may have found yourself a bit frustrated – to say the least! – by how difficult it can be to generate targeted traffic to your website.

Many marketers launch websites (or just use their company duplicated site, which is also a huge no-no) with the “build it and they will come” mentality, thinking that simply having a site is the key to successful traffic and lead generation.
Unfortunately, no matter how much time or money you have sunk into your online presence, building a website is not enough.

In order to make your website truly work for you, you need to use search engine optimization (SEO) to get targeted traffic to your website

Search engine what?…
Q:  What is search engine optimization | SEO?
A:   Search engine optimization involves generating traffic to your site through being ranked high in search engines for your chosen keywords.

Q:  Why should you care?
A:   Search engine optimization robots look for keywords , and having them in your content will help your site to achieve a position high up on the search result rankings.

Think about the last time you did a Google search.

How many pages of results did you look at to find the information you wanted?
Chances are you didn’t look past the first page or two of results. If you are on page 4 of Google you might as well not exist.

The same is true with the vast majority of internet users — if they don’t find what they’re looking for on the first page, they usually either give up or try a different search phrase.

There are several good SEO keyword tools I use Wordtracker  to find keywords relevant to your business and generate more traffic for your site via search engine optimization.

Spend some time finding out what people are searching for in Google and other search engines… and use these keywords in your content.

This includes not only the text of your website, but also your image tags, title tags, and page descriptions.
It takes quite a bit of time to use search engine optimization to gain more traffic for your site — time that you would probably rather spend talking to prospects.

HOWEVER, by properly optimizing your site for search engines, you can generate targeted traffic much more effectively — and spend your time capturing email addresses through your autoresponder like Aweber, instead of hunting for those leads.
 

Lead Generation:getting noticed by the search engines

Lead generation.We all want more leads.

To get those leads we must show up on the search engines,because if you are not known by the search engines, you are invisible on the internet.

You can create the best website there is,with hugely compelling copy but it will count for nothing if the Google,MSM and Yahoo spiders have not had a look at your site.

So how do you get search engine rankings?You need two things:keywords and backlinks.

Think about what you do when you search for something on the internet.You go to Google and type in a word or phrase in the search box.

Then Google goes and finds sites that have that word or phrase on their site.

So the first thing you need to know is what words or phrases people are using to find things on the internet.

To help you with that process Google has developed it’s own keyword tool which you can find here.Type in a word that you think relates to the central theme of your site and Google will show you how many times a day that word typed into Google.Not only that it will list variations of that word.The trick then is to use this list to create web pages n your site.

Take one keyword and make it the main subject of that page.In this way you are more likely to be ranked high on the search engines as Google puts the most relevant pages to that keyword at the top of the list.

If you want an even deeper list of keyword I recommend Wordtracker that also offers a free keyword tool  here.

Then keep adding pages to your website or blog using a different keyword for each page.This is part one of your search engine optimization strategy for lead generation.

The second part is backlinks.

Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your website.The more you have the better.But they have to be a certain type of backlink.

You must link back to your site from a site that is well regarded by Google.An example would be Squidoo.com which is a free web page creation tool that is well regarded by Google.You can see here a live Squidoo page on lead generation online .Create valuable content on your Squidoo lens then link to your web page or lead capture page.This will raise the status of your page on Google and get it higher up the search engine rankings.

Ideally you want to have one way links from the page that has high ranking back to your page,but not the other way.Google gives greater importance one way links.With two way links Google thinks you may have an agreement with the website owner of the other site to exchange links in order to lift rankings.

You can go on the internet and find these link exchange “farms” where people just exchange links with each other often between sites that have no relevance to each other.

Look for quality links and this will boost your search engine rankings.

Have a great day

Andrew Collinson

If you want to learn more about lead generation and search engine optimization I recommend the Renegade University which you can find here