As the internet grows exponentially each day, it becomes harder to gain recognition as a small business owner. Having to compete with large corporations that possess seemingly infinite advertising funds is a difficult task to say the least. In fact, it would be literally impossible without a thorough knowledge in search engine optimization. Search engines are responsible for more than 80 percent of the traffic distributed on the internet. If your site does not rank highly in the search engines, then there is simply no way you can become a formidable presence in your niche. There are many secrets to be learned before you can master the art of search engine optimization, however learning the basics will give you the head start needed to compete with experts in the field.

Quality Content

When web surfers search for a phrase in a search engine, they are looking for an answer. The website that best solves this question, according to the search engine, will appear at the top of the search results. A search engine judges the usefulness of a website based on numerous factors. One of the ways search engines judge your site’s usefulness is the amount of time each visitor spends on each page. If your visitors only spend 30 seconds at your site before leaving, then the search engines will view your website’s content as relatively useless. Another way search engine’s judge the usefulness of your site is by calculating the number of links containing your website’s URL that exist on the internet. These links are called backlinks. The more backlinks in existence, the more useful your site appears to be. In order to boost your site’s search engine ranking, you’ll need to provide engaging content updated on a regular basis.

Keyword Optimization

Simply having useful content is not enough. You want your content to be based on keywords that will attract attention for your niche. Try to remember that you are targeting search engine queries, so you’ll want to include key phrases within the content of your website. Before you begin writing or buying content for your site, you’ll want to do some keyword research. Find out what the most popular current search phrases are in your niche. You’ll also want to choose a keyword that is not over-saturated with competition. You can find out all of this information by using keyword research tools provided by Google. You can even find out what the hottest keywords of the day are by using Google Hot Trends. Once you have decided upon your keyword, it is important to use the proper keyword density. Search engines frown upon spam content that is littered with over-used keywords. You want your content to have a keyword density of about 1-3%.  Make sure you place the keyword in the beginning, middle and end of each article on your website. It is also important to include keywords in the design of your website, within title tags, meta tags, and even anchor text.

Getting Indexed

Once you have created your website and filled it with useful content, you’ll need to get the attention of the search engine crawlers. To do this you can submit your sitemap to Google and a few other popular search engines. You can also submit your site to a few popular online directories and social bookmarking sites. As your popularity increases the search engine crawlers will begin to notice your site, and eventually your site will be fully indexed. It is best to have a site that is heavy in basic text, as search engine crawlers index this kind of information more efficiently.