Many people develop a website under the impression that traffic is just about to pour in. To be honest, that never happens. In order to build traffic and eventually make money from your website, you need to focus on optimizing your content pages and marketing materials for the easiest way to be found on search engines. In other words, you can’t just write whatever you want and hope someone sees it. You really have to write what people want to see. This process can get a bit complicated, but the information below should give you a reasonable idea of what’s going on and how to use it to your advantage.
Whenever someone uses a search engine, he or she usually uses a keyword or key phrase to search for what he or she is looking for. This is how most people will find your website. To effectively reach your audience, you need to know what keywords people are using to get to sites like yours. Then you need to make sure you use those words in your web content and marketing materials so that your site will show up as a result of their search.
Every search engine provides tools for web developers to find out what those keywords are. For example, you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to see how many people are searching for a specific keyword online and what common forms of that keyword are being used. There you can also see how many other sites are targeting the same keyword so you can get an idea of your competition. Think of words that relate to the content, products, and services on your site, and then see if other people are using them online.
You need to have a good list of keywords to use instead of focusing on one or two. You can’t see from the start how effective they will be, so you need to have a widely used option to build on. Then you can find out what words most people use to get back to you later through analysis tools. However, the whole process starts with this keyword research and is vital to your success as a whole. If your website doesn’t have the right words, you won’t get the right kind of traffic. A little research will go a long way for you.
