If you build it, will they come?

"If you build it, they will come," is the famous quote from the movie Field of Dreams. However, as all too many webmasters and business owners have discovered, just building a website is no guarantee of receiving visitors.

Visit Google.com and type in a few keywords like real estate. You will be immediately presented with thousands of results organized in a ranking that takes up several pages (by 10 in each page). How many of those results are you going to glance through? The first 100, which would be 10 pages? Probably not. The first 30, or 3 pages is more likely. Some surfers wont even go past the first 5 results.

This means that just because a website is listed in the search engines it doesnt mean that it will be found.

What is search engine optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. In order to rank higher among your competitors, you have to make the search engines like your website. The higher Website ranks in the results of a search, the greater chance that site will be visited by a user.

What are search engines?

There are three basic categories of search engines:

1) Spider based search engines, such as Yahoo, Google and etc.
2) Directories powered by humans such as Open Directory (DMOZ).
3) There are also combinations or "hybrids" of search engines and directories.

How do search engines work?

Just in case you're unfamiliar with how search engines work, here's a brief explanation: Most search engines "spider" the Web looking for new pages to add to their database or index on a daily basis. You can also manually submit your site or use a software.

Once your pages are added to the index, people can do a search on the Internet for various keywords to find pages that "best" match their search criteria. Appearing within the first few pages of the search is critical to people finding you.

These matches will be ranked or positioned in order of importance (algorithm). The exact rules they use to rank pages for relevance are generally kept a secret and change often. Different search engines use different ranking criteria and is constantly changing.

How do search engines rank web pages?

After submitting your site to search engines, your website is indexed into a search engine's database. Search engines rank websites using a technology - called algorithm. Websites are ranked in order of importance (relevance). The most relevant site based on a search criteria makes it to the top of search engine results.

When a search engine spider analyzes a web page, it determines keyword relevancy based on an algorithm, which is a formula that calculates how web pages are ranked.

Most of the major search engines (including Google, Yahoo, MSN) uses sophisticated techniques to search billions of documents, files and websites within a span of few seconds and returns the information to the user a list of files that matches your topic of interest. Search engines will also sort in the order of relevance - called search results.

People finding your site via search engines are more qualified targets for your products and services because they have actively sought out your site by typing a search phrase directly related to your site content. It's the perfect web site promotion!

Why do you need search engine optimization?

Below are a few facts which should leave you in no doubt that search engine optimization should form an integral part of every web promotion strategy.

Over 80% of Internet users find websites through search engines.
90% of Internet users do not go past the top 30 search engine results. They simply type something else in if they can't find a relevant site.
75% of Internet users have the intention of purchasing a product or service when using search engines.
Professional search engine optimization is about twice as effective as all other Internet marketing methods and eight times more effective than costly banner advertisements.

Therefore, ranking highly in search engines and directories should be critical to your Internet marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many online businesses fail to address the importance of search engines, building their site without any regard to search engine compatibility at all.

Summary.

Question: How does your website compete against thousands of other websites?

Answer: Search Engine Optimization. The number one most effective way to drive qualified visitors to your website.