SEO Basics For Home Business Owners - How to Drive Free 'Organic' Traffic to Your Websites

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

This is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to your website from search engines via "natural" (organic or algorithmic) search results for targeted keywords.

To put it simply, SEO is basically how to make your website more attractive to Google and get it ranked higher on the search engines.

As a home business owner, SEO is important because it brings in free, organic traffic to your websites.

It's much better to get free traffic from the search engines instead of just 'buying traffic' e.g. using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

There are 4 fundamental elements of SEO:

1. The Crawl
2. Content and On - Page factors
3. Site structure
4. Inbound Linking

1. The Crawl

How do the search engines know that your website exists?

Well, they do this by sending search engine spiders (bots) to 'crawl' through your website to check what kind of content it has.

This is the general process for identification of a website and retrieval of information e.g. texts, images, and links on that website.

The search engine spider's sole purpose is to crawl websites, and it does not rank or judge the content.

The crawl is important because without it, search engines will not know your website or page exists and cannot place your website pages in their index and rank them accordingly.

There are 2 ways to get your website crawled.

The first way is the old - fashioned way, where you place a link on a site which has already been crawled and/or gets crawled frequently. This means that if you have a friend whose website is frequently crawled, you can ask them to place a link to your website on one of their pages. As the spiders crawl his website, they will see your link, follow it, and crawl your website also.

The second way is the modern way, where you submit your website to GYM (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) Webmaster Centrals.

You need to use BOTH these methods to get crawled because they both have their place and they are both effective.

Content and On - Page Factors

The content in your website is also very important for SEO.

The 3 most important on - page factors are Page Title, H1 (Headlines), and Body Text.

• Page TitleThis is the single most important page element. The page title is found in the topmost section of your web browser (the blue/black strip at the top of your web browser, with the logo of your web browser on the extreme left).
• (Headlines)These are the headlines of your posts and articles.
• Body Text
• Body text is important because it helps in giving the user and search engines a better understanding of what your page is about.

Site Structure

Site structure is another important element of SEO. Users and search engines should be able to find the information they are looking for quickly on your website.

Try to make your site as 'flat' as possible. You can do this by following these 3 rules:

i) Keep your most important content closest to your homepage.

• Try to keep your most important content within 3 clicks from your homepage (The 3 Click Rule).
• This is not mandatory but it is a good guideline to follow, especially for beginners.

ii) Group your content logically.

• You should always group your content logically to allow your website visitors and search engine spiders to sort through your content effectively.

iii) Don't create any dead ends.

• All your pages should be able to loop back (link back) to the pages before and also to the homepage.

4. Inbound Linking

An inbound link is a link on another website that points back to your website. It is also called a backlink.

Links are the MOST IMPORTANT factor in Search Engine Optimization.

The higher the number of quality backlinks pointing to your website, the higher your rankings in the search engines.

RECAP

Okay, to conclude this article, let us do a quick review. In order for you to start driving free SEO traffic to your website, you need to do the following:

• Get your website content crawled and placed in the search engine index.
• Build relevant page titles, Headlines (H1), and body text which target the keywords you are looking to rank for.
• Ensure your site structure is as "flat" as possible because this allows your pages to be easily found. This also gives preference to your most important content.
• Start link building! Get backlinks to your website or blog to gain authority and increase your search engine rankings.