Some website owners feel that it is enough to merely have a presence online. If you have paid for the hosting and construction of a website, surely it is worth finishing and marketing your project properly. It will only take a tiny amount of effort to achieve astounding returns and results.

There is always of scope for improvement, no matter what you are selling or who your business caters to. While some people may consider SEO to be a waste of their valuable time and resources, they are wrong, as this way of thinking could not be further away from the truth.

Search Engine Optimization is essential. Unless your business is completely unique, your site can get buried in the sheer number of websites who happen to be targeting exactly the same markets as you are. A targeted SEO online marketing strategy can really help you stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Your website was designed with generating income and/or business awareness, preferably generating traffic from those who are looking for exactly whatever it is you are offering. This is the traffic that is driven by the search engines.

The results from search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and Google are returned using complex algorithms which are constantly changing. Websites are first indexed by a bot or a spider which ‘crawls’ through all of the contents of the site, determining its domain or page authority and searching for information. A site list is then created and a link is made, from those sites to a timely search phrase. This is determined by what the bots and spiders “see” as being the most useful content to the searcher. They are searching information that is highly targeted, which is why good SEO is so very important.

For instance, the strength of a site depends largely on its incoming link structure. Every link’s rank is determined by its authority, so you appear more authoritative if you have a lot of links. If you are looking to achieve a larger impact, strong links are key, so you ought to start to be selective and look for sites that are high up on the page rankings. Page rank however, is but one mere metric in determining the strength of a site.

It is important to maintain relevance in order to source links from businesses or people from your surrounding area, from within your industry, or at least those who share something in common. These will also be considered a source of respect by web-savvy users and search engines.

Another factor that can have a profound effect on people’s perception of the authority of your website, are the domains your links are coming from. If you receive a link or a trackback from a site with a.edu or a.gov domain, this will have a far greater influence than a large number of equivalent low PR links.

How about your content? Your page copy is really vital, but so is your meta content too. Affording attention to the finer details can have a massive impact on how the search engines perceive your website. You should strive to compile a unique block of content for each web page within your site. It doesn’t have to be too long. Page copy should generally be approximately 200 to 500 words, yet less content should still be OK if you genuinely can’t find the time to write more than this. It is simply important that any content offers useful and relevant information to the market you are targeting.

Yet another way to improve the relevance of your site, is to ensure your content is well written, as this will ensure that the search engine spiders have a clear idea of what words or phrases you are targeting. It is vital to ensure that each page is keywords optimized. Include your keywords in your text 2 or 3 times; including as your page title and inside the H1 heading tag also.

There are also other factors to take into consideration, such as:

• how fast your site loads

• your website’s internal link structure

• the other things that you should be providing for the benefit of your potential customers.

Search engines are drawn to user friendly websites, so by optimizing your website for Bing, Yahoo and Google, you are also optimizing your website for potential customers in the form of your human visitors.

Building a website is only the beginning of a web design process, so please ensure you complete the task to your best ability and make sure it is optimized for search engines and visitors. Employing the above-mentioned points will hopefully ensure you have a continuous, steady stream of highly targeted traffic driving to your new website.