What do You do to SEO a Website, and How do You do this?

You've just joined an affiliate marketing programme, and as a part of the deal you have a brand new website. If you're new to the idea, you might then be inclined to sit back and wait for the visitors to roll in. Surprise! Nothing happens, so what do you do now? SEO means: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZE and we discuss how to get started on this process.

If we understand how the internet works, we'll understand why we need to do something more to get visitors to our site. The principles are actually quite simple, and if you understand how the system works, you'll have a clearer understanding of what you need to do.

The internet is based on a system that links people who are looking for information with others who can provide the required information. If you are looking for information about improving your golf-swing, you would go to one of the internet search engines, and type in something like:

"How do I fix my golf swing?" What you have just done is to enter the KEYWORDS which will be used to locate a website about golf and which will provide tips on how to improve your swing. The search engines send spiders to crawl golfing websites until they find a selection of sites which may have the information you need.

The principle is quite simple, and we don't need to be too involved in the technology involved. If you have a website about golf, and you offer tips to improve a golf swing, your website must be sprinkled with a selection of keywords which a potential visitor might type in to his computer.

The next trick is to select the best keywords for your purpose. The key is to achieve a balance between the most popular keywords used by the sites on page one, and those that are less competitive. The competition to get near to page one is fierce. There are almost five hundred thousand results listed for this inquiry in just one of the search engines. Your chances of beating them to page one are very slim indeed!

There is some very clever (free) software available to help you find the right balance. If you type in something like: Free keyword software, you'll have plenty of options to look at. You'll be assisted to find some appropriate keywords, and to strike a balance between the most visited words (which aren't available to you yet) and those that will serve your purpose, to get your site listed on something better than page 200 000!

Having decided on your keywords, you'll need to place them in strategic positions around your website. This is a fairly tricky process, so if you're not that technically inclined, you might pay someone to do it for you.