Saturday, February 16, 2008

Is Search Engine Optimization Worth It?

Many people question whether or not it is really worth pursuing search engine optimization. The truth is that it depends on the keywords you are targeting. Certain keywords will bring people that are much more likely to buy than others. You are better off getting fewer visitors that convert than getting a ton of visitors that barely buy any of your products.

As long as you are targeting potential buyers rather than strictly information seekers then ranking highly can be very much worth it. Of course you need to also ensure that there are enough people doing searches in your particular niche. It is important to remember that there are no guarantees in the world of search engine optimization as far as how well your site will rank.

You will need to monitor the progress of your site regularly, once a month is enough to check where your visitors are coming from and how much of it is from organic search engine results. Be sure to use the free Google Analytics program to track your visitors and to monitor the performance of your site.

Look at search engine optimization as a long term strategy and consider it a nice bonus if your site does rank number one for a competitive and profitable keyword term. However it is best to not rely on SEO only but rather have other sources of traffic such as pay per click advertising or using offline methods like radio, newspapers and television. Of course if you are flat broke then SEO may be your only option but always try to find some extra cash to pursue some paid advertising methods and be sure to always track your results.

If you are broke then consider entering a niche that is not too competitive when you start as this will give you a better chance of ranking highly relatively quickly and will also give you some good experience that you can apply to tackle the more competitive terms. A quick crash course on SEO would be to make sure your site titles are keyword rich, submit your site to directories with keyword rich anchor text, submit articles to directories with keywords in the anchor text of the articles author bio box links, create fantastic content that people will want to link to and keep your site fresh and regularly updated and make sure your content is unique.

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