Your online business does not have a physical presence, so how do you alert potential customers that you are there and ready to serve them? You do this via search engines; they drive the traffic to your virtual doorstep. To get the most traffic possible, you need to search engine optimize your website. Below are beginner tips related to keywords and site mapping that will help your website zoom up the search engine rankings.

Define competitive keywords for your website that epitomize your content. Search engines, like Google, use algorithms which weigh aspects of your site, including its content, and define a ranking relevant to a search query. To help you appear at the highest ranking possible for the search terms most used by your target audience, you need to layer your content with the correct keywords. Your first step to defining a keyword is to ask yourself this question, “If I was a customer looking for a website like mine, what search terms would I use?” The answer is your first set of keywords.

Next, you need to understand the real value of those keywords by defining how much traffic and competition surround it. The free Google AdWords Keyword Tool lets you do just that. With it, you can calculate how popular your keywords are in terms of searches and you can see how competitive the term is in AdWords (Google’s paid search advertising). If your terms popularity is low and the competition is high, it is not worth investing efforts with the keyword. The ideal keyword is a search term with high popularity and low competition. The good news is Google’s tool lets you not only see the keyword you entered, but also a list of related keywords. Scanning this list often reveals some hidden keyword gems that you should utilize to build up traffic fast.

Once you have your keywords, layer them into your site’s content. This will aid your overall ranking when it comes to that search term, but be careful not to overdo it. You only need to place the keyword a few times on any relevant page. Any more than a few times, Google may believe you are practicing keyword stuffing and punish your site’s rankings. As well, content overstuffed with keywords feels stilted and unreadable. Your customers will be turned off by your overuse. Don’t forget to layer these keywords into your page title and metadata as well. Your page title, especially, is used by Google to define your ranking.

Build a site map. An often forgotten next step is to add a site map as a page on your website. Those uninitiated to search engine optimization may see the page and wonder why anyone would ever visit it or use it. It’s just a page full of links to various pages on your site. This page, though, is more meant for the search engines than human consumption. It acts as a road map for the search engines as they index your website. With the site map, the search engines may discover deeper pages on your site than they would have otherwise. The more pages ranked on a search engine, the more opportunities there are for customers to discover your website.

These are just a few search engine optimization opportunities; there are many more. Start here and mature your website with strong keywords and a defined site map, but look, too, to learn more on optimizing. The more you know, the more you can increase your website’s search engine presence.