Getting traffic to your site is one of the main challenges you face as a web business owner. The more traffic seen by your site, the more potential sales you will make. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is something you must become very familiar with in order for you to succeed in your online venture. The following article will touch upon the major points of SEO and how you can put it to work for your business.

1. What’s in a name? Choosing the name for your site isn’t much different than choosing a name for your child. What sounds good, represents them well and will carry them through life? Your website name must be relevant to search terms potential customers will use, highly representative of your particular business and able to sustain your site for the life of the business.

2. Be search engine friendly. Use appropriate tags (title, meta description etc) to describe your site, and be sure to have a good site map. These things are used by the search engines to determine what your site has to offer the world, and the more easily an engine can decipher your content, the better chance you have of a higher ranking. Use a good automation tool for your site map, as that will make it easier to update. Understanding how search engines operate will enable you to calculate what information to feed them and how.

3. Have great content and update it regularly. No matter how precise and successful your SEO tactics are, if your site isn’t prime-time for customers, then they will simply leave. Have highly relevant and useful content for visitors, and make sure they can smoothly navigate your site. Use people you know to test the viability of your site prior to launch and have them visit regularly thereafter to give you feedback.

4. Analytics. These web tools and services enable you to understand who is coming to your site, how they got there and how long they stayed. Such invaluable data must be collected with reliable tools, such as Google Analytics. Google offers this service for free, and it will help you correct mistakes before they become too costly, keep you competitive in your niche and eliminate a lot of the guess work if your site isn’t performing well.

5. Backlinking. Links connect your site to other quality, relevant sites and show the value of your site to the search engines. The more one-way links your site has linking it to others, the more important you are seen as. Use a smart linking strategy that increases the authority and prestige of your site, and don’t just opt for playing a high numbers game, such as what is offered by link farms. Google watches who you link to and from and can pull the rug out from under your business by deindexing your site, should they determine your linking tactics to not be on the up-and-up.

Although SEO presents some challenges for you, the online business owner, once you have the hang of it, you will be able to maximize the benefits it has to offer. Stay current with your SEO knowledge and tactics, and remain competitive with your online agenda.