When it comes to getting traffic from search engines, you’re SEVEN times more likely to get a visitor through the organic (free) search engine than through a pay per click ad!

You can’t afford not to spend as much time as possible improving your site’s overall search engine performance.

With that in mind, here are my top three recommendations for improving your free traffic using the search engines…

Search engines strategy #1: Speak your visitors language

I don’t mean English, Spanish or Russian.

When I say speak your visitors language, I mean you should use the exact words and phrases they use to search for your products or services.

You’ll find so many people building their sites around the words THEY themselves use to describe what they are selling, even going so far as to optimize their sites using the name of their product.

Why is that a problem?

Well, let’s say you sell the “GutterClear 3000,” a tool that comes in pretty handy to clean out all the gunk in your gutters without ever having to get up on a ladder. Now let’s say there are thousands of people out there looking for a really cool tool for hands-free (and ladder-free) gutter cleaning.

Do you think they are all going to sit down in front of Google and type “GutterClear 3000”?

Not likely, right? Chances are, they are going to describe what they’re trying to accomplish, or what problem they’re trying to solve (“gutter cleaning tool,” “clean gutters without ladder” etc).

So even if you’ve got the top spot on Google for “GutterClear 3000,” the product remain unsold, because nobody is using that word to find it.

And please never assume. Use a good keyword research tool, like Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery, to be sure you’ve identified the exact words your customers are using to find you.

Search Results Strategy #2: Make sure your pages are search engine friendly

Once you’ve done your keyword research, and understand how your customers are searching for you, you can use that information to create a site that will appeal to the search engine spiders, which in turn will improve your rankings. The higher your page appears on the results page, the Greater the chances that people will click on it.

So be sure to use your keywords in your:

• Title tag— This is the title of your site that usually appears in the actual search engine results. Search engine spiders often look at the title tag first to understand what your site is about. That makes the title tag one of the best ways to appeal to both potential visitors and search engines at the same time. 

• Headline and subhead — By including your main keywords in your headline and subheads, and wrapping them in <h> tags, you’ll be tipping off the search engines that the site’s content reflects what’s in the heads and subheads , which is an SEO plus. At the same time, by displaying your best keywords in the headline and subhead, your visitors will see that they have come to the right place the second they land on your page… and be more likely to stick around.

• Salescopy — Because the search engines “crawl” your site looking for information about how to categorize your site, and also check to see how relevant your copy is, you want to make sure you include your keywords in the sites copy. But don’t get carried away! Search engines can tell when you’re cramming your site full of words JUST to get better rankings, and will penalize you for it, and you want to be sure your site actually makes sense to your visitors.

• Image (alt) tags— Search engines can’t “read” images, but they can read the text that you use to describe the images. This descriptive text, called an “alt” tag, is one more way to add multiple strong keywords to your site, again increasing your chances of being categorized for that particular term. 

Another way to use your keywords is in the way you organize the pages in your site.

Make sure that all of the information or products on a page are related or relevant. The last thing you want is to confuse the search engine spiders with a mishmash of words on any given page that don’t make sense together.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that it’s the words on your site that give you the overall competitive edge when it comes to your search engine rankings, so resist the urge to “fancy” your site by using Flash, tons of graphics, or other unnecessary elements.

Search Engine Strategy #3: Keep your site up-to-date

Like death and taxes, it’s inevitable that your site optimization will change, and what’s working today may not get you any results three months from now. That’s because, over time people, markets, search trends, and even keywords change.

So it’s crucial you constantly monitor your top keywords, and make changes to your site as necessary, in order to maintain your dominant position in the search results.

You should be setting aside time every week to make sure that you’re still optimized for the best keywords. And if you CAN’T seem to find the time each week to do this, then consider hiring someone to help.

By following these three strategies for maximizing your search engine traffic, you’ll not only improve your search engine rankings, you’ll be able to send more qualified traffic to your site.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he’s used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html

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