Contrary to what most think: "If you build it they will NOT come!"
A web site needs highly targeted qualified traffic in order to be successful and just building a beautiful looking web site and sending it into cyberspace without serious forethought and planning by an experienced internet marketing professional is a recipe for failure or at best mediocrity.
Sure you may get some traffic from people stumbling upon your web site and maybe if you are lucky the search engines will put you into their index so you can show up if someone is willing to search 5, 10, or even a few hundred pages deep into the search engine results.
So what can you do to get that ever elusive valuable search engine traffic to your web site and make more sales?
The 2 key ways web site owners can get search engine traffic to their web site is through Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Marketing is the process of getting your site in front of a surfer who is using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any one of the smaller search engines. The concept is that when a surfer is using a search engine, they are generally looking to buy goods or a service you may be able to provide.
Effective and intelligent search engine marketing does not count on one method to attract surfers but uses a variety of methods which include search engine optimization (the science and art of getting your site to appear high on the search engine results), paid banners, paid listings and Pay Per Click advertising such as the small ads you see on Google.
Each of these methods work with varying degrees of success based upon your business model, competition in your market, and even seasonal changes and your return on investment (ROI) can vary day by day. Because traffics costs and effectiveness can change suddenly and dramatically with little or no warning we always advise our clients to never put all of their marketing eggs in one basket.
Search Engine Optimization is the science and art of controlling "on page" (the code and text on a page) and "off page" (inbound linking, directory listings, age of domains and other factors) in an effort to rate well on "organic results".
Search Engine Optimization methods are generally either "white hat" (honest and straightforward and thus offer the surfer a better experience) or "black hat" (tricks to fool the search engine and surfers to think that the site is more relevant to what the surfer is looking for).
Black hat techniques sometimes produce spectacular results though generally these results are very short lived. Once a site with black hat techniques is discovered by a search engine, not only does the search engine drop the sites rankings, it can actually ban the web site from ever appearing it its results which can put an online business out of business.
Of course not everything in life is black or white and the same holds true for search engine optimization techniques. With so much at stake, Mean SEO has never nor ever will engage in black hat techniques are even cross over into the gray zone.
Where you are looking for our highly experienced professional search engine and marketing expertise, professional search engine optimization tools, or even free tools for search engine optimization, you have come to the right place!