by Jessica Hughey

Created on: November 14, 2009

There are several ways to attract visitors to your website, some better than others. Of course, the best way to get and keep visitors is to provide valuable content. Overwhelmingly, the average web surfer is searching for just one thing - information. Try to provide as much reliable information as you can about your topic or product and update your website often, to keep visitors coming back for more.

In terms of actual website promotion methods, however, none are more effective than search engine optimization. This is the most essential part of any Internet marketing campaign. Optimizing your web pages for a few targeted keyword phrases will cause your page to rank higher in the search results when someone searches for those keywords, ultimately bringing you more visitors who are looking for just the information you're offering on your website.

When determining which keywords you should optimize for, try to put yourself in your visitor's place and decide which keywords you would enter into a search engine, to find a site such as yours. You can also do some keyword research at sites such as Keyword Discovery, which allows you to enter search terms and returns related keywords and phrases you can use.

Once you've discovered your unique set of keyword phrases, the next step is to optimize your page text to reflect the use of these keywords. Use caution, however! Don't simply repeat your keywords over and over as the search engines are wise to this tactic and will quickly penalize and/or ban your site from their listings! Similar ploys, called "Black Hat" search engine optimization methods, are also banned at most, if not all, search engines. It is best to simply write valuable, keyword related content using page text that naturally includes your chosen keywords and keyword phrases.

Next, make sure all of your images have what is called "alt text" attached to them. This is a snippet of HTML code within the image tag that tells the browser what to display if the user has images turned off in his or her browser. Usually, alt text is simply a description or file name of the actual image but you can also use this field to display your keywords and they will be picked up and indexed by the search engines, along with your text. Similarly, your image file names should include your keywords whenever possible. Once again, use caution with this method and take care not to spam the search engines by loading keywords repeatedly into your image tags.

It was once thought that meta tags were the be-all and end-all of search engine optimization. However, search engines have been putting less and less importance on meta tags for years, because of the potential for spam content to be placed within them. It is still ok to use them, as they do still carry some weight with the search engines, but be careful not to misuse them. Similar to meta tags, your page title is equally important in carrying the keyword phrases that will improve your search engine rankings.

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