The Power of Natural Search Engine Traffic

Why should you be concerned with natural search engine traffic? You may already be paying for advertising in various channels across your market, and even getting a return on that investment.

How else can you reach the thousands of people that are already searching for your product of service except to go where they are searching? That's right, we already know they are using the internet search engines to research products and services ... you may not yet believe that there is an audience for your site; I'm here to tell you there is! The internet user base is an extremely diverse and curious group of people searching for the best deal, an absolutely unique product, or a service that will help them meet a particular need (and may not even know what that service is yet, hence searches for very diverse topics).

My first project in search engine optimization was for a furniture store, I was astounded that people bought furniture online without ever sitting on it. After just 3 months of redesigning some key web pages through the website we saw the traffic skyrocket and sales tripled. And this was free traffic! The company was actually able to cut its pay-per-click campaign budget in half without affecting traffic.

So does search engine optimization work? YES!!

Is SEO important to your online business? YES again!!

Five years later I am still helping companies climb up through the trenches of Google search results to find those niche first page rankings and seeing an increase in sales. The process is sometimes slow, and there are rules to follow in order to be accepted into the search engine index. And these rules are constantly changing in order to keep spammers from hogging those precious first page listings, pushing your newly ranked site down the list.

How do you learn these rules?

• Attend a Free Search Engine Workshop
• See what Google itself has to say about Search Engine Optimizers
• Call some of the optimizers you find online and ask them questions about how they got started
• Begin to test the advice you find and see for yourself what works
• If you currently work with a web designer ask them what their experience is

Can you just hire someone? Yes, but depending on your website budget this option can sometimes be out of the question. That is why I have put together a series of SEO workshops to help the small business owner get started on a successful path with search engine optimization. You can start with a free SEO workshop to work on the basic understanding, tools and rules. There will be a complete set of online tools and tutorials coming to the WhiteHat Connection site later this spring.

Emily Leach has opened a Search Engine Academy and teaches a 3-day intensive, hands-on search engine marketing workshop in New Mexico and Arizona