SEO Wars - Getting the Upper Hand in Your Field

To the casual observer, the Internet is a fair playing field. People head to search engines, type in what they're looking for, and then they click the results that interest them. Website owners know that one of the most important parts of getting people to your website is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. And while for the common consumer, it may seem like things just happen, every website owner knows that they are in a war. They're in a war for traffic, visitors, and clicks. So if you're competing against really smart people who know what they're doing, how can you make your SEO better than their SEO?

It comes down to three simple concepts: (a) Placement; (b) Compelling Interest; and (c) Call to action. Let's take these three things in turn.

1.) Placement. If you haven't learned to already, take advantage of all the parts of SEO. These include meta information, backlinks on articles, backlinks on forums, mentions on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, favicons, and so forth. If you're in too much of a hurry to learn all this complicated business, hire an SEO expert to do it for you. Their experience and advice will have you showing up high in search results on sites like Bing, Yahoo!, and Google.

2.) Compelling interest. This is an often overlooked aspect of winning the SEO wars. It's not enough to let people see you on Google. You have to answer their question: What's in it for me? So make sure you have a clear, compelling meta description of your site that they see in your search result. But more than that, take care when you name the pages of your site. Great website owners know that people want to be able to see what's inside the site without having to click around. If you set up your site correctly and use a good site map, search engines will place links to the component parts of your site below the main search result. For example, Google the company Microsoft. Below the main result, you see links like "Download Center," "Windows 7," "Check for Updates," and "ClipArt." If you set up your site correctly, visitors can click directly to what interests them without having to go to your main index page.

3.) Clear call to action. From your meta description to the first page of your site, ask your visitors to do something. For example, the website HubPages says, "HubPages is your online space to share your advice, reviews, useful tips, opinions and insights with hundreds of other authors. HubPages is completely free." Doesn't leave much to the imagination, now does it?

As you turn Internet searchers into visitors, always try to see things from their perspective. The harder you work to make your site stick above the rest, the more they will come.

Troy Childers is a experienced internet marketer and provider of top quality promotional content for the web. Along with being a fulltime father and online marketer. For more information please visit my websites Search Engine Optimization, or Top Google Listings. I enjoy staying busy and learning something new each and everyday.

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