The 10-minute-a-day tip for more search engine referrals

Because I build e-business web sites, one of the most common questions I get asked at cocktail parties is: How do I get more visitors to my web site? The answer can be a lengthy one. But a tip that people seem to love is my 10-minute-a-day SEO tip. SEO of course is Search Engine Optimization. That’s the art (and equally the science) of making your web site more relevant to search engines, so it ranks higher in searches. In turn, that causes more people to come to your web site through search engines.

While SEO may seem like a complex topic, you can boil it down to this simple formula: Optimization + Trust = Traffic. The Optimization part of the formula requires you to choose relevant keywords that a searcher would use, and then adjust a web page’s content to be focused on those keywords (I’ll give you simple tips on that another time). Keyword optimization is important, but what about the Trust piece of the formula? How do you get web users to trust your site?

If you spend 10 minutes a day asking your customers, partners or other web site owners to link to yours using keywords you want to be associated with, you’ll drive your traffic up. Why? Because a link to one web site from another, using linked keywords, tells Google those keywords are highly relevant to this site. In effect, you are trustworthy for those search terms. For example, if you link your site to this blog with the keywords “business technology blog”, Google will notice.

Do this:
Read this useful business technology blog

Not this:
Click here for a useful business technology blog.

As a result, Google will rank the linked site higher in its results. When dozens of people do that, the site’s association with those keywords grows quickly.  When hundreds of people do that a site’s rank will grow exponentially.  Lots of traffic will result if the site gets ranked on the first or second page of search results.

To achieve this, some people pay for other websites to link to them, or encourage people to link to them through discounts or contests. Others create great content that people naturally link to.

So invest 10 minutes a day in this trick. Ask your contacts that have web sites to link to you with keywords you want to be known for. Then get ready for great traffic, and, of course, more business.