The goal of any business is to make a profit, which comes from paying customers. In order to market online and survive, you need plenty of traffic to get those paying customers. You can spend a lot of money getting people to your website, but the key here getting visitors who are looking for what you have, and not how much you spend to get them.

What is targeted traffic? It is traffic from people who are actively searching for the information or type of product that you are selling. This is the kind of traffic that you can convert into paying customers. Anything else is an uphill battle. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the actual process of getting your webpage visible, and as close to number in the SERP, or Search Engine Results Page. You can have the best site and the best product in the entire world, but you won?t make a single dime if no one can find your website.

Keywords are the words and phrases that are typed into the search boxes on the search engines when people are looking for something. In order to find your webpage, you need to have the keywords they are searching for, not only on your page, but arranged and used in such a way that they are noticed and displayed by the search engines. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the things that are done to get your webpage listed as close to the top of the SERP, specifically on the first page where people are most likely to see and click on your site. The goal is number one, but getting into the top 10 can be a real boost to your business.

Getting people to visit your webpage is a great start, but you still need a solid product and sales mechanism to convert your visitors into paying customers. Converting potential customers into paying customers is what the sales process is all about, but before you can do any of that, you have to get them there in the first place.

A big part of SEO is the keywords, because that is what people are using to search for information and products, but there is certainly more to it than just the keywords. Here is just one SEO tip: when your webpage is returned on an SERP, there is a title, description, and the link. The description is usually taken from the Metadata description tag in the head section of your html code, or if not present, the first couple sentences from the webpage. Concentrate on making your description or lead in sentences something that will make searchers want to click on your site over the millions of others that come back in a search.

Can SEO be an effective way to get customers to your site? Yes it can, and is a proven method of long term targeted traffic generation. Remember that the big search engines are not going to hand over a plan that tells you exactly what they are looking for to place your page in the number one SERP spot, but requires some know-how and a lot of testing. There are basic proven methods that work, and the best part about SEO is that once the initial work is finished, the traffic and the paying customers are all free, which means less marketing costs and more profits.