By Nick Davis

It's hard to ignore the power of search engines. Everyone wants their business to be the top result in the search engines when users search for keywords related to their business. With roughly seven billion searches per month being conducted within the United States, even a tiny fraction of the results can add up to substantial traffic for your Web site.

Broadly defined, search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of making your site show as high as possible in the search engine results pages. There are as many approaches to SEO as there are people who do SEO work, but this article will focus on the low-hanging fruit.

To rank a page, the major search engines look at two main things: the keywords your site contains (relevancy) and the number of links there are into your site (authority). For any given search, the search engine wants to give the user the most relevant and authoritative sites.

So it follows that to rank highly, you need to be relevant and an authority. Here are some tips to achieve this.

Relevancy

• Know which keywords to target. Many SEO companies can provide you with this list for a small fee. Be somewhat specific in your keyword choices. There are multi-million dollar companies targeting the most common keywords. Go after keywords that fit your niche and that are not being aggressively targeted by other sites. Also, most people search using three to five words, so finding those keywords can be helpful.
  
• Create interesting, unique content. Using a blog-based Web site makes this easy by making your site easy to update. Make your content interesting so people don't want to immediately leave your site. When naming your pages, use descriptive words separated by hyphens. "about-company-x.html" is a much better name than "aboutus.html."
  
• Include your address on all your pages. If your goal is to be found during local searches, be sure to include your address on all pages. Also mentioning the broader area, such as "the Greater Kansas City area," can show your results for more generic searches.
  
• Write naturally. People will search for your keywords using a variety of related words. If you write naturally, these words tend to appear. Roughly half of searches performed each day are completely unique, meaning that no one has ever typed that exact phrase. Natural writing gives you a better chance of matching these searches.
  
• Move the key topics into the page title and the top of the page. Search engines give a heavier weight to the terms that appear first.
  
• Don't repeat your keywords excessively. Search engines can tell when this is done and will sometimes penalize you for doing so by dropping your ranking. Remember that the primary goal of your site is to promote your business. If you achieve a high ranking as a result of making your content uninteresting, you're worse off than when you started.
  

Authority

• Make sure professional and other organizations to which you belong give you a link. This is by far the easiest way to build your authority. The more authority that the linking organization's site has, the more authority is passed to you. Many professional organizations have a high level of authority.
  
• Find sites similar to yours. By reading those sites and studying the pattern of their linking, you can create content to which they will link. Once you've written something noteworthy, send it to a few of these sites.
  
• Submit articles to online article directories. These directories allow other Webmasters to place the articles on their own Web sites. Make sure the articles contain relevant links back to your site. One note of caution: The search engines may penalize you for having duplicate content, so don't also place these articles on your own Web site.
  
• Make your site interesting enough to garner links. If you provide content that is of value, other sites, especially bloggers, might find it interesting to link to.
  
• Submit your site to reputable site directories If a Web site looks unreputable, it probably is. 
  
•  Don't join a "link exchange" program. While this strategy was helpful in the past, most of the major search engines have eradicated this loophole. Now being a member of some link exchanges and directories can actually hurt your rankings.

Search engine optimization is a marathon, not a sprint. Many changes you make today may not show up for months, but they will accumulate over time. Because of intense competition, most of the top search engines change their algorithms frequently, making quick-fixes, such as link exchanges, obsolete in very little time. By following the fundamental principle of having good, fresh, regularly-updated content, your site will gradually improve in rankings over time, and your time won't be wasted.

Nick Davis is the President of iNDi Business Solutions, a Kansas-City based E-Marketing consulting firm. You can reach him at (816) 419-6748 or .