Starting an Online Business For Dummies®, 6th Edition

Chapter 11. Search Engine Optimization

In This Chapter

• Analyzing how search engines find your site — so that you can help them

• Focusing on ways to improve your coverage on Google

• Adding keywords and registering your site with search engines

• Making your Web site search-engine friendly

• Tracking referrals and visits to focus on the search services that count

If you can get your business mentioned in just the right place, customers can find you more easily. Consider my local electronics repair shop. The store has been in business for more than three decades but never seemed to be busy. This time, however, the owner told me he was overwhelmed with hundreds of back orders and couldn't get to my job for several weeks. His store had just been featured on a local public television show, and now people were driving long distances to bring him retro audio equipment to fix.

On the Web, too, being found is the key to success. Search engines are the most important places to get yourself before the public. The key requirements for any business are to match your products or services with potential customers, to ensure that your company shows up in lots of search results, and to have your site near the top of the first page. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of practices designed to improve your site's placement in search results and is a cost-effective form of advertising that any Web site owner can tackle. SEO gives you a measure of control over the quality of your placement in search results, ...