The first step towards getting an online presence is building a professional website, or having someone build one for you if this is out of your area of expertise. The next step is making sure your website is visible on search engines, like Google and Bing, and preferably somewhere on the first page. This is where Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, comes into play.

Basics of analytics

First of all, it helps to understand the basics of web analytics. Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytic service, and serves to track traffic to your website. It can inform you how many repeat or unique visitors your website is garnering, as well as how long they stayed on your page. It is a useful tool for monitoring how your website is doing, and determining which keywords and campaigns are most useful for boosting your search engine ranking.

Crawlers

Search engines, like Google, use crawlers to look at websites and decide how to index these sites. The crawlers these search engines use are designed to understand human behaviour in terms of what phrases and keywords people will use to search  for specific topics. Crawlers mostly detect content rather than images. Flash is particularly detrimental to Search Engine Optimization as flash sites cannot be detected by crawlers. Search engine crawlers determine the popularity and quality of your website, which in turn affects your ranking on that search engine.
Keywords

Before you begin writing content it’s a good idea to know what keywords you want your website to be ranked for.Using specific keywords can help target visitors that will be most likely to purchase your product or service. For example, if you own a coffee shop in toronto, key phrases such as “coffee shop Toronto” will generate visitors, however, more specific phrases such as, “organic fair trade coffee downtown Toronto” will be helpful in generating visitors who are interested in what you are specifically offering. As important as good keywords are to Search Engine Optimization, it is unwise to try to cram too many keywords into your text, which will make your content sound awkward and may even get your website marked as spam. Which leads into the next point:

Content

Having high quality, informative content is key. It not only helps get your website indexed, it is your venue to let prospective customers know why they should invest in your product or service.

In addition, having a blog is a way to connect with your visitors on a somewhat more personal level, and give them a glimpse into causes that you are passionate about keep  them up to date on what is going on with your business. again , crawlers are looking for quality information relevant to the searcher’s query.

Mobile friendly layout

So now you have a great design, targeted keywords and high quality content. However, bear in mind that over 75% of the population browses on their mobile device, so if your website is not optimized for mobile use, these visitors may not have a user friendly experience on your site and quickly click off. Checking to see if you website is mobile friendly is easy: just click on this link and type in your website’s URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

People all over the world are search for things related to your business. You can use SEO techniques to leverage targeted traffic to your website, which in turn will lead to more conversions.