Even companies that do big business online struggle to be noticed by Google users. The Web, after all, is home to some 120 million Internet domains and tens of billions of indexed pages. But every company, big or small, can draw more Google traffic by using search-engine optimization -- SEO, for short.
Traffic is directly related to your site's rank among Google's search results -- the higher the rank, the more you get. The specific algorithms, or formulas, that Google and other search engines use to rank websites are closely guarded secrets, but the basic components are widely known. SEO involves tailoring your website to satisfy as many of the ranking criteria as possible.
SEO isn't magic. It probably won't land your site among the Top 10 websites for highly popular search terms. Nor will it drive traffic to a site that doesn't offer anything of value. Still, says Stephen Woessner, author of The Small Business Owner's Handbook to Search Engine Optimization, "you should be able to increase your rankings significantly, and even score some Top 10 rankings on keywords that matter."
Do you need a consultant to do SEO? Only if you don't have time. (Expect to spend about an hour per page.) What follows will help you improve performance on two of the most important ranking factors: the strength of keywords associated with a page and the organization and functionality of the website.