In order to increase website traffic, your website needs to be optimized for both search engines as well as your target audience. The stepping stone in realizing this goal is to develop a website that is search engine friendly and attractive to the readers. With some basic knowledge of search engine optimization and your target audience, you can create a website that is optimized for search engines and engages your readers.

The following tips can help you optimize your website to enhance its visibility:

Internet Marketing 101: Understanding your target audience

Before you begin writing the content for your website it’s critical to start with your target audience in mind. You need to understand their problems, how you can solve their problems, and what keywords they use to search for solutions to their problems. Creating user personas are a great way to uncover information about your target audience.

Internet Marketing 101: Selecting the right keywords

Once you have a basic understanding of your target audience, it’s time to do some keyword research to more accurately determine which keywords your target audience uses to find your products/services. For example, you might assume your target audience is searching for website design, when in reality, they are searching for responsive web design. These differences alone can determine the success or failure of your website optimization efforts.

Internet Marketing 101: Writing your content

After you’ve selected the right keywords, it’s time to write your content and include your keywords. You should only include one primary keyword for any given page, and it should be repeated throughout your content so that you achieve a maximum keyword density of 5.5%. Be careful not to exceed a keyword density of 5.5% or you might be penalized by the search engines for keyword stuffing. In addition, include keyword rich anchor text links at the beginning, middle and end of your content. For example, instead of click here to download my internet marketing 101 guide, use download my guide to Internet Marketing 101. Search Engines like keyword rich hyperlinks.

Internet Marketing 101: Title Tags, Alt Tags and Headings

Title tags, alt tags, and headings hold a special place in the heart of search engines. Search Engines look at the content within these tags to help determine what the web page is about. You should include your primary and relevant keywords inside these tags to enhance the probability of your web page obtaining a high ranking on the search engines. However, there are some basic rules on how to use each type of tag so be sure to do your research beforehand.

Internet Marketing 101: URLs

Properly formatted URLs also contribute to achieving a high ranking on Search Engines. You should strive to keep URLs short, include your primary keyword(s) in your URL, and use hyphens to separate keyword(s). Try to avoid long, cryptic URLs at all cost. For example, /Website-Redesign-Kit is much more SEO and human friendly than /tabid/545/Default. The first URL is optimized for search engines whereas the second url is not.

In a nutshell, these internet marketing 101 website optimization techniques can improve the amount of targeted traffic to your website as well as enhance the user experience of the pages; therefore, increasing on-site time that is spent by the visitors.