Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the dream of every webmaster. Webmasters know the value of getting good ranking on the search engines that can give their sites free targeted traffic for a long time. SEO is a long process that can take a couple of months before you will see any results. But it is worth it.
If you dont know SEO than it means optimizing your site for search engines so that it gets ranked on search engine pages. You do this by On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization. On page Optimization means that you include the title tag, description tag, keyword tag and H1/H2 headers to tell the search engine the keyword that you want to be ranked. Search engines dont like keyword spamming. So keep the keyword density on your page below 4%.
On page optimization is good but what actually works on the search engines is Off Page Optimization: getting quality backlinks from other authority sites. Search engines like to see thousands of quality backlinks to your site from authority sites before they start ranking your site for high traffic keywords.
Lets be clear; this requires lot of work. Its not easy especially link building. There are SEO companies that can do this work for you on payment of a few thousand dollars. Why pay this much, when you can do it for free. And it is fun too!
Many people want to take short cut to SEO. They download Black Hat SEO eBooks thinking that these black hat techniques may give them success. Nothing is further from the truth. Search engines dont like black hat techniques.
Some people will tell you that there is a short cut. They call it Black Hat SEO. Avoid it. It may help you in the short term but in the long term your site will be noticed by the search engines and get banned. Others sell SEO software. One is SEO Elite. It sells for a few hundred dollars.
SEO Elite is expensive. It only tells you how many websites are linking back to your site. And what is the ranking of your site for a particular keyword. It does not help you in link building and it does not help you in on page optimization.
In my opinion, you need not waste few hundred dollars on such SEO software. Google gives you the resources that does these things free for you.
Open a Google Webmaster Tools account free. Get your site indexed by Google by submitting your site and its sitemap at Google Webmaster Tools. Without being indexed, your site cannot get ranking from the search engines.
There is link Search Queries in the Google Webmaster Tools that will tell you the keywords for which your site was ranked in the last week and last month.
Click on: link:http://www.yourdomain.com on the Google Webmaster Tools page and you will find the backlinks that Google is counting for your site. If Google is not counting a backlink, it has no value.
Now, this is a free method that does not require you to pay hundreds of dollars. Why you need to buy SEO Elite if Google can do the same thing for you free. And if you are using Google Adwords for advertising your site than you can use Google Analytics.
Google Analytics gives you everything. The number of visitors, their countries, time spent on the site, referral path, bounce rate, pageviews; keywords that give you search engine traffic, direct traffic and referral sites that are giving traffic to your site.