Search engines like Google and others similar, are critical to helping people connect with the web businesses they are searching for. There are companies out there that claim to get your page rankings so high that you’ll gladly pay high prices to make it happen. Not every website can or wants to go that route however.

The best way is to try to get free organic website traffic, meaning when someone searches for a term or phrase in the search engine, those pages that come up are “organic” type listings. Being on page one is highly desirable as few people search beyond the first one or two pages listed. This is different than the paid ads you see on the right hand side of the page, other wise known as “pay per click” ads. Trying to get listed at a high page rank is known as search engine optimization or SEO and boils down to:

1. Content, content, content. You need real content on your web, this is content that has real meaning to real people, not just stuffing a bunch of keywords that make no sense. Search engines use programs called web crawlers or web spiders that list web sites. The one thing those web crawlers looks for is content. They figure out if a site has content by tracing keyword phrases. This is why search engine optimization usually starts by picking keywords and writing content around them; many web site marketing experts advocate writing a high density of the same keywords, but doing too much of this can actually work against you.

2. Link exchanges are another valuable tool to get your site ranked higher. It’s important to find websites that are willing to put your link on their website that leads back to your site. It’s best to find websites that are related in content or topic of your site. Methods vary for finding these, but some common ways are link exchanges, article writing, social networking, posting on blogs and forums are some popular choices.

3. New and fresh content. You can’t just post a page and expect to keep the same page ranks. Your website should have new content. This is important not just for web crawlers, but for human visitors too. If they can anticipate to read new and interesting material at least three times a week preferably more, they’ll keep returning. It takes an average of seven visits before someone takes action such as post on a forum or purchase a product.

4. Navigational links that are clear and make sense from your main home page. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to find what you are looking for easily, most visitors will leave quickly if it’s seems too confusing to find what they are looking for.

5. Text means everything. The search engine spiders ignore Javascript and graphics and until recently couldn’t read text in Flash animations. If the spiders can’t read these items, it doesn’t help your page rankings at all. So you need plenty of real content on your site.

The real trick for long haul success to search optimization is to ensure your website is as easy to use as possible. Make it simple to navigate for visitors who want to read about your site and content that makes them come back.