To exploit the power of the internet you must first understand how it works. The internet is the most effective method available for targeting your customers. For example, Your dealership wants to reach aging men who want to have the comfort of a sport utility vehicle. Your company buys commercial airtime right after the nightly news on a local television network to promote your sport utility vehicles to this market. This is prime time and your ad will be seen by not only the older men but also viewed by women, teenagers, and children. And remember this is prime time and you paid a premium for this audience.

Search Engines Bring Your Customers to You

Seventy percent of online auto shoppers use a search engine when first beginning their auto research on the web. When consumers type a keyword phrase into a search engine they are requesting specific information on a product or service. If consumer is interested in a "sport utility vehicle" they would type the keyword into the search engine and hit "Go" or enter to begin their search. The search engine will return a list of websites with brief descriptions that it judges to be the most relevant to the request.

If your dealership wants to sell more SUV’s and the search engine responds to a request to search for the keyword phrase “SUV’s” then the best possible result as far as you are concerned would be to be at the top of that list generated by the search engine. Now the question is how do you appear at the top or in the top 10 results in the search engine?

Optimization - The Foundation to a Well Built Website

The trick is to optimize your website to be search engine friendly. When your web developer creates an optimized website they must first complete a keyword analysis. This analysis will identify the keywords that your target customers are most likely to type when they search for your product. The number of keywords that your site will be optimized for will depend on the size of your website and can be anywhere between a dozen or hundreds of keywords. This process is performed by software and calculates the actual number of times a keyword or phrase is searched every month.

Once a web developer has completed their keyword analysis they will incorporate the selected keywords into the design of your website. The web developer, who understands how the search engine evaluates your website, will have effectively told the search engine who you want to attract to your website. Examples of some of these methods are the "Title Bar" where targeted keywords are placed to be found by the Search Engines and "keyword density" where primary keywords appear in the content of the web page a specified number of times, "meta tags" where keywords are listed in the website source code for the search engines to find, and because search engines cannot read pictures "Alt Tags" keyword phrases imbedded in pictures on the web page.

Now that you have told the Search Engines exactly who you want to visit your website how do Search Engines decide to place your website higher on their list then a website competing for the same keyword phase (customer)? The answer is how important do search engines judge your website to be. This question is answered in an on "Off-Page-Optimization".