Do the words "search engine optimization" put a cold chill into the center of your heart? Does it seem too complicated? Do you even know what SEO means? Well, there's no doubt that it will bring lots of traffic to any website, which will in turn, intensify your list building efforts. However, to do it on a large scale, it takes very specialized knowledge. Can you do it? Should you do it? My answer is yes. There are some very simple techniques that can make your list building efforts go through the roof.

Remember to be list building on every page you can. Put an opt-in box on your website's homepage. Also put an opt-in box into your blog template, and into your profile at MySpace or wherever. If you haven't done these things, do them now! They're extremely important to list building.

To improve your list building efforts, you'll then need to send traffic to those sites. First, find your optimum keywords, specific to your niche. Take a piece of paper and write each one that you can think of down, just anything you think that people might search for.

Maybe you're selling some really cool jewelry. So, you'll probably come up with keywords like necklaces, rings, bracelets, and so on. Keep going, until you can't think of another single word that applies. Then, go to http://inventory.overture.com and find out how many people searched for each term in the previous month. Get rid of the words that have the highest number of searches because they're just too competitive. Also forget terms with 3,000 searches or less because no one is looking for them, and they really won't help you.

The words that are remaining are all potential keywords for you, but choose three to five that you can rank for. Then, be sure to use one keyword in every post you write at a density of around 2%. that means if you write 400 words, about 8 of them should be keywords. But don't try to get more than one keyword to that density. It's much too difficult to use more than one, and your words could come off sounding spammy. You don't want that.

But how does this apply to list building? You'll see. Hang on...

When you've finished your post, and you're sure your keyword density is around that 2% mark, go to your post and make the one of the keywords you used bold or italic. Also link to your website with one of the keywords you used, and make the hyperlink to your list building page. After making several posts in your blog, you should start to see your site rise in the rankings, and you'll be getting more people on your list. Don't expect immediate results because SEO takes a while to kick in. Just keep posting and using your keywords, and you should see some results.

Do the very same thing with your MySpace profile, or wherever you hang out, and use your keywords. Your homepage should have your keywords in it for around a 2% density, too. If you do these simple things, you'll be amazed at how much they really help.