When a search engine user enters a search term into their favorite search engine, those search engines use a ranking system to return websites based on relevance and popularity of the site. The higher your site ranks in the search engines rankings, the more likely the searcher will click on the link and land on your site.

The key is to have your site in the top ten listings for your keywords. The trick to getting your site higher in the rankings is through the use of SEO. SEO is something that must be ongoing with your site. You can start by learning how the search engines compute their rankings.

Many people think that the major search engines have virtually every page on the internet indexed. It is not a well known fact that less than 20% of all websites are indexed. Sites that are just copies of other sites wont be listed, or if they are too new they may be passed over. There could be some technical problems with your site such as bad robot text, or broken links that keep the search engines away. There are literally hundreds of factors used by the search engines to rank you site and all are important.

So, if we presume that your site is not technically preventing the search engines from looking around, then there are some fairly easy ways to improve your ranking. Having unique content is one very important step in the process. No matter what your site is about there are ways to keep the content fresh and unique. Consider adding a blog to your site and update it regularly with information on your niche. Think creativly about how your site is unique and add that to your content. It may be someting as easy as your specific product information, or pictures.

Some new marketers think there are ways to shortcut the process, but don't be tempted these techniques will backfire and hurt your site. Techniques like keyword spamming, hidden text, link spam, meta tag stuffing and more will all end up hurting your ranking at best, and at worst will get you banned from the search engines all together.

After building your unique content, gaining links to your site will help increasing your ranking. Again, there are right and wrong ways to build these links. Natural, one-way links to your site are the best way to build your ranking and traffic. Having high quality content may lead other webmasters to link to your site, however these may be difficult to gain in the beginning. Links that can help can come from writing and submitting articles on your niche, commenting on articles or blogs, and posting to public forums. All of these techniques will help you gain exposure and increase in the search engine rankings.

The effort needed for applying SEO will return benefits that make it well worth your time. Most successful sites receive more than half of their traffic from search engines. If your site is designed to be SEO friendly, then that traffic will be highly targeted to your niche. You can try to trick the search engines into sending traffic to your site by using less ethical SEO practices, but the traffic may not be the quality that will come from doing it right.