One thing's for sure. SEO isn't rocket science. It's much simpler to grasp. However, you might need to have all your faculties intact if you want to understand exactly how it works and why you need to know all about it.

Having a website with a nice web design is great but traffic really is the key - does a website that cannot be found exist at all?

What's the point of going to all the trouble of setting up a website, designing it and writing great content for it, but still not getting any traffic there?

Sounds familiar?

It's probably because your website is NOT search engine friendly or search engine optimized.

Everyone probably knows that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, it means that you're trying to ensure that your website gets the highest search engine rankings. So if someone is out there looking for what you specialize in and they do a search for it, your website comes up right on top where it is highly visible. Sounds fairly simple right? But then, nothing in life is this easy.

Understanding SEO

SEO is like an onion, made up of many layers. At first, a potential visitor to your website goes to a search engine and enters the key phrase which they're looking for. If your website has been optimized to have the right selection of keywords, then your website will pop up in their search.

So how do you know which keywords are important and which will help you stand out?

This is where keyword analysis comes to your aid. Read on to learn about the different steps in a typical SEO process which will give you a fair idea of the work cut out for you to optimize your website.

Keyword analysis €" This is the first step in getting your website optimized for a search engine. First, you begin by making a list of keywords and phrases under which you would prefer to be found. Ideally, you need to find the right balance between the keywords you want and the ones within your context that are searched the most.

Search Engine Friendly €" People make the mistake of going all out after appearance on their websites. While looks do matter, they don't bring the bots, the search engine spiders that are going to help in getting you high rankings in searches. So, jazzy flash-based home pages, lots of images, very few words on pages and broken links is where your SEO program will come to a grinding halt.

Excellent content €" Folks, why do they say that content is king? If someone has arrived at your website, it's because they want information on a particular subject and your website is probably all about that subject. But they want the content to be interesting and not clunky prose that is jam packed with keywords! So make sure that while you do include keywords in your content, it doesn't mar the style of your content.

The only way you will succeed at SEO is to not just follow the above steps but also constantly review and revise your website content and its web design. Updating your website frequently is important and once you understand how it works, you might want to up the level by checking out how link exchanges work and whether you should start an affiliate program. All these devices are known to drive traffic to your website.