Search engines are the gateway for any web business, Google being the most prominent out there. It’s important to get the highest page listing possible as few people searching for what they’re looking for, will go several pages deep into their search listings. There are companies out there making tempting promises to get you on the first page often times at exorbitant prices.

Finding tried and true ways to get organic traffic meaning being found during a regular search, not by pay per click ads as seem on the right column of the listing, is the best and most solid way to build your web site’s traffic long term. Here’s what search engine optimization boils down to:

1. Content is King. You need real content on your web site; this is content that has real meaning to real people, not just keyword stuffing. Search engines send out programs called web crawlers or web spiders that index web sites. The number one thing those web crawlers are looking for is content. They determine if a web site has content by tracking keyword phrases. This is why search engine optimization usually starts by picking keywords and writing content around them; a lot of web site marketing gurus advocate keyword stuffing well past the point of sanity and effectiveness. Anything more than about 2-4% of the words in an article and the web sites will filter it out it’s too obviously “gaming the system”.

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. Updated and fresh content. This is important both for your human visitors as well as the web spiders. When both see there’s new content added at least 3 times a week, they will be more likely to come back more often. It takes an average of seven visits before someone will purchase a product or post on a forum, so it’s important to give both reason to return to your site.

4. Web layouts that make sense. Your web site should have clean navigational links, your front page should have links to everything else on your site.

5. Text rules everything in web content. Search engine spiders ignore Javascript, they ignore graphics, and until very recently, they couldn’t read text in Flash animations. If the search engine spiders can’t read it, it doesn’t get used to help your page rankings.

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.