Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best way to get long term targeted traffic from the search engines. But SEO requires hard word and commitment on the part of the webmaster. It may take a few months before results start appearing.
First let me explain in simple terms what SEO is. SEO means that you optimize each page of your website with a title tag, description tag, keywords tag and H1, H2 headers for a particular keyword. The content of the page should not have more than a 4% keyword density.
On page optimization is good but what actually works on the search engines is Off Page Optimization: getting quality backlinks from other authority sites. Search engines like to see thousands of quality backlinks to your site from authority sites before they start ranking your site for high traffic keywords.
Lets be clear; this requires lot of work. Its not easy especially link building. There are SEO companies that can do this work for you on payment of a few thousand dollars. Why pay this much, when you can do it for free. And it is fun too!
Many people want to take short cut to SEO. They download Black Hat SEO eBooks thinking that these black hat techniques may give them success. Nothing is further from the truth. Search engines dont like black hat techniques.
Some people will tell you that there is a short cut. They call it Black Hat SEO. Avoid it. It may help you in the short term but in the long term your site will be noticed by the search engines and get banned. Others sell SEO software. One is SEO Elite. It sells for a few hundred dollars.
SEO Elite will tell you the number of backlinks that your site is getting. You will have to get the backlinks yourself. It will also tell you whether your site is getting ranked for a particular keyword or not.
In my opinion, you need not waste few hundred dollars on such SEO software. Google gives you the resources that does these things free for you.
Open a Google Account and register your website at Google Webmaster Tools. Submit a sitemap of your site. Within days Google will index your site. When you add new pages, Googlebot will get notified and index that page in a few hours.
Use the link Search Queries in the Google Webmaster Tools to find whether your site has been ranked by Google. It will give you the list of keywords that your site has a ranking.
Click on: link:http://www.yourdomain.com on the Google Webmaster Tools page and you will find the backlinks that Google is counting for your site. If Google is not counting a backlink, it has no value.
Now, isnt this method better than purchasing SEO Elite? If you advertise on Google Adwords than you can use Google Analytics as well for your site free!
Google Analytics is even better. It gives you the number of visitors, pageviews; keywords that are giving you search engine traffic, direct traffic and other referral sites that send traffic to your site.