The short answer to your question is - yes it will. But it may take quite a while to do so. I have found by even doing the keywords and built-in optimization it could be a while for the site and keywords to be recognized by the search engines. Generally it takes a couple of days.
It is not just important to have a good site description and relevant keywords, but it is key to know what you wish to achieve with your site in terms of site / product / service / publicity in your selected geographical area. To make your site SEO-friendly it is therefore vital to have a relevant site title and description to identify with customers and to know how to select relevant keywords to direct them to your site.
What I have done was to add / build back links with my local business / academic directories in Cape Town (My main "business" area is the presentation of short management and business courses) so that when people search for short courses my business name and my courses will be displayed as high as possible in their searches. This will also assist in getting an acceptable page rank (PR) from Google. I focused my SEO efforts around Google as it is very popular in my market area. And keep in mind up to 60 – 70% of Internet users only search up to the first page of Google.
You could also consider indexing your site with major search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. This should add further visibility and stickiness to your site. Many of these indexing services are free and with bundled webmaster tools will provide amateur webmasters many tools for analysis and optimization.
To guarantee a good position on Google I run Adwords advertising campaigns from time to time on Google and you pay per click (when people click on the ad to visit your site) - I find this extremely useful as it places ads in the sponsored link areas on Google. Relevant traffic to the site increased substantially and I have a steady increase of new visitors the last 3 months.
It is very important to understand the real purpose of your site - this will assist targeted traffic to visit for specific purposes. You have to be patient with SEO and work on your site content for targeted traffic. I am busy preparing my site for about 300 students per week that’s required to register and download course content / information. I have steered away from waiting for traffic to find me to a pro-active informative site / publishing approach with important content (for which the users must register).
Decide what you want to do with your site. Is it a business for selling - or is it a medium for getting relevant content across to support other / offline material? In my case the www.vernonchalmers.com is mainly a medium to get information across.
It does not need to cost you to be on the search engines. Determine your real online purpose and work patiently to link your site with other relevant and professional entities.
Do not just Google your domain name, but also the various products / services / content you are offering to your target market(s). Have a good look what competitors / similar sites are doing on the search engines when you type your own keywords in.
You could also use some of online SEO services to evaluate your site? It will assist in analyzing your site's description and keywords. The built-in automatic and manual URL submission will add your URL to many, many search engines and directories. I have found these to be ineffective somewhat as it increase email spam from unknown search engines and marketing companies.
SEO should be a major part of your marketing efforts and should happen over time. It is important to appreciate traditional marketing and advertising practices to assist in creating an effective online presence. Hosting and managing a website is an important building block in executing business / marketing strategy and respect to traditional business principles should guide you in the execution of your business strategy. Key is not to wait for customers, but to proactively deploy the Internet as the medium and message to communicate your presence, business and unique content.
Hope this helps. All the best.
Vernon Chalmers
www.vernonchalmers.com
Last edit: 20/07/08
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