Search engine optimization (SEO) is now one of the most important topics for website owners to understand. Anyone that depends on their website to bring them business needs to know the ins and outs of SEO in order to maximize their website’s potential. And if you want your website to have a high Google rank then SEO is essential.

What is SEO? The answer to this question has many different parts because there are a number of elements that make up SEO but quite simply it is the process by which you make your website as easy to find as possible by Google and other search engines. This is important, obviously, because if your site is not easy to find by people searching for goods and services then you will miss out on doing business with them.

Therefore, good SEO for your site is very important. The good news is that it is not expensive for most people to optimize their sites and it is not that technically difficult. Having said that, though, many people simply hire an SEO company to make the required changes to their site and maybe also engage in some website marketing and promotion. These are two separate subjects but they go hand in hand if you are really serious about gaining more traffic for your site.

According to Tom Aikins from Online Marketing Excellence, a Bangkok-based SEO training company, SEO is the process of making your site more visible to search engines and website marketing is the process of using external websites to drive traffic back to your site. When both of these processes are done correctly then your site has the best possible chance of getting maximum traffic and sales.

There are many aspects to website promotion and many opinions as to how to go about it. Many companies use Google AdWords, for example, to target specific demographic segments with pay per click ads. Others use article marketing and content posting to build awareness and traffic through back links. Acccording to the guys at IT Ready, a combination of these is probably the best for most businesses, but careful analysis of the AdWords program must be done at all times to ensure that the money being spent is being done so in the most cost-effective manner.

There are many more aspects to SEO and website traffic promotion that website owners should explore and if you can find knowledgeable people to help you then your website could experience a significant increase in traffic. One thing is certain, however – SEO and web traffic promotion are becoming more and more important every day so don’t wait to start optimizing your site and driving traffic to your site because the longer you wait the more business you could be losing.