Why do you want traffic?

Before you go anywhere you need to answer this question. You can break it down into:

• What is your web site about?
• Who will visit it?
• What will they gain?
• What will you gain?

Write the answers on a piece of paper… no really!

Now you have thought some what about who is going to visit your site, we can talk about the how.

Most website content naturally contains a number of keywords, but unfortunately it is unusual for these keywords to be the ones that will perform best for your site and for you. This leaves us with essentially two methods of keyword research; manual and automatic.

Philipp have a great post explaining the basics of Search Engine Optimization. This is the ultimate guide for SEO newbies, very well written, simple and focus on white hat SEO. Three important points that he keep the focus on :

1. Create good content
2. Make your content accessible
3. Tell others about your content

The first thing that one must realize about search engine optimization is that to be implemented correctly it must be broken down into 2 distinct factors "on-page" and "off-page" criteria.

Always remember that search engines do not consider "websites" they consider the "pages" of those websites. There should never be a debate as to which is more important between "on page" and "off page" characteristics as the truth is both are equally as important. However once one defines the two there is a logical order in which they should be considered.