Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very complex process. It is a long-term process that will usually never produce results that you can see in days or weeks. By now you probably heard about the importance of getting other websites to link to yours so that you can get a higher ranking in search engines. You listed your websites in some directories and also received a few other links to your website.

But stop right here. How is being linked to your homepage? Are people just using a plain http://www.yourdomain.com for the link? Or is the link embedded in your business name? If so you are eventually loosing valuable points in your search engine ranking. To receive full 'points' from a search engine for a link to your website, the link should be embedded in specific keywords.

Keywords? What keywords? How are people searching for things related to your website? Almost nobody searches for your business by business name when doing a search in search engines. People are search for something specific and the search engine will eventually show a link to your page if it relates the search term to your website. If it does not associate a keyword with your website it will not display the link to your site and you are missing out on visitors.

You need to create a keyword strategy to optimize your website AND the associates links for search engines. Keywords need to be found on your website. Make sure there is enough text with the important keywords. Talk to friends, family, and customers to find out what search terms they would use and how that relates to your business and the website. This can be helpful information in your research.

Now when you go to exchange links with other websites use those keywords. Let the other sites link you with these keywords and the link embedded into those keywords. This will be an important piece to your search engine success. A good example of how this is done can be seen in the Author Resource information of this article.

Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at Pregnancy Announcements, Free Smilies and at Vitamin B.