How to boost traffic to your website

Want to increase your odds of people finding your Web site on the Internet?

Well then, you'd better optimize your site so it ranks high in the listings presented by top search engines such as Google and Yahoo, say experts.

This "search engine optimization" is critical, considering that more than 150 million people in the United States regularly use search engines to look up information online, according to Tim McAtee of Warren, R.I.-based MarketingSherpa. Of those users, 60 percent to 70 percent look only at the first page of results, he says.

"The goal of search engine optimization is to get your site as high in the search rankings as you can," explains Julie Gross Gelfand of Harrison Leifer DiMarco, a Rockville Centre, N.Y., marketing and public relations firm that assists companies with optimization. "The ones on the first page get the most traffic."

So how do you propel your Web site toward the top [...]