Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well optimized website will yield lots of earnings for the marketer. However, optimizing your site might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area.

The fact is, you can essentially get information on SEO all over the Internet. But only a few people really show you how to work out an affordable search engine optimization plan. And those few that really inform include this article.

1. Link exchanges

One cheap SEO method that can get you great results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites.

Depending on the websites that you would like to exchange links with, this tool could even cost you no money at all.

Contact the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking using this means of getting your website optimized.

Two import points to note: (a) For best results you must be selective. Links to your site are really only useful when they are from sites (with contents) that relate to yours. The closer the match between the two sites' focus the more valuable the link. (b) This can be a time consuming effort. You must be systematic and regularly (daily or weekly) find other suitable sites, putting links to them on your site and then request links fromn them. BUT the resuts are well worth it and it won't be easy for your competitors to quickly displace you in the seach engine rankings etc.

2. Write or acquire key word rich articles

Writing truly informative and keyword-rich articles is one surefire way to make your Internet business more visible than ever. It's either you write your own articles or you get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author's byline in tact. Just don't stuff your articles with keywords that even idiots would get bored of reading them. The readability and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your readers keep on coming back to your website or not.

3. Great Domain Name

There is no better way to make your target visitors remember your website than with a very easy-to-recall domain name!

Something sweet and short will prove to be extremely valuable. Registering your domain name is not for free. But creativity is. SInce the web is maturing fast, it is no longer easy to find a short and memorable domain name. Most have been registered and short of buying them at huge cost, there is nothing you can do about that. However, all is not lost.

You can stick together memorable words or phrases and separate them with hyphens, like: www.my-whatever-store.com

I made that up, but you get the picture. Note that using the hyphensis great because search engine programs (robots) can understand the individual words and therefore will give you better ranking becuase they see that (even) your domain name contains words relevant to your site's content ... naturally you must try to pick words or keywords that are closely related to the theme of your site.

4. Organize your site navigation

Makig it easy to navigate your site is one way to put your visitors at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the flow of traffic to your website. Ask friends and colleagues to naviagte your site. Watch how smoothly they go from one page to another and how quickly they find the information they want. Also ask their opinions too. Make some improvements ... no really, even if you think your site is perfect listen to others. Their collective opinion is less biased and more valuable than your own - well you want busniess success, don't you?

Low cost SEO is always evolving like any other approach in information technology. There are many methods that can very well land you in the top ten rankings of Google and other search engines. Some may cost a lot but there are methods that can give you the same results at a low price or you can even do on your own such as those mentioned above.

Good luck, have fun and never, never, never, stop tweaking/testing, and then again tweaking/testing in a repeating cycle. I guarantee you great success if you stick with the cycle.