You must have heard the stories how people became rich and famous with their websites. How could they achieve this Their websites took a first position in search engine listings targeting popular keywords. Sounds easy, right Wrong! To be honest, chances for a regular small business website to get to the top of the search engine listings are close to zero and each day they become smaller and smaller as a number of new and old websites grows.
Lets examine the situation from the beginning. Search engines just need your content to deliver it to searchers. If a searcher is happy with the search result from the particular search engine, he will come back and use this search engine again. Do not think that search engines serve to send customers to your website. They DO NOT CARE about your website or your business. All they need is content.
When the search engines first appear in the Internet they needed help to determine what your site is about and how relevant is your website to search queries. People used Keywords meta-tag in those days. Keywords gave too many opportunities to cheat with search engines results so searchers were not happy with their search queries results. Same thing was with the search engines. Manipulation with a website position in the search engines listings became known as Search Engine Optimization. That was the time when you could actually wake up a rich man after the search engine came to your website, included it into its database and started sending you thousands of customers.
Then came the time of big G (Google) with its concept of website popularity based on two factors: content and links. They introduced the new factor which was called Google PageRank. Now it becomes more and more complicated to get to the top of Google results. You need to bother about your website content, incoming links and outgoing links, IP of your website, number of visitors coming to your website and many other things that are being counted to determine your page position in the Google index. Linking fever came to the webmasters community. New websites (no matter how original their content is) have to wait before they will get enough links to be displayed in search engine results. The more complicated the search engines have become, the more ways of cheating people could think of: invisible text and links, doorway pages, cloaking pages etc.
Surely, you can try one of these methods called Black SEO (search engine optimization) and you may even succeed for a month or two. When a Search Engine catches you, the punishment will be immediate: your website will be banned and no visitors will ever be sent to your website again.
Lets be honest - for small websites and home based businesses starting from scratch chances to get to the top position in search engine are minimal. The WWW is so rich that you probably will not find any competitive areas in search engine listings. Let me give you several suggestions, however, on how you can get started. I would recommend concentrating on one or two main keywords and trying to get the highest position in search engine and not waste efforts trying to cover the whole market. The right keyword can bring you several thousands visitors/customers in a day. Webmasters should concentrate their efforts on developing unique and original content. Search engines like new content and analyze if it is unique. Write articles, reviews, online publications etc. As an example, I can say that as soon as search engines index my recently written article for http://www.metamorphozis.com we get several hundreds visitors to that article from different engines. Exchange links with other websites related to your website. Put your keyword in the link title when you exchanging links.
Example:
We use this link to get the better listings for website templates keyword. Just copy it and replace your website domain name with your own and link title to the keyword you would like. Exchange this link with related, popular websites. I would recommend you to create a special page for link exchanges and place links to other websites there.
I hope some my pieces of advice will be helpful to internet business starters.
This article may be reprinted and distributed with no charge until the credit line below remains without changes.
Thanks for reading.Article source:
About the Author:
Oleg Lazarenko
Production Manager of
Metamorphosis Web Design Studio
Keywords have turned into big business on the internet. If you pick the keywords that your customers are typing in, then your product is finally exposed to your perfect customer. That keyword is gold. Either you have run out of keyword ideas, you dont know where to look, you havent had time, you need an easy to use tool, whatever the reason, Im here to help.
Let me give you THREE awesome sources that will help you pick the PERFECT Keyword.
1. Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) - This is a keyword suggestion tool from Overture. I use it all the time. You can type almost any keyword and it will suggest 30 or more related keywords.
2. WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) Wordtracker is probably the leader in keyword selection, but it will cost a low monthly fee. Its worth it if you make ONE sale that covers the cost of Wordtracker.
3. Google Suggestion (http://www.google.com/webhpcomplete=1&hl=en) This is Googles Beta Version that will actually give you the TOTAL number of searches for a particular keyword and give you the total number of searches for related keywords. If you keep losing the related keywords, just hit PRINT SCREEN when those words pop up. Then paste it in Paint.
I always strive to save you tons of money when generating traffic to your website. My eBook, The Traffic Toolchest, delivers over 70 valuable traffic generating ideas. You can grab a copy at www.thetraffictoolchest.com .
Kit Elliott is the author of The Traffic Toolchest. His ethical approach to marketing makes him one of the top experts in his field. His highly anticipated book Super Affiliates Guide to Riches is expected to launch by mid-August 2005 at . Check out The Traffic Toolchest at to get over 70 valuable marketing tools.