One of the most difficult tasks, having developed your website is to promote it on the search engines and achieve first page rankings. This is after all where we, as web site owners want to be, especially if you are selling products or promoting your services. Anything after the third page is generally useless for attracting visitors and potential customers. So how can you achieve this first page ranking on the major search enginesI will assume that you have good content and update this at least on a weekly basis as this attracts the search engine spiders to regularly visit your site. However content alone will not see you leap through the rankings. What will encourage this movement on all the search engines are backward links.
You will have undoubtedly read of the many ways of getting links to your website, from reciprocal links to one way links, and that the latest information out of Google suggests that buying links may result in a penalty and in being demoted in the rankings. So how do you, as a busy person running your own business and attempting to promote your own website do it You could as people suggest e-mail a variety of webmasters whose sites are related to yours asking them to link to you. This is very time consuming and yields little result. Reciprocal linking is easier but still time consuming and the links seem to be of little value now so again the time spent on this may not be a useful and productive way of using your time. Directories are again relatively easy if time consuming and many of them now require a payment for a link in their directory. If you are planning on registering with as many directories as possible then this can ultimately turn out to be an expensive enterprise. This is OK if you have a big budget but most of us work on very tight budgets. It is also being suggested that the value of directory links is being downgraded so again it may not be the most valuable use of your time.
That leaves one avenue, that of writing and publishing articles. You are presumably an expert in your field so writing about different aspects related to your website should not be difficult. The very first article is difficult and takes up a lot of time but subsequent ones become easier and easier to write. You will surprise yourself as to what you can actually write about. How valuable these articles are I can only relate from my own experience. Three months ago I started writing articles and have averaged ten per month ever since. When I first started my web site had 12 links registered on Google, 36 on MSN, 8 on Yahoo and none on Teoma and was languishing on pages seven and eight. Three months down the line and 30 articles later the site is on the first page of these three search engines for at least six of my keywords and the links have increased as follows; Google 54, Yahoo 616, MSN 2056, and Teoma 606. When these links are investigated over 90% of them are from these articles which have been picked up by ezines, weblogs and used as content on other peoples sites. It is a constant source of surprise and enjoyment looking to see where they end up! Getting excellent link backs to your website is not the only benefit you get from the articles because they also encourage visitors to your site, and every visitor is a potential customer.
David Andrew Smith is the owner of a cleaning services company which operates throughout the UK
Nowadays your online visibility on the Internet will depend on your ability to provide trustworthy, organized and updatedinformation, and to have a clear focus for your website.
The clear focus is needed for your visitors and for yourchances to obtain good registration in search engines andindexes. It will also increase peoples want to make linksback to your site.
Let us imagine you publish or just sell: - a magazine on classic cars,
- a magazine on travel and
- a magazine on modern homes.
It is obvious that you will have potential customers who are interested in all three magazines. But the majority will be interested in just one or two.
A minimum is that you design individual pages for each ofthe magazines. In this way each webpage will be able toshow the importance of exactly that magazine, and you canconvey feelings and context that fit to your main type ofconsumer of the individual magazine. Here, the graphics willplay an important role.
Each page will also give you possibilities to focus on theimportant keywords people use in their search for relevantinformation when they use a search engine. This is essential for an optimal online visibility.
Be generous with your exact information related to the theme of the magazine. Select your keywords with care. For your own information put the selected keywords for each page in the meta tag keywords. It doesnt help you in Google, but it doesnt hurt ether.
Use a website checker for each page. You will find free tools at http://www.ALLeMarketingTips.com/tools.html
In general it pays off to select a larger number of morespecific key words. Of course the optimization process willtake you some time, but it is a good investment.
A search facility on your site will give you much feedbackyou can turn into profit by adjusting the keywords you use on the page. I use http://www.FreeFind.com -- a free or paidservice.
If you design your web pages with the keywords that people look for you will get a great boost in your traffic. It will be targeted visitors, because they arrive and get what they searched for in a search engine. You are on your way to optimal online visibility.
Soren Breiting is the editor of the monthly ezine Stock Photo News about marketing and how to use pictures, see . Enjoy Sorens successful online photo gallery at .