The first, and perhaps the easiest, way to choose the right keywords for your website is to brainstorm ideas with regard to your individual goods and services. Sometimes simply the name of your goods or services will work as an excellent keyword. For example, if you offer writing services, consider “technical writing” as you keyword. Creating a page around “writing” may not get you the customers you deserve. Think specifically about what you offer and create a page to advertise it. Within this, though, you must remember to stay away from general keywords. The competition for these keywords is rather stiff.

Thousands of sites are optimized for words like “computers,” and doing the same thing with yours can simply make it redundant and hard for customers to find. Moreover, customers are more search savvy than you are giving them credit for. If a customer wants to find information on something specific, he or she will search for something specific. For example, they may want to know about flea treatments for their cat, but instead of searching for “fleas” or “cat,” they may search for something more specific like a product name or type of treatment. If you feel you must use a general keyword, try taking a keyword and adding a more specific term to it. For example, if your key word is “cat,” try adding more specific terms like “behavior” or “specialist” to that for site optimization. With these general terms, you might also consider adding regional terms. If you service a particular area of the country, you may have some regional terminology that will help customers find you. Names of nearby cities or towns can help as can terms that your customers know and respect. For example, if you run a sandwich shop in New Orleans, you might want to optimize for the term “muffuletta.”

The second way to choose the right keywords for your website is to use a service like Google Keyword Sandbox or Overture Term Suggestion Tool. This way to choose your keywords can be a bit time consuming, but in the end, it is certainly worth it. Start with either service, and you’ll end up with a huge list of possibilities. Once you’ve finished with that service, pick another and try running the same search. See what keywords you have in common with the two lists.

The third way to choose the right keywords for your website is to check your server log files. When someone visits your site from a search engine, the words they used to find your site are recorded in your server log files. Analyzing the actual files, though, can take some work. You can use various methods to examine those files depending on your server operating system. It can sometimes be best to use a software program to extract the information if you are not technically inclined.

The fourth way to choose the right keywords for your website is to use a keyword counter service. These analyze your web page and compare them with other, similar web sites. They offer you a density percentage report and the top words for the two pages based on their analysis. Keyword counter services are available all over the internet in both free and costly forms. Choosing the right service for you will simply be a matter of reading the reviews.

The final way to choose the right keywords for your website is to review sites that have both similar missions and products with regard to yours. It is important to notice sites that have rankings within the top ten on any given search engine. The point here isn’t to copy the site; it is to figure out which keywords they are using to draw in potential customers.

Choosing the right keywords can be both a difficult and a long process. However, if you pick the right terms, you won’t regret it based on your increased web traffic.

Link popularity is defined as the number of links that point to a site. The search engines consider this links as some kind of votes in the sites favor. Some time ago it didn’t matter what kind of links pointed to your site. So every webmaster linked their sites to any other site not considering it’s nature. Link exchange was the best website marketing strategies in those times. But now, the search engines updated their algos and they investigate every “vote”.

Link popularity remains a major factor in the search engine’s way of ranking but what’s more important this days is the quality of the links. When the search engine spider crawls, it investigates all the incoming links to see if they are good “votes” or bad “votes”. When everybody was making reciprocal links only the number was important. But this reciprocal links are not so powerful any more because search engines are looking for links on related sites with related content that are not placed their just for receiving a link back. The spider wants to find out if that link is placed there because of the quality of the site is pointing to.

So increasing your link popularity is still the best website marketing strategy but try to get only good links from related sites. This way you’ll benefit from the direct targeted traffic and you’ll have good search engine positioning too.

There are many ways to get quality links. The best would be acquiring one way links. If the inbound links are one way then the search engine will know from the beginning that the links are not a result of an agreement between two webmasters. You can achieve one way links by writing good articles and distribute them for reprinting over the net, having great content on your site, writing testimonials for products that you used or even purchasing them. Reciprocal links are still good but try to trade your links only with sites with similar topics and trust worthy sites.

In conclusion increasing your link popularity with good legit links will boost your site’s traffic in no time.

The following are the SEO techniques that have been known to work for marketing strategies used by experienced web designers and webmasters. Keep in mind that SEO is an ever-changing experience, and that while these techniques will work for you today, they may not be the same when tomorrow arrives.

1. Google AdWords – this is an SEO technique specifically offered by Google to make certain that you are indeed getting use out of the keywords you want to use. This technique is considered to be quite cost-effective for achieving good search results for your website. It works by allowing you to state the maximum amount that you are willing to spend on a daily basis on your chosen keywords. This can be changed monthly as you witness the results that the Google AdWords SEO technique brings you.

2. Overture Keywords – similar to Google’s AdWords, you can choose the keywords you want, however, you cannot limit your daily spending, so this may be an issue if you’re on a tight budget. However, it has been found to be quite cost effective when balanced against the number of new visitors and active customers created.

3. Yahoo! Regional Directories – when you have your site indexed by Yahoo! Regional Directories – a place where submission is free – then you will always be in their list. Many new clients are found through this reliable process.

4. Keywords, Site Descriptions, Alt-Tags, Title Tags, and Page Content – these are the main focus of SEO experts and SEO businesses today. These are the five elements that take the most amount of effort when optimizing websites. It all has to do with what is contained within the coding of your website. Unless you are truly confident that you know what you’re doing, it is very beneficial to hire a professional SEO company to ensure that you’re including all of the right elements, and doing it properly. Have this done before you submit your site to the different search engines, or re-submit your site after you’ve done your SEO for your website. SEO is well worth paying for to ensure that it is done properly. Professionals will know which keywords to use, how to use them, and how to make sure that they are properly laid out for search engine spiders to crawl the site. Furthermore “illegal” tactics will never be used, which can result in having your website permanently banned from search engines.

5. Online Directories – by submitting your website to any number of different free online directories, you will have an excellent new path for prospective customers to follow to find you. Many are free, others include a nominal charge. If there is a fee involved, do some investigation into the directory first, to make sure that it is worth the money.

6. The Open Directory Project – this is one of the primary resources utilized by the big search engines such as Google for sending their spiders out to crawl new sites. The directory is entirely maintained by humans – that is, every site submitted is reviewed and indexed by a person, not a spider. This does mean that it takes additional time to have your site indexed, but it is well worth the wait.

7. A Blog – adding a blog to your website is a fantastic method for continuing to attract new and repeat visitors to your website. They are drawn to the fresh new content that is constantly being added.

8. Make It Great – Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) is only as good as the website it supports. If you bring lots of visitors to your website, and it has nothing to offer them, or the content is terrible, all of your efforts will be in vain.

Doing business on the internet is very competitive. You have to arm yourself with the know-how and the marketing tools to make your business a step above the rest. Each day, more and more websites are clambering to optimize their rankings in search engines and if you don’t keep up, you may just be left behind in the abyss packed with so many failed websites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a tool used nowadays by many websites. In the past and years to come, search engines have and will be the most used internet tool for people to find information they want.

Most people that use search engines use only the top ten search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a gauge of a sites victory in search engine optimization. You will get a high ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more potential business which leads to profits.

In the beginning of this article, we went over the basics. Now, we will look at this topic a little more in-depth.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is a simple one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or perhaps at best make your site generate profits.

With search engine optimization you have the advantage of generating a high traffic volume. Lets just say you get only a turning out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turning out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site the top position in the results of search engines. Acquiring a position in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will guarantee that your business will produce awareness and subsequently stimulate more traffic, that could lead to possible earnings.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be a total benefit. There are many aspects of your site you may have to change or add to, to benefit from search engine optimization. This will require researching information about the keyword phrases that are prevalent in regards to your sites theme.

You may also have to revise your sites contents so that you will get the right keyword phrases in place trying not to make it too commercial but light with good information. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your sites content applicable and favorable to search engine optimization.

You will also have to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges . The more inbound and outbound traffic generated by sites among others are one of the algorithms search engines uses to rank sites.

Search the internet for valuable help, tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization. Read many articles that can help you optimize your website in search engine results. The more education and information you gather the better. This will all help you in receiving those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort on your part but the payback will reward you.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your website. There are also some content writers that have heaps of experience in making good keyword rich content for your sites that have good value.

Act now and see the payback you gain with search engine optimization. Search engine optimization will mean more traffic and business for your website leading to a sale.

The complexities of the subject matter within this article strive to give you a better look at what search engine optimization is all about.

First you want to create a blog; a blog is great because you can just write your thoughts down and get people to come and read your ideas, thoughts or questions. Blogs attract visitors who are looking for what you have to say or offer. Plus writing a blog keeps your thoughts in order. This business is always changing; the more you jot things down, the better organized you will be. Once you start a blog; make sure you use a site that can ping your blog. Ping sites are great because they send your blog entry out to people all over the web.

The second way is by writing articles; writing articles is a very effective way to get people to your site; you also boost your ranking on major search engines like Google when you submit articles. When writing articles you have to contribute something; make the readers feel like they are learning something when they read what you have to say; even if they learn one thing you’re helping them out. Another thing to remember when writing articles is the amount of articles you right. The more articles you write the more people will come back and see what you have to say. The more they come back the more they trust you; once they trust you, they may be willing to purchase something off of your site. I’m in the process of distributing 30 different articles to 75 different article submission sites. Guess what? If you don’t feel like putting in the time and effort to do this, you probably won’t be successful. If you feel like you need some help distributing your articles; there are programs out there that will distribute them for you.

The third way of getting targeted visitors is advertising your site on other people’s sites who are offering the same opportunity you are; the opportunity doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but relates to what you are selling in some way. Try to advertise on high traffic sites; it costs money to advertise on other people’s sites; you don’t want to spend money on advertising on someone’s site, if they don’t get a lot of visitors.

The fourth and hardest way to advertise and get targeted visitors is by placing ads on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are tons of people who use this method, it’s very competitive. Before you try this; be sure to research thoroughly how each search engine works. You have to spend a good amount of money to be successful on major search engines. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you could loose $500 in one day. I can’t stress the importance of researching this method before you get started. I hate seeing people with a great website get their rear ends kicked because they thought just throwing down a bunch of money could get them visitors. Believe me, there are some serious professionals out there; when you start using search engines to promote your site, you’ll be competing against them. If you’re not careful; they will chew you up and spit you out.

I hope I was able to help you out; it’s tough out there. We need to learn from one another in order to better ourselves. Another thing to remember is; keep your mind open and don’t be afraid to try new ideas. Working from home was a new idea one time; look where it’s evolved to.

There are TONS of ways to build up your traffic. Here are some of the most common methods.

1. Learn Search Engine Optimization – this is probably the most important way that you want to get traffic and probably the hardest too. Search engine traffic is highly targetted traffic of people who are searching the web for a specific item. If they get to your site after searching for it, you’re almost guaranteed a sale or at least a “bookmark for later”. lot of ebooks on the subject

2. Trade links with other sites – It’s important to get your site name out there.
So trade links with several other sites, even your competitors! People really do look at those links pages and they will find their way to your site from another site.

3. Post on message boards – When you post on highly trafficked message boards, BE SURE to put your site link in your signature! This is a highly effective form of marketing, especially if the message board you are posting at is relative to your site content.

4. Use email signatures – Make it easy for your customers to contact you! When they write to you and ask for more information, be sure that you are using a signature with your site URL and name inside of it. That way if they want to retrieve it later, it’s easier for them than having to memorize your URL and open a web browser.

5. Join Yahoo Groups – This is pretty much the same as message boards. Join groups that pertain to your site’s content and advertise (but don’t spam!!) your site there.

6. Post on free classifieds sites – Sites like Craig’s List or other free advertising classifieds sites will accept your site for free! Just do a Google search for “free classifieds” and you’ll see a ton of sites come up where you can promote your site!

7. Buy ad space – If your monthly budget allows, you can buy some ad space for your site. Find another site that pertains to your site’s content and ask them what their advertising prices are.

8. Hold auctions – Ebay gets TONS of traffic a day, while you’re not allowed to post your site URL within your auction listings, you are allowed to put it in your “about me” page. So think about listing some of your products as auctions and advertise your URL.

9. Offline advertising – Get custom t-shirts, bumper stickers, car decals, etc made for your site URL. Then whenever you are out in public, you are passively advertising yourself!

10. Submit your site to directories – If your site is a site about “fishing” for
instance, do a Google search for “fishing directories” and see how many directories are out there that pertain to your subject matter. Most of these directories will allow free submissions.

11. Write articles – Writing articles that pertain to your site is another excellent way to get your site out there. Just write a short, informative article of 5-6 paragraphs and submit it to any site that accepts article submissions and make sure that your article includes a link back to your site in your “author biography”.

12. Submit press releases – Even if your site is a small work from home site
(i.e. “Susie’s Candles”) it IS newsworthy! Let’s say your candle site released a new candle called “Vanilla Cream”. Submit a press release about it, I’m serious!! A good place to start is called http://www.prweb.com Or you can do a Google search for “submit press release” and a zillion other sites will come up.

13. Have great interactive content – People will bookmark your site if you have interactive and dynamic content. Have polls, message boards, interactive games, news items, guest books, item of the day….whatever! Just make the site relevant and have good SUBSTANCE in your site content. Don’t overload it with silly animated graphics, sounds, etc. That just makes it look like you had nothing else to fill your site up with but this annoying stuff. And Flash intros are only good if you are two
years old and need to see flashing lights and colors. Most of all they are slow loading, and people generally click away if they see Flash.

Your keyword must be in your meta tags of your website. If you open up your website and go to view and click on source you will see a whole lot of writing and if you read it from the top you will see meta name=”keyword” content etc this is where your keywords have been placed for your website. You can change your keywords by logging into your website hosting panel and changing them to be more in keeping with your chosen keyword or phrases. You must then optimise your site so that your keyword can also be found within your website as you would be penalised by the search engines if you have a keyword or phrase which is not anywhere on your website.

Keywords are very important they help the search engines to identify your site for searchers. You must optimise your site for your chosen keyword. I use a top 10 optimiser for my site so that I can get within the top 10 sites for my chosen keywords.

It is important to note that you should optimise your site and have your keywords inserted correctly before you submit to the search engines. The search engines will re check your site but it may take 30 days for them to come back to your site so ensure it is optimised before you submit. It is also important to ensure you have content on your website that has your keywords embedded in it. It could be articles or items for sale, links or pictures.

Another important note is that search engines like Google read your website from top left to right bottom so try and ensure your keyword is used in the upper left hand corner and the bottom right hand side of your page.

Submit your site to the search engine directories: By submitting your site to the human edited directories like dmoz.org and Yahoo your site will get an increase in the link and thus it will increase your site’s search engine ranking. It may take some delay. You can even get listed much faster by linking to niche
Special directories. You can get these directories from the major search engines with the primary keywords. One of the good directories from India to submit link and to increase link popularity and search engine rankings is
Online Indian Directory . It’s free to Submit. Any one can submit links if they find any website useful to others too.

Content should be qualified: If your site provides what the visitors seek, they will come back to your site again. This will naturally provide high ranking and popularity of your site. The content should be proper focused and meaningful.

Proper keywords: Keywords play an important role in search engine optimization and it increases your ranking.

Publish Articles: When the visitors find immediately what they search for they are so happy and well impressed. This satisfaction is achieved by publishing articles. If you attach a link with your article, you will automatically get a link in return. This method also leads to high popularity.

Link Request: Links paves a smooth way for high search engine ranking. Link a site to others and also attach a brief description about your link. It will increase lot of clicks in your site. Reciprocal linking request is much better. It will definitely increase your link popularity. Both parties are benefited from it.

Provide witnessing notes: If you write a positive review and the benefits of some other site’s product or web site they will attach their link back to your site. And it is more beneficial.

Conclusion

The above written strategies are more beneficial and effective to rise up your web traffic and to improve search engine ranking and link popularity.

So…how do you get people to visit your site?

Just because you know that your web site is great, it doesn’t mean that everyone else does. There are thousands upon thousands of web sites floating around out there in cyberspace, and everyone has a piece of the pie. For everything there is, there exists a web site. Every single type of business that you could name has its own web site on the Internet. How are you supposed to get yours to stand out above so many others that are out there?

How do you get traffic?

Internet users know that search engines are your key to finding what you want. Search engines are a friendly little Internet tool that does the work for us. All we have to do is think about what we’re looking for in the vaguest of terms. For instance, you’re doing a research paper on the wives and daughters of King Henry the eighth of England. So, you go to a search engine and type in the keywords, “Henry VIII and wives.” Just like magic, the search engine instantly presents you with a list of web sites filled with information about King Henry and his many wives.

As most everyone knows, those sites that appear at the top of the list get visited most often. The top of the list is definitely where you want to be, so that potential visitors will see your web site proudly displayed among the best. But, in order to appear at the top of list, you need to know something about search engine optimization.

Which leads to the burning questions: what is search engine optimization? It sounds sinister, but really search engine optimization is simple and easy. The following is a list of tips that will help you with search engine optimization. Using these tips, your web site will appear closer to the top of that list, and you’ll get more traffic on your site:

- Simple, easy to spell keywords
Internet users don’t want to take a lot of time – with anything. They aren’t going to spend a lot of time looking at the bottom of a search engine list, and they aren’t going to be that specific or exacting (at least not in the first search) with the keywords that they use. Keep your keywords as simple as possible. Commonly misspelled keywords should be featured on your site under all possible spellings, to maximize the possibilities of getting hits to your site. Long, complex, and hard to spell words don’t get searched out very often, so be sure to use as many short, simple keywords as possible.

- Lots of links
Search engines love links, so include as many as possible on your site. Both internal links, links that link to pages within your own site, and external links are good. The more links you have, the better your chances with the search engines.

- Lots of content
The more content you have means the more possible keywords you’ll have on your site. Search engines look at sites for content and their rankings are based upon that content, so you’ll want to have plenty of it. Keywords without content is nothing, and search engines don’t give good rankings to sites that have lots of keywords but very little content. Even if you content isn’t the greatest, it won’t hurt your chances with the search engines.

Google has defined the three-keyword match options in a fairly understandable way. You need to know what each match type is, how Google uses them and how you can use them in your keyword selection process.

BROAD MATCH is the default option Google will use in determining the relevancy of your keywords to a users search. If you don’t specify, your keywords will be matched using this option. Broad refers to the span of keywords Google will consider when determining the placement of your ad. Plurals and other variations of your keywords are automatically included. Broad matches are the least targeted of keyword matching.

infant carseats will show your ad when a search for both words are used, in any order, or when either is used separately.

PHRASE MATCH refers to entering your keywords using quotation marks. Google will show your ad when a user searches for the phrase, in the order you placed it within the quotation marks, as well as other possible terms.

“infant carseats” will show your ad when a search for the complete phrase occurs. This allows a more targeted audience than broad match.

EXACT MATCH occurs when you surround your keywords in brackets. This will show your ad only when the exact keywords, in the exact order are searched, and will not include any other possible words. This is the most targeted search and should produce a higher quality (although a lower quantity) of clickthroughs.

[infant carseats] will show your ad when a search for infant carseats appears. It will not appear if the search has included any other words. The traffic you attract will be the most targeted to your keywords.

NEGATIVE KEYWORD gives you the opportunity to exclude words. For example, if you do not want the word used to trigger your ad, you may place a negative sign, -used, and your ad will not appear if that word appears anywhere in the search. This is helpful if you are trying to target specific traffic and there are certain very popular words that often accompany your keywords, but are not related to your ad.

So which option is the best to use? The very best option is to use all three, broad, phrase and exact matching for every keyword in your ad group. Doing so will result in impressions being calculated for every variation of your keywords. This produces a greater click-through ratio. Google will calculate statistics for each keyword, allowing you to track performance. Having a high click-through rate is a key element in raising your overall Google Quality Score, meaning your ads will appear more frequently than someone whose score is lower.

A standard recommendation of 25 unique keywords per Ad Group is then changed to 75 when all three-match options are used.

It may seem very redundant to include the three different match types, and it certainly means more data entry per ad group. But you are increasing the chances of the right people clicking on your ads. The quality of the traffic and your overall Google Quality Score are worth the extra effort.

The “duplicate content penalty” myth is one of the biggest obstacles I face in getting web professionals to embrace reprint content. The myth is that search engines will penalize a site if much of its content is also on other websites.

Clarification: there is a real duplicate content penalty for content that is duplicated with minor or no variation across the pages of a single site. There is also a “mirror” penalty for a site that is more or less substantially duplicating another single site. What I’m talking about here is the reprint of pages of content individually, rather than in a mass, on multiple sites.

Another clarification: “penalty” is a loaded concept in SEO. “Penalty” means that search engines will punish a website for violations of the engine’s terms of service. The punishment can mean making it less likely that the site will appear in search results. Punishment can also mean removal from the search engine’s index of web pages (“de-indexing” or “delisting”).

How have I exploded the “duplicate content penalty” myth?

* PageRank. Many thousands of high-PageRank sites reprint content and provide content for reprint. The most obvious case is the news wires such as Reuters (PR and the Associated Press (PR 9) that reprint to sites such as http://www.nytimes.com (PR 10).

* The proliferation of content reprint sites. There are now hundreds of websites devoted to reprint content because it’s a cheap, easy magnet for web traffic, especially search engine traffic.

* Experience. I’ve seen significant search engine traffic both from distributing content to be reprinted and from reprinting content on the site.

How I Doubled Search Engine Traffic with Reprint Content

When I first started distributing content for my main site, I was stunned by the highly targeted traffic I got from visitors clicking on the link at the end of the article. Search engine traffic also slowly increased both from the links and from having content on the site.

But I was even more stunned with the search engine traffic I got when I started putting reprint articles on the site in September. I had written quite a number of reprint articles for clients and accumulated a few webmaster “fans” who looked out for my articles to reprint them. I wanted to make it easier for them to find all the reprint articles I had written.

I didn’t want to draw too much attention to these articles, which had nothing to do with the main subject of the site, web content. So I secluded the articles in one section of the site.

The articles got a surprising amount of search engine traffic. The traffic was overwhelmingly from Google, and for long multiple-word search strings that just happened to be in the article word for word.

Why was I surprised with all the search engine traffic?

1. The articles had so little link popularity. The link popularity to the articles came primarily from a single link to the “reprint content” page from the homepage, which linked to category pages, which linked to the articles themselves–three clicks from the homepage. The sitemap was enormous, well over 100 links, so its PageRank contribution was minimal. Since these articles were on the site such a short time I strongly doubt they got any links from other sites.

2. The articles had so much competition. These articles had been reprinted far more widely than the average reprint article, which is lucky if it makes it into a few dedicated reprint sites. As part of my service I had done most of the legwork of reprinting my clients’ articles for them. In fact, I guarantee at least 100 reprints on Google-indexed web pages either for each article or group of articles. So that’s up to 100 web pages, sometimes more, that were competing with my web page to appear in search engine results for the search string.

Why Do Reprint Articles Get Search Engine Traffic?

You would think Google would just pick one web page with the article as the authoritative edition and send all the traffic to it.

But that’s not how Google works. All the search engines look at factors beyond just the content on the web page. They look at links. Google, at least, claims to look at 100 factors total. Many of these must relate to the content on the page, but not all of them.

The whole experience has given me great insight into what factors Google uses in addition to what we would consider the page itself, and the relative importance of each.

* Web page titles (the one in the html title tag) are extremely important as tie-breakers between two otherwise equally matched pages. Most reprinters waste the html title, using the article title as the web page title. Set yourself apart by creating unique five-to-ten-word web page titles that include target keywords.

* Content tweaks. You can also introduce the article with a unique, keyword-laden editor’s note, and finish the article off with some keyword-laced comments.

* Intra-site link popularity and anchor text (that is, for links to the article page from other web pages on the site) are also important. If you can’t link to the page from the homepage, keep it as close to the homepage as possible and weed out extraneous links (try putting all your site policies on a single page).

Reprint articles, like the search engine traffic they bring, cost nothing. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Forget the “duplicate content penalty.” Get in on content reprints and share the search engine wealth.

The first place most e-business start-ups go when they need a quick traffic fix is the search engines. And rightfully so! After all, a top ranking position in one of the major search engines is an effective way to increase the traffic to your web site without spending your hard-earned advertising dollars!

Statistics have repeatedly shown that anywhere from 20% to 80% of your visitors will find your web site via a search engine. However, you should also know that statistics show that most web surfers never search beyond the top 30 results they receive. With that in mind, it is clear that a top position a top position should be the goal of any savvy site owner.

But top spots are no longer achieved by crossing your fingers and blindly submitting your web site to 900+ search engines and directories using a free submission service. Competition for top spots is getting fierce, so it is important that you learn the “right” techniques if you want to ensure that your web site is well ranked… and it is very important that you do so while this great advertising medium is still FREE!

As I said before; for high traffic generation to your website, it is very important that your web site ranks in top spots in search engines. You may ask “What are the search engine looking for when they rank my web site?” Well, although each search engine uses different set of algorithms to rank web sites, but generally speaking, however, here are some of the main factors currently being considered by the search engines.

1. Link Popularity
Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and the web pages search promotion of Yahoo! use a ranking system that involves measuring and ranking the number of links that are directed towards a particular web site. This is an extremely powerful traffic generation tools because:

Reason # 1
Building a well thought-out linking strategy is a powerful way to attract large volumes of high targeted traffic! By putting your web site on every major web “intersection” where your target market meets, you will ensure that your web site receives a steady flow of qualified potential customers.

Reason # 2
Links are equivalent to recommendations! They established credibility even before the visitor reaches your web site, dramatically increasing the likelihood that they will buy.

Think about it… David arrives at his favorite web site and notices that they have posted a link to your web site. He knows and trusts his favorite web site and therefore assumes that, because they have a linked to you, your business must be credible too. He clicks through the link to your web site and is immediately open to offers you present him with. Why? Because your credibility was established before he even arrived at your homepage!

Reason # 3
Since many search engines now factor link popularity into their ranking decisions, your linking strategies are all that much more important! If you want to be ranked as high as possible in search engines, you now need a factor in your link popularity – and, as you already know, earnings a top spot in the major search engines is key to increasing your web site traffic.

Obviously, developing a linking strategy that generates a high volume of targeted traffic to your web site is not an overnight process. It will take you anywhere from two weeks to six months to secure quality links you need. However, I promise you that it is worth the effort! Once you have done the initial footwork, the links that are established will remain on these web sites for years to come. Your perseverance will pay big dividends in the form of a continuous flow of targeted traffic generation.

2. Your Domain Name
A domain name plays a vital role in traffic generation to any web site. Domain names rich in keywords will rank higher in search engines because search engines love URL’s that are saturated with keywords! Brainstorm keywords and key phrases for your web site and then use them to create a catchy URL… or load the domain name with your best keywords to get ranked higher in the search engines.

3. Key Word Density
Keywords definitely refer to the number of times your keyword appears throughout your site. Your keyword density is a factor that is heavily weighted by search engines, so it’s very important to make strategic use of your keywords.

So, these are the golden facts and tactics through which you can drive high traffic to your web site. I should also mention that you do not expect to enter a couple of your top keywords into the search engines and instantly start making money through your web site— that is very rare. But yes, you can really make high traffic through search engines without crossing the line into “keyword stuffing” and with a little time.

What has this all got to do with link popularity? Well, link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines. It determines the ranking or positioning your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine by a potential customer when looking for a product or service. The higher the position the more likely a prospect will find and click onto your site.

There are a few things you should be aware of and guard against in your quest for link popularity. These can be summed up in two words: Quantity and Quality.

You will not achieve link popularity just by linking up with a large number of other websites. In fact, it may work against you. There are web sites that are known as “link farms” containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines will discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The quality of the site you are linking to is also super important. So be sure to check out the site you are linking to before you commit to linking. If you have any reservation about your visitors seeing that you are linking to a site that is indiscriminate and cheap, forget about it. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

Here are some things you need to do to achieve link popularity and improve your rankings on the popular search engines.

The fastest way to get your foot in the door is to get a listing on some popular directories. You can do this manually or with the aid of software. There are several excellent software products on the market and when you consider the cost versus the time, you can decide which course is best for you.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s visitors. For instance, if you are selling life insurance, someone selling health insurance would be a good link choice. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects – and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a link or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with this crowd. Again you can do this manually, or with a software program.

There is a lot of hard work over an extended period of time invloved to get a high ranking with search engines. Other than some software programs to assist you there are no shortcuts to achieve link popularity. So be prepared for a long journey to the top. This is one of those areas where patience, commitment, and persistence pay off. Good Luck!

P.S.: You want to be sure to have an attractive and interesting site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you.

1. Write an article related to the main topic of your website.

Not sure if you know enough about writing to write an article? Don’t worry about being perfect. Write about what you know. Keep the article short, between 300-600 words long. When you write the article, give out general information that anyone would gladly post on their site as valuable content. Don’t try to sell your product or service in this article.

Remember the goal of the article is for you to get a valuable link back to your website, not to make a sale. In fact, if you try to make a sale in the article, most webmasters will not want to publish your article on their site. The whole goal of writing articles is to get your articles on as many websites as possible with a link pointing back to your site.

2. Include a resource box at the end of the article with your website link in it.

If you’ve created a good general information article that is relevant to the topic of your website, you are ready to create your resource box. Keep in mind here to get to the point quickly. It is usually considered fine to promote your product or service in this resource box but it is necessary to keep it short. You should remember that the main point of including this resource box is to get a link going back to your website. The secondary purpose of the resource box is to get readers of your article to click through and visit your website.

When including a link in your resource box, make sure that one of your links includes the main keywords of your home page. Keywords are a fancy term for the phrase or words a visitor will type in to find your website. Make the keyword the clickable portion of the link instead of your web address. Put this keyword text in between your html anchor link.

3. Submit your article to the major article directories.

Once you’ve created your article, submit it to the major article directories to get the article distributed on as many websites as possible. Some major article directories include EzineArticles, ArticleCity, ZapContent.com and Isnare. Some services like Isnare will even distribute your article for you for a fee.

Do these three steps and search engines will find, crawl, then list your website in their listings. It’s as simple as that!

The first problem I have with that is why should Yahoo, MSN and ASK care about Google PageRank. PageRank is correctly written since it is a trademarked term. These search engines do not use Google PageRank as part of their listing criteria, or if they do, they are keeping it close to their chest.

The second problem I have with that is that I know, but cannot prove, that I have had websites listed in the top 10 in the Google listings for competitive keywords without any links other than those received through one article submitted to one article directory. The reason my web pages (not websites, since true search engines do not list domains) earned such a high listing is that they were optimized for the keywords that each page was built upon, taking into account the fact that a high listing is the result of the culmination of many SEO techniques used on each page.

Keep in mind that Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp and MSNBot use a large number of different aspects of your web page in determining the position of your page in the index for any particular search term a customer has used. The way to get a high listing is to pay attention to every one of these. If you ignore even one, you will probably not rank as highly in relevance for that search term as web pages like mine that ignore nothing.

Don’t believe them when they tell you that Meta tags don’t count, because they could. It does you no harm to use them, so use them! In fact, use every aspect of SEO that you can, and do not take notice of anybody that tells you not to. I use to listen to others who knew best until I noticed that my web pages were listed higher that theirs for their keywords. I am just a simple article ghost writer, yet I can get my websites listed immediately on Google, and listed higher that many SEO experts – self proclaimed!

I don’t care if your website is listed high or not, or if it is listed within 2 days or 2 months. However, if YOU care, then you should listen to people who have done it, and not those who want to tell you how to do what they can’t do for their own web pages! What credibility can they have if they have to pay for their advertising? I don’t.

Look at your own website and do your own SEO. Don’t pay hundreds of dollars for what you can do yourself. Then your free search engine advertising through high index listings becomes not so free after all. Here are two SEO tips:

First, look to your internal links. You should make sure that you use these to lead spiders or robots to where you want them to go. You also use them to gain as high an internal PageRank as possible for the page in your website of your choice that you want to be highest ranked. This is possible if you know how to do it.

Secondly, look to your use of keywords and language. Google, especially, no longer looks so much for keywords, but for words that would normally be associated with that keyword in normal speech and writing. It is what is loosely termed latent semantic indexing (LSI), yet it is neither ‘latent’ nor ‘indexing’. More ‘apparent’ and ‘analysis’.

SEO, search engine optimization, Page Rank and any other term you can think of. Forget them up to a point. Write natural content, and then use on-page SEO techniques as much as you can, then on-site and external links to raise your Google Page Rank as high as possible, and you might get a high listing for a specific web page that is optimized for a specific keyword.

Every one of these has equal importance in my view, and it works for me. One last thought. If PageRank relied on back-links, how is that so many links are to pages on your site with zero PageRank? Surely they should have the Page Rank and not your home page?

Look at your own website and do your own SEO. Don’t pay hundreds of dollars for what you can do yourself. Then, your free search engine advertising through high index listings becomes not so free after all. Here are two SEO tips:

First, look to your internal links. You should make sure that you use these to lead spiders or robots to where you want them to go. You also use them to gain as high an internal PageRank for the page in your website of your choice that you want to be highest ranked. This is possible if you know how to do it.

Secondly, look to your use of keywords and language. Google, especially, no longer looks so much for keywords, but for words that would normally be associated with that keyword in normal speech and writing. IT is what is loosely termed latent semantic indexing (LSI), yet it is neither ‘latent’ nor ‘indexing’. More ‘apparent’ and ‘analysis’.

SEO, search engine optimization, Page Rank and any other term you can think of. Forget them up to a point. Write natural content, and then use on-page SEO techniques as much as you can, then on-site and external links to raise your Google Page Rank as high as possible, and you might get a high listing for a specific web page that is optimized for a specific keyword.

Every one of these has equal importance in my view, and it works for me. One last thought. If PageRank relied on back-links, how is that so many links are to pages on your site with zero PageRank? Surely they should have the Page Rank and not your home page?

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let’s face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It’s about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.

They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer – sure it will help your SEO but it won’t be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:

1. Reciprocal Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A

2. One-Way Linking: Site B links to Site A

3. Multi-Site Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.

4. Directory Linking: Site Directory A links to Site A

That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren’t willing to spend the time or don’t have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn’t trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It’s possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page’s) but you won’t reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on “linking” pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.

The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 – 10).

The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn’t natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text description on your website.

Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point back to the home page of your website. It’s most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.

So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don’t be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the “sandbox”. It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP’s from being cluttered.

Many surfers use the Google or Alexa bar that integrates into their web browsers which consequently makes it easier for them to search and navigate through Internet. However, how many have the “overall page rank” indicator on these bars which shows either a ranking or the importance of the page?

The overall page rank in directories like Google, Yahoo or Alexa is the key factor while doing a search. It decides which website or page deserves the top places in the results of the search of a keyword. The search engine basically calculates the importance of the webpage.

For example, let’s say that you prepared a webpage supplying the users with focused, detailed and understandable info. You think your page deserves a high importance, therefore when you search for the theme of your website, you believe it should be shown in the top 20. Well, sometimes life is cruel. If you don’t optimize your webpage for a specific keyword, if you don’t get enough inbound links directing the user to your site, you would be disappointed by the 1/10 importance rating in Google. Don’t give up! It’s still worth fighting for. There are several factors which decide the page rank of a website.

First of all, Internet is not like the streets of a city: if you put your “shop” in a busy street, people will drop by your place. No visit on Internet is a coincidence. You have to create your links from other sites (inbound links). You also have to increase the internal linking of your website so that visitors can just “hang around” in your site. So your first factor for the page rank is the linking of your page.

Secondly, pages which attract more users (i.e. number of unique daily users) are obviously more important in the “eyes” of the search engines. This, being the dependent variable in our equation, grows directly proportional to the inbound links. So, page rank also increases with the number of unique users.

At last, relative, focused content increases the importance of your page (page rank). Initially, every page you add to your site increases the overall page rank of the whole before you start adding in-context hyperlinks; “in-context” hyperlinks because according to Google authorities, the hyperlinks that you place inside the content of the page are accepted more valuable.

Briefly, on the web, there are no lucky days, no coincidences or no serendipities. If you want website traffic on your page, you have to create it yourself. You have to put quality, focused and original content, you have to increase the number of the inbound links. The website traffic on your site will increase automatically depending on the other variables. Finally, one day you will look at your site and see that the page rank has jumped from 1 to 4 or even higher. Then you will understand that “La vita e bella.”

One of the first mistakes that most people make when designing a website is that they think about the entire website. Do not concentrate on the entire site. Instead, create your landing page with only that page in mind. The rest of the design will come later. Next, narrow down your list of keywords to keyword phrases. Make sure they are highly targeted keyword phrases. For example, if you sell motor oil your keyword phrase would be motor oil and not just oil. Remember that people, when searching for your website in the search engines, will search for general phrases, and not just keywords. A good place to get keyword phrase ideas is http://www.overture.com. There are many there, so be sure to check it out.

After you have chosen your phrase to use, put it into a search engine and see what comes up. This is an honest way to check out your competition and to get a real look at how your keywords work. You might find that your keywords are highly popular, and you will need to rework your phrases. Targeting a keyword that is not highly sought after could lead you to keyword phrases in niche markets. Fortunes have been built of niche markets in the Internet community.

Next you’ll want to look at your meta tags. The tags are html code that lists the different words in relation to your product on the web page. Search engines look mainly for descriptive tags that tell the engine and visitor what the website is about. If there is no tag, it will use other ways to search for information, like in a cached page of the directories. When setting up your keyword phrase, include it twice, and make it a clickable title tag too. You’ll need to describe your information for your page with the keywords. Be creative in the description. Search engines like versatility up to a point. One important aspect that you will need to use is not only your Meta keyword phrases, but a few sub keywords that are relevant to your site. Do not overuse keyword phrases because will hurt you with certain engines – your site will actually be penalized, and drop in the search engine rankings. Make sure you use a header tag. Certain search engines use these tags heavily for rating the value of your site. When writing your page, use your main keyword phrase or phrases right off the bat. A good inclusion would be twice in the first paragraph. Any other types of information about your site should include your keyword-targeted phrase as well.

Do not think that that is all you will have to do though. You will have to get others to notice your web site. Continue using your keyword phrase or phrases in any text on the page. For instance, if you have a blog set up on your site; use the keyword phrase in your Meta tag about the web blog. You may have to submit your web page to the search engines. Sometimes the engines don’t pick up a site with the spiders and crawlers. In fact, you might have to redesign your site with new Meta tags, and targeted keyword phrases and sub keywords. Don’t rush to do it though. First, find out if the search engines pick up your page. Usually only 2 – 3 weeks will suffice to see if it’s happened. If not re-do your site words so you can climb to at least the first two pages of any search engine.

The key is to remain patient and to follow the ever changing rules of SEO search engine optimization. It will take time and developing your confidence about your skills. In the end, you will be glad that you have learned the valuable technique, and you will go on to build improved sites that are finely tuned.