Promoting Your Website With Search Engines

There's a lot more to promoting your website than being number one in Google. Successful website marketing happens offline as well as online, with press releases, advertisements in relevant magazines and more. Funnily enough, that will probably help with your search engine position too, but that's not the focus of this article. Just avoid 'email marketing' under any circumstances! Here I'm more concerned with getting you noticed when people are searching for the services or products you offer.

Search Engine Optimisation

Lot's of companies promise an easy route to first place on Google, but the simple fact is, they're not telling the truth.

Sure, they might have a few tricks up their sleeve, and they might even get quick results, but in the long run, those tactics can cost you dearly. Google (along with other search engines) doesn't like being tricked. It doesn't take long for them to see what's going on, and often the penalty for using nasty tricks is a lifelong ban for your domain. Nasty.

On the other hand, if you're prepared to take the longer route and do it properly, it really will pay.

It's relatively easy to ensure that websites are easily read by google and friends. Apart from clear, well-placed text on your actual site, you'll need a list of keywords and a one paragraph description of your business that contains as many keywords as possible.

Search Engine Submission

You then need to tell the search engines that your site exists. There are a great many search engines, and the more you tell the better, as they often search each other! This needs to be done on a fairly regular basis for the best results, because many search engines delete huge parts of their database on a monthly basis in the process of keeping up to date.

Links

The most important way, however for search engines to find your site is through other websites. 'Link popularity' is the biggest factor in website ranking on google and others. This is where you need to get creative.

If you are on any forums on the internet, and it's appropriate, include a link to your site in your signature. Likewise if you use Myspace or any other social networking sites.

If you have business relationships with others, it's worth thinking about whether it's worth linking to each other from your sites.

Google for the products or services you sell, and look at the top results. It's likely that among them will be several 'directories' of businesses. Try and find out how to get listed on these. If they charge for the privilege, it may well be worth it, as long as it's not silly money.

Paid listings

You should consider paying to be included in the Yahoo! Directory; as this will push you up the ranking very rapidly.

It's also really worth advertising with google's adwords. This is just simply excellent value for money and provides you with genuine visitors for your site.

 

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