When it comes to getting visitors to your website or sites, there is no doubt that the majority of them are likely to come from the various search engines that are in existence.
The problem is that you will be competing against a lot of other websites to get found. That’s why it is so important to get as close as you can to being on top of the rankings when it comes to searches related to your particular subject of interest.
Because the closer you are to the top, the more visits you will get as a result – and that translates into more money for you. But how do you do it?
No matter what other people may say, you cannot get to the top of the Google or Yahoo search results (or those of any other search engine, come to that) overnight. You can certainly do it pretty quickly, but the best technique is to build up the value of your website over time.
Why is this? Is it simply because the best things are worth waiting for, or is there more to it than that?
The thing is, if you try and trick the search engines into indexing you faster or ranking you higher, they will spot your underhand efforts and boot you off completely. The best tactic is to build a solid, worthwhile and informative website that will gradually rise in the rankings and stay near or at the top for much of its life.
You can do this – no matter what the subject of your site may be – by getting familiar with white hat search engine optimization. If you come across black hat techniques steer well clear, as these are the ones that will get you banned.
Search engine optimization is all about designing your websites so that they appeal to the search engines, and so they can find them easily. Most of the good SEO techniques are actually very easy to implement. It’s all about getting the right keywords on your pages; and linking your pages together so that people can move easily between them – and so can the search engine spiders.
This is an ongoing process, and a lot of it comes from understanding your website and knowing who is going to be looking for it. What kind of search terms are they likely to type in when they want to find a website like yours? Make sure you build them into your site, and use longer key phrases as well. So for example, instead of putting ‘weddings’ as a keyword for a wedding related website, use a phrase like ‘how to plan a wedding’ instead, if that applies.
A good idea is to use different combinations of keywords for each and every page of your site, as this will attract more visitors overall. Just make sure every page has a clear link back to your site’s home page.
In the end, the more qualified traffic you can attract from the search engines, the more sales you are likely to make. If you have a good website that provides what people are looking for, and you have taken the time to find affiliate products and put Google Adsense and similar advertising modules on your site, then you can expect to start bringing in a good income from your website over time.
And once you have cracked the secret of getting to the top of the rankings, you can repeat the methods that worked in other sites as well, giving you a whole portfolio of successful websites that could replace your ‘normal’ job completely.
Before you spend the rest of the day thinking about how nice that would be, you can leave a comment for us using the form below. Once you’ve done that, why not start planning to raise your rankings – starting from now!