To make a website profit-making, one needs traffic to the website. And for target traffic one needs better search engine ranking. All websites are competing for select key phrases to get traffic. A beginner could easily figure out that if you are in the first page of a highly-searched phrase, then you have a nice bulk of traffic coming to you from search referrals. However, there are only 10 spots in the first page and there are millions of websites to compete with. Higher search engine ranking brings more traffic to the website. Thus we need every edge that we can take to push our website higher in search engine rankings.

There are some simple changes to a website that can help a website gain prominence with the search engine giant.

If you get a good search engine rank with a particular keyword then with that keyword when people will search in the search engine they will get your site. Higher is the ranking in the search engine better is the probability for clicking your site. So always try to get targeted keywords for higher traffics. So the bottom line is for good traffic you will always need a better search engine ranking with the targeted keywords. And if you get good traffic then naturally you site will become popular and you can earn money from this site.

Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Don’t make them guess what’s at the other end with links that say “click here” or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.

Title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you’ve written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it’s on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.

The process by which we get high search engine rankings is a part of search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process which maximizes your chance of getting good traffic from higher search engine rank. It also optimizes your site and maximizes the chance of getting inbound links to your site from other related sites. Optimizing you site means basically on page optimization. On page search engine optimization means placing your targeted keywords on the title, description and keywords of the metatag for different pages of the site. The keywords should be placed in such a fashion that it should look meaningful especially in the tile and description of the metatag. You should also remember that keywords you are using in a particular page should be at least related to that page.

Inbound links are off page search engine optimization. This is another type of search engine optimization. In this optimization you will try to avail maximum inbound links to your site. But remember you should always get links from the related sites. Irrelevant link exchange can reduce your hope of getting good search engine ranking. Also remember to rotate the anchor text for different sites. Don’t make link exchange of link building with only one keyword. Inbound links (also know as backlinks) are always highly beneficial especially the one way link back links. One way link is you are getting links from the site but you don’t have to give links to that site. Naturally the search engines will not think you to be a spammer and you can also acquire good number of inbound links. More the number of related inbound links better is the search engine ranking.

If you’ve done the above correctly, youwill start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You can sign up for a free trial of ClickTracks, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won’t hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don’t simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!

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Pick Your Strategic Keywords
Internet surfers usually search for Websites by typing keywords into the search box in search engines. The words that you imagine users entering to search for your site are your strategic keywords. Your strategic keywords should always be at least two or more words long. Usually, too many sites will be relevant for a single word. There are several tools available from Google, Overture, and third party software developers that can make the keyword research process easier. 

Position Your Keywords
Make sure your strategic keywords appear in the crucial locations on your web pages. The page title is most important. Failure to put strategic keywords in the page title means a perfectly relevant web page may be poorly ranked.

Use your strategic keywords for your page headline, if possible. Have them also appear in the first paragraphs of your web page.

Consider the implications of web design
Many web designers use tables to layout text and imagery when formatting their web pages. When a search engine reads a page it breaks tables apart. Therefore using a table may make your page seem less relevant as it pushes your text further down the page.

Large sections of JavaScript can also have the same affect as tables. As with tables, the use of meta tags can also help.

Make sure that all the pages of the site have custom titles and descriptions
If your site is using the same tags for all the pages, you are not helping search engines figure out the subject or relevance of your individual pages. Regarding Meta Tags, there are 2 very important fields:

Meta tags are not a magic solution to ensuring web sites are highly ranked by search engines. Not all search engines support Meta tags. However they can improve a site’s ranking with a number of search engines and therefore are invaluable to making a site more findable. By definition Meta tags are machine understandable information for the Web. Generally it is information used to define and document the content of a site. It doesn’t appear when the page is viewed through a browser, but sits silently in the HEAD element of a page adding commentary for whoever or whatever (essentially search engine robots) cares to look at it. Some search engines make use of two types of Meta tags, keywords and description tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary a search engine would normally generate. The keywords tag provides keywords that the search engine can associate with your page.

Many web designers over rate the importance of Meta tags to search engine performance. HotBot and Infoseek do give a slight boost to pages with keywords in their Meta tags, but Lycos doesn’t read them at all, and there are plenty of examples where pages without Meta tags still get highly ranked. 

Have Relevant Content

Keywords need to be reflected in the page’s content. In particular, that means you need HTML text, that the search engines can read on your page.

Use HTML text when possible

Sometimes sites present large sections of copy via graphics. Search engines can’t read those graphics. Therefore they miss out on text that might make your site more relevant. Some of the search engines will index ALT text and comment information, along with Meta tags. But to be safe, use HTML text whenever possible.
 

Some search engines are unable to follow image map links from the home page to inside pages. However the most relevant, descriptive pages may be inside pages rather than the homepage. Therefore HTML hyperlinks should be added to the homepage that lead to major inside pages of the Website.

Have HTML links
A site map page with text links will help search engines locate pages within your Website.

Link your pages well internally. This will enable search engines to find more of your Website.

Some of the major search engines cannot follow frame links. Provide an alternative method for them to enter and index your site, through using Meta tags or smart design.

Avoid Dynamic Doorblocks   

Common Gateway Interface (CGI) code is a standard for running external programs from a World Wide Web HTTP server. For example a CGI program could enable a site to access information in a database and format the results as HTML. Some search engines may not be able to index pages generated using CGI or database-delivery and this should be taken into consideration.

Avoid symbols in your URLs, especially the ? symbol. Search engines tend to choke on it. 

Be patient. It can take up to two months for non-submitted pages to appear on search engine results.

Verify And Maintain Your Listing

It is important to continuously check your sites performance in all of the search engines. Check on your pages and their listing regularly.

Some major search engines are now providing country-specific versions of their search engines. These filter sites by domain. If this applies to your site contact the search engine so they can manually include you site.

Resubmit your site any time you make significant changes.

Create a site map that tells people where everything is on your site

You will get about a 1% click through rate to your site map. However, it will do wonders for those who know what site maps do, and the Search Engines will like it as well.

Build up your popularity

So now you have determined the right keywords on the right pages, you’ve created all of the necessary content, and you’ve optimized all of the content to the best of your capabilities. Congratulations – you’re now in the top 80th percentile (from an optimization standpoint) of the websites listed for the keywords you’re trying to target. So how do you get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page listing? The answer is quite simple: You have to be the most popular, too. That’s right, it’s a popularity contest. In other words, how many other websites know you (link to you), and how popular are they? This is typically referred to as link popularity, or called PageRank by Google. The more sites that link to your site the better, and the more popular the site linking to you the more value you will receive for your link popularity. The best types of “link building” are directory registration, text link advertising, and press release distribution. Try to offer valuable information or tools so that other people are motivated to link to your site. Well-linked sites (that don’t use spamming) do better in search engines.

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Top search engine rankings could potentially result in a large amount of exposure and traffic. But now it’s coming to a point where large amounts of exposure and traffic result in high search engine rankings. The search engines (especially Google) get more advanced, they are working hard to improve the quality of their search results and return listings that are sure to be useful to the searcher. In other words, branded and well-known sites that already receive a lot of traffic are promoted to the top of Google search.

You can see this happening in Google already…

• Wikipedia and other big informational sites rank #1 for countless general queries
• Google recently gave a boost to big brands in its search results
• Google is making an effort to clean up its results – getting rid of thin affiliate pages, discounting obvious paid links, manually editing rankings, etc. There is bound to be some collateral damage – especially for small sites

With the web becoming more mature every day, more links and optimization are required to get ahead of the competition for keyword phrases across the board. Not only that, but it’s not even just about links anymore. As Google adds new capabilities and data points through its vast network of services, the search engine will look at a variety of additional signals of quality (e.g. traffic, user engagement, social factors) and use them to influence its rankings.

It’s much harder now to “fake” authority with a small site and work your way up Google’s search rankings. You can’t just start a new site and get links to move up in the rankings and build traffic. Those days are over. Soon enough you’ll need traffic and exposure, the very things that you’re looking to get, in order to rank at all.

If you’re a small publisher, how do you get that traffic without first being included in the rankings? Sure you can buy some traffic, engage in social media, and employ guerilla marketing techniques, but it will all be much more difficult and expensive 5 years down the line. There’s still time for you to build up your sites and use SEO tactics like on-page optimization and link building to greatly improve your search rankings. However, the key is to build your brand in the process and prove to everyone (including Google) that you have a site that deserves its high rankings. Once the shift occurs, you’ll have the audience and numbers to back you up.

In the near future, you’ll need traffic already in place to rank in the search engines, so you might as well utilize the search engines to build your traffic and exposure while you still can.

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