AdWords Adviser

Archive for the ‘Guest Author Tuesday’ Category

Welcome to “Guest Author Tuesday”!

No online business owner should rely on just one method to promote their website. In this series of articles we invite guest authors to introduce us to alternative marketing methods that you can use to attract visitors.

To contribute an article, please email it to:) editor@adwords-adviser.co.uk

So many business owners invest a lot in their websites. The site may be nice looking and user friendly. But it never serves the business very well because nobody visits it.

What is the problem? It is actually very simple. There are millions of Internet sites. In the particular market you operate in, there are probably thousands of search results. You need your website to rank well when an Internet user enters a particular search.

You need your website to rank near the top for a query when they look for the products or services you promote. If your website is buried on the third page of search results, you are not likely to get a lot of visitors. And the major search engines are very important because they deliver a lot of traffic!

I want to quickly explain the basics of search engine optimization. These examples are very simple, but should give you the basics so you can learn more. Professional webmasters and SEO’s (search engine optimizers) work hard to study this all the time. Things change to, so if you are determined to get your pages to rank well, you need to stay current.

How do the large search engines decide how they will sort the search results. The major search engines have bots or programs that scan websites and analyze results. There are a couple of important things that can help you rank.

What is your website about? Are there clear words on your pages that “tell” search engines what your site is about. This may sound simple, but many website builders have missed it. The first step is actually very simple. You must make sure you figure out what sorts of words or phrases searchers would type in when they want to find a website like yours. The you need to make sure you actually use those words on your pages.

To get found when a searcher looks for the products or searches you have, those words must be clear on your website. This is part of search engine optimization. You can find a lot of resources on this topic on the web.

The second factor is link popularity. Your website has to have back-links (link back to you). The back-links (links back to your site) should contain some of the keywords in their hyperlink.

The other websites do not have to always link to your front page either. This is a common mistake. If your Red Widget website has a page on Big Red Widgets, then you want to point some links at that page too!

So you may try to get some links back to your website that point to your front page with a phrase like Red Widgets in Houston. But you should also mix this up. So some links need to use more detail when they link to your detail pages.

How do you get other websites to link to you? It is actually easier than you may think. Social networking and bookmarking are simple ways to start. You may participate in forums, ad you can drop a link in your profile.

Search engine optimization is not the only way to get free traffic either. But it is one factor you need to consider.

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Learn how to make your website more popular!

http://www.houstonhandshake.com/articles/what-if-you-built-a-website-and-nobody-came-2.htm

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