Higher Search Engine Rankings In Five Proven Steps

Just because there are millions of websites on the internet and thousands are added each day, don't think it is impossible to get your website ranked highly in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines and directories. In fact, if you're willing to put in some time, it's not tough at all. Remember, not many websites are going to be competing for the keywords for which you seek high rankings. Even most of the sites which include your keywords will be little competition for you. For example, if you have a comprehensive site about gardening, you should easily rank ahead of someone whose website merely lists gardening as a hobby.

In fact, even webmasters who would like high rankings for "your" keywords won't be much of a threat, because they don't have the knowledge they need. Or, if they do, they fail to understand that website promotion must be an ongoing process.

Are you motivated enough to spend a few hours a week working on your search engine rankings for the life of your website? If so, you have a good chance of being a big winner in the search engine ranking games. Below are the five activities in which you need to be engaged.

1. Be sure you have good meta tags. There are lots of websites which will give you the basics of writing good meta tags and even create them for you; just do a search to find them. Remember that your top keyword or two should be in your title tag, and that you choose the keywords in your keyword tag carefully. Your description meta tag should give potential visitors a reason to want to come to your site.

2. Subscribe to a few website promotion newsletters. You'll learn a lot that will help you. My favorite newsletter is the LED Digest http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/. Don't forget to read the archives.

3. Put icons on your website that will make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark it. You can find the code for icons on http://www.addthis.com/web-button-select.html.

4. Create brief (250-350 word) articles related to the subject of your website or closely related subjects. Then, submit your articles to at least 15-20 article submission websites...more if possible. You can submit manually, but I recommend that you use a service or buy submission software allowing you to submit to well over 500 sites. It's worth the minimal investment required...here's why. With an author's box which includes a link to your site, like my author's box below, every webmaster who reprints your article will be giving you a link; a link that can help raise your rank in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. And, one article can generate hundreds of links for you. If you write a few slightly different versions of each article, you can get an even better search engine "bump" when they are published.

5. Spend at least 3-5 hours a week on a linking campaign. First, submit your site to the major search engines and to the directories with a Google PR of at least 4. Then, identify and request links from the most popular sites related to the subject of your website. Of course, your direct competitors won't link to you, but if you find out who links to them, those webmasters may be happy to link to your site too. You'll find a great tool to see who links to your top competitors (and other great tools) at http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/default.htm.

The five activities above, in my considered opinion, represent the best ways to promote your site. There are other ways as well...you might want to try them too. But, if you engage in the activities suggested here, you'll stand a great chance of achieving significant search engine ranking gains...the kind of gains that can ensure the success of your site.