Increase Your Web Ranking According To Search Engines

How much money are you losing by having your web site showing up on page two or twenty two of the search engine results?

The cost to your business could be significant especially if you take into account the life time value of a new customer you may have been able to serve had your web site appeared on the first page of Google or Bing or Ask.

Unfortunately most small business web site stink. They tend to either be high flash designs that look lovely but are invisible to the little search engine robots that can only read text and not images, or they are the product of low budget techies who can slam together a web site that is serviceable but lacks in marketing know how.

Professional internet marketers, the guys and gals who make the big bucks online selling to one another the tools and techniques of internet marketing have long know some basic tricks of the trade. And entire industry has grown up around what is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

In simplest form there are two major categories of action required to give your web site a better chance of ranking on the first page. And you want to be on the first page when your prospective customer searches for you. These are On Page Factors and Off Page Factors.

On page factors can be split into two sub categories. Those that are visible on your page and those that are in the hidden code behind your page that the search engine robots see which tells them what your page is all about. These hidden codes are called Meta Tags, and while less important than they once were, they still are used by most search engines to at least some extent. The sad news is that on many web sites they are completely missing, and this is not just the cheapie websites.

The actual text on your web site is also visible to the search engines and to the public. If your page is about quality nutritional supplements it would be a good idea to say so on the text of your page. Its generally thought that you want to have you top key word term that people are most likely to type into their computer to find your type of business in at least one headline on your page, and also in the first 50 or so words and again in the final paragraph on your page. You don't want to over stuff the page with the phrase too many times, but you want it to be clear to anyone that that is what your page is actually about.

There is an art to this, but it is not that difficult. The key thing for a business owner to know is that it matters, and to then make sure their computer person has a good idea of what is needed.

The second major tactic for top search engine rankings has to do with Off Page Factors. This primarily means back links from other pages to your site. While there are some "Black Hat" techniques that may generate a lot of quick back-links to your site most of these are not a good idea for the typical small business. While they can work for a while, the folks at Google and the other search engines are pretty smart and typically discover these systems and penalize those who use them. So word to the wise, be wary of anyone who promises a ton of back-links in short order.

Instead you want to build a ton of back-links over and extended period of time. This looks more natural to the search engines. This process is not difficult or expensive, but it does take time and commitment.
The easiest way for many businesses is to engage in blogging and or article marketing over time. The consistent addition of new material on the web that links back to your site is the key additional step you need to take, once you get your on page factors set up. But don't neglect those on page factors or it will take two to three times as much ongoing effort to get the same results.