Every website owner wants lots of traffic coming into their website and getting traffic can be a difficult task. But then again..not really! Search Engines like Google and Yahoo provide high quality organic traffic absolutely free if you can just get your website ranked. So, how exactly do you get your website ranked? It really isn’t that difficult, just follow the tips we have provided below and you will be well on your way to getting more search engine traffic!
First of all, you need to understand exactly why search engine traffic is better than other forms of traffic out there.
A) Search engines provide the best form of organic traffic. If your website sells Bicycle Parts and you’re ranked number one in Google for the term Bicycle Parts then you have targeted people coming into your website which provides a higher chance of getting more sales.
B) Search engine traffic is completely free. Yahoo, Google, Bing and other search engines do not charge you to be ranked.
So now you know exactly why it’s good to be ranked. Follow one, two, or all of the steps below and you will be on your way to higher search engine rankings:
1) Submit your site to each of the three major search engines. How can you get traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing when they don’t even know you exist? We have provided you with the direct link to each submission page. Note: you will need a Yahoo and Google account to submit your website to each of those search engines:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
http://www.search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
2a) Find keyphrases for your website and website inner pages by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Using this tool is simple – just visit the link and type in a common word such as the one in our example earlier. If you type in bicycle parts and enter the required captcha code you should see a large list of keyphrases with the word bicycle parts in them. The goal now is to find two or three keyphrases that do not have huge search volume. The more search volume a keyphrase has – the more competition there is and the harder they can be to rank number one for. New websites or websites without much development should try to target easier keyphrases that have a global search volume under 10,000.
2b) Once you have decided on two or three keyphrases you will want to edit your homepage title to include these keyphrases. For example, if we had picked the keyphrases bicycle parts online, discount bicycle parts, and bicycle parts for sale then we would make our homepage title something like Discount Bicycle Parts Online, Bicycle Parts for Sale – YourCompany. The object here is to take your three relevant keyphrases and shrink them into about 75 characters or less.
2c) Now you should have your top three most relevant keyphrases picked out and each one should have a global search volume of 10,000 or less according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Your next step is to add two other very important meta tags to the header section of your HTML code (below your title tag). Notice how I write the example description and keyword tags below. Copy them and edit them so they are similar to your website and the keyphrases that you choose. Then, add them into your HTML code inbetween the tag and below the tag – Save It.
2d) Lets review everything one more time now. You submitted your search engine, you found two or three good relevant keyphrases, and you edited your meta title, description, and keyword tags. Great! This is a wonderful start to getting your website ranked.
3) Every website has content right? Your homepage is not a blank white page that has no text, images, or anything else on it..right? The next step is to edit (or create) some text on your homepage that includes the keyphrases you picked throughout step 2. You should have the exact keyphrases put throughout the text on your homepage at least two or three times. Don’t overdue it, but every paragraph should contain at least one (or part of one) keyphrase. Since our three keyphrases were related to bicycle parts we would be using terms like discount, bicycle parts, and online often throughout our homepage – as well as the other exact keyphrases in some places.
4) The next step is to begin building backlinks to your website. This step is one of the biggest because it is extremely important to have other similar websites linking over to yours.
4a) Going back to our earlier example with bicycle parts – We would want other website’s out there that are related to bicycles linking back to us. The same goes to the people we would be linking back to. The nice thing about link exchanging is that it helps both parties. Since our example website sells bicycle parts then we would search Google for other websites related to bicycles (in general) and email them asking them if they would like to exchange links. Many people will respond back to you and will trade because they also know how important it is to find similar websites and exchange links with them. Doing the exchange is very simple once you have spoken to them and agree to trade, edit your HTML code and add a link to their website in the footer. Then, send them back your link and include your specific details when responding back to them. It is very important to make sure they link back to you using one of the keyphrases you choose in step 2. If we traded links with someone on our bicycle site we would double check and make sure they were linking back to us with they text Discount Bicycle Parts or one of the other two.
4b) Emailing other website owners with relevant sites is one way to get backlinks. Another way is to use Web2.0 websites to write content yourself. Visit our post called A New Idea for Traffic – Web 2.0 Sites for more information on this step.
4c) You now have read over two different ideas for getting backlinks. I cannot stress again how important relevant backlinks are to your search engine ranking! You don’t want links from pages that have no content on them, irrelevant content, or tons of other links. But, aside from those three reasons – you really want as many as you can get! Another way to get backlinks is to visit our Webmaster Forum and other webmaster forums around the internet. Many of these forums have link exchange sections where you can post that you want to trade links. This method is another great way to find good link trades.
Well readers, that was allot to take in but believe it or not; These four simple steps will really improve your search engine rankings! Follow the same steps whether you are trying to rank your homepage or your inner pages, just make sure every page is targeting a different specific set of keyphrases.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, and its sister legislation in the Senate, the Protect Intellectual Property Act caused quite a stir in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Washington. The two bills were intended to put a hard stop on theft of intellectual property on the Internet, by means that are controversial in terms of the First Amendment. Big players from the overlapping worlds of movies and music pushed for this bill, including Disney, the parent company of ABC News. So did their high priced lobbyists. But SOPA and PIPA were ultimately shelved last week, and not just because there were formidable forces lined up against it. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and Twitter are just a few of the tech companies that opposed the bills.
