Search Engines: How to Get More Traffic and Sales

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most effective ways to promote your business on the internet. By optimizing your site for the search engines, customers can more easily find you. Not only that, the traffic you receive from the search engines is targeted. Searchers are looking for what you are selling. This can increase your conversion rate and result in more traffic and sales for your site.

(If you want a quick and easy primer on search engine optimization and submitting your site to the search engines, read my article, 5 Search Engine Optimization Strategies for Newbies. This article will tell you how to quickly optimize your site for the search engines, as well as how to get your site indexed by the major search engines).

It is estimated that approximately 80 percent of traffic to websites comes from search engines. If you dont have an effective search engine strategy, you will either have to pay a pretty penny to get traffic to your site, or you will have to be very creative about how you get traffic to your site.

If you dont have a search engine optimization strategy, you can create one. Although some topics are harder to get to the top of the search engines now because the topic is saturated, there are still plenty of topics on the internet that are heavily searched for, but have little competition in the search engines.

Although search engine optimization is an effective strategy for marketing your business on the internet, and doing it for free, there are several effective search engine optimization strategies that complement search engine optimization. You can use to improve your search engine rankings, and increase your traffic:

1. Build a content rich website on your topic. Whats key here is doing your homework. Select a topic that you are interested in, something you are passionate about, and create a site around this topic. If you are an affiliate marketer, choose products and services related to your topic and add them to your site to make additional streams of income. Make sure that you do a thorough search of keywords to find keywords that are heavily searched for but have few pages listed in the search engines. The more times a keyword is searched for in the search engines, and the less competition it has, the more effective the keyword or phrase will be in helping you attain high rankings.

2. Write articles, product reviews, and press releases. Not only can you use articles and press releases as a way to promote your website, you can also use them as a way to draw search engines to your website. Search engines love content, and a well built website, with lots of good content, will get traffic. Searchers also love content, and the more valuable your content is, the more likely you are to draw visitors to your site. Solve your visitors problem by using valuable content, and you will increase your website conversion and make more sales.

If you own a content rich website, you should try adding one page of content per day. At the end of a year, youll have over 300 pages of content. The more pages you have on your site, the more pages you will have to index in the search engines. This gives your site a better chance of being found and getting traffic. You will also have more pages that you can optimize. The more pages you optimize, the more you can improve your rankings.

If you dont want to write your own articles, do a search of top article directories and find articles to post on your site. Make sure that the articles you choose are keyword rich and tightly related to your topic. The higher your site ranks in the search engines, the more likely others will come to your site to read the article eventhough you didnt write it. Your goal should be not only to have search engine optimized content to increase your rankings, but it should be content that will be valuable to your visitors. This will increase your credibility.

3. Develop a linking strategy. The more links you have pointing back to your site, the higher your site will rank in the search engines. Keep in mind that page rank, though is exactly that: based on individual pages. You want to find as many directories as you possibly can that you can submit your site to that dont require a backlink. A backlink is where you exchange links with the site. You want to create as many one way links as possible. Also, make sure that the sites you link to are relevant to your topic. The sites you link to should complement your site. Its a waste of time to link to a site with high page rank if the site has nothing to do with your topic.

4. Make your site interactive. If the thought of creating content, or writing, makes you cringe, then there are other ways that you can build content to your site.

Start a forum. Forums are a great way to build content to your website, and people love expressing their opinions or talking about subjects theyre interested in. By building a forum, you give others a chance to talk about your site topic, and you dont have to write a word. Also, this makes your site sticky, and visitors will stay longer, increasing your chances of making the sale.
Build an article directory. Article writers are always looking for places to promote their articles. If you dont want to write articles, you can create an article directory and have writers submit articles related to your topic. Your article directory can be general, and offer articles on various topics, or it can be on a specific area of interest like health and fitness, or romance. You can further niche your topic. Dont niche too far, or you will have a hard time finding articles on your topic.
Create a links directory. A links directory could be a directory of resources on your topic. You can allow visitors to submit their sites to your directory. Whats important here is that you make sure you offer clear guidelines on what can be submitted to your directory. You also want to check your directory from time to time to make sure that only links related to your topic are included.
Create a classifieds directory. This type of directory on your site is an excellent way to get traffic. People love being able to post their classifieds, as well as browsing classifieds. You can use this as a way to build a list and follow up with posters to let them know when their ads are expiring. This is an excellent opportunity to get your sales message in front of potential customers, build a list, and recycle your traffic.

5. Give away free ebooks and reports on your topic. Web surfers love freebies. If you write a short report or ebook on your topic, you give surfers an incentive to visit your site, or even sign up for your list. This is also a great way for you to promote your products and services, even if you sell affiliate programs. Include one or two of your programs in your report as resources that you recommend. Just make sure that the information you include is top notch. Too many ebooks and reports have been given away that are nothing more than blatant sales pitches. Dont make your report a blatant sales pitch for the product or service you are selling.

Search engines are great way to get traffic to your site, and the best part is that its targeted traffic because potential customers are looking for what you sell. Its also free.

For more information on marketing in the search engines, and building a search engine optimized website for your business, get your free copy of Web CEO.

I recommend you read the fast start guide, watch the videos, and download the software and set it up on your computer. This package contains the most comprehensive and easy to understand documentation on using “White Hat” search engine optimization techniques.

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