Web Promotion and Search Engine Optimization

If you are serious about making money online, then web promotion and search engine optimization are essential to your success. In fact the two go together like peaches and cream or love and marriage: you can’t get one without the other!

If you want to make money online using a website, then you have to promote your website. A website is of no use whatsoever without traffic, and you need promotion to get traffic. There are many ways in which to promote your site, but search engine optimization is one of the few free ways of doing so. SEO might cost you money to find out how to go about it, or to pay somebody else to do it for you, but the actual design and administration of a website that is attractive to search engines is totally cost free – other than the hosting cost of course.

Once your website is listed in Google, particularly on the first page for your keyword, then you are getting free advertising. Many people pay a lot of money for a Page 1 listing on Google through its Adwords program, but you can achieve it without payment if you know how to do it. So what are the major aspects of web design that are needed for good search engine optimization?

First, your use of keywords. You should use your keyword as the title of each page. This stresses the important of the keyword, or phrase, to the search engine, and it will seek further reference to that keyword in the body of the page. Keep in mind that search engine spiders can interpret HTML and text, and it will regard the first paragraph of the text on your page as being most important. Then use your keyword sparingly: once at the start and once at the end of each page, and use semantically related vocabulary to expand on your content rather than continual repetition of keywords.

Another way to endear the search engines to your website is to have lots of other website linking back to your webpage, and a good way to do that is through article marketing. Write articles on your niche or page subject and submit them to as many article directories as you can. If you include your URL in the author’s resource box, you will not only be able to generate traffic to your site, but also receive a link back from every directory that accepts your submission.

That’s pretty powerful stuff! Other means of web promotion include ezine advertising, where you pay to have an advert to your site placed on ezines related to your niche. You can also use one of the many ‘swarm’ advertising methods available online, use bulk email marketing and directory submissions. There are many online website directories that you can use to advertise your website. Some of these are free and other you have to pay for, but you get a link back from each that your website is listed in. Other promotion techniques include designing a good signature with your website address included, and taking part in forums where you have the opportunity of publicising your site. However, there is one aspect of SEO that can be used to your advantage.

If you carry out a search online, have careful look at the web pages listed on the first page of results. You will find that most are home pages. That is because search engines tend to list home pages significantly higher than they do internal pages on your website, and you can use this fact to your advantage in your website promotion. It will be slightly more expensive than most other SEO techniques, but if you could make every page on your website a home page, then you would have a considerably better chance of achieving good listings for each of your pages than with a traditional website. How do you achieve that? By the use of portal websites. A portal website is one that links to a number of other sites, each of which is based upon a specific aspect of your niche. Rather than having one website with ten pages, each on a different aspect of your niche, you should have ten websites each on a different aspect. One site should be a portal page that links to the others. Since each is a home page, then you will achieve significantly higher listings than you normally would. Such sites take a lot of organizing, but it can be done, and that is the best type of SEO there is if you want to achieve the greatest number of Page 1 listings. Web promotion is more that just good search engine optimization: it involves ingenuity and a little thought. Now all you need is software to automate the generation of these portal websites, and you are all set to make a killing with your website.