Optimize Your Site for Search Engines

If your search engine optimization and marketing strategy is not generating enough traffic, consider the following ideas. Be sure you do all you can do with search engine optimization first.

Provide quality content

If you provide quality content, the links to your site will grow. If your an expert on something, then add that content to your site. Keep your content fresh by making updates regularly.

Create a Newsletter

If you are a expert on your subject matter, you can create a simple e-mail based newsletter. Create a "join our newsletter" link on your site.

Discussion Lists

The web is full of bulletin boards where people gather to talk about a specific topic. Join these boards and help others with your expert knowledge. You can sometimes include a link back to your site. This can help you build links, which helps you in your search engine optimization efforts.

Yahoo!

Yahoo previously was the big name in web search directories. They no longer are. In fact, most of their search results are actually those of Google's. So, if you do well in Google, you'll do well in Yahoo! Yahoo! was free at one time, but now they charge $299. per year for a business listing.

When you do a search in Yahoo!, Yahoo! first returns paid listings. They are listed as "Sponsor Results". After that what you see is really Google's search results. Yahoo! labels these "Web Results".

If you do a search for "website designers dc" in yahoo, you will see that this site is listed there even though we've never purchased a Yahoo! listing.

Pay for Click Ads

If you are not doing well naturally with search engines, and you want guaranteed good results, you can pay for them . With Google, you can sign up for their paid subscription service called Google Adwords. Basically you create a Google account and then bid on keyword phrases. So if kayaks are your business, you might put a bid on the search phrase "Sea Kayaks". When a user does a search in Google for "Sea Kayaks" your ad will come up on the right hand side. If there are other businesses that have bid on the same search phase "Sea Kayaks" then the highest bidders ad will be on the top. If the searcher then clicks on your ad (which links to your site) your account will be deducted the amount of your bid, 25 cents, for example.

You can experiment with this service, but start small and monitor your results to see what yields positive return on investment.

Banner Ads

Banner ads were all the rage in the late 90s. That was until marketing folks realized that nobody was clicking on these things. The result is that banner ads have gotten bigger. Take a look at the ones are cnn.com. They are twice the size that they used to be. If there is a good source for you to have banner ad, you could experiment with them.

It's hard to measure, but you may get more in the long run from name recognition than you do from users clicking on your ad. Traditional print ads are not clickable and are of course invaluable to companies interested in promoting their brand name.

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