The key to promoting your real online business is website traffic. There is no way you can make money without it. One of the best types of traffic is traffic that comes from the search engines. You might wonder if it is practical to try and get traffic from the search engines. There are a lot of competing websites out there and you might not be able to beat them in rankings.
Here is what you may not realize. You can beat many websites in search engine rankings because there are a number of keywords and phrases these websites are not even trying to get ranked for. We offer a book for sale called “Thomas Jefferson Education.” There is only one other website on the first page for this keyword that sells this book as well. As a result, at the time of this writing, we are listed on the first page of Google for this keyword and phrase.
Do you see how powerful this is? With a high ranking and little competition, this gives us a significant advantage. There are times where we even had a higher search engine ranking than the publisher of the book. Amazon has also ranked well for this book, but they only have used copies.
My students ask me all the time “How does Google determine where I get ranked?” Nobody knows for sure because if they did, they can manipulate the listings and it will hurt Google’s business.
Because of this, it is very healthy to be skeptical to those who claim that they can teach you “all the secrets to getting high listings in the search engines.” The reason why is because they do not know all of the secrets unless they work on the algorithm team at Google.
I am not saying that people are lying when they tell you this. There are certain fundamentals that will typically always hold true. However, no one knows the specific components that you need to know in order to manipulate the rankings.
Since no one knows the algorithm is there anyway to dictate high search engine placement? One of the best ways to do so is to create a campaign where you create back links to your website. A back link is a link on another website that when clicked on, leads the visitor to your website.
Most search engines use back links as part of their search engine algorithm. For example, if you get a link on a website and the link says, “Butterfly”, this will help your search engine rankings if your website is also about butterflies. This is how search engines determine what website should get placed where.
So how do you get the links so Google can make that determination?
1. Reciprocal Links: This is where you ask someone to put a link to your web site. You in turn will put a link to their web site.
2. Write a press release: You can write a press release and submit it online about your company. You need to include a link to your website to get any benefit. If a news website uses your release, they will publish it along with a link back to your web site. An example of a press release site is http://www.free-press-release.com/
3. Writing articles: Another excellent way to get back links is to write articles about the topic your website covers. When you write the article, you should submit it to what are called article directories. These are websites where ezine publishers and website owners looking for content go to. You get a back link from the article directory, which is usually a highly valued website in the eyes of Google. You also get a back link from any websites that use your article. One of the largest directories is located at http://ezinearticles.com/
I believe the easiest and fastest ways to get backward links is to go with the article option. A single article can create hundreds, even thousands of back links for your web site rather quickly. This will result in search engine traffic for your real online business as well as traffic from visitors that come across those articles as well.