Achieving a top search engine rank for your website is an incredible free advertising technique which gets your website noticed and gives your company maximum exposure. The majority of folks that use the internet for shopping or to find information use the search engines to find what they are looking for.

If your website is at the top of the search engine results, or at least on the first three pages of results, the search engine rank will be a powerful advantage for your business. Many new website operators don’t recognize the importance of a search engine rank, or they think that is something to achieve after the website is developed.

Considering factors that will help to achieve a good search engine rank during the design and development phase of website development; however, can save you lots of time and money and can get you a decent search engine rank more quickly so you can enjoy the vast advantages of being effectively ranked in the search engines.

When making plans to launch a website, you should consider techniques that will help you to achieve a good search engine rank for your website. It is beneficial to learn about how a search engine ranks your website before you ever start the design or development. It is also advantageous to select a web developer that is experienced in search engine optimization (SEO) and to employ their SEO services during the development phase.

Not only will you likely get discounts for pursuing both website development and search engine optimization at the same time, but you will also have a better performing website once it is launched if your search engine rank is considered during the design and development process.

Search engine optimization techniques are frequently changing as the search engines change their rules and strategies for displaying the most relevant websites in their search results for the benefit of web surfers who use their search engines. Even so, there are a few techniques for boosting a search engine rank that remain constant and should be considered during the website development process.

The main search engine optimization techniques that are standard include the use of keywords and keyword phrases in your content and html code, link popularity and link relevancy. While a linking campaign is certainly something that can and should be conducted after a website is launched, strategic placement of effective keywords for obtaining a search engine rank should be taken into consideration during the design and development phase of a website.

If you are going to engage in link exchanges as part of your linking campaign to achieve a search engine rank, an area should be planned for link placement during the web design phase of website development.

Sometimes web developers submit websites to the search engines in an effort to speed up the process of getting a search engine rank. If your website developer takes into consideration the submission rules for each search engine to which they submit, that can be a value added service. However, if they use bulk submission processes, you are probably better off submitting your website yourself to individual search engines in accordance with their unique submission rules.

While search engine optimization techniques to achieve a desirable search engine rank can be implemented after a website is designed, developed and launched, there is less backtracking to be done if search engine rank tactics are accomplished or at least considered during website design and development.

By conducting keyword research before hand and using keywords strategically in your website content and html code, you will save effort and money that will have to be spent on search engine optimization at a later date in order to achieve a beneficial search engine rank.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Top 10 search engine rankings. Everybody wants it but a few achieve it. Search engines have always been an important source of traffic for many marketers. Achieving high search engine rankings should be one of your goals because it can be profitable in the long run.

But what is it that prevent some people from obtaining their coveted rankings?

It’s true that some years ago, getting high rankings was very easy. You could just set up a site, heavily optimize it on the page itself and bam, you can appear in the top listings quickly and easily.

Nowadays, this has totally changed. It is becoming more and more difficult to secure and even maintain good rankings on the major search engine result pages(SERPs) like Google and Yahoo. Some of the reasons are:

(1) Competition

There is more and more competition. More and more websites are popping out everyday and everyone is trying to promote their websites, hence increasing pages and websites in the SERPs. An example, Google has more than 8 billion pages now in its index.

(2) Search Engine Algorithm Change

With the search engine algorithm changing, it can become more complex to figure out how to get top rankings or maintain your existing ones.

(3) Search Engines Are More Severe

Doing any foolish mistake with your site can be costly. You should be careful what you are doing when promoting your site. For eg, you can have hidden text or links on your site without you knowing and you can be penalized.

If it’s not a mistake, you could be linking to websites that aren’t good anymore, hence devaluing your site.

What should you do? Well, you can’t do anything about competition neither algorithm change but you need to monitor who you link to and ensure that your site is clean everytime. And above all, links on as many similar and related sites are still highly valuable to get top rankings and you should constantly get them regularly because that’s the core building block of good placement in the SERPs no matter what and to outrank your competition, that’s what you should do. And you can be sure that good quality links will still be important in every algorithm change.

Here are top 2 ways to get links to your site and higher rankings in major search engines:

(1) Reciprocal Links

It’s being said that reciprocal links are decreasing in value but still though, they are worth getting. If you are exchanging links with sites which are of similar or related topics, it can do you more good than harm. So don’t stop getting these type of links. A link is a link and it will benefit you in many ways you can imagine. A link will not only help you in better search engine placement but you will get traffic from that link alone.

I know that because I get lots of traffic from my link partners alone. If you can get one on the homepage, it’s even better. So don’t underestimate reciprocal linking. They still work. Many sites with high search engine positioning have reciprocal links to them, so they are still of great value. The web is simply a network of websites linking to each other in a way. Links are what form the internet.

(2) One-way Links

On the other hand, one-way links are best because they are independent votes. Other websites link to you without linking back. Well these type of links are harder to get.

Some good ways to get them are:

(i) Build a useful site and allow others to link to you freely by providing them with the necessary materials like text links or banners. Text links are better because you can include your targeted keywords in them. Some people will even link to you just because your site has good content and will find a way to link to you usually just by taking your homepage title. I’ve seen that.

(ii) Buy some text advertising on other quality related sites. This will give you traffic and automatically benefit you in your rankings.

(iii) Write articles of interest to your audience and submit them to other websites which accept articles. In your author bylines, you have a link to your site. Well this will certainly help your traffic, link popularity and rankings. But to boost your rankings better, check out section (iv) which reveals how use the article marketing strategy to get one-way inbound links with your targeted keyword in your anchor text.

(iv) Create a section on your site allowing others to re-publish your articles. Provide them with the exact html code so that they can just copy and paste that code on their sites easily. Don’t forget to mention that the article and author bio should not be modified in any way if it’s used. Hence by facilitating their tasks, you can be sure to get your articles distributed on the web much more faster.

In your author bylines, be sure to put an anchor text with your targeted keyword in the link to your site. This is how an author bylines can be extremely beneficial for your rankings. This is not just a url but a keyword targeted url. Imagine your reprint article page gets decent traffic, you increase your chances to get some people interested to re-publish your work on the net. With time, you will boost your link popularity and get higher rankings.

Well you work hard to produce quality content and it can pay itself many times over. One article can be published on hundreds of websites and if your url is automatically coded with an anchor text containing your targeted keyword, you will have 100 one-way keyword-rich inbound links. Now what’s the value of that? I let you figure it out.

Getting high search engine rankings takes time, work and patience but if you are serious about your business and you are here to stay for long, you should devote some of your time everyday doing some search engine promotion. In the long run, you are going to reap the rewards of your on-going work.

This article can be freely published on a website as long as it’s not modified in any way including the author bylines, plus the hyperlink must be made active just like below.

Jean Lam is the author of the highly acclaimed eBook Top Search Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed, a concise, step-by-step guide to high search engine ranking for the beginner to intermediate level webmaster.

Use Print Ads to Bring Potential Customers to Your Internet Site

Print advertizing can be very profitable to Internet operators. Low-cost classified ads in targeted print magazines can drive folks to your site. Ads not targeted will prove to me fruitless.

One problem to Internet business operators is that ads must be tracked to determine the advertising dollar return. If a visitor comes to the site from a print ad, how do you track it? Well, the simplest way is to have your ad send them to a page (URL) used only for a specific ad. Place a counter on that page to see what traffic is generated by the ad. From this page, your customer can than move to your desired URL and message.

You may want to welcome the visitor to your tracking page with a request for his or her first name and e-mail address. That way, you will know which enquires place orders and those that can be contacted later by e-mail to persuade them to buy your product or service. A free gift or newsletter might intice them to leave their information. Just don’t make it a requirement to move on to your sales pitch.

Some operators request more information than the first name and e-mail address. Is that a good idea? How do you feel about it? Remember that the visitor is there to find the information described in your print ad. He is not there for the Spanish Inquisition. With this in mind, you may not want to ask more than two or three questions.

One Advantage of Print Advertising That Directs Traffic to Your URL

Your URL can be an ad in itself. That is if it is named correctly. I have a dozen web sites. I’ve tried to give them descriptive names that make the URLs ads in themselves. For example, one of my sites is www.secret-cash.com.

Another is www.money-making-books.com.

Do you get the point?

These URLs are small ads in themselves. This allows me to use fewer words or just the URL to promote my business.

If you would like a copy of my full magazine published article email me at tjbooks@hotmail.com

John T. Jones may be contacted at TJ Books, 213 3rd Ave. N., Buhl, ID 83316 or by e-mail at tjbooks@hotmail.com. He has a dozen web sites. The e-commerce site where he sells wealth-success books and kits is http://www.bookfindhelp.com

Search engine placement is a pretty important aspect for internet businesses because the majority of people who surf the internet looking for information, products or services use the search engines to find what they are looking for.

Getting your website listed in search engine results can dramatically improve the traffic to your website and relatively, your website’s performance and the profitability of your business.

Gurus who study statistics regarding the behavior and characteristics of internet users repeatedly recommend that website operators strive to achieve search engine placement within the first three pages of search results.

Of course, it is best if you can get a top position on the first page, but if that isn’t possible, getting search engine placement within the first three pages will likely do wonders for your business.

Everybody wants to get a great search engine placement in the Google search results because Google is, hands down, the most popular and most widely used search engine on the internet. Yahoo! is second in the running with MSN sneaking up on it quickly.

These are considered the three major search engines and achieving desirable search engine placement in them really adds a powerful punch to your internet marketing and the success of your website for generating leads and sales.

There are also specialty search engines, some which are industry or topic specific, which can provide you with some highly targeted traffic which can produce exceptional results for your internet business.

Search engine optimization is the process of designing and developing your website to be search engine friendly for the purpose of achieving a good search engine placement within a specific search engine or a variety of search engines without paying pay-per-click advertising fees to get your website listed in the search engine results. Some website operators can do their own search engine optimization to get good search engine placement.

In some cases though, especially if there is a lot of competition in your industry, you may need the services of a search engine optimization specialist to get an effective search engine ranking.

It doesn’t hurt to try to do your own search engine optimization. All you have to lose is the time put into the process.

If you give it a shot and you don’t get the search engine placement you want, you can always hire a search engine optimization consultant later to attempt better search engine placement.

The reason that getting the search engine placement you need is difficult is two-fold. First, there is a lot of competition on the internet and everyone is striving for a beneficial search engine placement. Second, the search engines don’t reveal their set of rules that are used to decide which websites get which search engine placement.

So, achieving top search engine placement is really a matter of trial and error in many ways. Thus, there is no "key" to achieving a desirable search engine ranking. There are some things that remain constant; however, that can help you to get a good search engine placement.

The constant factors of search engine optimization that generally aid in boosting your search engine placement include the use of keywords in your website content and metatags - titles and descriptions; link popularity; and link relevance.

Keyword research should be conducted to identify keywords that are relevant to your business but have low levels of competition. These keywords should be used in your website content and strategically placed in your html code so the search engines will pick up on them in determining your site relevance to specific search terms.

Link popularity can be built up by exchanging links with other websites so that there are many links coming into your website. Link relevance is something to consider in your linking campaigns because your search engine placement is generally better if the links coming into your website are displayed on websites that are actually relevant to yours. These are aspects that should be considered in your strategy for achieving search engine placement that will benefit your business.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Launching a new website with enough acceleration to rise above this ever increasing daily din needs some force. It is common to see a website with a different name and various product or service offerings with equally unrelated names. Promoting these diverse brands will naturally need more energy than promoting just one brand.

However, if the website’s name is carefully chosen to resemble the site’s main theme, all the promotion energies can focused on just one keyword. Products and services can have this name embedded into the official product names (think Microsoft Office).

Consider the example of "seecrets", which is a misspelling of a common word. It also reflects the main theme of the website which is in the business of protecting digital data, documents and software. It is fortuitous coincidence that this name is the same as the site’s resident writer, Stan Seecrets.

This author then sent five articles in as many weeks to about a dozen article submission sites. The result was astonishing. Within a week after the first article, Google ranked this author’s site #1 for this particular keyword. MSN also ranked this same #1 after about 6 weeks.

It is perplexing with Yahoo. The moment this keyword is keyed in, it gives a #1 ranking. When this author repeats the search five minutes later, the ranking disappeared altogether. Maybe, there is a big bug in their software or this search engine is as indecisive as we are.

This is an example of getting a #1 ranking by careful selection of the website’s name. Obviously this author cannot provide a list of step-by-step procedures. Readers who are using the most powerful computer located at the top of their heads can easily figure it out.

Getting a #1 ranking for one keyword is just a confidence-booster and perhaps some bragging rights. The longer journey with other keywords has just begun with this small step.

Please remember that past performance do not guarantee future results, only intelligence, common-sense plus Labor Omnia Vincit (Latin for labor conquers all - Oklahoma state motto) can.

Stan Seecrets’ Postulate: "The brand is the website." (Spoofing Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message". McLuhan is considered by many, as the prophet of the electronic age)

[This article may be freely reprinted provided it is published with the author’s bio and activating the link to the URL below. It can be edited, summarized, expanded, and translated into any human language provided the literary integrity is maintained. In the case of print media, the same condition applies except that the URL must be printed in bold letters.]

The author, Stan Seecrets, is a veteran software developer with 25+ years experience at http://www.seecrets.biz which specializes in digital asset protection and total website management. You can send your views or criticism by e-mail to Stan at seecrets.biz.

© Copyright 2005, Stan Seecrets. All rights reserved.

We’re always being told about the importance of making our sites "sticky," and everyone agrees it’s a great idea. The difficult part is trying to find ways to achieve this desirable state of affairs.

It sounds almost too simplistic to say that in order to keep people interested, you first have to know what interests them. There are four basic areas that interest every human being and these are: sex, family, wealth and humour -– not necessarily in that order.

The adult sites have the sex side tied up, there are nearly as many genealogy and parenting sites as there are sex sites, and you don’t need me to tell you that the Internet abounds with sites that exist to help you increase your wealth. But that still leaves us with one other area of immense interest -– humour.

We all know, instinctively, that laughter is good for us. "Laughter," says Steven M Sultanoff, Ph.D, (in an article orginally published in AhHa! Furthering the Understanding of Holistic Health, the Newsletter of the American Holistic Health Association Winter, 1999, Vol. 5, No. 1 Page 4) is the physiological reaction to humor. The research on laughter, while limited, indicates that there are physiological benefits from laughter including an increase in certain antibodies, a reduction of specific stress hormones, and an increased tolerance to pain."

Children’s hospitals around the world are realising the value of laughter in helping young patients recover more quickly, and many now employ nursing staff to dress up as clowns to entertain the children.

If it can make sick people well, it’s no wonder humour is so popular!

Every site benefits from a little humour, because in this day and age, it doesn’t pay to take yourself too seriously, so think of how you can incorporate some fun into your site.

Many sites will send you a joke-of-the-day (http://www.jokeaday.com/6feed.shtml) and will give you permission to post this on your site if you include a link to them. These sites automatically update the material (similar to the news services).

If you’d prefer a cartoon instead of a joke, try here: http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/cartoon/index.php

The downside to these services is that visitors may be so taken with the idea, that they’ll click off your page to sign up for the service themselves and never return.

The solution?

Provide your own material. We all seem to receive countless pieces of humour with our email, so why not set up a page where you showcase your favourites? (Rememebr to acknowledge sources.)

Or write your own!

There’s rarely a day goes by that we don’t encounter some example of bureaucratic lunacy, political foolishness or general insanity as we go about our business. Keep your eyes and ears open for these situations. Whenever you find yourself chuckling or shaking your head with a silly smile on your face, stop and think about what has amused you. Make a mental note to add these to your collection.

Always choose material that suits your site’s subject matter, acknowledge the sources and away you go.

Write101 is a site that focuses on writing, so it’s natural that any humour on the site will relate to writing, education, learning etc.

If you’re having a bad day, there’s nothing like a chuckle to boost your spirits and help you put things into perspective. Recently, I received a photo that still sends me into guffaws – and I’ve looked at it dozens of times. If you need a bit of a laugh, this should do it: http://www.write101.com/W.Tips116.htm

If you prefer something more substantial, how about the History of the World? You’re guaranteed to discover something new and wonderful here! http://www.write101.com/hist.htm

Planning on writing that great novel that lurks inside us all? Get some tips on writing a best-seller here: http://www.write101.com/best.htm

Want to submit a script for a soapie? Go no further: http://www.write101.com/soapie.htm

Take a look at your site, consider what you find funny and keep your visitors happy by offering them the gift of laughter.

If the spelling of words like "humour" in this article worried you, please read this http://www.write101.com/aus.htm

Jennifer Stewart is a professional writer who offers copy writing, proof reading and editing services for businesses and individuals from her site at http://www.write101.com. She has undertaken a variety of assignments for clients around the globe — writing articles for ezines and the print media; preparing award submissions for business clients; copy writing and proof reading works of non-fiction; editing web pages and ebooks; writing press releases and much more. Subscribe to FREE, weekly Writing Tips to improve your writing: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Now that you’ve got a website it’s time to start thinking about promoting it. Search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to your website. The following information will help you effectively promote your website through search engines.

Search Engine Selection
When submitting your site to search engines consider the search engines that will generate the most traffic to your site! There are a core group of search engines that will generate the most traffic to your site. These major search engines below are all excellent choices to have your website listed with:

• Google
• Yahoo
• AllTheWeb.com
• MSN Search
• Lycos
• Ask Jeeves
• AOL
• Looksmart
• Netscape
• Excite
• HotBot
• AltaVista

Search Engine Rankings
To be effective, your site needs to rank in the top 10 listings, and ideally the top 3. Here are some ways to ensure that your site stays on top.

Keywords
Choosing the correct keywords for your website is a critical part for obtaining desirable search engine rankings. Your goal is to increase the targeted traffic to your site. For demonstration purposes lets say your website is promoting a computer show in new york. When choosing keywords related to computer show, you have the opportunity to target a general market (such as the keyword “computer show” or a geographical market (such as “computer show in new york”). The keyword “computer show” may attract a wide range of computer show related searches, but the keyword “computer show in new york” is more targeted if you are targeting the state of New York and are looking to attract visitors in New York.

It’s important to know how many times people searched for your keywords and their variations last month in the major search engines. This will help you to choose keywords that people are actually using, as there is no point in choosing a keyword that nobody is searching for.

For example, if one of your keywords is "computer show in new jersey", it’s important to know that “computer show new york” attracts more visitors:

Searches done in Dec 2005
Count Search Term
144 computer show new york
77 computer show in new york
56 computer fair new york

You can learn from it that "computer show in new york" has been searched only 77 times during the last month in the search engines, yet the keyword "computer show new york" has been used 144 times. That’s 2 times more!

Meta Tags
Meta tags for your web site are an important part of your search engine submission strategy. The Meta tags should be inserted between the and tags of your document. This is an example format for a web page source, which includes the proper Meta Tags in it.

Search Engine Optimization
There are other factors to consider when submitting your site to search engines. Meta Tags and Keywords are a great start, but often they won’t help you generate the type of traffic your looking for if your site is in a competitive market competing for the same keywords. When this is the case, you’re next step should be optimizing your web pages. Elements that involve search engine optimization include the location of your keywords through out your meta tags and page content. Also keeping your listing current is important.

Shaun Cronrath is the President & CEO of DomainPurpose.com, a domain name registration company offering all the major domain extensions –.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, .ca, .us, .cn, .eu, .de, .pro and more.

The name of the game is search engine optimization and there are 20 winners and a million losers. It is a massive game that is conducted each and every minute by the top search engines. The fun is the referee of the game tries to modify the format each minute, to make the game useful for the spectators, in this case the folks who search. This is a high stakes game with billions of dollars at stake and the rules change daily. The playing field changes daily and the folks who compete constantly change. Wow what a fun filled game this is. This game has consistently shown that the folks with the right tools win consistently and the ones’ who don’t but with good ideas win at random and like shooting stars fade out real quick.

Search engine optimization is a tough game to play and there are penalties for foul play and this could mean thousands of missed opportunities for your business. The folks out there keep the secret strategies to themselves as they can profit a lot out of it. But a few folks who intend to make money or simply for the fun of helping others achieve the glory of being in the top 20, have developed very good nifty tools. This article is about these tools and the techniques behind them. Google ToolBar is the first and foremost tool that every website owner should have. This tool has much functionality like popup blocker etc. The feature that helps SEO is the page rank bar and the add-on features it provide. The Back links checker is capable of displaying all known back links for your webpage that is known to Google. The similar page feature is very helpful to know your competitors.

Lets look at the top 4 categories of tools needed for SEO:

1. Keyword Tools: the keyword density is the number of keywords present as a percentage of the total words in that page. The keyword density could really depend on what you are targeting and usually a trial and error. This tool provides the details about the density without counting them yourself each time. The other keyword tools are keyword suggestion and research tools that give the right keywords to employ for your optimization, keyword optimizers, keyword typo’s tool.

2. Page Rank tools: This is a broad category with many tools under this umbrella. The page rank checker is a simple tool to check your rank and also some versions provide the rank of the competition as well. There are some additional nifty tools like the Google dance tool and the future page rank checker.

3. Meta Tag related tools: Meta tags are needed to describe the webpage for the search engines and other bots. The tools under this umbrella are Meta Tag generators, Meta Tag analyzers, Meta Tag replicator.

4. Link Analyzers: This contains the back links checker, the broken link finders, sitemap generators, Link popularity checkers, Link suggestion tools, Internal link density checkers, I also found a good one - link relevancy checker. These tools are very very important for your page rank if not for your search results.

Most of these tools with basic features can be found for free and there are some good tools that need special licensing and most of them provide a good way to reach the top 20 and be part of the winners and not be in the millions of folks who loose for each and every keyword. There are many keywords you can target and be part of the top 20. The first step is choosing a less competitive keyword and get to the top 20. Well before you put that SEO cap to get down and dirty, please go through the suggested tools in this article. There are a few good tools that have a demo period for you test out whether it is suitable for you. One such product is the SEO Elite.

For more resources on SEO and to try out some good tools you can visit http://www.seo-software-tool-experts.com You can download a free trial version of a good search engine optimization and web site ranking tool from the website as well – the SEO Elite v3.

As an interactive marketing professional and also a forum webmaster, I have come to the conclusion that many smaller online marketers - the type that sponsor many forums - are prone to making a few key mistakes that wind up costing them sales. Quite often, this leads to a lost sponsor for the forum or other small web site as well.

If you’re currently running a banner on a web site, or are considering the prospect, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Update your banner often.

If you’ve purchased a text ad, update that often as well. I can look at my site’s banner click-through stats and tell you exactly which banners are brand new and which have been running for more than a couple of months. In the marketing world, we call it "wear-out" or "poster effect." Either way, it’s caused by the simple fact that after your audience has seen your banner enough times, it blends into the scenery of the page and they no longer even notice it.

The good news is, it’s easily corrected. Change your image. Change your color palette. Change the text. Change the animation. Any combination of the above are almost guaranteed to breathe new life - and click-throughs - to your sponsorship.

Participate!

As part of the sponsorship package, my forum offers the right to post specials, updates, coupon codes, sales, and group buys in the appropriate sponsor forums. I’m amazed at how few of our sponsors actually take advantage of them. A banner is great for getting your name out there, and for the "window-shopping" click-through. But it’s the good deal that will send buyers your way, wallet in hand. If you simply email the banner and paypal the money every month and forget about it, chances are the forum’s users are forgetting about you too.

Clicks aren’t everything.

Here’s another common and frustrating pitfall. In this pay-per-click world, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the click-through stats when it may not be your best statistic to look at. You need to look at the impressions of your banner. Because, if done right, a banner does an excellent job at getting your name out there. It hammers it home to the people who see it hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times. Then, when they’re ready to shop, you’re top-of-mind and there’s a good chance they’re gonna type in your URL.

Notice what I just said: They’ll TYPE IN your URL. That’s right, people who are actively shopping don’t click banners, they visit the sites they can think of. Imagine you wanted to buy a book from Amazon, that you saw featured on a web site. Would you go back to that site and refresh the page until that banner came up, then click on it? Nope, you’d type www.amazon.com and be done with it. The click won’t register for the site you’re sponsoring, but the register still rings. So remember, clicks aren’t everything.

Become a part of the Community

Of all our sponsors, the ones who are there day-in and day-out to give advice and answer technical questions are the most successful. People still want to buy from someone they like, even in this crazy Internet world where they’ve never actually met anyone.

In conclusion, if you want quality results, be a quality sponsor. The time you invest will pay off, and the banner you run WILL do its job.

Travis is Associate Creative Director at a worldwide interactive marketing agency. He’s currently responsible for creative development of interactive marketing initiatives and sites for two fortune 500 companies and a branch of the U.S. armed forces. He is webmaster of Reef Sanctuary a community of over 2,000 reef aquarium enthusiasts and the Reef Aquarium Index, a saltwater fish and coral reference guide.

So you want exposure on the Internet? Of course you do. You want to drive people to your site, because that’s the only way your online business can succeed. And the more eyes you can get to your page, the better off you are. It’s common sense.

You’ve probably already thought of Google, and rightfully so. It’s the top search engine, so you want to make sure you’re a part of it. You may have also done some search engine optimization, and tweaked your site in certain ways so that Google will index you better. That’s a good start, but it’s also where many people go wrong.

The search engine marketing community often discusses this faux pas: people become obsessed with ranking on Google, and forget that there’s so much more to the Internet, so many more places where you can be found. It’s back to common sense again: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Here are some reasons why:

- People use multiple search engines.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, 58% of the people who search on Google also use another search engine. The same is true for 70% of MSN searchers, and 71% of Yahoo searchers. If consumers are looking for information in several places, it only makes sense for you to be in as many of those places as you can.

- Google indexes your web directory listings.
Ironically, when you work to broaden your horizons beyond the Google universe, you’re also working to improve your chances of showing up on Google. That’s because when a major search engine indexes the Internet, it also indexes the content of other directories.

Here’s the best part: if you can get listed in a web directory that provides search-engine-friendly one-way-links (that is, links that connect directly to your URL), you are essentially acquiring a “vote” to your site, and therefore improving your site’s authority in the eyes of Google, Yahoo and other major engines.

There are thousands upon thousands of Internet directories where you can list your site. Some will charge for submission, and the price will vary, from as little a few dollars, to as much as hundreds. Some will accept your site right away, and others will need to review it, to ensure the integrity of their database.

Common sense applies again here: the goal is to get listed in as many directories as you can, so you get maximum exposure. But web directory submission can be very time consuming, so you have to be selective to maximize your productivity. Here are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind:

- If the price seems too high, it’s probably not worth it. If you have a little money to invest, it’s a good idea to get into some of the paid inclusion directories. Pick and choose from some of the mid-level ones, and try to diversify your presence by picking some foreign directories, as well as some local ones. Some directories also offer special inclusion, where you pay a premium to get listed quicker. It’s definitely worth it if you’re looking to improve your traffic as quickly as possible.

- Before submitting to any web directory, check to make sure the directory is not banned by Google. Here’s a handy site, where you can type in the URL of the web directory and find out if it’s banned right away: http://123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

- Be prepared before you start submitting. Write a few descriptions for your website in different lengths (50 words, 100 words, 200 words), so you can just copy and paste when you’re submitting. This is guaranteed to save you a lot of time.

- If you don’t want to spend a lot of time searching for, picking and choosing directories, start at this page, which provides a great list of the top search-engine-friendly directories on the web: http://www.eliteweb.cc/directory/internet/web_directories

- If you don’t have a lot of time to devote to this, don’t worry about doing it all in one shot. Bookmark the link above, and take a few minutes every day to do one or two directory submissions, until you make it through the list.

Good luck, and happy submitting.

Robert Burko is president and founder of Eliteweb.cc, an internet portal featuring a best-of-the-web search engine and a comprehensive search-engine-friendly web directory.