It is important to get into the search engines but it not just a case of getting into them you first need to decide what your keywords are going to be, by keywords I mean what the customer types into a search engine to find you. For example, if you sell mobile phones you may decide that 'mobile phones' are your keywords or that 'sim free phones' are your keywords.
Whenever one of these phrases is typed into a SE then it pulls up all the sites/pages that contain this term as indexed by the SE Bots, some of them are highly competitive (as in the mobile phone example) so you may wish to redefine it onto the sim free example to lower the competition. This in essence is technically a niche market (waiting for the kicking for saying that!)
There are numerous sites that help when selecting your keywords, I have not listed any but will if people want them.
Now you have decided the keywords that you intend to target you have to get the search engines to index you using these terms, this is achieved by getting the bots to visit your site (they will then index it using key words on the page etc) and also to get the bots to follow links to your site using anchor text (ie. your keyword).
Anchor text is best explained using an example :
Non anchor text would be :
http://www.onlineauctiontrader.com/dropshipping.htm
and
anchor text link would be :
Dropshipping
Hence when a bot follows the link it associates it with the text ' Dropshipping'
Getting your site into the search engines is fairly easy but getting it to rank highly can take some time. A few ways to get your site indexed are :
Write an article (like the ezine articles I have written
Here) that has links to your website in it, when the bots index the article site they then follow all the links they find and hence index your site.
Blog and Ping, this is a process of writing a weblog (Blog) about your topic and then Pinging the relevent directories and SE's to say that the blog has been updated and hence they should take a look (send a bot) and hence your weblog links will be followed. An example can be seen at : ebay auction blog. To ping the blog just goto the site :
http://pingomatic.com/
This is a very quick and easy way to get into the Yahoo directory(and others), although due to massive abuse is becoming less and less effective. If you are interested in this service then contact member Force5 as he offers a great service to help you with this.
Submit to the Search Engines direct, this is simply going to the relevent SE's and telling them that your site exists by adding your URL to be spidered.
The key to good search engine rankings is
Links, they get good scoring from the SE's as they work on the principle that if another website promotes your website then you must have something of value on yours. These links must be from related authority websites (although non related do not seem to damage your site but show very little benefit). Authority websites are those that are already established and have been deemed as 'the' websites in the sector.
Links can be recipricol or one way, recipricol means you link to them and they link to you whereas one way means they alone link to you (the best ones to have). It is possible to buy links from major websites and is generally a good way to get a quick indexing, Google(probably the main SE) frowns upon purchased links and link farms etc so be sure to get links from sites that do not 'oversell' their popularity.
I deliberately haven't talked about PR (Page Rank) as that is a whole different subject and I believe that quality links from a number of different PR rated (Google measurement) is best as it forms a natural linking process as opposed to a false one. I personally have links to established and new sites in my area as this forms a more natural stance which I find the SE's like best.
Forums are a good way to get links, your signature gets spidered when the bots spider the site and they hence then line yours up for indexing also. Hence my insistent that you use anchor text.
A simple way to get links is to ask the webmaster, approach them and say take a look at my site and if you like it would you consider linking to me. Always link to them first and provide them with the details you wish to have on their site so all they do is copy and paste. Do not be offended if they do not link to you, just remove their link and go to the next site but ask why they wouldn't link to you. Make sure you have content on your site, content/information exchange is what founded the internet and is still the basis by which it operates and hence why the SE's like it so much (hence why I have article sections on ALL my sites.)
A forum signature link counts as a link to your website and as the SE's (in particular Google) treat links as a measure of the websites relevancy (or authority on the subject) then yes it will help in your SERP's.
The key to linking (apart from quality/quantity) is to have a mixture of anchor text links, ie. different keywords so that it forms a more natural linking strategy because SE's are becoming more and more negative towards unnatural website development. That also applies to the development of content for your site, and postings to your blogs etc etc.
Also a lot of people assume that you always have to have links from higher PR rated web sites, this is not the case as once again this is unnatural and it is always best to have a mixture of new/old sites low/high PR sites etc. Again if you think about this it is more natural in the life cycle of a website that this is true.
Also, try to spread the pages that these links link to. Do not have them all pointing to your homepage, try to spread them so that they point to a number of your pages so once again to establish a natural linking development.
A trick I have always used and Google have just started to formalise (Google Site Maps) is to have a few pointing towards your web sites site map (always include a sitemap) as this lists all your web pages and will provide not only a useful resource to the reader but will also provide a 'hub' of links for the SE spiders to follow when they index your site map and hence index your site..
Example site map :
http://www.onlineauctiontrader.com/sitemap.htm (not a Google Site Map)
Some other methods:
Use
Ebays Traffic itself..
Looking for suggestions...
Linear Mode
December 2008
