What is the first thing you think of when you hear about website promotion? The first thing that many people think about is search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. There is no doubt that having your website listed in one of these search engines is very important element of getting visitors to your website. The disappointment comes for many when they find out that their website does not automatically appear in the search engines the very instant that the site is placed online. Some search engines can take months to get listed. An Important thing to remember when your site first goes live is that it will not immediately be searchable, at least not right away.

Importance of Content

Many search engines find and categorize websites based on the content of the site (text on the website pages). One of the most important pages of a site is the home page text when optimizing for search engines. As an example, if a web page contains the words “clean air”, and a potential customer searches for those exact words, the site should theoretically appear in the search results. I may not appear in the number one spot, but it should appear somewhere in the list. To get your site included in the search results, you have to determine how you want the site to be found. Your website content should contain as many occurrences as possible of the keyword phrases that your customers might use when searching for your services. Think like a real person, what would they use as a search phrase if they were looking for your services? Once you figure out these words or phrases that might be used, write your content using those phrases as many times as you can, without making your site sound ridiculously redundant. Remember when coming up with these phrases to include your location. Many people who use search engines always look for products or services with a location.

Methods of getting traffic

There are many different methods out there for promoting your site. Some work, some do not. Some are expensive and some can be expensive scams. Here a few you may have encountered:

Linking with similar sites – Having other sites show a link to yours can be an effective way to help increase ranking in search engines especially if the other website is visited frequently. However, simply having your linklisted on a few sites probably won’t help you much. It’s best to get your site listed with sites that have similar products or services. Of course if you want to be listed on someone else site you will have todo the same for them, a catch 22, “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” You want to be careful since you obviously don’t want to send customers to your competitors site. Additionally, if you link to sites that don’t get traffic it may negatively affect your sites ranking. Be very selective when you link with other sites.

Sponsored Links – Many search engines offer sponsored links, basically paid ad space. Sometimes these ads work, and sometimes they do not. Most feedback seems to point that it does not work well. You may want to give it a shot and see if it works for you, just do not expect miracles from these services.

Submission Services – Once your website has gone live you might start receiving solicitations for services that promise to bring more traffic to your website. Be careful! While it’s possible some of them may be able to bring you more traffic, a lot of them may turn out to be a waste of your money.

This is an overview of simple methods used to get traffic to your website. It should give you a basic understanding of how the process works. The task of getting more traffic to your site is never a simple one shot deal. It will be an ongoing process that lasts as long as you have your website.