Better Search Engine Rankings (1)

[Published in The Business Eye, February 2007 - Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce]

Many website owners want their sites to attract more visitors. One way to lure more people to your site is by making it more visible in the search engines. You can advertise with the search engines, and pay for every visitor (click) that the search engines refer to you. If you choose your keywords and your ads wisely, then Pay-Per-Click advertising can be a very profitable way to increase the traffic to your site.

Another possibility is to get better rankings in the normal search results. You do this by making your website more relevant for search phrases that you want to be found for. You should lay a solid foundation by researching first whether people are actually searching for those phrases. What if you want to be found for "pink cars" - and almost nobody is looking for that on the web? Tools to perform your keyword research include the keyword suggestion tools of many Pay-Per-Click engines like Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing (used to be called Overture), or a specialized paid service called Wordtracker.

Armed with the right keywords you are ready for the next step: optimizing your site for those phrases.

More next month.

For more information: contact your webmaster, or email Nardo Kuitert at nardo@u-cwebs.com.

Nardo Kuitert is an Internet Consultant with Fergus Website Development and Optimization firm U-C WEBS (www.u-cwebs.com). U-C WEBS also offers Internet advertising opportunities on www.ferguspages.com.

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