Getting your website found on the Search Engines is a great way to bring targeted prospective clients directly to your website!

Google continues to have the biggest slice in the search engine market, with over 4.8 billion searches (yes that’s 4,800,000,000!) in September 2008.

In terms of market share, Google held almost 60 per cent of the market, while Yahoo! had 18.1 per cent Microsoft saw 11.8 per cent.

These are the figures from Nielson Online’s September research. Other search engines that appeared in the top ten included AOL, Ask.com, My Web, Comcast and AT&T Worldnet.

So how to get found on Google? The all important question!

Google’s intention is sound - they wish to provide searchers with the very best results for whatever it is that they are searching for. It’s as simple as that (well almost!). You need to make your website a worthy result for the keywords that your prospective visitors are searching for.

There are two ways of generating traffic (visitors to your website) from Google and these are organically and through paid advertising. Today I focus on Organic (or natural) listing result which are the main listings on the left side of results when you conduct a search on Google. It is impossible to buy or bribe your way to a position here.

So how do you get there? Well the only way is for Google to think that your website is a relevant result for the keywords that are being searched.

You will need to “optimise” your website for Search Engines to find and index it - also known as Search Engine Optimisation (or Optimization).

Increasing your chances of “Organic Listings” through Search Engine Optimisation is really not as complicated as it may appear. Here are my Top 3 Tips, kept short and simple (you may have read these before but they ARE important so I repeat them from time to time):

Tip 1) Keywords: Make sure the keywords that your prospects may search for when they are looking for your products and/or services are included on your website, on as many pages across your website and often as possible.

Tip 2) Incoming Links: These are important because Google give every website a page rank which effects your placement in results for searches. Page Rank is effectively a ranking of how important Google considers your web page to be. This is based on a number of factors, with one major contributing factor being how many websites link to your website.

In Google’s interpretation, if you have lots of incoming links, then you must be popular, and therefore important. The quality of the incoming links does also factor in, so if the links to your website are from high ranking and relevant sites (with a high Page Rank) they have more effect.

Tip 3) More Content: The more written content you have on your website the more there is for Google to find, rank and return in their results.

This is why blogs are proving to be so effective, as they generally contain lots of content that is always being updated. Search engines love blogs. (Interested in blogging… visit www.businessbloggingprogram.com)  

Writing articles is another fantastic way to build your online presence, optimise your website and create multiple incoming links to your website. I would suggest that you begin writing creative, interesting articles relating to your target market. Once you’ve written an article, you can submit it to article directories and gain valuable links back to your website for free.

by Belinda Jackson

© 2008. Web Chameleon Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Belinda Jackson, Online Marketing Mentor, is founder of Web Chameleon, Chameleon Mail and The Business Blogging Program.  To learn how to attract and retain your perfect clients using Online Marketing, and increase sales & income then sign up for your free Online Marketing Report and Marketing Newsletter by visiting www.WebChameleon.com.au/.