Question by Hey now…: How do I get my companies website to appear in the top of search engine results without paying?
I know I can pay to advertise on yahoo and google, but I’ve also heard you can become one of googles top search returns another way. How do I do this for google, yahoo and other search engines? Thanks everyone!
Best answer:
Answer by joethegeek
get loads of content and backlinks from other sites, google and yahoo have a page rank system, write on forums about your site, but dont spam them
What do you think? Answer below!
Have a read of this excellent article I recently found –
http://forums.seochat.com/link-popularity-43/link-building-101t-124545.html
ATB
Mark
http://www.kmg-s.com/
The process you are referring to is called “search engine optimization” or SEO. Contrary to popular belief, SEO is not free. Although you are not directly paying for traffic the practice still has its costs when you factor in the time spent optimizing your website, any consulting fees you pay to move up the rankings, and the purchasing of backlinks. There are, however, ways in which you can improve your search engine ranking on the cheap.
The first and most important aspect of SEO is link building. Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your website. The first thing you must understand about link building is the concept of anchor text. Anchor text is the text used to hyperlink to another webpage. When requesting or paying for backlinks you should pick three or four keywords that you would like to be associated with and use them as anchor text for incoming links. These words must be relevant and specific in order to have the most positive effect on your search ranking. This is fundamental to your SEO efforts. Get this part wrong and you will certainly have wasted your time.
The most obvious target for links to your website, also called backlinks, are influential web directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, Google Directory, and Best of the Web. It is best to stick a few with high quality directories rather than submitting your site to every directory you come across. Another source of backlinks are bloggers that write about your industry. Develop a relationship with bloggers and provide them with content such as interviews or expert articles in exchange for backlinks. Press releases are yet another source of backlinks. Every company communicates with the press on occasion. Be sure your company is optimizing its press releases for the web by including links to your website and submitting the release to news wires such as PRWeb. Finally, there are paid links which quite obviously means you will be paying for the specific placement of a backlink on a website. Google has recently cracked down on the use of paid links. After this change paid links are more risky and less rewarding. Buyer beware. Collectively, these tactics are referred to as “off-site optimization” because they take place on other websites.
The other half of search engine optimization is on-site optimization which deals entirely with how your webpage is constructed. On-site optimization consists of writing relevant, timely, and keyword-laden copy, managing the use of meta-keywords and descriptions, as well as proper use of title tags in html, and internal linking. As with off-site optimizaiton pick three or four specific keywords for which you would like your website to rank well. Write copy that includes these words frequently, but be careful not to overdue it. A good rule of thumb is that your copy should always read well to a human. If someone reads your copy and it is obvious you are overusing particular words it will be obvious to the search engines as well, and you will be penalized. Next, every webpage has what are known as meta-keywords and meta-descriptions. I will not go into the details about why these are important, but be sure the keywords you have selected also appear in the meta tags. The same is true of title tags. Title tags appear at the very top of the web browser and are titles that describe the content of the page. Finally, internal linking is essential to on-site optimization. Link to content across your site (known as “deep linking”) using the keywords or keyword variations you have selected.
Ultimately, search engine optimization is a very complex skill. Search engines are constantly changing the way they rank websites and if done incorrectly it is easy to do more harm than good. Thankfully there are many companies available to help you. One highly recommended company that will do SEO consulting is Market Motive which has assembled a dream team of internet marketing experts. They also have a content subscription service which can be very helpful for do-it-yourselfers.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
Add links to your site with appropriate tags and keywords to as many social media sites as possible. Make sure you hit the most authoritative sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. One each of these sites, make sure the profile is built out in great detail.