You have a business on a site. You need to get people TO that business. One of the hands down best ways to do that is to have good Search Engine position, aka ranking.
Let us say you are looking for Cashflowpc. You heard about Cashflowpc, maybe read an ad which you did not respond to or whatever. So, you go to your browser and do a search on the word cashflowpc. The results come back in pages. You view those pages starting with page one.
How did those sites get there anyway? The answer is not so simple these days. But, basically you need a website that is acceptable by the Search Engines and then you need to get it indexed, or added, to the Search Engines Database.So what is a Search Engine anyway? It is a site/script with a huge database, a collection of sites placed on the Internet. You access the database by entering a word or phrase called a "keyword" or keywords in a search box or form. The Engine then searches it's database to return the results to you listed from 1 to ... depending on how many "matches" it found relative to the keyword you used. The top sites, or most popular sites are listed in descending order beginning with the top ranked site.
There are "Major" Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Then there are satellites and other Engines attached or associated to or with the Majors. Then there are hundreds of "Minor" Engines. Major or Minor, they all play an important role in helping the billions of Internet users find stuff.
Getting listed is called Indexing. The Engines have robots called spiders, little programs that go out and "crawl" sites looking for the information they need to add a site to their database. The information is found in what are called "Meta Tags." The most important tags being a description and then the keywords. In order for a site to be listed in a SE it must have a relevant descripton and keywords listed on a page (seen in the backround, you don't see it when you view the site). To get listed then:
*You need your website. Most important, you need an ACCEPTABLE website. If you have what is called a main or unique site and address like http://www.xtreamsurf.com,/ you have a site which is perfectly acceptable by the Search Engines. However, if you have what is referred to as an affiliate link, like http://www.viptravelrewards.com/code.asp?c=agy5j5, that is not.
Unfortunately in 2005 SEs began to not accept affiliate links any longer.So, if you are an affiliate member of a program, you need need to be creative to Get on the SE Map. We will discuss ways to do this in this section of the forum on other articles.
* You need to OPTIMIZE your sites. Peter will discuss ways to do this and also strategies for attracting the SE Robots to your site. * Once you have your sites, you need to submit them to the Engines at least once a month. You will find various submitters on the forum and in the Xtream Center is another tool to help you do just that.
* Once you get your sites indexed (or added to the Search Engines) you will need to drive traffic to your site. In other words, get visitors. The more traffic, the higher your positioning in the engines. There are many ways to do this and we will have a number of articles which discuss strategies in future articles.
