There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in top 20 spots of major search engines. That amounts to a lot of competition! I say if you can't get listed at top, indirectly get to top.

How do you do this? Look up top 20 web sites on major search engines under keywords and phrases people would find your web site. The key would be to then advertise on those web sites.

The most expensive way would be to buy ad space on those web sites. If you don't want to spend any money, you could use ten strategies below. These strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link at end of your messages.

2. Ask web site owner if they would like a free ebook to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad in free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link at end of article. If they publish it, you'll indirectly be at top of search engines.

When I first started Pixel2life.com back in January 2004, I already had a large amount of friends in gaming community that I knew would visit my site to check it out, but I wanted to get a targeted audience of visitors. People that would be interested in content I had to offer them. I love my friends in gaming community (some of which I’ve known for over 6 years), but only a small portion of them really cared about design. So through trial and error, I’ve found ways to increase my traffic by targeting proper audience without having to pay for it. These methods don’t compare to buying targeted traffic, but it’s next best thing. P2L is not a profit oriented website, so I don’t exactly have tons of cash to spend on Ad campaigns.

First off, I must stress importance of a quality design and quality content. You can draw as much traffic as you want, but without a quality website that will interest your guests, you’ll never make it to their coveted Bookmarks. In case of design oriented websites for example, there are millions of personal websites that have a few wallpapers, a personal portfolio a shoutbox , and loads of spelling errors. What makes your site better than rest that would warrant someone to re-visit? Be original, provide quality content, and update often. It’s that simple. If you’re not willing to commit to those rules, don’t bother trying to be next DeadDreamer or Shiver7. I may write an article in future regarding this topic in a bit more detail, but for now, I’ll assume your site is a smoking gun and ready for eyes of world.

Before you start anything, optimize your site for search engines. You should have a title, meta keys for keywords and description, and nice full sentences in body of your site. Keyword density is important and with proper SEO techniques, hits from search engines will grow quite a bit. Make sure you customize each page as required. A page about 3D Modeling should not have same keywords as a page about your graphic portfolio. And remember to include main keyword(s) in your title. If you’re not sure what exactly to do, check out these results on Google for keyword optimization: http://www.google.ca/search?q=keyword+optimization&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=

For Pixel2life.com, our first month of operation (January 2004) yielded about 200 hits from Google. After spending a week or so correcting my lack of meta keys and keyword density, I received well over 28000 hits from Google in June. This isn’t simply because I worked keywords, but it had a large hand in it. The other part of puzzle is reciprocating links.

Now I don’t work for an SEO, nor do I pretend to be an expert in field, but in my experience, more reciprocating links to Pixel2life.com on other websites, higher my Google ranking climbs. In some of my main keywords, I wasn’t even in top 1000, but after a few months of affiliating and spreading word, I place in top 5 in many principal keyword searches. Examples include:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cinema+4d+tutorials&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=swift+3d+tutorials&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=photopaint+tutorials&meta=

You can check your google rankings for your choice of keywords at http://www.googlerankings.com