Links From Other Sites. In good old days (a year or two ago), it was sufficient to add keywords in a few places on your web pages, submit them to search engines and voila, top listings. However, with explosive growth of World Wide Web in recent years, search engines have become much more smarter in figuring out which search results would best satisfy a particular query. One criterion that is currently very important is number of other websites that have links to yours. From perspective of a search engine, lots of links coming into your site make your site more important, and therefore more likely to provide information needed by searcher. Why would another website want to link to yours? The best reason is that your website content is so outstanding that other sites will link to yours as a service to their visitors. But, this is not as easy as it sounds, since there are so many sites out there, many with dozens (sometimes hundreds) of pages of useful information.

A commonly used method of increasing links to your site is to offer to swap links with another site. This is known as a "link exchange." It takes a bit of work, but is generally quickest route to improved search engine listings.

Search Engine Submission. After all above has been completed, it is time to for your web pages to be submitted to search engines. Although there are numerous submission firms that claim to be able to submit your site to "thousands" of search engines, there are only a few engines that actually matter, such as Yahoo, Google, MSN Search and AOL (not an exhaustive list). After working hard to get your website designed, built and optimized...now you wait. It generally takes 6 - 10 weeks after submission for results to start to be seen. And it is vital to understand that your position in search engine listings is dynamic. There are other websites also using these techniques to improve their position, and there is absolutely no way to guarantee a particular position in listings, or how long your site will stay at that position. Even so, difference these steps can make for your site's visibility makes it a worthwhile investment.

Pay-Per-Click Listings

If you want immediate placement on search engines, plus a better measure of control over your listing's position, you should consider pay-per-click, or sponsored, listings. If you do a search on any major search engine you will see listings at top or along side of page that have notation "sponsored listing." They may also be set apart with a colored background, which is case on Google.

These listings are really paid advertisements. The way they work is a bidding system. You, advertiser, bid on search terms for which you want your listings to be displayed. The amount of your bid indicates how much you're willing to pay for a click on your link. You only pay when your listing is displayed for a particular keyword and searcher clicks on your listing to visit your site. The highest bidder gets first listing on results page, second highest bidder gets next highest listing, and so on. Bids can be as low as 10 cents, and go as high as 10 dollars or more for a really hot keyword, such as "mortgage." Quite often you can bid on very effective keywords for 25 to 50 cents.

There are advantages to pay-per-click system. The most obvious is that in just a day or two your website can be displayed at top of search engine listings. If you've invested a lot in getting your site up and running you may not want to wait 2 months for your customers to be able to find you. Also, sponsored listings are targeted to those who are really searching for information available on your site, unlike "banner ads," which you have no doubt seen on many sites. (A banner ad is more like a billboard. The advertiser pays to have it displayed regardless of whether viewers actually click on it.)

The big downside to pay-per-click listings is that you may have lots of idle visitors who are just surfing around Net and don't intend to buy. If they click on your listing, you pay, regardless of whether or not they become your customer. The business owner (you) must decide what you are willing to spend for customer acquisition.

In Conclusion

I hope that this discussion has been helpful to you. If you are investing in a website or search engine positioning, you need to understand at least basics of game, and that is what I have hoped to achieve. It's not as complicated as it sounds ...although unfamiliar terminology in field of computers and Internet often make it seem so. Never be concerned about seeming ignorant to your web designer or other Internet service providers. Before meeting you they probably had even less understanding of your field!

Debra Bellmaine is President of Bellmaine Associates (http://www.bellmaineassociates.com), a web design & development firm providing website solutions for small and medium-size businesses. She is a software professional with broad experience creating custom business applications. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems, as well as various certifications, including Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform.

Again, search engine robots seem to "ignore" this abused "strategy". Don't worry, you won't get your site banned, but also don't anticipate measurable results.

~~ Myth #5 ~~

Using Search Engine Submission Services and Software will Skyrocket your Search Engine Rankings

If most search engines offer a "free submission" option, what would be benefit of paying for a submission service to promote your site? Obviously no benefit.

Since search engines are programmed to "spider / crawl" your web site through links it receives from other web locations (sites), any additional promotional effort is evidently futile.

~~ Myth #6 ~~

Search Engines don't Index Dynamically Generated Pages...

Top search engines like Google and Altavista (and not only) do index dynamically generated pages / links, but don't necessarily count them as a "good hub" towards optimum link popularity. Dynamically generated hyperlinks / web-pages like affiliate links and certain database-driven webs, can be "spidered" and actually appear in search engine indexes. It's up to a search engine's algorithm to "decide" how high will a web page appear in its' results.

Enigmatic Hint: A selected few savvy webmasters are acquainted with a little-known, yet legitimate technique, that is based on a specific search engine algorithm to generate thousands of dollars in affiliate marketing commissions.

Combining forces of link popularity and a strategic usage of meta tags (oh, yes... meta-tags are *still* important), will turn any web site literally hot wired and competitive. However, you'd need more than conventional search engine marketing methods to vie with your competition.

Many webmasters have resorted to submission software to boost rankings and automate indexing procedure. These tools are promoted aggressively by marketers who promise to produce superlative results. Yes, these "tools" were good but... once upon a time. The main purpose of using such tools is to automate your search engine submission, but you'd better resort to other, self-promotional avenues by... enriching your knowledge.

Since we "debugged" 6 of most shattering search engine marketing myths based on top ranks and optimum link popularity, "comeback" is almost obvious...

The postmortem of whole chronicle, is that search engine marketing savvy is a priceless "virtual" asset. No matter how classy a website is, if it isn't search engine optimized, only a strong budget can bring-in visitors (add "prospective" before visitors) -- an everlasting "marriage" with advertising companies.

George Papazoglou is the Creator of the Search Engine Pro-2001 Marketing Course and ex-Web Site Optimization Veteran.