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If you were to talk with a search engine marketing consultant, they would have certain tips to give you. There are many websites these days which do have a website which is optimized for search engine marketing. This is important because if you do not have a website which is optimized and shows up in search engine results, you cannot get traffic to your website without having to buy it and this gets expensive.

If you are concerned about how your website shows up in websites, you may inquire about search engine marketing services. These services will usually focus their attention upon three main areas: incoming links, your content, and your keywords. These are factors which are important for the search engines and will result in your website being placed higher in results if you focus on these factors. This article will talk more about this.

The first of the six factors a search engine marketing services company will examine is competitive analysis. This is done to see how your website stacks up against the competition along with which companies are in the top ten results and why they are there.

The second factor to look into is keyword research to see which keywords are actually used by your prospective audience and how competitive these keywords are. Without proper keywords, your website is not visible to your niche audience searching for what you have to offer.

A search engine marketing consultant will use page optimization to see which keywords are emphasized on various pages. This will ensure that your set of keywords is used properly throughout your website so that you show up for all keywords you are targeting.

Search engine marketing services companies place great emphasis on site usability. Without a site that is easy to get around, your audience will become disenchanted and exit your site quickly which is not good for your business.

Off page optimization such as link building is the next area which will be focused on by search engine marketing services companies. Link building is important because this is a factor in search engine rankings.

You can also think about using paid search engine marketing such as Adwords. This is an option some search engine marketing consultants will recommend because you can get your website in front of your audience faster than organic search engine marketing optimization efforts.

Can you not see the importance of these tips if you were a search engine marketing consultant? There are certain steps that must be done to develop a highly successful website and this website covers many of those steps. Be sure to use these to maximize your website’s chances for success.

Designing and building a website can be a thankless task. You spend hours of your time planning, designing and creating the whole site, carefully assembling it into a work of digital art. Having lovingly pored over every word and put heart and soul into a decent navigation system and a well thought out layout, you eagerly publish your site and hold your breath for the torrent of visitors. It is somewhat disappointing, therefore, to find that days can go by without a single hit. You know that it can take a while for the search engines to identify and crawl your site, but as the days crawl by it can become very disheartening.

After a while, of course, people do start to stumble across your site, and maybe you get one or two orders. This could encourage you, and you start to wonder how many you might come to expect over the next few days or weeks. With regret you start to accept that making your first million by Christmas seems somewhat unlikely. You may start to wonder why, since at least some people have started to find you, you don’t have more people coming. But thinking about it seriously, what have you actually done yourself to ensure that your site attracts visitors? It’s all very well having a site that is so good that people want to stay and buy, but they need to know it exists first.

One thing that you may have done is to browse through the internet and find information on how to promote your site, or tips on ‘optimizing’ it. You are almost certainly aware of the fact that to be successful on the internet you really need the search engines on your side. Having your site listed by Google, MSN and Yahoo for example is going to make a big difference to your site. But, what will make a far bigger difference is the overall rank of your website.

When someone carries out a keyword search for, say ‘empty egg timer’ and you just happen to sell these handy devices (useful for those who don’t have to worry about how long anything takes) then you will need your website to be right at the top of the list, so that people will find you easily, and come looking to buy from you. On Google alone, a keyword search for ‘empty egg timer’ generates nearly half a million websites! That means that there are approximately 50,000 pages of results. Incredibly, only 3% of people ever look beyond the first page of results, which means that 499,990 websites will be missed, and only 10 sites seen by 97% of visitors! You can see just how important it is to make sure you’re on that first page, and preferably at the very top of the list. If your website is on page 2, it might as well be on page 49,999, since almost no one will ever find it.

Possibly you might have heard of tips or companies that can rocket your website skywards and make sure your site is listed right near the top. Perhaps you’ve tried a few of these tips, and wondered why your site didn’t suddenly become the hottest place on the net? Maybe you even forked out a small fortune on a company that promised you the world and delivered you maybe a few places higher, rocketing you all the way from 164,378th place to 153,735th? Yes, 10,000 places higher, but the only difference is that number. Remember, unless you’re on the first page of results, it makes almost no difference where you are, so even if they had rocketed you to 1000th place, it still isn’t go to make much difference to your business. The thing is, that there is no single way of achieving this, and any company that takes your money on the premise that there is, is one to avoid. There are a whole range of factors, many of which are easily achievable yourself in a few hours, or even minutes. The other thing to remember is that this progress in rank doesn’t happen overnight. For many reasons, search engines don’t respond to changes immediately, and it can takes many months to achieve a high rank.

Some of the factors which will influence how well your site is ranked include keywords. Search engines scan the documents that make up your website, and catalogue the keywords which occur within it. This helps them to judge the relevance of your site compared to others and to keyword searches. It used to be relatively easy to reach the top of the search results simply by inserting hundreds of keywords all over your site. This now no longer has the effect it did, and there are many other factors which have much more influence. How many people link to your site is a big factor - obviously the more people linking to you, the more popular your site, and the more credibility is gains in the eyes of the search engines, and so your site will rise up the ranks.

I have actually come across a website which is able to analyze your website against these, and the myriad of other factors which affect the ranking of your site. I was surprised to come across it because it actually offers its service free of charge. All you do is enter your web address and contact details, and they carry out a whole range of tests to assess how well your site does for certain keyword searches, and what you could do yourself to improve it. Of course, they offer their services as far as making these improvements is concerned, but this is optional, and if you’re happy doing the work yourself, it’s a really handy service that will save you a lot of time, and a very great deal of money.

It can often be quite obscure little changes that you wouldn’t think of - such as the position of the text on the page, the number of menu links and outside links you have, the length of your sentences and so on. Knowing what you can do to help get your website noticed is a massive step toward getting up towards that golden first page. I have a number of websites, and I can’t say I have always tried every single bit of advice, but even by applying a few which suit me, I have noticed that my sites are climbing higher. Don’t forget, no one ever gets overnight top rank placement, and your eventual position will depend largely on the number of keyword competitors you have, but I’d certainly recommend getting your site checked out, after all, it’s free!

Well I’m back from my holiday and ready to get back to business!  I notice that my Alexa rank has risen up again past the 150,000 mark!  Which is great news.

This site is now up to 143,556 as of the 21st of July 2008… Let’s hope it keeps rising and rising for the rest of the year as well.

It only hit me quite how good this ranking is when I went and visited the Forestry Commission of Great Britain’s website which is ranked at 145,107.

Note: not everybody likes alexa as they don’t believe it is a reliable ranking method.  Having said that, it’s still one of the best and only methods on the net at the moment.