November 22, 2007       (Updated from our Mar. 24, 2002 article)

Ranking a website for sales and performance can be easy, if only you follow the right steps. There are no shortcuts, no easy way out, if you truly want to succeed. As with any serious undertaking, the right way to successfully optimize and position a site requires planning ahead and executing the project step by step.

If you follow all the advice given in our articles on the Rank for $ales web site, you will do extremely well; better than your competitors in many cases.

Start by the beginning: the right keywords
Even if your web site ranks number one in Google and most of the major search engines, it is of no value at all if it brings you unqualified, off-topic traffic. A properly optimized web site with all the right keywords and key phrases will not only bring you traffic, but targeted traffic.

People visiting your web site will have a real need for the products and services that you offer. Recent studies and market surveys confirm that most Internet searchers use the major search engines to rapidly find the products and services that interest them.

Using the right keywords and key phrases will insure that they will find your web site and they will purchase what they need from you. No successful and in-depth optimization project can be seriously done without the help of Word Tracker to effectively identify and use the keywords that are just right for you.

What may be good for one of your out-of-state or out-of-the-country competitor may not always mean it will be good for your business too. Local variations in the economy, geo-political concerns or a host of different factors can, to a certain degree, affect the optimum choice for the right keywords that should be used.

For example, if your website sells airline tickets, obviously those needs can vary a lot from one country or continent to another, view. The same is true for most industries. A steel products manufacturer in the US could have different keywords and key phrases than some of its European competitors.

Using a powerful search tool such as Word Tracker can help you a lot in the clear identification and definition of the exact keywords and key phrases you should in fact be using.

Avoid using spammy techniques
If you truly want to rank for performance, don�t resort to illegal methods or spam in an attempt to rank higher. That will just ban or seriously penalize your web site. Instead, write quality, search engine friendly content. Ensure that each page is structured so it is obvious to a search engine that the page is truly relevant to a specific keyword.

Also make certain that your pages and all the rest of your site can be read by a search engine spider.

Try in creating a reference point if you will, associated with your keywords. A reference point could be similar to a balance of an authority, which could have many quality links to it from other sites and pages associated with that specific keyword. In order to rank better, you need to participate in a reciprocal link exchange program (RLEP for short).

You should seriously consider link leasing to significantly increase your sites rankings and Page Rank. Also, actively try to get other quality sites to link to you. To be effective, be certain that those sites are in the same field as you are. Stay in the same industry. You can get excellent results by simply following the above rules.

Check that you are not being penalized unfairly for content that may be interpreted as spam, or for being on the same IP address as someone who has been barred from search engines for delivering spam. If possible, contact the search engines that are not listing you and check what is wrong. Let supply and demand decide. Market forces should mean that those search engines that produce the best, most relevant results will flourish, and those that don�t will ultimately die.

The current prevalence of spam is preventing this from happening. Finally, if you think you can calculate relevancy better than the current availability of search engines, don�t deliver spam to attempt to control their listings. If you do, in the end, you will lose.

How PPC programs can make a difference
A good PPC program in Overture and Google could represent a faster way for you to drive fairly targeted traffic to a web site and could be most effective in testing or promoting new products, seasonal services or other short-term needs. Additionally, it can provide short-term results, to fill a certain vacuum between real ranking results and its underlying campaign launch.

But these benefits all come at a certain price, ie: a price that isn�t always under one�s control at any time. Hence, conservative investment in PPC programs is a crucial and permanent ingredient to any serious search engine marketing campaign and should be viewed as a supplement only to �native� SEO.

Given all these facts, and throughout your SEM campaign, as your natural visibility generated through native search engine optimization regularly increases, your dependency on keyword and key phrase purchasing should lower with the passage of time.

Always remember that search engine optimization is a science as well as an art. It is a delicate balance of the two that will help nurture the best results in the engines. Every PPC program analysis process, like native search engine optimization, is based on such things as keyword density, placement, optimization and general link structure in the whole site.

As with any other SEM program, it is crucial that a company first understands the actual surfing habits and buying styles that Internet searchers demonstrate when looking for specific services, products or information using today�s modern search engines.

(Updated from my March 2002 article).

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2002

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Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

        

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.