The Search Engine Marketer's 7-Step Survival Guide

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The Search Engine Marketer's 7-Step Survival Guide

By Richard Adams

© 2004. All rights reserved.
http://MerchantAccountForum.com
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Using the search engines to generate substantial numbers of visitors to your website can be expensive, frustrating and complicated.

It can also be incredibly profitable, enjoyable and almost simple once you know what you're doing.

Here, then, are a few things you ought to know to give you the greatest chance of success (and not going mad in the process!)

1) Choose A Technique That Works

There are dozens of people claiming to have a secret formula they'll let you use - for a fee.

There *are* techniques that work, but filtering through all the garbage to get the really good stuff can take time and money.

So let's cut to the chase.

You see, many search engine marketers spend their whole lives reading books, buying expensive software and spending long, boring evenings analysing the competition, trying to look for an "unfair advantage".

Get real.

Here's the only secret you'll ever need - aim to build a genuinely great site that offers visitors real value, then supplement it with a well thought-out linking structure.

Stick to the concepts I'm going to share with you, methods that have worked for years, and you'll win long term - no doubt about it.

2) You Don't Need To Pay For Listings

In general, the quickest (and cheapest) way to get listed in the search engines is to get other large and popular websites to link to you.

Websites that are regularly updated tend to be visited far more regularly by the search engines, and if they link to you, the search engines will soon find you without you needing to submit to them.

The best way I've found is to either submit press releases to one of the online pr sites such as http://www.prnewswire.com or write an article on a related topic and submit it to the article directories.

3) Two Places You Do Need To Submit To

There are two major directories that generally *won't* "find" your site on their own yet receive a considerable amount of traffic, so they're well worth the time submitting to (free).

They are:

http://www.dmoz.org
http://www.zeal.com

4) Don't Link To Just Anyone

Only link to quality sites on a related topic.

By quality I mean original, easy to navigate, a reasonable Google PageRank and a similar linking policy to what you're going to adopt of a limited number of equally high quality links.

5) Swap Links With Your Competitors

Firstly, type the keywords into Google that you'd most like to rank highly for and check out the competition.

Then, contact these sites one by one, asking for a link swap.

By exchanging links with these sites, ensuring their link to you contains your chosen keywords, you will over time experience a serious boost in your rankings.

6) Link Within Your Own Site

The last main linking technique is to create hyperlinks within your own site.

Again, use your main keywords to link to other pages on your site.

7) Stick With The Technique That Works

It's a fact that your listings in the search engines will go down as well as up. In Christmas 2003, Google changed it's algorithm (since named the "Florida" update) resulting in massive changes in traffic flow.

I myself was seriously affected and my income was less than a quarter of what it usually is.

However, now my listings are back up at the top of the charts, even higher than before infact.

My traffic and income has grown as a result, and do you know how I did it?

I did precisely *nothing*.

Others, with all their "secret formulas" will scrabble wildly to work out what they did wrong and redo their entire site based on some new "hunch" or whisper on a forum.

If you've used the techniques I suggest, just sit back and relax.

But your listings don't just go up and down. They can also vanish into thin air.

The first time it happens you'll wonder what on earth happened.

But it's life. It happens from time to time and is nothing to worry about.

Again: don't do a thing. Don't change your site. Don't resubmit. Just sit back and wait.

You'll see your site reappear like magic in a matter of weeks.

That's it. Now go get yourself some free traffic!

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Richard Adams is the founder of Merchant Account Forum, one of the net's most popular merchant account advice sites. Click Here Now =>
MerchantAccountForum.com
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