Great Search Engine Ranking Without Spending Money

If you’re just starting out building your own business or
personal web site and have little or no budget, you can still
get high search engine ranking. You can do what the
professionals do. You’ll simply be exchanging the money you
would have spent for time doing research and then implementing
the changes and steps it takes to get your site ranked.

First of all, I’ll tell you a little secret that you generally
don’t hear from people who own web design firms. A visually
stunning site is not always necessary. Now, before you go
slapping up a pink and orange site with purple text, let me
explain. You can have a good, clean design without all the bells
and whistles. The important thing is to make clear what your
business provides and make your site easy to navigate.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, there is a more
important aspect of your site design that will help you rank
higher in the search engines: the structure. By structure I mean
the code behind the site whether it is html or xml or database
driven code such as php or asp.

CSS and Validation

Some design firms have found that sites created with cascading
style sheets (css) get better search engine ranking. A tool you
can use to check if your code is up to current standards is the
validator offered by W3C (http://validator.w3.org/). W3C also
offers a tutorial on creating cascading style sheets:

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

Keywords

Once you have your structure in place, you need to determine
what the most effective keywords are for your site. This is not
as easy as it sounds. If you choose common keywords such as
“landscaping” or “jewelry” you will be competing against
hundreds of thousands of other businesses. They trick is to
choose a keyword that is less popular, but still has thousands
of searches per month. I found a tool that tells you how many
searches have been performed on Google and Overture for the
keywords you enter. It also offers suggestions for alternate
keywords to use. The best part is that there is a free version
available here: http://www.thedowser.com/.

Don’t load your entire site down with one or two keyword phrases
to the point where your site doesn’t make sense to your
visitors. In addition, don’t “spam” the search engines by adding
similar keywords over and over again at the top or bottom of
your page. That will get you booted out of the search engines
quicker that you can say “spamming is bad form”. There is a
better way to use these keywords that will help you more in
terms of getting new business which I will explain in a minute.

Sitemaps and Web bots

All of the major search engines have “web bots” which “spider”
your website for inclusion in their directories. You can help
them out by creating a sitemap. Google, MSN, and Yahoo bots are
frequent visitors to one of my websites
(http://www.themiracleisyou.com). Notice the small XML
AUTOSITEMAP graphic beneath the menu and quotes? Auto Sitemap is
a free tool you can use to create a Googlebot friendly sitemap
for your site (http://www.autositemap.com/). I highly recommend
it.

Advertising

Finally, once you have your structure in place and are ready to
advertise your website, comes the fun part – announcing your
site. With a small budget, you can boost traffic to your website
through programs like Google AdWords
(https://adwords.google.com/). Some hosting companies offer free
Google or Overture coupons when you host with them. Now that
you’ve determined the best keywords for your site, use them to
gain more traffic for less money.

I have one last tidbit to share that will help you with your
ranking. Search engines love sites that are linked to other
high-ranking sites, and lots of other relevant web sites. This
means if you get your site listed in an article on CNN, you are
going straight to the top, baby! I know this is not always
realistic, but start advertising your site to other sites that
might consider linking to you.

Finally, if all this work makes your head spin and you think the
time you’ll spend learning and implementing all these tips would
be better spent earning money for your business, then seek out a
professional. There is an endless supply of web design and
search engine optimization firms out there. Just understand
three things:

1. You usually get what you pay for.
2. You must always,
always, always check references.
3. You should know exactly
what you are getting for the price you’re paying.

It is not necessary to pay for a great search engine ranking,
but it does take lots of time and effort. If you’re willing to
put in the time, it will eventually pay off in more leads and
sales. Good luck to you!

Amanda Huber
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/great-search-engine-ranking-without-spending-money-2423.html