By Daniel D Dwase

When you're looking for some information on the internet where is the first place you look? Let me consult my psychic powers...

Google seems to have a strong aura, with Yahoo! coming in slightly less clearly, ah wait, I see a fuzzy MSN (Bing), there's another coming in... may be AOL... Ask.com... hmmm?

The majority of people... at least in the United States and the UK... turn to one of these major search engines when they are trying to solve a problem, answer a question, research and locate more information.

Understanding this, it is vital to your business that your site be able to be found in these top search engines when someone conducts a keyword search related to your website.

Why?...

Because any traffic that comes in from these sources are absolutely and totally free! And doesn't everything taste just a little sweeter when it's free? You bet it does!

However, you'll have to do more than just submit your website to these top search engines in order to benefit from the free website traffic that they can generate (read "Free Search Engine Submission" for tips on how to do this).

It will do your website absolutely no good if it ends up on page 14 of the results of a keyword search.

Why?...

Because most people rarely even make it pass the first page results. Some might click on to page 2, but I tell you, no one clicks on and reads through to page 14 results!

So the goal is to end up on page 1, as close to the top as possible. But how do you do that? No one except the developers of each search engineÕs ranking system knows that exactly... and since these rankings seem do change so much, maybe even they don't know.

So don't fall for it when a product promises to reveal these search engine secrets because they are always changing.

What you can do is optimize your site for search engines (read "Search Engine Optimization Tips" for more on this).

In addition to writing search engine optimized, or keyword/keyphrase centered content for your site, it's important to know that other factors... some that are out of your control... also contribute to achieving a high ranking such as the age of your site, the frequency of updates, the amount of content, the amount and quality of other sites linking back to yours, the title of your site, as well as the words that appear in your URL.

As you see, it really is a complex mixture of things that contribute to your siteÕs search engine ranking. On top of that each of the top 5 search engines I mentioned earlier have different ranking systems.

Does this mean you should try to optimize your site for all of them? No, I would suggest you focus on the top search engine: Google.

You've heard people say things like: "Sure, I'll google it," meaning they will perform a search on Google.

When a noun (person, place or thing) like Google suddenly starts operating as a verb (action word), its influence canÕt be ignored.

I haven't heard anyone say they'll Altavista anything, yet. So stay focused on optimizing your site for Google and you'll be on your way to getting closer to the top, one results page at a time.

See Also...

• Search Engine Advertising... Is There an Alternative?
• A Search Engine Secret that Will Increase Your Rank
• Must-Have Search Engine Tools Every Webmaster Needs
• Untold Truths About Free Search Engine Submissions
• Why You Should Hire Search Engine Services for Your Online Business
• Increase Your Website Conversion Rate With Guaranteed Web Traffic
• Search Engine Site: Ways To Install Search Engine On Your Site
• 5 Ways of Generating Google Traffic
• Successful Techniques of Getting More Google Traffic
• How To Generate Web Traffic Using Twitter

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