Optimising your Page Ranking

Have you ever gone through the often depressing exercise of typing in keywords, even specific ones, on a search engine like Google, only to find your site buried in the muddy depths of page three? At this point, may I suggest that you have probably done one of three things, a) shrugged your shoulders and elected to market your services or goods in old-fashioned ways, b) got dispirited and closed your site down, or, c) made some enquiries about changing the situation so that your Web site ranked somewhere high on page 1 instead of down there in the mud.

It is you C people that will most likely be reading this article, and you are definitely the category of Web Owners who I believe will benefit both of us, by reading this article.

So just how do you go about improving the position of your website on a search engine, when a potential customer of yours tries to find goods or services in your area that you can offer them?

Well firstly let us get through some of the verbage. The measure of whether you are top 10 on page 1 of the search result, or somewhere else, (which really translates to nowhere), is all down to a calculation called page ranking or PR for short. Okay, so now you know this, let us discuss how you can increase that PR so as to drive real live prospective customers to your site in ever increasing numbers.

The major search engines all use a similar algorithm to determine the PR of any given site as a result of any given keyword search. The full detail of how that algorithm is constructed is beyond the scope of this short article, so let's discuss the dot points.

The number of hits your site receives is taken into account, as is the volume of content, and the time you have been continuously online. However, the most powerful criteria the search engine will use is something loosely described as peer linkage. Peer linkage, what on earth is that I hear you ask? Peer linkage expressed very simply is a count of how many sites, with relevance to yours, have chosen to have a link to your site.

By way of and example; Pete the plumber from Anytown has a website. He is a successful plumber and has developed strong relationships with various plumbing supply companies in his area. Because of this relationship those plumbing supply companies have chosen to place a link back to Pete's website on their websites. They choose to do this, as they find him to be an honest tradesman who represents the craft of plumbing well, and who undoubtedly supports their busnesses by buying his supplies from them. What Pete possibly doesn't realise is that his site will have a very favourable PR 'hit', largely due to the fact that his local suppliers all carry a link back to him. This is a classic example of peer linkage in operation. In addition, the higher the PR that the plumbing supply sites have, the more upwards leverage our friend Pete will experience as a result of them choosing to link back to him.

Does this scenario fit your business and your website? If so, could you, (or would you), do the necessary legwork to have relevant peer sites place a link back to your site, on their site? If the answer is potentially yes, but there aren't that many hours in the day, read on for a solution.

There is a whole industry out there devoted to assisting you, for a fee, to optimise your search engine ranking or PR. This industry is known collectively as search engine optimisation, or SEO for short. For a fee, usually a very big fee, they will take your web address and tweak it to maximise your PR. Want to know how they do it?

Well the main way for them to optimise your search engine results is to create peer sites, mimicking the example given above of Pete and his suppliers, and make sure that those peer sites contain a link back to your site. So what, in internet terms constitutes a site? Does it have to be a full-blown bells and whistles website? No it does not. It just has to have what is known as an HTTP address, in other words a unique Internet address that is searchable by everyone. One page is fine, as long as that page contains information relevant to your site, along with a link back to your site. By a million miles the most time and cost efficient method of achieving these requirements is to write an article that is relevant to your business goods or services and publish it on the Internet.

My suggestion is simply this. Cut out the cost, and cut out the middleman, and create these articles yourself.

So what does this entail? Well it means you need to be able to write, at least 6, (preferably 10 to 12), articles the contents of which bear a strong relationship to your business and your site, and have them published on the Internet. No, they don't have to be War and Peace, 4 or 500 words minimum is acceptable, just ensure that it is relevant to your site and that it is free of spelling and grammatical errors. Oh and hey, don't forget the all important inclusion of the link back to your website.

Okay, so you've got your articles written and I hear you ask, now what! Well I suggest you find an article site that accepts articles from authors, just like you, and publishes them for free on the Internet. This gives your article its unique Internet address, and therefore the peer support that the search engines seek to determine your page ranking. What's even better, is that other sites can (and do) adopt your article as their own, and by publishing it on their site, spreading the distribution of your article, thereby working to further increase your page ranking.

So how can sites like this exist, publishing articles for free? Do they on the other side charge people to read, download or print your article? No they do not. These types of sites rely on the targeted advertising that is shown on them. Advertising aimed at you the author, as well as all the people who may choose to read print or download your articles.

One final tip, and a breath of fresh air to authors. Instead of joining all these article sites one by one, why not sign up with a marketer who will accept your article and then in turn distribute it widely on your behalf. Article Marketer is one such service. Have a look at the costs, and determine how much your time is worth. Are you really saving money when you are frequently diverted from the main game of writing those articles?

All the very best of luck maximising your footprint on the gigantic world wide web.