There are two main parts to promoting a website in the search engines. Firstly there is the onsite analysis, looking for what words are used in each page, and the architecture of the page. Secondly there is the off site promotion which looks at how the search engines see your website in terms of popularity and relevance.

Onsite Optimisation.

One of the first things that should be done when you are looking to promote a website is having a look to see how a search engine reads your page. Search engines cannot really see images and flash content, so the text on your website is a very important part of the promotional technique. The page should consist of a title (the text which is in the top left of the browser, usually above the back and forward buttons) and a primary heading for that page. The title and the heading should be relevant to each other. Ideally, the main words that you are targeting for that page should also be included in the url of the web page. The text within the page should also contain wording or phrases that again are relevant to the topic of the page.

But you cannot use just any words. It is important before you plan the content of a page, that you understand what people are actually typing into the search engines to find your products or services. There are many tools available on the Internet which will give you a good idea which keyword phrases to choose. Some of these results get skewed by people checking their own or competitor sites in the search engines but we will be able to determine which keyword phrases are more poular than others. Once we have identified a multitude of terms that people actually search for, then you can ensure that your website contains these phrases within the web pages. The more popular keyword phrases being used for the title and variations of the phrases being used in the headings and content. This list of quality keyword phrases will need to be used when we are looking at offsite promotion. It should be remembered to take a laymans view when identifying the correct keyword phrases to use. Scrutinise the phrases and make an educated decision if they really will convert your traffic to a call to action.

Offsite Promotion.

We need to target Google uk as the dominant search engine in the UK. Google is a link based search engine, meaning that it indexes web pages depending on how they are linked to other web based documents. There are three main things we need to look at with offsite promotion. The text you use within your link (known as the anchor text), the relevancy of the website that is linking to your page in comparison to your own website and the authority or popularity of the website that the link comes from. The best links that you can get are know as in-content links. These are links directly to your website page from a block of text which has relevancy to your website. They are non reciprocal links.

The anchor text is the text within the link that is directed to your web page. We will need to use one of the phrases based on the keyword phrase analysis you have previously done, this tells the search engine that the web page it links to has a relevance to the text within the link.

The link must be from a relevant website. A good start to getting a link from a relevant webpage is by looking into categories of directories where there are links of a similar theme. Not just normal website directories but also article directories, social bookmarking websites and press release sites which all have categorised structures.

Many of these websites have simple forms where you can submit your website and after review of your site, they may link back to you. The link that comes back to your website needs to be a direct link so a search engine can follow a path through their category structure, see your link which is relevant to that page, follow the link to your website which is again relevant to the category and anchor text it has come from. Your page then is relevant to the previous category, link and holds the relevancy within its content. Its all about relevancy and it is a word game.

It is not just directories that are an area to investigate in getting a link. With the introduction of Google universal search there are listings starting to appear in Google UK which are based on news, images, videos and blogs. There are some incrediby popular websites out there which will allow you to show the world your images, videos, publish your news and syndicate your blogs. Taking an example of a popular image sharing website. They allow you to upload your images and insert a description of that image. They will also allow you to add tags (which is a way of creating your own category structure). In your profile on that site they will allow a link to your website and links can also be inserted in the description of your images. Assuming your images and videos or whatever media you are adding to these sites is relevant to your business then the relevancy trail continues. These popular sites have the authority that we are looking for with our link.

You may want to also target individual websites to exchange links. Now this has been frowned upon but taking an approach based on the foundations of the Internet, a link swap is good if there is relevancy and usefulness. The last thing you want to do is blast lots of email addresses with emails directed at the webmaster asking for a link exchange. You need to investigate the website and see what use a link from them will be to you and what use a link from you will be to them. Whilst you do investigate the website take the time to find a name of a person responsible for the links and even call them to discuss a link exhange. Link exchanges are personal between your site and theirs. You do not want to be penalised for swapping links with non relevant websites.

The link building is a continual process, so just when you think you have got enough links, go out and get some more! But, here is the big problem. The onsite and offsite promotion of a website takes a lot of time and energy. Is there anyone in your business who has the time to do all of this? Normally the answer is no. For now that is. Seeing as the majority of business connections are now online it makes sense that new roles are developing within businesses. Online marketing, Online promoter or whatever title they may have, the target is the same, to generate leads or sales by improving search engine positions for keyword phrases that people are actually searching for.