Search engine marketing involves getting your website listed with the many search engines available. Having your website listed means that when someone does a search for something they need, such as flowers or gift baskets, then your website will come up in the search results as a possible lead on what they are looking for. Clicking the link on the results page will take them directly to your website, and hopefully end in a sale.

To gain any kind of success through search engine marketing, people have to be able to find your website. By implementing the tools to optimize your website, either through software programs or with a search engine marketing firm, your website will become more accessible to potential customers and visitors.

To get your website in the search engines, you not only need to have a website optimized for them, you need to work on getting your link onto other websites. This can be done through link exchanges, buying ad space, or even posting for free on website directories or on the classifieds page. However, placing your link on a website that has a low ranking in the search engines isn’t going to help you much. The higher-ranking websites will ensure that your link will be seen, because they have a lot of traffic, are crawled by spiders, and will bring up your ad or link on the search engines when someone does a search.

Search engine marketing is one of the best options you have for getting noticed online. Your website is just a speck, on the virtually endless World Wide Web, and without the help of search engine marketing, no one would even know you exist.

According to registereverywhere.com, there are roughly 240 search engines in the world and only about 12 of those are considered to be major search engines. The most popular ones being Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, Altavista, Netscape, Lycos. Hotbot, AOL, Iwon, LookSmart, and OpenSource Directory.

Your search engine marketing efforts should include getting your website listed in the top engines. Most of them will allow webmasters to submit their link to the engine for free, or you can hire a search engine marketing firm to do it for you. Hiring someone will usually ensure that your website will achieve high rankings due to the optimization work that is done on your website, and because it is a paid service, you will get your website in the search engine’s sponsored listings.

Search engines use software programs that are referred to as robots, spiders, and crawlers to index your website in the engine. The software automatically follows links around the web and sends all the information back to the engine to be indexed. That’s why it may take a few days for new information on your website to be updated in the search engine. The amount of time it takes to get your website initially indexed depends on the engine itself.

All search engine marketing work should involve SEO (search engine optimization) to achieve good rankings. Good rankings result in a lot of traffic to your website. Search engine optimization is something you can do yourself, or you can hire a professional to do it for you.

SEO includes choosing the best keywords and key phrases for your website, the less competitive they are (infrequently used by other webmasters), the better chance you have of getting decent rankings. Do a search of your competitors and find out what keywords they are using, and then try to come up with different ones. Think about the kinds of keywords and key phrases that you type into a search engine search box, what would you type in if you were looking for the product or service that you sell?

Title tag descriptions. These are the words that appear at the top of your web browser in the blue box. Again, look at what your competition is putting up there. Avoid using your website’s business name; instead use words that describe your website’s content. The html for the title tags is this,

Description tags. This should explain to your visitors what your website is all about, because this is the description that shows up on the search engine results page. Keep it short and sweet, entice your readers to click on your link to go to your website, because if they do, they will find what they want. The html code for your description is,

Keyword tags. Using the html, List your chosen keywords and key phrases in order from most important to least important, and use the keywords you list here throughout your website’s actual content.

Headlines. These help search engines figure out how significant your content is, and also make it easier for your visitors to find what they are looking for. Your headlines should look like this,

Pizza Dough Recipes

use the appropriate number according to your font size, the higher the number, the bigger the font.

Alt tags. This is a commonly forgotten form of SEO, and refers to your website’s image descriptions. A lot of search engines use the alt tags to ensure that your website is listed under the right search terms. If you move your mouse over an image on your website, a box should show up with a short description of the image. Include your keywords or key phrases in the brief description of your image. Alt tags can be added into the body of your website locating where each image is (it will start like this

Naming pages. The names of your pages throughout the website should be descriptive and describe what is on that particular page using hyphens to separate them. For example, pizzadoughrecipes.com/our-famous-cookbook.html accurately describes what is on that page, and may help when it comes to search engine marketing.

Good content. Placing a lot of well written, informative articles, fact sheets, checklists, etc., using your keywords, key phrases, and descriptions can help make your website search engine friendly.

Website layout. Having a nicely laid out website will make it easier for your visitors to find their way around your pages, not to mention user friendly for search engine robots, spiders, and crawlers to index your content.

Links. Get your link listed on other good ranking websites that are related to your website’s content. Even having a few links on other high-quality websites can increase your search engine rankings.