At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high Search Engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in Search Engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what Search Engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage. The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page.

To increase Search Engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search Engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into Search Engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on Search Engines, this text is essential. However, the Search Engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your Search Engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called META tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that META tags are the key to high Search Engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a Search Engine will use META tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with META tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are META tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a META tag would read: META name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your Search Engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of Search Engine rankings. Almost all Search Engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular Search Engine, the Search Engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low Search Engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign.

Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your Search Engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search Engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a Search Engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your Search Engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

Forum Marketing
You can start posting in various forums to enhance your presence, as more people will get to know you, and will trust you. For getting traffic from the forums, you must put your signature in your profile, which is nothing but text of about 3-4 lines, with a link to your site or the affiliate’s website placed strategically.

Traffic Exchanges
Here, you need to visit other people’s website, who will reciprocate by visiting yours. It’s not a one-to-one relationship. On an average, you need to visit about 2 websites to get one visit to yours.

Free Classifieds
Nowadays, free classified ads have lost their significance. Due to being free, many people opt for this medium for placing ads, which results in ads getting unnoticed. But trying your luck is not a bad idea. Since it’s free, placing a classified ad is good. Who knows, you might get a visitor!

Press Releases
Your website will be overloaded with visitors when the website is printed in a press release. But your press release must be written properly, and not just like an on-the-face advertisement. This works!

Resource Box
A resource box involves you putting a link for people to click on. But ensure that the site you wish the readers to visit is in relation to the article of yours. A resource box can get good traffic to your site, and it should not be considered an unimportant option.

Email
Emails can be used effectively to get people visit your website. Emails are inexpensive, and can give huge profits to online campaigns of marketing. Emails can be used to update the customers about your company, your product, etc.

Google AdWords
For targeted traffic, Google AdWords is a great option for webmasters to use. The keywords being used with AdWords are very important when you are targeting people to visit your site. The keywords must also be relevant, and must be in relation to the product that is being sold.

Title Tag
A blog must have an attractive title in order to get a good ranking in the search engines. The title plays a vital role, but the actual post must be well-written and informative as well. That will get your site good traffic.

Submission to Directories
Though the submission of your blog to the various online directories is a monotonous job, it is very important since it goes a long way in increasing the blog popularity. Every directory that you submit the link to, results in better rankings.

HubPage and Squidoo
Both of these allow you to focus on a specified topic, and write on it. Also, both of them permit you to bring RSS feeds.

Link Exchange Partnership
You can put your website’s link on another good website, and allow the webmaster of that website to place a link in yours. By this, both the parties gain.

Joint Ventures
Exchange email promotions, and through the exchange of ads, find a partner. In this way, you can reach the co-ventures customer base, and vice-versa.

Affiliate Programming
You can offer your products’ affiliate program. If done through an expert, it will increase both sales revenue and profit.

Subscriber List
You must get your website visitors involved by providing them value when they join your mailing list. Regular communication with them and asking for their inputs and opinion about the site would be a very good idea.

Tell-a-Friend
You can place a “Tell-a-friend” script on the website, which would help you get more traffic as visitors might recommend your website to other people.

Paid Reviews
There are many freelancers out there, so you can surely pay someone to review your blog. This is a great way of exposure for those who are new to blogging.

Re-Visits
You can turn the one-time visitors to regular visitors to your website by recycling of traffic. You can direct them to many sites at a single instant.

Error Page
You can design a 404-error page for your site. A link can be placed in that website, which directs the visitor to the main website.

Promotion
If you’ve liked a product that you’ve used, you can leave behind a testimonial and put a link to your website at the end. This will get adequate traffic to your site.

Offers
You can offer the visitors free gifts. For instance, a free e-Book would do the trick to get greater number of subscribers.

Yahoo! Answers
Answer people’s queries on Yahoo! and place a link at the bottom, to your website.

Customer Support
If you offer your customers good support, they will refer you to others and this will increase your popularity manifold.

Commenting
You can comment on blogs, and put a link to your website at the bottom. This can build traffic very well.

Screensaver
You can make a good screensaver for your company, and make it attractive. The company logo can be placed in the screensaver for branding purposes.

Keywords
If you have any profile on the internet, put necessary keywords and give back a link to your website.

eBay
Selling any item as a charity auction on eBay will result in the charities linking back to your eBay auction, and also to the main website.

Blog Entries
Whenever you post an entry in your blog, always make sure that you link it back to your site. You can also create more than one blogs, and have a link to the main website.

Advertisement
Proper advertisement at necessary classification at Craigslist would be beneficial. Also, it will be beneficial to post advertisements in many densely-populated cities, which would enhance exposure.

Quantity of Traffic
Quantity is to be focused on for non-targeted traffic.

Quality of Traffic
Quality is to be given preference for targeted traffic.

Non-Targeted Traffic
Money is lost on advertisements for non-targeted traffic.

Targeted Traffic
Sales can be generated with targeted traffic.

RSS
Make sure that you have the RSS subscription forms or Feedburner handy and always keep a track of it personally.

Email Subscription
Ensure proper configuration of the free-of-cost e-mail subscription.