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Search engine advertising should be one of the tools you use in your marketing campaigns. The vast majority of buyers still reach the sites by going through the search engines. You need to have content relevant to the market you are targeting in addition to the products on your website. Search Engines Deliver Free Targeted TrafficPeople use search engines to find information. Provide articles relevant to the product or service you are offering with a text link to the product or service. This content is what will tell the search engines and your visitors that you have what is being sought. Describe the product or service and list the benefits the consumer will get by using your offering. If you write like you are talking to your best friend where you outline the benefits without using hype then ask them to visit your link to see if it fits their needs, you’ll be giving the consumer the ability to qualify themselves because you are not selling. Stating the real or possible benefits leaves the reader with nothing to object to because there is no sales pitch. Get Your Own Domain Name and Hosting AccountSearch engines do not like affiliate sites because of the duplicate content. Spend the $9 or so a year to register your own domain name so you can create your own piece of virtual real estate. The importance of the name you choose cannot be stressed strongly enough. - Your domain name needs to be easy to remember for you and your prospects.
- Your domain name needs to be appropriate for your business if you want it to provide the maximum benefit from the search engines. (Having your primary keyword as part of the URL always helps.)
- Your domain name is easiest to remember if there are no hyphens.
- The .com extension is what most people think of when they think of a web address.
- Use your primary keyword phrase in the title if you can.
- Use meta tags even though the primary search engines don’t pay much attention to them.
- Do NOT use free web hosting accounts. A lot of search engines and search directories refuse to list sites host on free accounts because they aren’t seen as dependable, professional or long term.
- Do NOT center all of your text. We are used to reading from left to right in the western world so centered text is discounted or ignored because we don’t want to strain to read the sites.
- Do NOT load your site with a bunch of images and banners that do not add anything to your sales message. Search engines and people want useful information fast and images slow the loading of the page and seldom contribute to what is being said.
- Keep the font simple such as Verdana or Arial because most computers have these fonts installed and they are easy to read.
- Use title tags on every link and image tags on every image. Both search engine spiders and readers for the visually impaired use these tags to understand what they are seeing.
Manually submit your site to the smaller search engines and niche directories. (Do NOT use the sites that offer to submit your site to anywhere from 80-800 or more search engines and directories because these are often non English speaking sites or they don’t provide the information that’s required to benefit you.) If YOU manually submit your site, you know you are complying with the terms and you can choose the category that fits your site. Choosing the wrong category can get you banned from that search engine or directory. These smaller search engines and directories can have a Google Page Rank that varies from 2 to 6. If you are promoting a relatively unknown website, you cannot afford to lose a potential link from a website that probably has a higher page rank than your website. Some of these search engines and directories require reciprocal links.You will benefit more from having only inbound links but reciprocal links with sites that have similar content are also beneficial. The directories have categories that may give you free targeted traffic and they may also have Google Page Ranks of 3, 4, 5, 6 or more. You must decide whether an exchange of links with a search engine or directory that probably has a better Google Page Rank than your web site and may deliver some highly targeted traffic to you is worth the effort. You decide whether free targeted traffic and exchanging links with search engines similar to the ones listed here are worth your time and effort. Search engines and directories can be a source of free targeted traffic but only if you're listed in them. Here's gift for those of you that are ready to act on the information I've presented in this article. This link is for a zip file that will do a lot of the work for you. Download your free directory submitter.
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Search Engine Advertising and Free Traffic 
