Posted by Alex Dupris


There is an old saying in real-estate. There are three things that matter: Location, location, and location!!!" Making money online is exactly the same; it's all about locating your site high on the list of search engines. This article will explain the basics of getting good search engine placement, which will ultimately drive traffic to your site making your online business successful and profitable!

Too many people get drawn into trying to optimize their site too early, instead spend time trying to get traffic to your site. If you put a business in a good location people will shop there because it's convenient. But if the location is bad enough, no matter how well organized a store may be, it will fail. Like a brick and mortar store, no matter how well engineered your webpage happens to be, it will never be profitable unless you can drive lots of traffic to it. And conversely, a poorly designed site that attracts large traffic volumes will rake in substantial earnings. Postpone optimizing your sites to make the most out of each visitor until you have enough visitors to judge what methods are most effective.

You'd be mistaken to think that it is merely an analogy to say that location is crucial for both internet business and brick and mortar businesses alike. Although your internet business is not constrained by the physical aspects of the real world, its location is just like and as important as a physical location. For example, it is good for a jewelry store to be located in or near a mall because the mall attracts people who are interested in fashion. Shoppers are really at the mall to buy clothes, however they're also likely to buy jewelry to complete their new outfit! If you've been reading into the details you've found that there are two important factors in making the mall an ideal location for a jewelry store. First is the close proximity to other stores. The people who ended up in the jewelry store didn't necessarily go to the mall to buy jewelry, but they stopped in because of the convenience factor. And secondly is the close relation of the types of stores in the mall. The type of shopper the mall attracts to buy a new outfit is exactly the type of shopper who is inclined to buy jewelry. Both the clothing store and the jewelry store benefit from each other.

Search engines use what is called Page Ranking to determine how valuable your website's location is. Page ranking works by counting the number of incoming links to your site, as well as how popular the site making the link happens to be. If your webpage has only a few links, this is analogous to your store being located out in the countryside. If your webpage has lots of incoming links, this means you're getting closer to the prime real-estate. However, a lot of incoming links from unpopular websites will not help you. This is like opening a jewelry store in a floundering mall. Sure there are lots of related stores, but they are no shoppers! Also, lots of incoming links from unrelated sites is like opening your jewelry store next to a chain of hardware stores. You won't get the targeted traffic you want and search engines look for this. Ultimately you need to locate yourself close to lots of similar online stores by getting links from related websites.

Most internet marketers intrinsically understand that consumers will search no more than the top few search engine results. If you want to make lots of money, this is where you'll have to be. But how can you increase your webpage's page rank and popularity? Lot's of people will tell you that you need good keywords and to perform Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While the use of keywords and SEO are important, your webpage must ultimately provide something valuable to the internet community. You cannot simply list a set of keywords and expect to drive potential customers to your website. You must network with sites that are related to your website, and provide the customer with information related to the keywords in your site.

How do you get links to your website? You can either buy them, or you can trade for them. Although paying for links is extremely effective there are two caveats you must know about. Page ranks can be faked and you can get links for free. There is quote from John Wanamaker. "Half the money I spend on marketing is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Before wasting any money buying a link, be sure to use a service such as Alexa to determine how popular a website actually is. This way you don't throw away any money. Also consider that in exchange for writing this article I will gain some number of links to my website, there are ways to market your site for free.