Step 1: Design - The first step towards optimizing your site for search engines is to give your website careful thought in its design. The design starts with a domain name that contains keywords describing your website. For example, www.starcomputerparts.com is a website selling computer parts and computer hardware, which contains the keywords "computer parts" in the domain name. If possible, register your domain name for 5-10 years out, the search engine will value your site on a higher level than a site that is only registered for a year.

Second, choose a title for your site that accurately describes the content of your web page. For instance, the title for Star Computer Parts is Star Computer Parts.com | Buy Computer Parts | Laptops | Software | Networking. The title says the site sells computer parts along with some examples of what kinds of computer parts can be found on the website.

Third, the description should give a more in-depth overview of the website and a bit more in depth of what content is contained on the web page. The description, "Buy computer parts, computer hardware, software, networking, modems, and more online", describes more about the website and some of the product categories that are offered. It is important to mention not to use promotional language in the title, description, and keywords as the search engine may construe your site as 'spam'. Also, avoid the use of 'FREE' in the site's headers as this is a red flag to search engines of 'spam'.

The site is now complete and carefully written, but it won't make profits yet unless the search engines can find it. The subject of marketing your site will be described in the next few steps.

Step 2: Site Submissions - Once your website is complete, be sure there are no broken links. There is no quicker way to lose a potential customer if you have broken images or broken links on your site. When you are sure everything is looking top notch, start submitting your site to Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google, and other major search engines. By submitting your site, it will put the site in the queue of sites to crawl. Crawling is when a search engine goes to your site and follows all the links down through the site, indexes into its database what it finds. There is no guarantee the search engine will index the website, but a well written site has a very strong chance of being found. Read carefully the guidelines for each search engine and be sure your website meets those standards.

Step 3: Directories - There are thousands of directories on the web that you can submit your site to and be listed. Here is a list of directories to get you started: http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/free-web-directories.html . Be sure to read the submission guidelines carefully for each directory, failure to do so will most likely cause your submission to be rejected. It is important to understand that directories are different than search engines. Directories are human-edited and search engines are maintained by massive servers that electronically index websites they find.

Step 4: Articles - One of the fastest way to build up links to your site is through articles and press releases, which I'll discuss next. Write an article on some expertise you have that is relevant to your website, then post it to an article site and every time your article gets used on a site, a link is generated to your web page. For example, this article is being written based on my experience with Search Engine Optimization and is relevant to my website. The links used in this article are a link to my website to illustrate the points I am making throughout the article.

Step 5: Press releases - Press Releases are used to announce to the world that you are open for business and where potential customers can find you. It is important for both articles and press releases that you carefully proofread it before submission for a better chance of the media picking them up and publishing your article.

There are many other ways to promote your website, you just have to be creative and many of them do not cost anything to promote. Some other pay services to consider are Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture, both are pay-per-click marketing programs that can almost instantly generate traffic.
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