awebBLOG

There are three main factors that determine the search engine ranking of your website:

• Site optimisation
• Site popularity
• Link popularity

Site optimisation is about placing your keywords in the right places on your website and making your website accessible to search engines.

Look for websites and ask them to link to you

There are three ways you can find websites that might want to link to you.

• Go to your favourite search engine and type in some words related to what your organisation does
• Sift through the websites in directories such as Yahoo! or the Open Directory
• Find out who’s currently linking to both you and your competitors, check who’s linking to them, and who’s linking to them, and so on (To see a list of the inbound links to a website go to Google and type in link:http://www.URL.com)

Now that you’ve found these websites, ask them to link to you. A quick phone call or e-mail ought to do the trick. And remember, always mention that linking to your website will benefit their site users and therefore their website. You could also offer a link exchange, where by you both link to each other. If you’re going to do this, it’s wise to link to their website first, before getting in contact.