Your Guide To Books

As a real online business owner traffic is king. One of the best ways to get traffic to your web site and increase your sales is to get high search engine listings on Google, Yahoo or MSN. One concern many people who are starting a home-based business online have is about competing with larger web sites. They do not see how they can outrank the major web sites.

That is not necessarily the case. While it might be difficult to outrank them in one set of keywords, with another set you can dominate. We sell a book called “Thomas Jefferson Education.” When we wrote this article, we had a very high 1st page ranking on Google and were only one of two websites that actually sell this book. This gives us a significant competitive advantage when it comes down to making sales from people searching for this book

Do you understand the benefit of this? By focusing my efforts on the keyword and phrase for my book, we get a good search engine placement. At some times in the past, we have even outranked the publisher webpage of the book that we sell. Although Amazon also ranks well for this keyword, they only sell used copies.

One question I am often asked in particular is “Is there a way to know exactly what Google looks for?” Google’s search engine algorithm is as closely guarded as Coca-Cola’s formula for making soda. No one knows what it is exactly.

This is why you should have a certain level of skepticism if someone claims they are going to show you “all the secrets to dominating the search engines.” They really cannot because the only people that TRULY know the secrets work for Google and the specific details of those secrets change all the time.

Does this mean you should not buy search engine optimization books? No, you will learn something of value. However, you just need to know that they cannot teach you everything because they do not know how the algorithm works.

So what are the fundamentals to getting high search engine placements for your selling information business? One of the main fundamentals is the amount of backward links you have to your website. These are links that other websites have that lead their visitors to your web site when they click on it.

The way Google uses back links is it looks at the incoming links to your website and the keywords used. If you have a link that says “From Caterpillar to Butterfly” and your web site has content about butterflies, Google will be able to determine that your website should be ranked for the keyword “butterfly.”

So how do you get the links so Google can make that determination?

1. Linkback exchanges: With a linkback exchange you offer to link to someone else’s website if they agree to link to your website.

2. Write a press release: You can write a press release and submit it online about your company. You need to include a link to your website to get any benefit. If a news website uses your release, they will publish it along with a link back to your web site. An example of a press release site is http://www.free-press-release.com/

3. Writing articles: Another excellent way to get back links is to write articles about the topic your website covers. When you write the article, you should submit it to what are called article directories. These are websites where ezine publishers and website owners looking for content go to. You get a back link from the article directory, which is usually a highly valued website in the eyes of Google. You also get a back link from any websites that use your article. One of the largest directories is located at http://ezinearticles.com/

In my opinion, the simplest way to create backward links for your website is to use articles. If you write a single article, about 300 to 400 words and submit it to 10 article directories, you should have backward links for your web site within a short period of time, which is exactly what a real online business needs.