Why Keywords, Back Links and Link Exchanges can Improve the Bottom Line of Your Online Home Business

There are a wide variety of techniques that can be used to improve the general ranking of your online home based business on the major search engine sites, including Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and a number of others. Why do you want to improve your website's ranking? It holds true that the majority of the internet searchers start their search with a visit to one of the major search sites. Therefore, it is good to try to make sure that your own site pops up when potential customers are searching for what you have to offer in your home business endeavor. If search sites can deliver up your website to the computer screen in front of your potential customer, you could be on your way to make the sale-and with absolutely zero spent out of your own pocket for additional advertising. Cutting expense is always a good thing for any business--and online business at home is no exception to this rule. (And advertising can be expensive.) What you would need to have done to attain this free advertising would have been to make small changes to your the content of your website in ways that the search engines see and appreciate, and have your site float up to the top of the listings.

But how show you do this? Search engine logarithms (formulas that that search sites use of determine what is relevant and what is not) have become more and more complex as the internet has matured. This is necessary so that the Google and the other search sites can render precisely what the searcher is seeking, with little duplication or irrelevant content. It is no longer sufficient to simply list your site in a few online directories to achieve good ranking. The more successful the Google searcher is in finding what he/she is looking for, the more likely it is that that individual will return to that search engine for their needs the next time.

One way that search engines use to find relevant content is through keywords. A keyword is just a word or phrase that identifies what you are promoting. Search engines initially go about the task of determining a precise match for the term that the searcher has typed into the search box. If it is a popular search, there will be a vast number of web pages that have some relation to the search term used. If the search was placed in quotations, then the exact phrase will be pursued (if not in quotes, the search site simply looks for the individual words no matter where they may appear on a page.

So then, it is important to use the proper keywordsones that prospects for your product might use when looking for what you have to offer. If your product or service is very unique, it may be easier to select key words that are very specific, and therefore probably used less often, which results in a smaller number of results. Your market is then more targeted. This can be a positive thing because then you are sure that the prospects who search that term desire specifically what you have to offer in your online home business--for instance, "crossword puzzles for children" is a rather specific category.

If you are selling to the business opportunity seeker, however, you'll find that the search terms can be very popular and therefore harder to specify. Definitely, if there is something particular or unique about your product, this should be reflected in your choice of keywords. What benefits does your product offer that the prospect is looking for? Also, you can use keyword popularity tools to determine what other terms searchers are using to find the type of product you have.

Make sure that your key words appear in the proper place on the webpage. By editing your HTML source code, you can find the correct location of your keywords and specify the keywords you prefer. Some search engines look for keywords in a specific place, while others can spider sites to get a sense of overall use of specific terms on a webpage. It is good to learn more about the preferences of the various search engines so that you can optimize your webpage for the search they are conducting. Formatting such as bolding, placement of keywords within a page title, or keywords appearing as a hyperlink can achieve greater significance in search engine page rank, also.

Link exchanges are very popular among webmasters because search engines recognize and still reward a site that is linked to another one, preferably related in subject matter. Having multiple mutual search links with other sites is not only a factor in achieving page ranking, but will likely render much additional traffic in and of itself.

But what is really more preferred by the search engines are backlinks. Backlinks are those one-way links from another site not related to your own. Detection of a backlink "tells" the search engine that there is another site on the web that considers the content of your site to be so valuable that they wish to direct their own traffic there, with no reciprocal link required.

But beyond the backlinks that may come as others recognize the value of your site over time, you can create backlinks yourself. How? One method is to post comments regularly on large website forums, preferably on sites that are somehow related to your own. At the conclusion of your posts, at the bottom, you may place a "signature" which includes a line about your site and gives its URL. Presumably, if you have posted interesting or valuable comments, readers will want to visit your web site to see what other insights or valuable products you have to offer them. Using your posts to "advertise" the site itself is generally considered a no-no. It is better to write interesting posts related to the thread of the forum topic, and then allow the reader to find you via your website link in the signature if they wish to do so.

Another very often used method of achieving backlinks is to write articles and post them on internet article directories. Articles tend to stay published for a very long time, so a good article can provide some additional traffic flow for yearsso long as your topic is interesting and still relevant. Still another way is to submit your web site to online web directoriessome charge for this, even though many are free.

One thing that the internet does very well is to remember. It remembers forum posts. It remembers articles. It remembers links and backlinks. It remembers your listing in web directories. It is this inherent memory that can serve to greatly improve your bottom line. Do the work once to optimize keywords, and to achieve some one-way and two-way linking, and you may financially benefit for a very long time to come.