My
preferred way to reach customers is to promote my website to make it
rise in the search rankings. You’ll here the term “SEO” used a lot
these days. It stands for “search engine optimization”. This term is
used by those who will make your business successful and by those who
will take all of your money and not help you out one bit. I now do my
own SEO. I adjust my websites text and network with other sites to make
my site more popular with the search engines. Be very careful in hiring
someone to help you out with this. They can hurt your website as much
as help it. I go to two trusted sources to learn about SEO. First is
SEO Book with Aaron Wall and the second is SEO moz. They both have free
and paid sections to learn about SEO. I would be sure to research and
have a basic understanding of SEO before paying for their paid forums.
In
order to be listed in the results for a search engine, you will need to
submit your site to the search engine. Again, there are companies that
will do this for you for a fee. Search engines have complex
mathematical algorithms which search your website and will give you a
ranking based on the qualities of your site. The factors that determine
a high ranking are closely guarded by the search engines and for good
reason. Have you ever searched for something and had nothing but bogus
results at the top. Perhaps you’ve clicked on a promising result only
to find it is another search engine with more results. Google and yahoo
want you to find what you are looking for because if you don’t , you
will stop using their search engine. They are trying
to
rank the web pages so that the most relevant results end up at the top.
This is a complex job when everybody is competing for the top positions
including those who have no business being at the top. For this reason
they can’t publish what will get a page ranked high. People do study it
and look at the websites in the top results to guess what made them
rise to the top. I should also mention that the rules change all the
time as the search engines try to get and keep the most relevant results
at the top. My best advice to you is to try to compete for just a few
keywords that actually describe your product. Remember the search
engines are trying to get good results for the searchers. I would not
try and “trick” the search engines into ranking your site high for a
search where it does not belong.
I believe there is a
great deal of opportunity out there for the homesteader who would be
business owner. I find more and more that I am buying my goods and
services from small home businesses. The internet offers a growing
marketplace and a chance to compete. In my own life it has become the
perfect compliment to low-tech simple living. Good luck with your
enterprises.
