Before you start to optimize your web pages, you should know some things about website promotion and search engine optimization.

Why do high search engine rankings increase your sales?


High search engine rankings are the perfect way to get more website visitors, more
customers and more sales. Recent statistics show that having high search engine
rankings is the key to the success of your online business:


1. Your customers are on the Internet and they have money

More than 1 billion people use the Internet (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings). Web users
spend twice as much time online as watching TV (Source: Stanford Institute for the
Quantitative Study of Society). Consumers spend more than $143.2 billion online per
year.

These people have money, they want to buy and they could be your customers.


2. Your customers use search engines

More than 80% of all Internet users find new websites through search engines
(Source: Georgia Tech/GVU Users Survey). That means that millions use search
engines every day to find websites.

3. These people are interested in your goods and services

Search engine users are some of the most qualified and motivated visitors to your
website you will ever have. After all, they have taken the initiative to hunt for online
resources on a certain topic. And then they clicked your link to learn more.

Why do you have to optimize your web pages?

Some people think that it is enough to submit a website to as many search engines as
possible to get high rankings. Unfortunately, that is not the case. If you do not
optimize your web pages, then you won't get high search engine rankings.


1. Not all websites can have high rankings

There are billions of web pages on the Internet. It's obvious that not all of them can
be listed in the top 10 results on search engines. Search engines only list web pages
that they find relevant to a special keyword. You must make sure that your website is
such a site.

If search engines cannot find out that your website is about fishing equipment, they
cannot give your website high rankings for that keyword. The process of changing
your web pages so that search engines find them relevant is called search engine
optimization (SEO).


2. Your website must appear in the top 10 results

75% of searchers never look further than page one (Source: Georgia Institute of
Technology). Most search engines display ten results on the first page; and very few
searchers click the links to look at the second page.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen points out: "Users almost never look beyond the
second page of search results." Danny Sullivan, ClickZ Search Engine Marketing
Columnist, puts it out this way: "Being listed 11 or beyond means that many people
may miss your website."


Ok ..next we'll see about:How do search engines rank web pages?