By Dawn Rowlett
Search Engine Positioning Specialist

During the search engine optimization process, the visibility to your web site should also experience an increase in publicity as you are ready to show your web site off to the world so that you can begin to sell your products and services!

The popularity of a web site is also an important factor to obtaining high search engine rankings.

The number of links pointing to a site from other popular sites and the amount of traffic coming to a site helps the engines determine just how popular a site is.

A lot of quality links, a lot of traffic and a lot of returning traffic will boost your visibility scores significantly.

There are many "wrong" ways to go about the process of increasing visibility. Some are a complete waste of time and others can actually penalize your site in search engines.

A Few Ways To Increase Web Site Visibility

• Seek Advertising Partners
  Arrange with other web masters who have a web site that your visitors might be interested in to trade advertising with you. You advertise for them, they advertise for you. This gives you links to your site, provides additional resources from your site for your visitors and sends more visitors your way.
  
• Get Listed In Directories
  There are thousands of large and small directories out there. Many are topic oriented to a specific market only. Your listing should be in as many directories as possible.
  
• Develop Your Own Directory
  Having your own personal directory helps to increase traffic to your domain when others come in to add their listing. It also helps increase the size of your web site, offers your visitors a multitude of resources they would be interested in.

Helpful Hints
Start Networking
Networking with web site owners and web masters that are in some way related to your own target market is a great way to begin finding advertising partners.

• Text Links Are Best
  Search engines follow these easier and the text allows them to better determine your keyword phrases.
  
• Titles & Descriptions
  The title and description that you use for your advertisement must accurately represent your web site and the keywords that you are targeting.
  
• Familiarize Yourself With Google PageRank
  PageRank is Googles way of calculating how important your web site is. Become familiar with this process as you are seeking advertising partners.

NEVER:

• Sign Up With Link Exchange Programs
  There might be programs out there that our good. Web Submission Services does offer a program that helps others to seek advertising partners. However, many link exchange programs can seriously penalize your web site in the major engines.
  
• Link To FFA Pages
  Better known as a "free for all" links page, these pages contain tons of links that are in no way related to one another or to a specific market. There might be links to automotive sites and links to baby sites or even more extremes. If the page doesn't seem to have a general theme to it of some sort -- stay away!
  
• Link To Unrelated Sites
  It is best not to place advertisements on your site that your visitors would have no reason to be interested in.

Keep Going!
Its a rare occasion that anyone would say that their web site has too many links coming to it or too much traffic and sales. A lot of links and a lot of traffic is always a positive thing. Work on increasing the visibility to your web site on a regular basis.