Being ranked on page one of the major search engines is one of the best marketing strategies you can employ.  It assists to bring you targeted traffic to your site which can, if executed correctly, greatly increase the chances of achieving your web site’s goals.   Employing a professional to optimize your web site for you is still less expensive than almost any other type of conventional advertising.  For example a Toronto search engine optimization company may cost a few hundred dollars a month for their services.  This may seem like a lot but you could easily burn through a thousand dollars with traditional paper ads.  And optimizing your site can give it much a broader exposure.

However there are things you can do yourself to successfully have your web site ranking on page one if you are willing to put in a little time and effort.

Before you even begin to optimize your site you should think about which keywords you want to rank for.  Think like a customer to discover keywords phrases they may use to find a similar product or service.  The more you can dream up the better.  These can then be put into on-line services like Google’s keyword research tool or on sites such as Wordtracker or Wordze.  Services such as these allow you to see if your selected phrases are actually being used and how often.  A large number of searches often equals a potentially great amount of visitors.

Keep in mind that frequently the keyword phrases with the most number of searches are usually the most competitive as well.  That does not mean that you cannot rank for them, only that it can take quite a lot of work.  Try to choose a mix of competitive and non-competitive phrases.  This will help give you a short term and long term goal.

The content contained within your site has to be your next focus.  It needs to incorporate the keywords that you are attempting to target but in a way that flows.  Always remember that real visitors will be looking at your content and it should be written with that in mind.

The more pages you can add to your site the better.  Adding content keeps the search engines returning.  This can increase the chances of getting you ranked for many more phrases than the ones you are strategically focusing on.

Your last step is by far the most critical and that is your linking strategy.  One of the top factors a search engine uses in determining a site’s ranking is the number of other sites that are linking to you.  However you cannot just get any site to link to yours.  They should be from sites that are of the same theme to yours.

If you a have a site that has a real estate theme then you should come up with a real estate search engine optimization strategy.  This might include obtaining links from various real estate agent sites, blogs, or anything related to that industry.  Target quality and not necessarily quantity.

One of the premier ways to do this is with article marketing.  You write information in the form of articles. These are then posted to various directories for inclusion such as Article Alley.  Your site will receive a link pointing back to it in exchange for giving out free content.  This is step you could be doing a minimum of once a week.

You will incrementally start to see your site’s traffic and ranking begin to increase.  The greater the time period you optimize your site for the better your results will be.  And all it required was some time and effort.

Every major search engine uses what are called “Backlinks” as a huge part of their judgement of a site’s rankings.  You can equate it to every link pointing from another site to yours is a vote for you and the greater the number of votes you get the higher your site’s ranking will be.

That seems like child’s play right?  All you have to do to achieve better search results and more visitors is to increase your backlinks.  You could easily spend a lot of money hiring a Toronto search engine optimization company to do it for you.  Now comes the hard part for many which is how or where to get these links.  Lets look at ways you can get massive amounts of backlinks that won’t cost you a dime.

You have probably heard the saying “content is king” when it comes to search engines.  There are couple of reasons for this.  Visitors that arrive at your site need something to hold their interest and search engines need to index it. Content is also necessary for all other sites for the same reasons. This part can be used to your advantage.  They need content so give it to them.

Compose an article on a topic that is closely related to your website’s theme. It should be no shorter than 500 words but you can go as high as 1000 words. Adding in your site’s keywords is good but only if it does not interfere with the flow of your article.  In the end what you are trying to accomplish is to put out quality information.

Now you are going to give this article away for free, but with a stipulation.  Post it to an article directory such as Article Dashboard for free.  These directories have two purposes.  They display your content on the site but as well enable others to use that article on their own sites and above all give permission for the content creator to place a link back to their website in a section called the Resource Box.

Inside the resource box you are adding a brief bio about yourself. That’s nice, but what you are really looking for is to add a link to your site.  So every time a site posts your article they are also be posting your website’s link.

Don’t just submit your article to one or two directories.  The more sites you post your article to the more mileage you will get from it.  If your article is on twenty directories that means that there are 20 sites that are linking to your site.  But if those directories syndicate your article to just 5 sites each your links jump to one hundred with no extra effort.  In many niches like real estate this will be a huge step in getting your site to the top of the search engines.  However if you want to put together a proper real estate search engine optimization strategy you will need to do a little more.

You may now take your content a step beyond and turn your article into a podcast.  To accomplish this you can either record yourself reading your article or use a site like odiogo.com that can convert the text into speech.  Before you begin get yourself a blog which can easily be done with Wordpress or Blogger.  This is easy and you can have a blog up and running in a few minutes.

By following this guide you will be able to boost your search engine rankings and drive targeted visitors to your site.  In no time you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.