I have seen my site hit #3 at Google, and some of my fellow entrepreneurs are
wondering how I did it. Well, it's no big secret, and it won't cost you anything but
your time. Here's what I did:

1. I searched online for information about the title and description tags to
get a better idea of what they should say. http://www.selfpromotion.com is a
great site for this kind of information. It's all about search engine
positioning, and it's free to sign up. However, your account only stays active
for 4 weeks, after which the webmaster asks that you donate
money to his site to keep your account active.

2. I used Overture's free keyword tool at
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Just enter
keywords that are relevant to your site, and Overture will generate the most
popular search terms that people are using. I picked the most popular terms
(making sure they were relevant), and made a list of keywords for each page of
my site in Notepad.

2. Next, I visited http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html. This handy
tool will check your meta tags and tell you if there are too many characters
in your title, keyword and description. The above site is just one of many
meta tag analyzers available on the net, so beware - every analyzer says
something different when it comes to how many characters your meta tags should
have. My advice? Pick one and stick with it, at least for a while. Otherwise, you
will just get frustrated.

3. As soon as I uploaded my pages with their new meta tags, I resubmitted to
the search engines using (the former) World Submitter -
http://www.worldwidepromoter.com/?strategy. Note: there are some search
engines that require you to submit your site manually in order to get listed.
Selfpromotion.com has great information and articles about how to properly
submit to these engines. I wouldn't suggest submitting to the search engines
more than once or twice per month, unless you want to run the risk of being accused
of spamming them.

4. If I see the opportunity to add my link on a relevant site, I go for it. The more
links your site has to other sites, the higher you will rank in the search
engines. However, you will want to avoid linking with sites that are your direct
competition.

You may just find that selfpromotion.com is the only place you need to
go for information about search engine positioning. I did quite a bit of
research and found several sites with great information, so I just tried to
combine them all. Am I a glutton for punishment? Probably ;) But even though
it took hours to redo all of my meta tags from scratch, it was well worth it
to see my site in Google's Top 10!

Elizabeth Piotrowski
------------------------------------
Powerful ad copy is the key to producing the visits and
sales you want. Drop by http://www.strategyadservice.com/?alp
for low-cost, effective solutions!

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