These days, trying to improve your website search engine ranking can be a long and frustrating nightmare. Being a search engine optimisation specialist and having established my own business, many clients seem to be confused about the long process of how to build website presence in the search engines. Having built my own site from scratch and having struggled to get the desired ranks, one thing is for sure, it does take time.


Many seem to believe that link building will get you the desired ranks in no time. That is quiet wrong. Whilst there is a lot of talk about link building, many seem to forget the basics of website optimisation (content, coding and tags). Search engines like Yahoo! place strong emphasis on these basics whilst Google may favor factors outside our control such as link popularity. So how do we satisfy all search engines?

Notes are as follows:

1. Focus on the things that can be done at your end. This includes:
- Writing efficient code with as much scripting placed into external files.
- Select targeted keywords that do not have a large number or competing pages so that you have more chance to win position for them.
- Write keyword rich content.
- Have Title and Meta tags that are keyword rich and reflect what is written for a page.

2. Directory submissions are a key factor. Some may charge a price for inclusion whilst others may not. It is highly recommended that directory submissions are made simply because a human editor will look at your site, which in turn gives you more points with the search engines.

3. One of the most difficult points to fulfill is link building. If you have a site that offers useful information and services, in time it will generate the required links. There are other ways to speed the process such as writing articles and posting them on certain websites. However, the key factor to link building is not to obtain irrelevant links. This will simply be regarded as spamming and could result in negative consequences.

4. Lastly, the most important point, PATIENCE.

To recap, provided you follow the basic steps and have the patience, your site will climb up the ranks steadily. Link building will help improve your ranks but be careful because it can also harm your visibility if used in the wrong way i.e. obtaining too many links from non-related websites.

David Touri works for SEO Sydney, providing search engine placement services. He is currently working on The Love Club single matchmaking website and Gay Match Maker gay dating service website.