To rank well in the search engines your webpage needs to be totally dedicated to the specific search terms. So if you want your site to be on the front page of Google under the search term ‘what do ants eat?' your page needs to have lots of quality content about what ants eat. As well as quality content on your page you need to ensure the title of your page describes what the page is about. So if you're targeting ‘what do ants eat?' make sure the title is called ‘what so ants eat?' This might sound very simple and your right it is, but so many people get it wrong. The titles of every web page play an important part in search engines as it states the title of the page. You wouldn't title a page about cats ‘information on dogs' now would you. The biggest mistake most webmasters make is titling your the home page ‘home'. This tells us nothing about your webpage.

Another aspect in ranking high in the search engines is having your pages indexed. A webpage that is not in a search engines index will never be found. The more pages you have indexed the more chances you have of coming up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). To get your web pages indexed you need to tell the search engines about them. The best way is to add links to your website on already indexed pages and better quality pages the better. This brings me nicely on to link building.

As well as high quality content the search engines now look at the number of outside websites that link back to your website. Link popularity measures the quality and quantity of other web sites that link to specific sites on the Internet. Link popularity is another part of the jigsaw in getting your website higher up the search engines. Search engines think if people are linking to your website then your website must be good. This makes perfect sense as no one would want to link to your site if they thought your site wasn't any good.

That is it really, high quality content and high quality links. Basically it's all about making your site the best in your industry. If you have the time you can do this yourself but most companies who are serious are search marketing enlist the help of an SEO company. Search Engine Optimisation campaigns are the best way to improve your visibility in the search engines. Many companies have a marketing budget and if you are trying to target business from the internet an SEO campaign is the only way to go. Depending on what your competitors are doing depends on how much time is needed on SEO. With some very competitive search terms a full time campaign of up to 30 hours a week might be needed. For less competitive search terms, a day a week might be enough. Be wary though as there are many SEO sharks who take a lot of money but don't deliver. Always ask to see previous results from past or present clients. If they promise you a number one position, be very dubious as no-one can guarantee number 1 positions unless they are search terms with very few search results which very few people would search for anyway.