You have products or services you want to sell? You want to use the internet as your main publicity vehicle? So you want a website? You want to sit atop the rankings for the search engines? You want loads of visitors to your site? You want a high conversion rate from visitors to paying customers? We are all in that situation and it is possible to achieve all of these wants by following a few simple rules.

1. Web Site Design.

Keep it simple with no flashy opening graphics. People searching for products or services do not want to wait while these graphics load and play through. They will probably have gone elsewhere before they get to the ‘nitty gritty' of your site. Text based sites load faster, are more search engine friendly and are more likely to contain information the visitor is searching for. Base your site on plenty of good text and keep the graphics to the absolute minimum required to do the job.

2. Web Site Structure.

Produce as many pages as you can. The bigger the better.. Search Engines give a preference to sites with large numbers of pages. Plan a straightforward navigation path through these pages. Make it simple for people to find what they are looking for on your site and easy to click through onto different pages.

3. Web Site Content

Good quality content is a necessity if your site is to perform well. So what makes good quality content? Firstly it has to be well written from the point of view of grammar and punctuation. Secondly it must contain information into which your keywords can be embedded. Telling people how marvellous your products or services are is not good quality. Telling them what the likely benefits are to them is good quality and a better sales pitch into the bargain. Put yourself in the position of a visitor. Does your site tell them how to solve their problem? Is it informative and easy to read? It should be.

4. Search Engine Positions

Submit to as many free directories as you can find. Look at your competitors backlinks and find sites that you can also submit to. Develop some reciprocal links with related sites. What constitutes a related site is quite flexible so think carefully about these before committing to a link. Link with a wide range of sites with differing page rank values do not only choose those with high page ranks. The bulk of the links should be page rank 3 or 4. Develop a weblog attached to your site and keep this updated, at least once per week. This will attract the search engines to spider your site and will also attract in more links. Write and publish articles which will bring in large numbers of inbound links and by putting them onto your site will update and increase your content.

Four basic rules have been outlined above which if carried through should eventually see your ‘wants' gratified. However I have only skimmed the surface as each of these topics are several articles in themselves, but you should be able to easily find information about each of them. Take on board the advice and your site will be one of the successful ones.