We all know that if we are looking for something online, we usually make our first stop a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. It is important to remember this when you are trying to increase traffic to your website. If you look for everything in Google or Yahoo, then the chances are that is what everyone else is doing so as well. So I use a search engine, what is the big deal? I hear you saying. Well the big deal is that you use a search engine and so does everyone else!

But of course I am sure you know that already, so why am I still banging on about it? Well the thing that many small businesses fail to grasp is that getting your page onto a search engine and as a highly ranked page at that is often not fully understood.

Here are the options for getting your site recognized by the Google search engine:

o Put in an application. Not an altogether bad idea and relatively easy, but how long are you willing to wait? Putting in an application via Google Addurl, Yahoos How to Suggest Your Site page or via the Open Directory Projects How to add a site to the Open Directory page is a worthy effort, particularly as Google has made agreements with Yahoo and Netscape ,owners of the Open Directory, that any sites indexed in their directories will be placed in Googles index. The downside of this is that you could be waiting anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks before this happens, and even then you may end up somewhere around page 20 in the rankings; basically your efforts are hardly worth the time spent on them!

o Link your site to others. Great, sounds terrific but what does it mean? Well quite simply linking your site to others is just what it sounds like, having links to other sites on your page; but more particularly, having links to your site from other peoples pages. The advantage of this is that it creates a search engine position that is known as organic. This means that the search engine crawlers that locate links to pages via other related pages find your site and index it by linking to it from another site. The advantage of being indexed in this way is that instead of being relegated to a page ranking where you are unlikely to ever be found, the organic placement of your website will start to creep up. The more links the more popular your site becomes, and the more links you can establish the higher your ranking is likely to climb. As an added bonus, you may also pick up traffic to your site from other sites that people with an interest in your particular product or service are visiting.

Clearly option number two is going to get you a higher ranking and a whole lot faster, so the next question is how do you get those links in place? Well to start with, consider what sorts of sites would be interested in linking to your site. If you are selling fine wines, then you may not get much benefit being linked to a site for pet food. A great way to get started is to link via relevant directories for your product or service. These can often be found simply by looking in the very search engines you are trying to get your site on to.

You can also request to exchange links with sites that are related to yours, simply add a link from your site, contact the other site to do the same, and very soon you will start to build up a large number of incoming quality links that will boost your page ranking. If you are unsure about taking this step, then it is worth getting started with the help of a reciprocal link managing tool. The better quality links you get the faster you will rise in the page rankings on Google.

A final sure fire way to get your page ranking to increase is by having articles and information about your site posted on article directories, which then include a link to your site from the article. If you are selling fine wine, then an article for example about how to store fine wines could be posted with a link to you site. This can be a great way to bring in traffic that you know is interested in your product or service, whilst at the same time increasing the quality links to your site and the ranking your page is given by Google.

Getting onto Google is a worthwhile endeavor, as this is one of the surest ways to bring targeted traffic to your website. By following a few simple steps to be certain that your site can be easily found, you will be on your way to getting onto Google in just 48 hours!