As owner of 123-cyber-register.com, webmasters come to me daily for advice on how to get more traffic to their site. Here are the three common tasks that they (and you) must do before you begin your site promotion campaign.

1 - Identify Your Site's Key Phrases

Think like a typical web surfer for just a moment. How do you search for information and resources on the web? If you are like 85% of web surfers, you search in terms of key phrases - not key words.

That said, the first task prior to promoting your site is the identification of your sites key phrases. What would someone type as a search query if they wanted to find the kind of information on your site?

Take my web site as an example. The services I offer help people professionally promote their web site. How might somebody search for my site? They would typically use key phrases such as...

• register web sites
• search engine registration
• search engine submissions
• register with search engines

Examine your site and make a list identifying the key phrases a potential client would use when searching for the information. After all, if they're looking for certain services and products and you offer what they're searching for, then you stand a much better chance of getting the sale because your prospect is pre-qualified.

2 - Name Your Page Appropriately

Now that you've got your list, your next task is to craft your page title. This is the place where most webmasters make a mistake. They create their title page for the visitor, not the search engine. Here's a good rule of thumb: MAKE CERTAIN that your page title contains your most important key words and/or phrases.

One of the popular promotional services offered at our website is the writing and distribution of press releases. We've learned that the top phrase most people query when researching this topic is

Press Release Service

That's why we made sure that this phrase was a part of the page title. The HTML code looks like this:

<title>1 2 3 Cyber Register Press Release Service</title>

3 - Create Your Meta Tags

There are two more places where these phrases need to appear. The first place is within the first 250 words of your page. Search Engines look there to determine the content of your site. The higher your "key phrase density" the better your ranking in many search engines.

The next place to use your key phrases is in your meta tags. This bit of HTML code helps the help search engines and directories properly classified and indexed your page. There are two types of meta tags - your sites description tag and its key word tag.

The first tag is the description. Use your key phrases to write a one sentence (25 words or less) description of your site. Here's what my Press Release page looks like:

<meta name="description" content="Press Release Distribution and Professional Authoring.">

Next take your key words and phrases and prepare a key word meta tag. Here's what that tag looks like on my press release page:

<meta name="keywords" content="press release, media, releases, news, professional writer, release, advertise, contact, public relations, newspaper, stories, web site,">

Search engines are funny things. Their rules and ranking procedures change often. Generally speaking, however, if you include your key phrases in the page content, title, and meta tag descriptions, you'll have the best chance of gaining and maintaining a high ranking.

Good luck!

Ted Smolkowicz