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SEO Visibility - Increasing Search Engine Visibility

Anyone who owns a website can benefit from SEO visibility, especially those who operate business websites for profit purposes.

But what is website visibility anyway, and how does SEO help you achieve it? These are common questions among webmasters, and I will do my best to answer them here in this article. It's your guide to search engine visibility success.

SEO Visibility Defined

Let's say I have a website that sells graphic design software. When people enter that phrase into a search engine, I would obviously want my site to come up near the top of the results page. This is referred to as SEO website visibility (or search engine optimization visibility, in the longer form).

The higher my website appears in the search engines, the more visibility I have among my target audience. The more visibile I am to this audience, the more website visitors and sales I can generate.

So the goal of any SEO program is to increase the search engine visibility of the subject website. Higher ranking ... better visibility ... more sales. Internet Marketing 101, right?

But how do you improve your SEO visibility to achieve all of these great things? Here are six strategies to get you started!

Improving Your Visibility in Search Engines

1. Choose the Right Search Phrases
The first step to search engine visibility is finding out what phrases people are using to find businesses, products or services like yours. Don't guess what phrases people are using -- research them. Use a tool like WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) to find out how your target audience is using the search engines. Compile a list of ten to twenty phrases that are relevant to your business, and develop content around those phrases. This must always be the first step in a search engine visibility campaign.

2. Make your website worth linking to.
Inbound links are a key factor in SEO visibility. Links coming from quality websites to your website will increase your search engine visibility. You can think of links as votes. When a lot of quality websites link to your website, search engines will view this in a favorable way and rank your website higher in their listings.

How do you get inbound links to your website? Well, you can use articles, press releases and directory submissions (as mentioned below). But the most important thing is having a website worth linking to in the first place. If your website only talks about you, few people will link to it. But if you turn your website into a resource of helpful information, you make it much easier to gain links ... and increase your SEO visibility by extension.

3. Add 20 Pages to Your Website
Any website that adds 20 pages of relevant content will enjoy a boost in SEO visibility. That's because you have a much greater chance of ranking for a broad range of search phrases when you have a broad range of content. Better still, creating content is one of the easiest steps in an SEO campaign. Search engines love content because it helps them understand what a website is about (and thus how to categorize it and match it to search queries).

4. Publish Articles Online
When you publish articles online, you can increase the number of websites that link to yours. The more websites that link to your website, the greater your "link popularity." This is a major factor in search engine visibility because websites with good link popularity usually outrank websites with few links coming in.

Here's how it works. First, you write a great article. Then you submit the article through distribution websites like EzineArticles.com. If it's well-written, you article could end up on dozens or hundreds of other websites. Each article would link back to your website thus increasing your "link popularity." Greater link popularity will eventually translate to better SEO visibility.

5. Publish Press Releases Online
Much like the article publishing scenario above, you can also publish press releases online for wide distribution. Using a service like PRWeb.com, you can distribute your message through hundreds of channels, RSS feeds, websites and blogs. And by adding a hyperlink to each release, you're once again increasing the number of inbound links to your website (a big factor in SEO website visibility success).

6. Submit Your Website to Directories
We talked about inbound links (from other websites to your website) and how they increase search engine visibility through link popularity. You can also get high-quality links by submitting your website to web directories. An example would be the Microsoft Small Business Directory, or Best of the Web (www.BOTW.org).

Most of the directories that are worth your time will charge a review fee, but it's usually worth the price because of the additional trust your website will earn. Remember, the more quality links you obtain from other websites, the more you will help your SEO visibility cause.

Conclusion
I hope you've enjoyed this guide to making your site more visible to search engines. Remember, website visibility directly translates into more website traffic and more business. So though it takes time to achieve, it is well worth the effort.