First, go to the search engine where you want to check your site’s ranking, and enter the keywords you want to check. Your result pages will come up, and you will need to look through them until you find your website. SEO experts recommend that if you aren’t listed in at least the top 20 then you should continue to optimize, as most people won’t look any further than that. This is simply common sense. When you are determining if your rank is high enough simply think to yourself, “Would I look for this long for this page?”

You will want to do this with each search engine and directory until you have some idea of where you are. Check your website's rankings regularly, because changes to algorithms can affect them drastically and quickly. Keep in mind also that thousands of new web pages are added daily, and many of them are actively trying to get ranked ahead of you. That’s right. There are thousands of other in on the same game as you so you must keep sharp. Your competitors may be reading these same articles and using these same tricks!

If you can’t find your website in a search engine’s results, you should enter “site:” your domain name in the keyword field to see whether you are listed at all. If your URL appears with the name or description of your site then you are somewhere in the search engine’s index. If all you get back is a blank page, then you’re not in the search engine’s database at all – you need to wait longer. This trick of typing “site:www.yourdomain.com” also helps you to determine how many pages you have indexed on each particular search engine. The more pages that are indexed, the more likely somebody is to encounter your site.

It you find that your website is miles away from the top 20, don’t be discouraged – you can change that! You may need to re-evaluate your keywords, and try to find new ones that are more relevant to your site. Many search engines have human-edited rankings for the most commonly searched-for phrases, and it is often difficult to get in that list. Good content is the best way to increase your chances of getting a high ranking for a certain topic. The more popular that your page is with the masses, the more popular it will be with search engines.

Search engines are a perfect example of “the chicken or the egg.” In this case, there is an answer! Search engines attempt to deliver sites that the populous has deemed important, not the other way around. This is why it is so important that you have good, relevant content and plenty of it.

If you want to check to see if a single web page on your site has been indexed, visit the search engine and enter the complete URL, like this: www.yourpage.com/yourpagename.html.

If the search engine has indexed that particular page then it will come back with a description of it. If it hasn’t then you’ll see a message saying something like “Sorry, no information is available for that URL”.

On Google, if your URL has been indexed, this page will offer you to show the cached version of the page, or to find similar pages, as well as pages that link to your page or that contain your URL on the page.

You could go ahead and use these manual tracking methods, but we would recommend that you consider using online tools or downloadable software that will allow you to check these things more quickly. It can be a very tedious and time-consuming job to do by hand, especially if you have several sites to monitor.

   

Top25web.com is one such search engine-ranking tool. You can find out where your website ranks in Google, Inktomi and AltaVista for free. You can also analyze the results of a particular keyword search, to create a plan for improving your site’s ranking.

URL Ranker offers instant, online reports of website rankings in 17 top search engines, including Google, Yahoo, AOL Search, MSN, AllTheWeb and AltaVista, again for free. It will tell you if your site is listed in each engine, and tell you the ranking if it is.

These tools alone offer an excellent way of checking your sites rankings. Once you know where you stand, you can continue with your SEO plan, and move on to other aspects of marketing too.

The aim of a sales page on a website is to give your customers only two options; buy your product or leave your website. Why let them leave without giving yourself another chance to sell to them? You don't have to… You can set up a system which will give you many opportunities to sell your product or service to each single visitor to your sales page.

The secret is to use what is known as an autoresponder which is an email utility you can use to save the contact details of your visitors and then to send them emails at set intervals.

To make use of an autoresponder you can either use the services of a third party supplier or you can purchase and install a script onto your website. To begin with it's a lot easier to use a third party autoresponder.

Irrespective of whether you use a third party service or your own script, you will have to use a form to capture your visitors contact details. This form can be built into any HTML web page be it your sales page, or a page designed specifically for use as a popup.

The underlying concept behind the use of autoresponders is that people rarely buy on their first visit to a website. Research has shown that most people need repeated contact with an advertising message before they respond to it and purchase the product or service.

Autoresponders were designed for just this. You can load a series of advertising messages into your autoresponder and adjust it to send the messages at set intervals. That said, people react badly to advertising; in fact most people just plain ignore advertisements.

To get round this, you have to design your email series so that it is not perceived to be advertising. A good way to do this is to design your email series to include plenty of useful information; give your subscribers some good quality free information in each email and weave your advertisement into it.

For example, let's assume you are selling an e-book titled "101 Dieting Tips". You could create a series of 7 emails, each containing a single dieting tip. At the end of each email you could inform the reader of your e-book containing 101 tips and include a link to your sales page.

The bottom line is the content you include in your email series must be of very high quality; after all you are going to ask for somebody's contact details in exchange for it.

Bear in mind nobody is going to sign up for your email series just you write it, or you include good content. In truth visitors to your website aren't interested in you, they are interested in themselves. They have a problem they are trying to solve, and that's why they ended up on your website; they thought they could find a solution there.

Another point worth considering is you are a relative unknown to the person visiting your website; they don't know you or trust you. It's because of this distrust that many people won't buy your product or service on their first visit. If you can get them to subscribe, your email series should build up their trust to the point where they will buy your product or service.

First you have to get them to subscribe, and you do this by advertising you are giving away "free" tips which will help solve their problem. Your opt-in form must be prominently displayed on your sales page, build it into the content. You should also design a popup form that displays your opt-in form either when people first get to your site, or when they leave.

Finally, a properly designed opt-in form which causes many of your website visitors to subscribe to your information series will incorporate these three design tips:

1) Use a heading, in a larger font and of a different color to the rest of the form, which includes a major benefit. In other words, in as few words as possible, explain the biggest benefit your visitor will receive from subscribing to your information series.

2) In as few words as possible explain two or three additional benefits your reader will receive from subscribing to your opt-in list. A list of bullet points is the best way to do this.

3) Your primary objective is to get your visitor to join your opt-in list, so ask them to subscribe. Get into the conversation going on inside their mind, use words like "Yes! Send Me the Tips Now!" on the submit button of your form.

The most effective way to sell your niche product or service is to build a niche mini site, which in its simplest form has only three pages:

- A sales page

- A payment processing page

- A thank you / download / order fulfillment page

Let’s take a look at each of these pages:

1) The sales page.

This is a carefully constructed web page which gives your visitor two options: either buy your product or leave. Obviously you must do everything in your power to stop your visitor from leaving without buying, and this is where a few sales page basics come into play… Use each of these features in the order they are presented:

~The headline.

You need to state a compelling and powerful benefit your customer will receive from owning your product.

~The introduction.

Your introduction should explain the problems facing your customers that your product will solve. You do not mention your product at this point, all you are doing is making your customer feel comfortable because you know and understand their problem and their pain.

~The lead-in to your product.

At this point you need to introduce your product. This takes two forms, the first being a visual representation of your product and the second a description of your product and how it solves the problems you outlined earlier.

The visual representation is particularly important if you are selling an e-product (an intangible product that your customer will download onto their computer). The visual representation could be a picture created to look like a physical book or the box that a physical software product would be packaged in.

~Customer testimonials.

Customer testimonials are a very potent motivator to somebody who is unsure about your product or service. After you have introduced your product or service you need to display any testimonials you might have from your satisfied customers.

To start with you won't have any testimonials leaving you with two options:

- The obvious… Don't include a customer testimonial section.

- Advertise free copies of your product in exchange for testimonials.

~Benefits.

An important part of your sales page is a list of benefits explaining how your customer will benefit from owning your product. These benefits will create the desire for your product. 

~The call to action.

In this section you will ask your customer to buy your product. You may wish to include a few free bonuses to make your customer feel they are getting a good deal. You might also wish to include some kind of deadline which could motivate an undecided customer to purchase; the thought of loosing out could just tip the balance in your favor.

~Your Guarantee.

People are very nervous about buying on the internet, so offering a guarantee will put them at rest.

~The Summary.

This is last part of your sales page and where you summarize your offer. You need to state your major benefit once more and ask the customer to buy.

2) The payment processing page

In nearly all cases you have little control over the design of the payment processing page you use. It largely depends on how you process payments for your product or service.

Most payment processors (and all third party payment processors like PayPal, ClickBank etc.) have their own processing pages. You would be given a code to use on your sales page and when a customer clicks the payment button they will be automatically taken to the third party payment processor's page.

3) The thank you / download / order fulfillment page

As soon as your customer's purchase has been verified they will be forwarded to your order fulfillment page. If your customer has never purchased anything online before, it is quite possible this was a traumatic experience. To put their mind at rest and to complete the transaction, your order fulfillment page should:

~Put your customers at ease

It is vital that you inform your customer that their payment has been verified before giving them any other information. Tell them what to expect on their credit/debit card statement.

~Describe how your customer's order will be fulfilled

Explain to your customer, in detail, exactly how their order is going to be fulfilled.

For offline fulfillment, explain when their purchase is going to be shipped, how it is going to be shipped, and when they can expect delivery.

For online fulfillment, you need to explain how they can download their product. If you have used a compression tool, explain how they can uncompress (unzip) their product. If you have used a special medium for viewing your product, explain what your customer needs to do in order to view you product, for example most e-books are created as a PDF file and so Adobe Acrobat is needed in order to view them.

When somebody visits the sales page of your niche website, they are looking for a solution to one of their problems, they have an itch and they're looking for a way to scratch it. They are not there to buy your product… That is the last thing on their mind. Your website has got their interest and they're checking it out, no more, no less.

Now it could be that they are in a bad mood and on that particular day they don't like your writing style, or they might be late for another appointment and don't have the time to fully read your sales page, what ever the reason they won't be buying your product today… and then they're gone. In fact most sales pages are lucky to convert 4 out of 100 website visitors into customers. That means 24 out of 25 visitors will leave your sales page without buying.

You've no doubt heard many times that the way to get around this problem is to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list so you can pitch them over and over again with your sales message. This is quite true, it's the way to go, but just how do you get your website visitors to join your opt-in list?

It's not that difficult, there are many ways to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list, and here are a few examples you can implement on your website today:

1) Place an opt-in form on your sales page. You need to place your opt-in form a few times on your sales page, you also need to make sure readers understand that you are providing some free information related to your niche product and they only way they can get it is by subscribing to your list, and the reasons people will opt-in can include:

i) Those visitors who are in a hurry and don't have time to read your entire sales page will be inclined to join your opt-in list as a reminder to themselves to carry on checking out what you have to offer.

ii) Those people who can't afford your product will sign up for more information from your free information series.

iii) Those people can't decide on any course of action will sign up hoping you will help them make up their mind.

In all cases, if you had not provided an opt-in form on your webpage they would have left without subscribing, and you already know how difficult it is to get visitors to your website in the first place.

2) Place your opt-in form on a popup which displays either as soon as the webpage opens, or when it closes. Popups might be the cause of much controversy, but no matter what people think, they are effective. The new generation of popups and popunders are not easily blocked and in some cases cannot be blocked at all if the person is using Internet Explorer.

Fortunately the majority of internet users still use Internet Explorer, so these unblockable popups are the way to go. Just don't make your popups a nuisance… Use them with cookie controls so they are only activated once per day or once per hour, and don't use them on every page of your website. Some of the newer popups will only activate if the website visitor exits the sales page by closing the browser window or clicking the back button. If they go through to the sales process and purchase your product, they will never see the popup.

3) One of the most effective ways of getting people to subscribe to your opt-in list is to send them to a special opt-in form first. In other words nobody gets to your sales page unless they have subscribed to your list. These special opt-in pages are known, amongst other things, as "squeeze pages" or "name squeeze pages".

These pages are the most effective at converting website visitors to subscribers and they don't seem to affect a sales page’s conversion rate at all. If a sales page was converting 1 in 25 visitors to a customer, the introduction of a name squeeze page doesn't seem to change that… For every 25 visitors to the name squeeze page 1 still becomes a customer. The difference is the number of people who subscribe is substantially higher than for any other opt-in method.

The point to bear in mind is that many of the subscribers to your list will buy your niche product from links in the autoresponder emails sent to them. If you had not been using an opt-in form you would never have had the opportunity to make these extra sales.

Every website listed in the search engines has a position, or ‘ranking’, and each one of these rankings can change very quickly, in some cases as often as weekly or even daily. One day your website’s in a good position, then the next you’re wondering what happened to it. Staying on top of this situation is a must for any SEO professional – you need to become a search engine ninja. If that’s what you want to do, then you need to keep these things in mind at all times:

1. Good SEO requires frequent updates and ranking checks.

You might have a good spot today, but all it takes is for a few new sites to open, and before you know it you’re back down at the bottom. If you pay attention to your rankings, then you have a shot at fixing things that go wrong before your rankings fall too far.

2. You should check all your links weekly to make sure they work.

Maintain high-quality, relevant reciprocal links and check them weekly to make sure they’re working. Remove any dead links, as search engine crawlers may mark you down if they find them on your site.

3. Tweak and assess your website on a daily basis.

You need to continually assess and tweak your listing to keep your site in its proper place – that is, at the top. This ensures that your site is in the best position possible, and helps you keep your competitive edge.

4. Maintain the content on your website.

Update your content weekly at the very least, to make sure that search engine crawlers come back frequently. Even the smallest changes will be picked up on by the search engines and will help to maintain your ranking. If you can’t write, find someone who can: you need content.

5. Keep up-to-date with the latest developments in SEO.

If you can’t decide what you should be doing or you don’t want to keep up with SEO on your own, you could consider hiring a specialist. Consulting with an SEO specialist will still allow you to make your own changes to your website and learn which things work best, but you’ll have someone to answer your questions if you need them.

You should review your SEO techniques at least every few months, to see how the algorithms have changed and to devise new plans and strategies for increasing your rankings based on those changes. Any SEO ninja will tell you that there are only really two major search engines that you need to worry about: Google and Yahoo. You can do well even if you only have the time or energy to focus on these two engines. Being an SEO ninja is hard work, but it can be very rewarding if you’ve got the dedication for it.