It is not difficult to get listed in a search engine, but getting listed in the top 20 positions is no easy job. The top 10 is the ideal, but if you are listed on one of the first two pages of a major search engine, then the traffic will come to you. That is guaranteed. Naturally, the higher you are listed the better, and you will do an awful lot better on the first page than on the second, but if the best you can do is page three then you are going to need a lot more than search engines to help you attract business.

So what are the main essentials of search engine marketing? You have two objectives, the first being to get listed and the second to reach the top 20. It is easy, as I stated earlier, to get listed on a search engine. Many design their site, submit it to Google and then wait for the Google Dance, when Google carries out its World Wide Web search for websites.

Forget that: do not submit your site to Google or any of the other search engines because that can delay your listing. Instead do one of two things. The best is to write a few articles on the topic of your website and submit them to the top article directories. If you can't write, or if English is not your main language, then use an article ghostwriter. There are plenty people online offering article services at good rates. Google and the rest frequently visit the higher ranked article directories and will pick up on the link to your website in your 'author's resource', or bio. When they find your site, you get listed, and that can happen in less than 24 hours. That is the main way, but the other is blogs. Add a blog to your site, and it will soon be listed. Google, especially, likes blogs, particularly if it is a Blogger blog, since Blogger is owned by Google. You are virtually guaranteed a listing. If you are not too keen on Blogger, you can switch once your site has been listed. Wordpress is arguably the most versatile blogging software available at the moment, especially if you are running it from your own web space.

Once you are listed, you can improve your position by optimizing each website page for the topic of that page. Don't forget that search engines list each page separately, and so each page should be optimized separately. However, you should initially focus on your index page, since it is that page which almost invariably gets listed highest. Once your site does have a reasonably high listing, it is possible that another page could get listed higher than your index page, although this is not generally the case.

You can then post a blog on the topic of the page and add new postings on a regular basis. You should also include a link to your blog from your web pages and a link on your blog sidebar to your website. This will enhance the probability of your home web page being listed, as it also will your blog, since your blog can also be listed on Google and other search engines.

There are some simple things that you can do to make your index page more attractive to the search engines. Bear in mind that your listing is for one search term only, as used by someone seeking information related to the topic of your page. You can receive another listing for another search term (or keyword) on a different index. So, what you must do is to determine the best keyword for which to optimize your index page.

Once you have decided that, include it in the title of your page and place the title in 'title' tags. Try to make the title a bit longer than your keyword, so if your keyword is, say, 'lock design', make the title 'The History of Lock Design', for example. The main heading for the page need not be the same, but should also contain your keyword. A good heading, for example, would be 'Lock Design from the 18th Century'. Place that in H1 tags to tell the search engine algorithm that the heading contains important text relating to your web page.