When you go to a search engine and plug in a key subject or title , the search engine parses millions of documents and puts the result in order of apparent relevancy.

Search engines tend to do a commendable job in returning relevant information. Getting your site listed near the top of these engine results can mean increased traffic for your site.

There are a number of ways that search engines pull up your pages. The first thing almost all engines look at is the Title of a site. If the keyword is found in the title, its considered to be more relevant and will pull up more quickly then a site without the keyword in the title.

Search engines will also check to see if the keywords entered appear near the top of the web page (in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text). Engines will assume that if the topic is important, it will be mentioned within the first part of your site. Frequency will also factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search in engines determine how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant then a page with a lower frequency of keywords.

Note: Some search engines also give web pages a "bonus" for various reasons when ranking them . For example , WebCrawler uses link popularity as part of its ranking criteria. It can tell which pages in its index have numerous links pointing to them These pages are given a slight bonus during ranking under the assumption that those pages with many links pointing to them must be more popular. Some Combination Search engine/web directories may give preference to those sites that they have reviewed.

Although search engines are the primary way people look for web site, remember that they are not the only way to attract people to your site. Web surfers also find sites by word-of-mouth, traditional advertising , the news media, newsgroups postings, web directories and links from other sites. Many times, these alternative form of promotion can be as effective an attracting visitor as the major web search engines.

When developing an affective Web site promotion strategy, you should definitely consider negotiating reciprocal links with sites that have a high ranking with search engines in the categories relevant to your site. Perhaps some of these sites could be considered competitors, but you may be surprised at how many are willing to add a link to your site in exchange for the addition of a link on your site back to theirs- especially if the content of your site appears to be professional quality . Hyperlinks from one site to another are part of the foundation upon which the web was built and remain an effective way to attract visitors to your site.