There is no doubt about it: The ability to draw traffic is the key to online success, no matter what you are selling online. With top search engine rankings, you are able to capture potential buyers who are specifically searching for your product or service.

Ever since launching What-Sells-Online.com, I’ve been trying for top search engine ranking for the search results of “what sells online”. A bulk of my traffic came from my articles posted on Ezinearticles.com, many of which were listed on the first 2 pages of Google’s search results.

Eventually, I was able to get top search engine rankings with these strategies:

1. Post articles linking to your site on Ezinearticles.com

It seems that Google has an affinity for high PR websites such as ezinearticles.com. Thus, new articles on this site optimizing specific keywords will easily get a first page ranking. If you have just started a new
website, it helps to have an article (not duplicated on your blog or website), posted on Ezinearticles.com (or other popular article submission sites).

This will help to channel traffic to your site. However, not all article submission sites get the same favor from search engines, or even the same amount of traffic as Ezinearticles.com.

2. List your site in blog directories

The next thing I did was to get my site listed on blog directories and website directories. Some popular blog directories I have listed in include:

• Blogcatalog.com
• Blogsearch.com
• Blogster.com
• Quickblogdirectory.com
• Blogrush.com
• Bloggingfusion.com
• Blogsearchengine.com
• Weblogs.com

If you have a .com URL for your blog, you should also list your site on website directories.

3. Ensure your site is found on some popular social blog networking and blog popularity sites:

Next, sign-up for a profile on blog popularity sites such as:

• Digg.com
• Technorati.com
• Bloglines.com
• Sphinn.com
• Del.ico.us
• Mybloglog.com
• Blinklist.com

Make sure you list your blog with your profile, and ping these sites (and also Google blog) whenever you put up a new post. You’ll also need to set up a RSS feed via Feedburner.com.

4. List your site on these not-so-popular social book marking sites

I learnt this after reading Caroline Middlebrook’s post: 24 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites That Actually Work (and how to bookmark QUICKLY). My doubt turned to amazement when it really worked! (I’ve not even posted my blog to the entire 24 sites!)

Here again are the 24 social book marking sites recommended by Caroline Middlebrook. She uses two defining criteria:

a) These social bookmark sites have relatively high rankings of between 4 and 7

b) As they do not use the ‘no follow’ tag, listing your site here allows you to gain back links

5. Some other stuff you need to know, and do:

• Getting incoming links from high Page Rank sites helps in getting you top search engine rankings.
• A good amount of outgoing links would be useful in gaining trackbacks from other blogs.
• Your optimized keyword has to appear on your blog postings, and headings. If possible, have your optimized keyword as part of your blog name.
• You need to ping your blog to social bookmarking sites whenever you put up a new post.
• Build RSS subscribers with Feedburner.com. This helps with maintaining a consistent pool of readers.
• You’ll probably have to wait several days for your efforts to take effect. There is an exception though – I have noticed that blogs hosted with Blogspot.com tend to list quicker on search engine results.
• Finally, good and useful content is critical in reducing bounce rate.

After working on all of the above, What-sells-online.com is now in the top 10 search results on Google.com for the search term “what sells online” and the top 20 for “what sells”. Now….let me work on getting my site listed on the Top 3 search engine rank!

What does this mean?

• It is possible to get top search engine rankings for your website or blog.
• You need to use the right methods to get top listings.
• Getting top search engine ranking takes work and patience, although it is not necessarily difficult.