I remember when I created my first web site. I designed it, published it and then waited expectantly for Google to list it in their page rankings. Of course, I didnt expect to be up at the top of the listings but I did think I would be there somewhere.

After several days the disappointment began to set in. I had a great web site but no one was going to see it because Google wasnt including me in their listings! All that work for nothing. So I started looking around the net, trying to find out why I wasnt being listed. It was now that I discovered that it can take Google up to 8 months to include your site on their search engine. This was a devastating blow. I couldnt wait 8 months before people saw my web site!

My next plan of action was to get some traffic to my web site, maybe that would help get me noticed. I designed a banner free of charge from a site on the web, this was really easy, even as a beginner it was done in 5 minutes. I then bought some banner impressions from a seller on ebay. Typically this involved displaying your banner 1,000,000 for a fee of say $4.99. So I signed up for this and expected the traffic to come flying to my site. Well, if I got 1 person clicking on my banner from every 1000 times the banner was displayed I was lucky. And then there was the people that just view the banners in order to get paid. When I looked at where the hits were coming from it was evident that most of them were coming from China and other non-English speaking countries.

So, having discovered that paid for banner advertising does not work, I finally discovered how to get noticed by Google.

Back-links. Yes, that was the secret. What are back-links? There are other web sites that have a link to your site on them. Google determines the popularity of your site by how many other sites link to it. So how do you get back links? You can list your site in the free directories that proliferate the web, but these are low quality links.

The best way of getting links is to create your own links by writing an article like this. There are dozens of article directories on the net, you submit your article, simply ensure you include a link to your web site and hey presto, you have created a back link to your site. Google will take notice and you will move up the search rankings. The more articles you submit, the more popular Google will think your site is.

Article directories are free to use and can also be a good way of advertising your site. Write about a subject that relates to your site, people see you have some expert knowledge on the subject and follow the link through to your site.