We all strive to be ranked number one in search engines.  On the other hand, I am sure we all know that it is not easy to get to the top.

So what can we do to improve our rankings? Well, first of all it depends on whether you want to pay for better rankings or whether you want to use free engine search results. In other words do you want to pay for example AdWords or do you want to use search engine optimisation on your site.

There are no hard and fast rules and everyone has their own opinions.  However, the options are as follows:

* Submit your websites to the search engines

* Make sure you have good, relevant content on your site

* Run pay-per-click advertisements

* Add your URL as a signature

* Take part in forums

* Write Articles (plenty of them)

* Use popular keywords

* Get links to your site

Let's just elaborate on the use of keywords here.  It is no good using hundreds of keywords on your site to get high search engine rankings.  Rather select two strong keywords and build your site based on those keywords.  If you have many keywords you would like to be ranked for, rather build a separate page for each of them.  It is much better to have a site with strong keyword density for a couple of keywords than lots of keywords that are not 100% relevant to the content of your site. 

Don't forget link popularity.   The amount of quality inbound links to your site also determines the popularity of your site.  There are many ways of getting inbound links but the one I believe works best is article writing.  Submit your articles to article directories. Submit your articles to sites that have RSS feeds. Do not even think about link farms or link exchanges. The major search engines like to see a slow steady increase of inbound links on your site and the best way I found to do that is by adding your link to the resource box of your article.  The search engines will find your links in the web directory and the more links they find the more popularity you are credited for.