2. Build a free site using Google Sites. Yes, you’re not going to use this free site as your own business site. But why not create one that talks to your customers about their needs (and subtly promotes your organization through backlinks or a “brought-to-you-by” notice.

3. Sign up at Google’s Local Business Center. You can create and manage information about your site, locate your business on a map, and add information and coupons there for users to find. You’ll also be able to track online searches and other analytics about your business. (Click here and watch the video).

These three strategies are free and can profoundly impact the traffic that arrives at your website… and at your front door.

If you don’t want to do this work yourself, please see our Local Domination Service Packages.

The bottom line for Google was a very website-searcher-centric idea: Put the most authoritative sites first. The more authoritative it was, the higher it should rank. (Which makes sense for internet users who are using search to find something).

They measured authoritativeness by a variety of factors, including keywords, backlinks, and more.

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz‘s CEO, wrote a very compelling blog in which he talked about how Google’s rankings algorithm has changed over time. He even provided a handy chart which shows an estimation based on Fishkin’s experience and observations.

Essentially, he says that authoritativeness is still key at Google and they measure 4 basic things:

• The authority of the domain
• Anchor text
• Keyword usage
• Backlinks

View his chart below and read the blog post here.

Learn how search engine optimization (SEO) has changed

So, how do you help that traffic find you? There are a number of ways you can generate traffic – from paid search to viral videos to social media to articles. No matter what combination of search engine marketing you do, there is one single search engine marketing secret that will make all the difference. Follow this one secret by making sure that all of your search engine marketing complies, and you’ll generate traffic.

The search engine marketing secret
The best way to generate traffic is by building credibility. Credibility is the magnet that will attract prospects to you so you can sell to them. All of your search engine marketing – when done correctly – will contribute to a growing sense of credibility that will help you to convince your prospects to buy.

In fact, the most popular search engine is set up to encourage you and enable you to become more credible. Google uses the concept of PageRank, which was named for Google co-founder Larry Page. Google’s game changing impact on the internet was its idea that each link to your website was a “vote” for your website’s credibility. That sounds like a good idea, but they took it one step further with PageRank: The value of a vote was higher from sites that were more credible themselves.

For example, there could be two equal sites on the web but one has a higher PageRank because highly valued, thoughtful, informative, and useful sites link to it compared to the other site.

Then, Google would use each site’s PageRank as a factor in deciding where to place it in a search result. Generally, pages with a higher PageRank appear closer to the top of search results because it has been “voted” more credible.

How credibility impacts your search engine marketing
When you’re planning what your search engine marketing efforts, you need to make sure that one of your activities is to build links back to your website using highly credible sources.

Press releases are a good example of this because news sites often have higher PageRank. Some articles, distributed to the right article distribution sites, can offer a similar result. If you create a blog or a YouTube channel or a Flickr account, these can all help link back from high PageRank sites, giving you votes of credibility.

To start, think about your industry and where the most credible websites are likely to be. Use a tool like PRChecker.info (http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php) to check for the PageRank of the target sites you’d like to do your search engine marketing through. When you find higher ranking pages, find ways to link back to your site from there. It could include submitting articles or participating on a forum or having your blog posted there.

No matter what type of search engine marketing you choose to do, just remember to make sure it builds your credibility. And when you do enough of that, you will successfully build web traffic to your small business.