The key to a succesful web site is traffic. It simply doesn't matter how beautiful and user friendly your site design is or how unique your products are. Traffic is king.

How do you get traffic to the your web site ? There are many different ways. The following list rates the over-all effectiveness of generating web site traffic.

1. Search Engine
2. Solicited or Opt-In Email
3. Offline Advertising
4. Press Release
5. Banner Advertising
6. Discussion Forums
7. Sponsorships
8. Newsgroups
9. Strategic Linking

The Next Step
Simply submitting your pages to search engines using the conventional way does not guarantee you'll rank high in the results. People usually read only the first 10 to 30 matches of their search. If your page did not appear in the first 30, most people won't get to it. That's why it's a good investment achieving search engines top rankings.

Nearly everyone (95% of Internet users) begins their Web travels at a major search engine. When people find your pages using search engines is because they are looking for the type of company, service or product you offer. Hence, it's more probable they buy from you. Studies have proven that people coming to your site from search engines are more likely to buy than if you attract them using other forms of Web promotion.

We key on the following major search engines and directories:
AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Snap, Yahoo!, WebCrawler, InfoSeek/Go Network, Lycos, Magellan, NorthernLight, LookSmart, MSN, AOL Search, Google, Goto.com, Netscape, Open Directory (DMOZ)

It's the top major engines that generate over 90% of the search engine traffic. Therefore, the KEY to gaining traffic to your site is not how many no-name engines you submit to, but achieving high rankings in the major engines. That's what Harbor Light Web Soulutions will help you do.

How We Do It
There are a few different techniques to achieve success in the search engines. All require the creation of special alternate entrances to your site that are designed specifically to rank well in the search engines. Once your site is listed at or near the top of a major search engine, it can stay there for some time. However, it can also fall in rank over time. Monitoring of your position and resubmissions to the search engines may be needed to maintain your position.

How Much Does it Cost ?
In general the fees are comparable to a yellow pages or newspaper advertisement. The fees are determined on a case by case basis and dependant on the sophistication of the plan. The more sophisticated methods require purchasing additional domains and setting up "cloaking" on your search engine listings to prevent your competitors from stealing your well ranked pages.