My website has grown a lot since I bought my first domain name almost three years ago.  Since then, it has developed from a simple business website to several different domains and a variety of money-making opportunities.

Here are a few things I did to make my website so successful:

1. Blogged.  Blogging will help you get a higher search engine ranking because a blog is updated more frequently than a regular website, which means that the search engines view it as more relevant, up-to-date information.  It also helps by bringing you relevant contextual links as your fellow bloggers get to know you and recommend your site to their readers.
2. Wrote marketing articles.  Marketing articles also help to boost your search engine rankings: They bring you additional links back to your site every time your article is reproduced, and are therefore often a big part of link building campaigns.
3. Joined forums and other online communities.  Online communities are great.  Not only do you get to put a link back to your site in your signature, helping to increase your link popularity, you also get to build your reputation by becoming well-known in the community.

Of course, all of these things take time — nearly three years, in my case.  It’s difficult to find time to blog, write marketing articles, and participate in forum discussions when you’re also trying to maintain your website and run your business.  In retrospect, I probably could made my website more successful, more quickly by using a search engine marketing company.  An outside Internet marketing service would have been able to get all this done quickly and without the learning curve I went through, not to mention leaving me free to concentrate on running my business instead.

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