What do you need to get top rankings on Google? There are many
ingredients in the mix, but here are three of the most important that you need
to concentrate on.
1.) Keyword Relevant Copy and Content.
Whatever the keywords you want to get ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages
(SERPs), be sure that you have enough copy and content about those specific
words which will give Google a reason to rank you in the first place.
2.) Can the Search Engines Read and "Crawl" All the Pages and Content on Your
Site?
Probably the biggest surprise to most marketers is that the search engines are
unable to either navigate or read most of the content on their website. If they
can't read your copy, then it's not surprising that you're not getting the
rankings or traffic to your website that you aspire to.
The only thing a search engine can read is words. Sites that are dynamic, or
created in other formats such as Flash or Java often can't be read by the search
engines. Even if they can read the content on your site, many times they can't
navigate it properly or just bounce "off the walls" as there are no specific
links or site map to tell the proper sequence or where to go next.
3) Links... Why Are They So Important?
Link popularity is one of the most important factors search engines use
in determining where you will rank in the search engine for your keywords and
phrases, as it helps them to determine how important or popular your site is and
what it's reputation is. In essence the search engines are saying "we're going
to give top ranking to pages that have important and relevant sites linking to
them".
Link Building is the process of finding related/relevant websites and receiving
a link from them to you. Natural linking occurs when a site has good content
that others will link to. But to get these links people have to know about you.
It is a catch 22. Building links has gotten sophisticated in the last couple of
years. Today you need a mixture of links from many sources including articles,
press releases, social bookmarks, directories and social media sites.
How many links do you need to have? It depends on the individual keyword or
phrase you want to be found under and how the links are structured. The search
engines look at inbound links as a popularity contest but more importantly, they
are looking at the quality of the pages that are linking to you and the "anchor
text" - the "clickable link" and what it says about the page that it links to.
The key to linking is to have the right anchor text on a link that points to a
page that has content using the same keyword phrase.
You do not want to boost the overall number of links by more than 10-15% each
month for an established site with history because this may trigger a filter
from the search engines as an indicator of artificially inflated link
popularity. New sites have an advantage since there has not been a history
established and the link building can be done at a faster rate. Linking is
critical not only with your search engine placement, but also because it helps
stabilize you positions in the search engines and delivers traffic directly from
the sites that link to you. But linking is not a once and you are done process.
Generating new links is an ongoing process.
In summary, successfully implementing the above 3 strategies either through your
efforts or through employing search engine promotion specialists will deliver
the "triple punch" and the knockout punch you need to get top rankings on Google
and the other search engines as well.
Move around
- try to continually blog in different places as changes
in environmental stimuli will stop your brain from going into autopilot and keep
it fresh and receptive to new ideas. I tend to continually rotate from the
kitchen to my home office to my sofa to the local coffee shop as I read news,
write blog posts, or jot down notes. In my case reading other blogs in the
kitchen seems to give a 50% better ideas hit rate.
These pointers may not work for everyone, but the basic principle holds true -
give your brain some freedom and exercise and it’s more likely to reward you
with brilliant new thoughts. There is no complete recipe for creativity, but
actively managing your blogging habits and environment can give you the very
best chance of developing great ideas and great content.
