In 10 years on the internet building websites and blogs, I’ve learned a few tricks to getting listed in the search engines, gaining rank, achieving TOP 10 status, and keeping it in any industry or niche market. Clients always ask me “How do I get my site listed in the top 10 on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc?” The answer is always the same. Work at it, work hard, and work smart. Here’s some quick and dirty SEO tips to help you get your site listed in the king of all search engines. Google ROCKS!
- Niche It! – Pick a niche topic for your website or blog and stick with it. Don’t be general or broad. Don’t write about “Technology” write about “New Blue Widget Technology”. Be specific to your market niche. If you like windsurfing, hangliding, reading, camping, hiking, photography, new technology, investment, cars, motorcycles, or pink elephants, write about it. Pick your niche wisely.
- “Content is King” – Maybe this should be the #1 tip, but without actually picking a niche market first, you won’t have anything to write about. CREATE CONTENT! Lots of it, be specific in your writing. Write from an “educational” point of view. And never ever copy content from another website! It’s against the law, plus Google will penalize you for duplicate content.
- Top 5 Keywords! – Concentrate your efforts on the TOP 5 keywords within your niche market. Write about those 5 keywords A LOT! Don’t get too broad in scope or you’ll wander off topic in your website or blog. This effects Search Engine SE ranking greatly. If you’re too broad, you’ll fall in the rankings. There’s a ratios of content that Google and other search engines look at. Being too broad in scope will usually diminish your popularity with the search engines unless you have massive amounts of FRESH CONTENT.
- Fresh Content! – Post often to your blog or website. Write for your blog everyday. Write something, even if it’s short. If you know you’re going to be away on vacation, or are going to be away from your computer for a prolonged period of time, write some posts ahead of time, and post them via email from your mobile device.
- Write “How To’s” & DIY – Writing “how to“ articles and content is a sure fire way to get noticed by people and the search engines. This is a two edged sword. You have to know what you’re talking about or people won’t come back to your site.
- Write “Smart” – This could be good, or bad. If you’re not smart it will show. Good content speaks to the reader, and empathizes intrigues and entertains. Bad content turns off the reader AND the search engines. Think about this for a second. When you type into a word processing program on your computer, you have spell check right? There’s also a grammar algorithm that checks if you’re writing properly and using words in their proper context within sentences. Well, don’t you think the programmers who write Google’s, Yahoo’s, and Bing’s algorithms have thought of this?
- Never Post OLD Content – Don’t post content from another site. This is the general rule in SEO, and ranking your site high in the search engines depends in part on not posting duplicate content. There are exceptions to this rule however. When one is posting comments, or excerpts from other sites as references to points being made within your own post.
- Build Links – Having a good backlink strategy is also a two edged sword. Google ranks sites partly on the relevance of backlinks. In other words, if you have high ranking sites linking to your blog you’ll get more “points” or PR (Page Rank) with Google and other search engines. If you have low PR backlinks linking to your blog, you might be hurting yourself. It’s guilt by association. It’s better to have a few popular and high PR websites linking back to you, than lots of low PR sites.
- META – I can’t write about SEO without addressing META tags. I’ve left it for last because it’s been overused, over hyped, and totally misused. First. Forget about keyword META tag. It’s dead! And most probably doesn’t help much at all, or more likely it may even hurt your site. Throw in a few keywords and leave it alone. Instead concentrate on the two tags that actually might provide your site with at least a few points when it comes to search engine ranking. Those are the <TITLE> and <META name=”description” content> or more easily named DESCRIPTION tag. See, the TITLE tag is your search engine listing TITLE LINK, and your DESCRIPTION tag is the brief Summary listed below your SE listing on the SERP pages (Search Engine Results Page). Without these two tags Google has to spider the page to find out what’s on it, and it will generate a dynamic Title Link and Summary which may or may not be the best description for your site to create a click and ultimately traffic to your blog. Having good <TITLE> and DESCRIPTION tags is important.
- HOT Keyword Links! – Create LOTS of keyword links within your site. Link from your targeted niche market articles keywords, to other related posts on your blog. These are called “Anchor Text” by Google, and are merely keyword links to relevant content within your own site. For example, if your site is about mountain biking, you’d probably want a link from your “mountain biking in Arizona” to your “safe mountain biking article” you wrote previously. It’s related content, relevant to the article, and Googlebot loves to eat links for breakfast!
- Go Bold! – Bold your site’s niche keyword and keyword phrase text and links. It provides readers with key points within your articles, and gives the search engine spiders food to munch on.
- Emphasize – Use italic text on keywords and keyword phrases. It provides emphasis on certain words and tells people and search engine bots what your article is about, more importantly it emphasizes key phrases with your content.
- Quote it! – Use block quotes and in-line quotes within your niche market articles and content. This provides even more emphasis on content pages, and niche relevance. Don’t overdo the quote thing though. People HATE “air quotes“
- Wikipedia-ize Your Content - Everyone who has ever been on the internet for any amount of time uses, or has used Wikipedia. It is by far the most informational rich website on the web. Type in ANY keyword term in Google or ANY major search engine and most times Wikipedia is #1 or if not, it’s in the Top 5. Rarely is Wikipedia ever not on the first page of SERP‘s. The point being, that if you emulate Wikipedia’s method of displaying content within your own blog and website you’ll not only increase your ranking in ALL major search engines, but in turn you’ll grow your business, increase sales, and increase your website or blogs popularity, because you’re offering your readers something real to chew on and consume. Knowledge and information!
If you’d like to learn more about SEO, blog design, search engine ranking, or would like your own blog or website ranked higher in the search engines please contact me for information on how I can help you.
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