How is it done?
Here we will help you develop a sensible strategy for promoting your website by weeding out all of the nonsense, myths and hype.
Firstly, what places a site in the higher rankings?
Search Engines are out to deliver the most current, relevant and accurate information to the public. They do this by using top secret algorithms for site rankings. Therefore, they are at constant war with SEO experts, whose goal is to ensure the top is dominated by their clients.
Top rankings can be achieved by two "strategies":
"Black Hat" and "White Hat".
White Hat refers to strategies that work with the search engines - to deliver quality, relevant, accurate, timely information.
Black Hat refers to strategies that try to get around that by various ways of cheating. Black Hat techniques can work, but usually only for a short period of time until all the PhD's at Google figure out what you are doing and find a way to plug that loophole - and ban you while they are at it.
No one knows for certain what ranking factors work, but these are the ones that have been well proven, have survived the test of time, and make intuitive sense, given the goal of the search engines themselves:
1. Quality themed content, and lots of it. This goes beyond just stuffing in your keywords as much as possible. The SE's are getting better at determining themes by means of "latent semantic indexing", which basically means using artificial intelligence to work out what the site is about, rather than just what keywords are on it. To achieve this you need to provide your keyword, certainly, and also other words and phrases that are linked to them.
2. Links pointing to your site. Links coming from Authority sites are generally worth the most, as they are trusted sources of content. Links from so-called "bad neighborhoods" count for very little. Theme sites related to yours are worth more than non-related sites, ie political sites won't help you nearly as much as a pet site if you are likewise, a pet site. Search Engines don't penalize you for bad links coming into your site, but they certainly don't reward you for links from Free-For-All pages (FFA), link farms or other sites dubbed "bad." Google Page Rank is a good rough indication of how valuable a site is, the higher the better. PR is probably going to become theme specific, meaning that you may have a low PR for one theme but have a high PR for another theme.
3. Sites that are older -PR generally rises in time if all factors are equal. Sites that have been around for longer are more valuable than new ones due to this.
4. Fresh sites - In the Search Engine's quest to find hot news, they generally look to new sites and therefore give initial priority to the newer sites. SE's also look for links pointing to these new sites as they are sometimes a stepping stone to other new content.
5. Outbound links are quite worthwhile, especially when linking to expert sites. A word of caution though, do not have too many links and do not link to bad neighborhoods as you can be penalized for it, as opposed to incoming links, which you can not.
6. Content words or keywords, as they are commonly known. Though they vary in how competitive they are, the best bet is to aim for your most focused keywords before the broader ones. For local business owners, try adding your local area name to your keywords.
7. Original Content. Don't just use the same article everyone else is using. Search Engines are quick to filter out content that they find multiple times. One needs unique content, both on sites linking in, as well as your own. Search Engine's don't want the public to find the same information in multiple places.
Here we will help you develop a sensible strategy for promoting your website by weeding out all of the nonsense, myths and hype.
Firstly, what places a site in the higher rankings?
Search Engines are out to deliver the most current, relevant and accurate information to the public. They do this by using top secret algorithms for site rankings. Therefore, they are at constant war with SEO experts, whose goal is to ensure the top is dominated by their clients.
Top rankings can be achieved by two "strategies":
"Black Hat" and "White Hat".
White Hat refers to strategies that work with the search engines - to deliver quality, relevant, accurate, timely information.
Black Hat refers to strategies that try to get around that by various ways of cheating. Black Hat techniques can work, but usually only for a short period of time until all the PhD's at Google figure out what you are doing and find a way to plug that loophole - and ban you while they are at it.
No one knows for certain what ranking factors work, but these are the ones that have been well proven, have survived the test of time, and make intuitive sense, given the goal of the search engines themselves:
1. Quality themed content, and lots of it. This goes beyond just stuffing in your keywords as much as possible. The SE's are getting better at determining themes by means of "latent semantic indexing", which basically means using artificial intelligence to work out what the site is about, rather than just what keywords are on it. To achieve this you need to provide your keyword, certainly, and also other words and phrases that are linked to them.
2. Links pointing to your site. Links coming from Authority sites are generally worth the most, as they are trusted sources of content. Links from so-called "bad neighborhoods" count for very little. Theme sites related to yours are worth more than non-related sites, ie political sites won't help you nearly as much as a pet site if you are likewise, a pet site. Search Engines don't penalize you for bad links coming into your site, but they certainly don't reward you for links from Free-For-All pages (FFA), link farms or other sites dubbed "bad." Google Page Rank is a good rough indication of how valuable a site is, the higher the better. PR is probably going to become theme specific, meaning that you may have a low PR for one theme but have a high PR for another theme.
3. Sites that are older -PR generally rises in time if all factors are equal. Sites that have been around for longer are more valuable than new ones due to this.
4. Fresh sites - In the Search Engine's quest to find hot news, they generally look to new sites and therefore give initial priority to the newer sites. SE's also look for links pointing to these new sites as they are sometimes a stepping stone to other new content.
5. Outbound links are quite worthwhile, especially when linking to expert sites. A word of caution though, do not have too many links and do not link to bad neighborhoods as you can be penalized for it, as opposed to incoming links, which you can not.
6. Content words or keywords, as they are commonly known. Though they vary in how competitive they are, the best bet is to aim for your most focused keywords before the broader ones. For local business owners, try adding your local area name to your keywords.
7. Original Content. Don't just use the same article everyone else is using. Search Engines are quick to filter out content that they find multiple times. One needs unique content, both on sites linking in, as well as your own. Search Engine's don't want the public to find the same information in multiple places.
About the Author:
Noel Swanson suggests the use of an article submission service, which will be crucial in climbing to the top of Google Rankings. These services will help you submit articles to thousands of article directories; much more than you could do by hand.
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