Get Your Site a Top Ranking in Google

There is no secret, but rather, it's just knowing what to do. I've made just about every mistake one can make with a website, but I learned from every setback. If you were only allowed to do one thing to get ranked for your site in Google, without a doubt, all you'd need to do is get links for your site.

Yes, there are many other factors involved in getting your site to a top position. But this is the most powerful way as of this writing to get a top spot in Google. It's not just enough to have links pointing to your site, but you need to have your keyword "anchor linked" to your site. Anchor linking is when you use your keyword phrase as the click-able text for a link. So, instead of saying "Click Here", you would use "Widgets" as the link text.

Now, another point of consideration is determining what keyword/phrase you want to use to get your site found. Most times, people impulsively choose a one word phrase. While this would be a great way to bring traffic to your site, would it bring targeted traffic, with people looking specifically for your product or service? Most times when people type in a one letter keyphrase, they are in the beginning of their search.

They may type in "Shoes", but are really looking for "Running Shoes". So, if you have a top ranking for shoes, do you serve that user's needs? Maybe, but they may also be looking for dress, casual, Women's, Men's, Children's, athletic, girl's, boy's, etc. This is why when you begin to optimize your site, you should focus on more targeted keyword phrases.

Suppose you sell a certain brand name of dress shoes. For this example, we'll call the famous brand XYZ. So, by getting anchor links as "XYZ Dress Shoes", you are already eliminating those users who are looking for another brand or line of shoe. Next, you need to make sure that the page that gets linked contains the on the page content with "XYZ Dress Shoes". If you would link to a page without relevant content, Google would view this link as possible spam, or more appropriately, irrelevant content.

Now, once you have compiled your list of keywords, you need to see which one are searched on the most. The best tool for this is WordTracker, and it is worth the tiny fee you need to pay to have access for one day. There are also free tools online that you can use, but WordTracker will give you the most accurate results.

Once you have run through your list of all your keywords, the obvious choice is to pick the ones with the highest amount of searches (and content relevant to your site!). The next step is to then begin the process of a link campaign. Now, I can already hear you complaining about doing a link exchange. This is only 1/3 of your campaign. The ideal method is to not only engage in a reciprocal link exchange, but to also engage in strategic linking.

Strategic linking is when you get a link to your site without having to return the favor. What's the best way to do this? Write an article just like this one. If I get one website to use this article and have it point to my site, I've just created another link to my site. Pretty easy, eh?

Since you have now engaged in a linking campaign, you should expect to see results in Google in as little as 4 days, and as far as 6 months. All of this is determined by where your links are coming from, and the popularity of the site from which the link came. Next, you need to get as many links as you can pointing to your site with your popular keyword phrase anchor linked to your site.

As I mentioned before, there many other factors that will only enhance your rankings in Google, but the implementation of a link campaign is the strongest method to get your site to a top ranking!


by Paul Bliss at www.seoforgoogle.com

Selecting a Topic for Your Web Site

Selecting a good topic is the first step to building a successful web site.

You should select a topic which you find interesting, as you will be devoting thousands of hours of your life to this topic. It does not necessarily have to be a topic where you are deeply knowledgeable today, but it does have to be a topic in which you are interested in becoming deeply knowledgeable.

It should also be a topic in which other people are interested. No one wants to build a web site only for themselves. Your topic should be broad enough to appeal to a good audience, but narrow enough for you to be able to cover it comprehensively. Many successful web sites initially focus on a very small niche’, grow to dominate that niche’, and then branch out from that niche’ into related topics.

It should be a topic with economic value to an advertiser. Some topics are very interesting as hobbies, but do not do well at generating income. For example, the War of 1812 is fascinating, but is not something which will interest many advertisers.

Finally, the topic for a new web site should be one which is not too competitive. If there are already a hundred great web sites on your chosen topic, you should choose a new topic where you will be able to add something new to the Internet.

How to Determine if Other People are Interested in your Topic

One easy method of determining if other people are interested in your topic is to use the Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/). This tool will show you rough numbers which represent what people on the Internet are searching for. These numbers come from the Wordtracker and Overture tools which we will discuss in the section on keyword selection.

Enter possible topics into the Keyword Suggestion tool and you will be able to get a rough idea how popular your topic is – as compared to other topics. The actual numbers are irrelevant; the important thing to note is how the numbers relate to one another.

Today, the term “arizona” scored 265 on Wordtracker and 492.4 on Overture. The term “chicago white sox” scored 511 on Wordtracker and 755.1 on Overture. From this data, we can see that more people search the web for information on the White Sox than on the Cardinals.

How to Determine if Advertisers are Interested in your Topic

One of the best methods for measuring advertiser interest in a topic is to find out what it would cost an advertiser to purchase a PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement on that topic. This can be done using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).

Enter the topic you are thinking of as a keyword and click “Get More Keywords”. Change the value of the “Show columns” dropdown list to “Cost and ad position estimates”. Enter an unrealistic value as the Max CPC -- $50 should work fine. Click the “Recalculate” button.

When we try to search for “white sox”, our search fails. This is because AdWords does not allow advertisers to key on Trademarks. Therefore, we search for other terms which will be found on our web site. For example, a search for “baseball” shows that “baseball” currently has an average CPC of$1.07. This is a good CPC and tells us that this is a site idea that we might be interested in.

How to Determine if your Topic is too Competitive

NicheBot (http://www.nichebot.com/) is one useful tool for roughly determining the competitiveness of a keyword. Enter your prospective keyword and click the “Search” button.

If we search for “white sox”, we see that “chicago white sox” was searched for 40,537 times. That is excellent. Lots of people are interested in this topic. However, we also see that 19,100,000 pages on the Internet include the phrase “chicago white sox.” That gives us a ratio of 471.17. 471.17 generally means that a search term is very competitive. I recommend competing for search terms with a ratio of less than 10.

However, if we look down the list of suggested keywords, we see that “white sox jersey”, “white sox jerseys”, “chicago white sox jersey”, “chicago white sox jerseys”, “chicago white sox jacket” and “chicago white sox hat” all have ratios below ten. This tells us that a web site dedicated to Chicago White Sox clothing could potentially do very well.

Checklist for Topic Selection:

• I am interested in this topic
• Other people are interested in this topic
• Advertisers are interested in this topic
• This topic is not too competitive

Article by Will Spencer at DigitalPoint Forums.

Increase Traffic with Squidoo

For those who don't know about Squidoo:

The site allows anyone to make a special webpage that focuses on some subject that you are an expert in. You don't even need much expertise to create a "lens" on Squidoo.

A Squidoo lens is a webpage that focuses on a particular topic. For example you could make a lens about a hobby, sports team, your great grandmother, or even a product that you are selling. I make a lot of lenses on items I want to make money with and it works!

The interesting thing is Squidoo pages (lenses) are getting high placement in search engines for many keywords. Awesome!

Go to Squidoo.com and set up a free lens on your favorite subject.

The set up is easy and there is plenty of help on how to do it if you get stuck.

When you make your lenses, add as many keywords (tags) as you can that are related to your topic to bring in more traffic.

Treat it like blog and update it daily and you'll begin to see lots of traffic to your sites, not just your Squidoo pages.

The best thing is Squidoo lets you earn royalties from the traffic and clicks to your Squidoo lenses since there are Google Adwords on your Squidoo Pages. You can also add Ebay, Amazon, CafePress and Netflix modules that you can make money from too!

Keyword Selection and Competition checking

I would like to pay attention to Google Adwords External Keyword Tool.

It is maybe the best tool for keyword selection. You can see the search volume and competition for particular keyword or phrase. Combined with Google Trends you can make marketing research for any niche. Maybe thats the first thing to consider when you are going for a new site and optimization. A big limitation of this keyword tool is that you can view search volume of the current month only but sometimes thats enough to get a overall picture of the market situation.