How Do I Raise the Rank of my Search Engine Listings
09.10.07Filed Under: Search Engines, Google and the Hamptons
We’ll talk about Google but this applies to all search engines. Google is by far the most important holding approximately 50% of the world search. Google is interested in one thing ONLY - everything they do, be that an adwords campaign where you pay for ads, or free/organic search results (left side of the page), and that ONE THING is RELEVANCY. But more important I WANT websites to be about relevancy too - and search listings, and ads, and marketing seminars - because TOO MUCH OF IT IS ABOUT ANYTHING BUT RELEVANCY.Relevancy is a word used online a lot these days. Transparency is another - it’s the sister to Relevancy. Relevancy in terms of advertising or website content online refers to a number of things that inter-relate, together.The listing in Google (or ad), says Find Blue Widgets and when you get to the site it says in huge capital letters BLUE WIDGETS. But the content isn’t about BLUE WIDGETS it’s about a bunch of links someone put together, that when clicked earns them money and, the links are about Dog Food, Apple Cider, How to make potatoes blue, and a bunch of other crap. But even if those links were about all kinds of BLUE WIDGET information - I was JUST ON GOOGLE looking for that information - why then am I now on another site with more links. Imagine if someone didn’t stop this craziness you’d be clicking from one site to another seeing nothing but links to another site with links on it - sort of like the old song “I’m glad I’m glad I’m glad…”
And many of those links might be Ad Sense - Google’s way of sharing the ads on their site, with websites around the world. So Google is cracking down on those types of sites - as well as sites that are put together to just capture someone’s email address, or not related to the ad or listing. Google makes it’s billions on those little ads, and they want to be sure that their customers are happy too. I’m glad they are doing this.
Transparency is similar but really more about deception and lying - or rather NOT doing those things online because it’s SO easy to do in the short term. Long term deception is just a recipe for disaster (in life and online)… which is where the third piece of the trio comes in - NEGATIVE SATURATION. For now, Transparency is more about saying what you’re about up front, no hidden agendas, no hyped up games, no lies.
Online one learns quickly that many of the so called miracle million dollar opportunities are nothing more than hype that sounds good, looks good but doesn’t work. Google is aware of this - and I have created a term called NEGATIVE SATURATION to define what happens even when large companies participate in creating a bad vibe with their customers by ripping them off, making fast money, not caring that they did so, and you’re left with one pissed of chap… And he tells 10 who tell 10 who tell 10 and also that same equation is going on as 1 guys gets ripped off, then 10, then 1000, then 1 million and WHAM stocks plummet out of nowhere - SATURATION OCCURS - NEGATIVE SATURATION.
Negative Saturation is BURN OUT - someone reads books on how to make money online from Joe, and Sue, and Ben and finally realizes they’re all full of CRAP. So he stops reading e-books - especailly from those three, and although they made money up front, they lost their audience by offering what was soon to be revealed as CRAP. There is a lot of it. So Google and profeesionals alike are sick of hype, lies, deception, games, spam and the rest of the worst of human nature playing itself out on the world of cyberspace.
- RELEVANCY
- TRANSPARENCY
- NEGATIVE SATURATION
Three important areas to be aware of in terms of having good placement for your site, gaining trust from your visitors, and avoiding burn out becuase you were in a rush, and you fibbed to your customers to get their money and in the process wasted their time.
Google wants to know that what someone searches for, is found not only because it “relates somewhat” to what that person is looking for but what it EXACTLY relates and provides information quickly, and efficiently.
HOW GOOGLE JUDGES YOUR WEBSITE FOR PLACEMENT
Google finds your website and if it meets its basic standards lists the site according to the information found in the page and other elements. Once that happens, they respider you (spider means they go to the site and crawl through pages in the site, to find a way to create one or more listing)…
Here are a few of the most important pieces of information Google looks for. Remember these are computer programs that do not have human judgment.
–The domain name.
–If the domain name is related to the title tags in the html portion of your hidden code.
–The titles and headers on the page itself (what someone reads).
–The links and their titles (called Anchor Text)
–The keyword phrases that exist in the text of your site, in the anchor text, in the alt text (invisible tags in photos), that relate to the site’s theme, domain, tags, meta tags (hidden keywords), and so on.
–The # of links from OTHER WEBSITES that link back to yours. A link back simply means that some other website has put your domain name (www.hamptonswebdesign.com) for instance, on their website. This means that they are recommending your website to their visitors - and Google takes that seriously.
–The traffic for the sites that link back to you. If you have a link on a site that gets 1 million visitors a day that means more than a site with 1000.
–Your traffic #’s…
–The overall ability of your site to work easily for the end user: easy navigation, clear text, relevant keywords in the text related to the site’s title and theme/subject etc.
–After all Google has said - here is a listing based on what you searched for in our engine, when you go there, it:
–opens fast
–has relevant content related to the keywords you asked for
–it’s easy to navigate
–it doesn’t break any rules we have set that are tricks.
So relevancy is everything.
Transparency is important.
Negative Saturation is something to avoid.
Lie to me once, I want a refund. Endorse someone’s crappy book or program, and you lose my trust. Tell me something I know is a lie, even to be nice to me, I’m done with you. I want information and service, not a run around. Be clear, I’m not unique the very nature of the Internet in terms of finding information is that it CAN exist without commerce really interfering.
TIPS TO IMPROVE RANK
For the East End most websites do nothing to change their content, improve their link partnering, add new keywords to text, add articles or videos - they just have a website created, let it sit like a lump in cyberspace and expect everyone to get excited about it. Google doesn’t.
–Google goes to your site.
–It says - nothing has changed.
–They ignore you.
–Your rank stays where it is.
–Others who are doing basic Search Engine Optimizations rise up.
–Your rank gets pushed down.
STEPS TO TAKE
Keyword Research to find out what keywords are BEING TYPED INTO GOOGLE not what you think are being typed in have to be done. These keywords are then sifted into the site’s content, meta tags and other areas.
Articles should be written - short and sweet, entered into the site, teasers on the home and other pages linking to the full article, and submit the articles to several important article directories. People who take these articles as content for THEIR sites keep your link to your site. As they place them, your link popularity increases without having to contact link partners. There are services that will submit them to 100’s of directories.
Contact link partners and ask to have a shared link - theirs on your links page, yours on theirs. Tracking helps to insure they keep it there.
Video is big now. Home videos of a walk through your store, you talking to someone, etc., can be put on YouTube and with one snippet of code brought into your site. There is no server strain either as they reside on Google’s Servers, and feed into the site. The video listings in YouTube have keywords, and Google spiders that everyday. This can help drive traffic to your site. Others who take the snippet for your video and put that on their site counts as a link back to your site but for video which ranks higher in terms of importance.
FRESH CONTENT
Weekly or at least monthly you need to add fresh content to the site - especially on the homepage. This is good for repeat visitors but more, the Google Bots who are seeking NEW content and want to know how relevant your site is.
Adding a teaser that opens an article, new photos with descriptions linking to a new gallery, will tell the Google Bots that NEW things are happening. Also, because you have this article on the site, you can submit it to a few article directories that Google likes so other people can use it on their sites - the links in the article remain and are considered a link back which recommends your site to Google. The more of these the better so people from around the globe can grab your article and your site gets link backs while you sleep - No link partnering hunting.
Creating a simple newsletter today is a good thing if it relates to your business. By offering information about your business to those who are reading it, not only brands you as an expert in your field, but gives you articles that help your online presence in multiple ways. It can be added as new content to your site, which means Google says HEY NEW STUFF … you can infuse the articles with keywords relating to the article and your business (keywords you KNOW someone is using online via keyword research), and you can submit them to article directories allowing other sites, newspapers and publishers to use your article keeping your name, contact info and a link back to your site.
TIP
99% of the sites on the East End do NOTHING to change their sites. I would safely assume this is true for any small community anywhere on earth. These are niche markets in and of themselves and less competitive than world markets. If there are 10 yoga studios in your area, you can be #1 if they are not doing much to their sites on a REGULAR basis. That’s the key isn’t it to anything that is managed well and develops - CONSISTENCY - or doing things on a regular basis.
Taking 1 hour a month, or maybe 2, you can increase the rank of your site for keywords people use to find you. These are free searches which cost you nothing.
SUMMARY
Google wants relevancy and transparency, and I want NO NEGATIVE SATURATION behavior - which is the same good behavior that makes you create relevant, transparent sites and care about the information you give to your visitors. Google, Yahoo, MSN and a myriad of other engines can check your site on a regular basis, to see what’s new. If there is new stuff, and it’s done properly to make your site more relevant, your rank will increase.
Doing this requires professional expertise and will cost money or a lot of reading on your part to learn how to do this yourself - and you can. I am working on a step-by-step e-book to show you how if you want to pay me a fortune of money to learn this stuff. Cheaper to hire someone :). Considering that more and more people use Google and other online sources to find information, it makes good business sense to have changes being done every week and either hire someone to do it, or to teach you, consult with you, and check the work.
GOOGLE AD WORDS
This is the PAID version of Google - the same keywords found that people use to find you online can be placed into an ad campaign (ads show up at the top and right side of Google). Based on competition and activity, the price per click increases. Relevancy plays just as big a role as for free search listings. Someone can be paying $1 per click (yes that’s a buck a click), and you could be paying 20 cents per click and your ad can show up before theirs.
Why? How? Come on John that’s just crap…
WELL NO it’s not…
It’s called CTR
CTR means Click Through Ratio.
That is, the calculation between the # of times the ad is shown, and the # of times it is clicked sending someone to your website.
The higher this is, the higher the market value in terms of relevancy is, thus, Google rewards you because they want your ad to show more - you’re providing THEIR CUSTOMERS with the PRODUCT they are seeking.
In addition, there is a QUALITY SCORE that means other factors are checked too - like the speed of your website opening (this is where high-level hosting comes in rather than cheap hosting which too many seek), navigation, no pop ups like collecting email addresses right way, and other factors. The Quality Score and CTR in a Google Ad Words Campaign is everything. Unless you want to spend a small fortune. I will repeat this in other articles because it’s SO important.
BOTH free search engine placement and paid is important today for your business.
If you have an ad campaign in Google and Yahoo you are covering most of the net’s search. Because ads can fluctuate if you are not paying enough per day, and free search results change monthly based on new Indexing criteria, both are insurance policies that when someone types in the keywords to find you, you’re there.
How to Set Up, Test and Hone your Google Ad Words Campaign
and
How to Search Engine Optimize your Website for Free Listings
will have articles written in the near future. If you want to be alerted when these are up on this blog sign up for my alert mailing list - top of page link.
___________________________UPCOMING ARTICLES
Be Alerted when new articles are added
Click Here for Alerts
___________________________
Be sure to visit:
www.HamptonsWebDesign.com and www.HamptonsDirectory.com
___________________________
You may republish this article
but you MUST KEEP the following
Information and Links in the Article
Written by
John Monteleone
www.HamptonsWebDesign.com
www.HamptonsDirectory.com
631-725-5251
Submit your questions
and we will consider answering them Click Here
___________________________
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.