How do I do it?
Without all the myths, hype and nonsense, you can develop a logical strategy to promote your website.
Firstly, what places a site in the higher rankings?
The reality is that all the search engines use their own, top secret, algorithms to rank sites. Their goal is to deliver relevant, accurate, and up-to-date information to their searching public. To achieve this, they are in a constant war against SEO experts who would seek to skew those rankings so as to put their clients at the top.
Top rankings can be achieved by two "strategies":
"Black Hat" and "White Hat".
White Hat optimization is designed to deliver accurate, timely, relevant and quality information - essentially working WITH the Search Engines.
Black hat goes against the Search Engines by cheating and exploiting loopholes. These strategies can work but are only effective for a short time until the programmers at Google find out what you are doing, ban you and fix that loophole.
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. Well thought out content that relates to your theme. The more the better. Search Engines are getting better at interpreting sites though a process called "latent semantic indexing" with is a more complex way of saying that artificial intelligence is being used to determine what the site is about, as opposed to simple what keywords are within. Littering the site with as many keywords as possible simply doesn't work anymore. Keywords are still required but now also require other phrases and words that are related to your topic keywords.
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. Old sites - ie that have been around for a long time are worth more than new ones - in general your PR will rise with time, all other factors being equal.
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. Links OUT to authority sites are also worth points. But don't have too many. While you are not penalized for any bad links coming in, you can be penalized if you link out to bad neighborhoods.
6. The keywords themselves - obviously some keywords are a lot more competitive than others. Aim to get ranked for your most specific keywords first. If you are a local business, then tag on the name of your town or state to the keyword.
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.
Without all the myths, hype and nonsense, you can develop a logical strategy to promote your website.
Firstly, what places a site in the higher rankings?
The reality is that all the search engines use their own, top secret, algorithms to rank sites. Their goal is to deliver relevant, accurate, and up-to-date information to their searching public. To achieve this, they are in a constant war against SEO experts who would seek to skew those rankings so as to put their clients at the top.
Top rankings can be achieved by two "strategies":
"Black Hat" and "White Hat".
White Hat optimization is designed to deliver accurate, timely, relevant and quality information - essentially working WITH the Search Engines.
Black hat goes against the Search Engines by cheating and exploiting loopholes. These strategies can work but are only effective for a short time until the programmers at Google find out what you are doing, ban you and fix that loophole.
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. Well thought out content that relates to your theme. The more the better. Search Engines are getting better at interpreting sites though a process called "latent semantic indexing" with is a more complex way of saying that artificial intelligence is being used to determine what the site is about, as opposed to simple what keywords are within. Littering the site with as many keywords as possible simply doesn't work anymore. Keywords are still required but now also require other phrases and words that are related to your topic keywords.
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. Old sites - ie that have been around for a long time are worth more than new ones - in general your PR will rise with time, all other factors being equal.
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. Links OUT to authority sites are also worth points. But don't have too many. While you are not penalized for any bad links coming in, you can be penalized if you link out to bad neighborhoods.
6. The keywords themselves - obviously some keywords are a lot more competitive than others. Aim to get ranked for your most specific keywords first. If you are a local business, then tag on the name of your town or state to the keyword.
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 recommends 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 manually.
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