by Neil Anuskiewicz
Here are some of the things that I did to get our website to the first page in Google search results for keywords that matter to us. I followed basic “white-hat” (ethical) techniques to get us there. It required consistent effort to achieve results. I hope you benefit from these ideas.
Write Compelling Content
There is no point in doing Search Engine Optimization if your website is not well designed and, more importantly, does not have good content. You should use keywords and phrases in your content, but do not overdo it to the point where it seems unnatural to the reader. If you sell something, you must have compelling offers to keep visitors’ interest.
Get Text Link-Backs
Once you have designed a compelling website with solid content, it is time to build incoming links to it. Do this by getting links back to your site on other relevant sites.
The best way to get link-backs is to establish relationships with website owners and bloggers in your industry, and ask them to publish a text link to your site. Be sure to focus on sites that have a reasonably high PageRank on Google.
They are likely to publish your link if you explain to them how your site is relevant to the topic of their site or blog. In addition, they are much more likely to publish your link if they view you as a contributor to the online community and not out purely for self-promotion. Remember, you are optimizing keywords and phrases so people can find you using search engines. Use text links that include the keywords and phrases you want to optimize.
Publish Articles
No matter what you do for a living, you likely have knowledge that would be beneficial to other people. Share your knowledge by writing articles and publishing them on sites related to your industry, or in publications that are read by the customers you want to attract.
Many online publications allow you to include a brief bio at the end of your article. This is your opportunity to say something about yourself and your company, and include a text link or two. Some publications only allow a one-line bio, while others allow several lines. You would most likely not want to include one to three text links in your bio.
Submit Press Releases
When you have something to announce, take the opportunity to issue a press release. If you have press contacts, you can submit your press release directly to editors and reporters who may write a story based on it. Keep in mind that business reporters generally want measurable results when writing about a case study.
Alternatively, use a paid service that will post your press release online with text links. Press releases submitted through these services can produce both SEO benefits and direct click-throughs to your site.
Blog
Search engines love fresh content. If you have not done so yet, start a blog. Services such as blogger.com make it easy to start your own blog within minutes.
Experiment
Try using all or some of these tactics to boost your site rankings; it certainly worked for us. It may take a few tests to find the exact right combination of channels, words and links, but a higher search ranking will make it well worth your effort.
Content, content content.
And might I add, do NOT used canned PLR articles too! Nothing is more frustrating than to visit a site and see the same article that exists on 2,334 other places…
Congrats on your achievement!
Good information Neil. Since redesigning and relaunching our web site, we have been focused on everything you talk about here. As you say, increasing page rank takes time, attention to details and hard work.
Great Post Ann,
The whole idea of being diverse and consistent is an absolute must. Just a few links or a couple articles a week with a good routine works very well and looks natural.
One thing that I find is over looked to a great extent is Deep linking instead of just using your main url to use the perma-link to the article you want to highlight. This gives the inside of your site authority also instead of just your domain. Give your content authority not just your site.
Thank you
Brad West ~ onomoney
And the best part, Ann? This doesn’t cost a fortune. It worked for our company.
Terrific information and spot on. I would add a couple of items. Page titles are very important. A note about page titles: the more words you put up there, the less weight each word has. Your company name should come last. The phrase you want to be found by should come first. Headlines that are in sync with that page title are important as well.
@ Barbara – You are absolutely right that content, content, content is the core of SEO. Yes, it is much better to get your article published to one great Web site than through PLR.
@ Lewis – Consistent, hard work is what makes it happen. There are no good short cuts and people should avoid the temptation to take short cuts as they can backfire.
@ Brad – You make an excellent point about deep linking, something I did not mention in my guest post.
@ Elaine – Exactly! It requires sharing your knowledge.
@ Richard – Yes, this post purposely focused on other things but page titles and headlines are key. A whole other post or article could focus on just these sorts of things. Articles and books have been written on this topic.
I recently started a blog and thought it would be time consuming and hard to find creative ideas. It turns out I was wrong. I get my ideas for content from unexpected places.
I read in John Chow’s book Making-Money-Online that he does not care very much about linking to sites with PageRank near or above.
Logically speaking Google or any search engine would be looking at rank and the number of links. So I don’t know if this part of your advice is completely on line.
@ Lisa – I just went to your blog and you blog very regularly so obviously the hardest step for you was the decision to do it. Well done!
@ Atul – You are saying that the PageRank of the sites that link to you is not relevant? Please clarify exactly what you are saying as this is a useful area of inquiry to flesh out a bit more.
Neil thanks for writing this, as I will be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about SEO. But I was talking about this recently with Shannon Paul, and I mentioned to her how many people in the social media space aren’t very well versed in SEO.
But at the same time, I look at my blog, which has always had a Google Pagerank of 5 or 6, while many of the so-called ‘SEO experts’ only have a PR of 4-6 on their blogs.
If I know almost nothing about SEO, and can do as well or better than the ‘experts’, why should I invest any significant amount of time in learning more about SEO? Or is PageRank not that important anymore? I really don’t know, just going on what little I do know. I think that most good bloggers naturally follow most of the steps you outline above.
We have found an entire community of women bloggers who write and link back to our site, and this continued growth has kept us at the top of Google & Yahoo for quite some time. Gerhard Kramer, Marketing Director. http://www.Psalm23Jewelry.com
@ Mack – You make some excellent points. In the case of StreamSend, our permission-based email marketing service, we are on page 1 for the key phrase “email marketing” and our overall PageRank is 6/10. While PageRank is important, the actual results returned for keywords that are important to your business is even more crucial.
Mack, I do not think you need to spend a huge amount of time learning about SEO as you can achieve great results without being an expert. I would say, however, you should spend some time studying it. You can keep doing what you are doing to achieve other things and achieve better SEO results as a bi-product of what you would do anyway. If you are going to do certain things anyway, you might as well do it optimally. In addition, there are some things you would do, especially in the HTML of your site, keywords, etc., that you might do mostly for SEO so it is worth knowing a bit about that.
It is worth noting that the rules change from time to time so it is good to keep up to some degree. I am not talking a lot of time but keeping an eye on trends is a good idea.
@ Psalm 23 Jewelry – Cultivating relationships with bloggers in your space is an excellent idea for many reasons, including links. Bloggers need content and you are there to provide them something to write about. It works out for everyone.
Neil, on your comment “start a blog”, might work for many companies, however I would suggest that updating the website content often with fresh content – even html articles might substitute for blogging. Thoughts?
Paul, I agree with that. The search engines love fresh content and your customers and prospective customers want information they can use.
Though you can always put off posting fresh content to another day, a blog imposes a sort of discipline. You cannot put off posting to your blog for too long or becomes noticeably stale.
If necessity is the mother of invention, a blog in need of an update is the cure for writer’s block.
Good ideas. I am a little confused by this line: “You would most likely not want to include one to three text links in your bio.” Wouldn’t putting a text link with your keywords in your bio be a good thing? Three might be excessive, but what’s wrong with one text link?
@ Eric – I gave 1 to 3 text links as a range with 3 being the upper bound of that range.
I think one text link would be enough.
Even with White hat techniques, it can take years to move up in the rankings if you are a newcomer. All this effort comes with a price, either in time or money or both.
@ Eric – I may have misunderstood your comment. If I did more than one link in a bio the other link or links would be to other pages on our site and would focus on other phrases. It would not be the same text or the same link repeated.
@ Steve – It took a year of consistent work to get to the middle of page 1 for our most important search phrase. It takes consistent work to keep the site there as well.
I agree with you that there are really no good short cuts. If it were easy and fast, everyone would do it and right now, which obviously is not possible.
The key is consistent, sustained effort. It is worth saying again that these efforts are not just for SEO but have other benefits that are at least as important as the SEO outcomes.
The key is consistent, sustained effort
I agree with you that there are really no good short cuts.
I agree with you that there are really no good short cuts.
I agree with you that there are really no good short cuts.
Though you can always put off posting fresh content to another day, a blog imposes a sort of discipline. You cannot put off posting to your blog for too long or becomes noticeably stale.
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In recent years, the terms white hat and black hat have been applied to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. Black hat SEO tactics such as spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines’ terms of service, whereas white hat methods are generally approved by the search engines.[3] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[4]
Though you can always put off posting fresh content to another day, a blog imposes a sort of discipline. You cannot put off posting to your blog for too long or becomes noticeably stale. klip