Every single website master wants to get to the top of the search engine rankings. Despite me telling them that often this doesn??t produce the best quality traffic and that there are many other sources of traffic, every website owner I know and I??ve spoken to wants to be at the top of the search engines; Google in particular.
So if you want to be top of the pile for all your key phrases and keywords, how do you actually do it?
Well, you need to play the search engines at their own game. What I mean by this is don??t try and beat the search engines system. Too many people get caught up in the trap of trying to beat the system. They hear about a new trick or a new gimmick and they think it will send them to the top of the search engines.
Don??t forget that search engines, Google in particular, spend millions and millions every single year trying to combat these types of techniques. They have scientific buffoons in white coats trying to keep people from beating the system. So don??t try and beat the system with the search engines. You need to play by their rules.
Now although all search engines are unique, they do have some similarities when it comes to the criteria on which they rank websites. The criteria behind the search engines algorithms are always kept secret, but generally they are looking for the same things.
Search engines are looking for which phrases you have on your website and the weighting of the key phrases and keywords. They also look at how much of a resource they think your website is and at how many quality websites are linking to you. Finally, and most importantly, the search engines look at how relevant they think your website is.
Google??s ethos, for example, is all about relevancy. The more relevant you can be to people looking for some information on Google, the greater your chances of being highly ranked.
Now this means changing focus and becoming a leading authority and a number one resource for your particular business sector. You need to move away from one narrow theme and extend your content to other related areas.
When search engines look at the phrases that you have and the weighting of these phrases, they??re making sure that you don??t have too many key phrases on one page or that you don??t have one particular word mentioned over and over again. When they measure how much of a resource they think you are, they look at the amount of content that you have and where that content has come from.
When they take a look at how many quality sites you are linking to, they spider backwards and see which sites are linking back to your site and what those sites are actually saying about you. They want to know how these sites are linking to you and how well ranked they are themselves.
Ultimately, a good search engine ranking comes down to being relevant. The more relevant content you can have on your website and the more you can become a number one relevant resource, the higher your rankings will be.
