Online marketers frequently struggle with the question of how to
compete when Google fails to look positively upon a particular
website. In this article, I will focus on how to build rankings
and drive traffic to your website, using Google and the other
search engines.
What Motivates Google's Algorithm
Over the years, many have tried to claim, even in court, that
Google was unfairly keeping their website out of the top of
Google's search results. But, the truth is that Google is not
beholden to the needs and desires of the webmasters who want to
be on page one of Google's natural search results.
Instead, Google is beholden to its stockholders and its need to
earn profits. Google has determined that the best way to keep
profits high is to keep Internet users flocking to its websites.
Google accomplishes that by giving its users the kind of
information they are looking to find, and Google weights its
search algorithm towards what Google believes its search audience
wants to see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
It is important for online marketers to understand that it is not
always in Google's best interest for our websites to rank well
in Google.
But in 2007, Google only provided 52% of my website's total
search traffic. Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, and MSN provided the
next 42%. The remaining 6% of my website's search traffic came
from another 55 smaller search engines.
On my website, only 48.8% of my 2007 traffic actually came from
search engines. The remaining 51.2% of my website's quarter
million visitors came directly from article placements on other
websites, recommendations from other people, forum posts, and
from people who have bookmarks for my website.
Tips For Ranking Well For Specific Keywords
It has been my experience that it is easier to rank in 1) MSN /
Windows Live, 2) Yahoo, and then 3) Google, in that order. Quite
frankly, I have always ignored the role of Ask in the search
market. While MSN is the easiest search engine to rank in, it
only delivered 4.6% of my total search traffic in 2007.
I read a question in a forum, where the poster was asking how he
could get his website to rank well in Google for the search term, "software".
The truth is that it is nearly impossible in nearly every search
engine to rank well in the natural results for such a singular
keyword, such as "software". In a nutshell, if you want to rank
well in Google, you need to build inbound links (IBLs) to your
website with your targeted keywords in the links.
But, you don't want to put all of your links together with one
keyword phrase. One of Google's red flags is when they notice a
link to a particular website appearing more than 60% of the time
with one specific keyword phrase.
Utilizing a variety of long-tail keywords will actually serve you
better in the search-engine ranking puzzle, in more ways than
one. After all, when I do a search for software, I don't type in
the search word, "software". I type in search phrases like: "accounting software", "small business accounting software",
"windows software accounting small business", "windows
image
editing software", "windows software image editor", "windows
xp photo album manager", etc.
People searching the keyword "software" have yet to figure
out
that they are looking for specific kinds of software. Once they
do an initial search, they are going to type in more specific
search terms to find what they actually want. So, once you start
targeting a variety of long-tail keyword phrases, then you will
start seeing more success in your search marketing efforts.
How To Start Your Search Engine Optimization Journey
If you are wanting to get into the natural search results of
Google and the other search engines, you must know before you
dive into the project that getting good rankings in the search
engines for your chosen keywords can take a really long time,
before you begin seeing results.
While inbound links to your website, targeted to your chosen
keywords, will help your website climb in the search results of
your favorite search engines, it may be a frustrating journey.
Your competitors want to rank well for the same search terms you
do. And since only ten of you can be on page one of the search
results, you may have to work really hard to topple those guys
already on page one of the results, and you will have to fight to
keep your ranking once you get it.
There are some keyword phrases that are nearly impossible to rank
for, even if you have really deep pockets. For example, most
every keyword phrase for the financial industry will be extremely
difficult to rank for in Google. Competition in this industry is
fierce, so achieving top search rankings will be tough to say the
least.
This is the reason why so many SEO experts encourage marketers to
target "low-hanging fruit". It may be fairly easy to rank well
for a four- or five-word search phrase, and extremely expensive
to target a two- or three-word search phrase.
My personal approach has always been to rotate through a list of
more than 100 target keyword phrases, over a longer period of
time. In doing so, I capture a lot of low-hanging fruit quickly,
and at the end of the loop, I am a bit closer to snagging the
fruit in the upper branches of the tree. At the end of my list, I
analyze my keywords again to see where I am strong and to see
where I am still weak, and then I begin the process again.
(According to SEOdigger.com, I have better than 950 keyword
phrases in the top twenty results of Google.)
How To Get Links
The challenge most people face when they begin building links to
a website is where to get those essential links.
Article marketing is my chosen method for getting inbound links.
Because of Google's news feed strategy, the initial placement of
your article might appear immediately in the SERPs, but then it
will disappear. During the news cycle phase of the Google
algorithm, new materials are given an added boost in ranking.
Once the news cycle is done, any new pages will sink back down to
where they would be based on the general Google algorithm.
If you are honest with yourself, you know that every page on the
Internet started life with a PageRank Zero, but given enough
time, many pages will gain in PageRank, as they begin to be
linked. For a more detailed look at the process of how reprint
articles gain value for a website in Google's search index, see
my article about "Fishing for Links in Google" at:
http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/....../2008/06/10/
Utilizing article marketing as a link building method, I have put
one website on the map in as little as eight weeks, with only
three articles. This website has one #1, one #2, eight results on
page one, and twelve results in the top twenty listings of
Google. Most of those keywords also rank well in Yahoo and MSN.
On the other hand, on my main website, I started looking at the
keyword phrase "article marketing" just eighteen months ago,
when my website sat at #79. Today, my website sits at #12 in
Google for that keyword phrase.
I believe that given enough time, investment and commitment, I
can use article marketing to elevate any web page on the Internet
to multiple page-one listings in Google. But, not everyone is
willing to make the kind of investment and commitment one needs
to get to the top of Google's search results...
What To Do When You Need Results Now
If you simply cannot wait as long as it takes to build top
rankings naturally, then you need to look seriously at
Pay-Per-Click advertising models, such those offered through
Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com)
and Yahoo Search
Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com).
Bill Platt: Article Distribution and Article Ghost Writing
services through his website at: www.thephantomwriters.com
He has written an ebook that has been designed to help people
create more effective articles. One customer said of his ebook,
"I've read almost every ebook out there on article writing and
article marketing and this one tops it all." To learn more about
Bill's ebook or to get your own copy, please click this link: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html.
