Learn how to be number 1 on Google

Everyone who has a website wants to be number 1 on Google for their chosen keywords/phrases and it is possible, it just takes time and lots of hard work. The reason we all want to come up on the front page of Google is that Google is the most powerful search engine on the internet and delivers the most relevant search results.

So how is it done? Simple, just be the best! So how do you be the best? Read on…

Keyword Research

Being number one for your chosen keywords is all well and good but what if nobody uses those search keywords? It is very important to research and identify key phrases that for one are not too competitive and two, what people will write into Google. For example, if you have a hair salon and wish to come up on the front page for the words ‘hair salon’ it will take a lot of time and hard work as there are 8,390,000 results on the day of writing this. However, if you think locally, say your hair salon is in Halifax, West Yorkshire then you should be trying to target ‘Hair salon in Halifax, West Yorkshire’. This produced 121,000 results which is much more attainable. It is much easier to get your site on the front page for search phrases of 3 or 4 words than it is for just 1 or 2 words.

Create Pages for each Keyword/Phrase

If you want to come up with keywords such as “women’s Shoes” make sure you have a page on your site called women’s shoes. Sounds obvious. but there are many webpages out there with the title of the business name, and headings like “Welcome to…(business name)… “. Search engines search for page titles and headings and text on your site so if your pages are titled with your business name on every page and not your key phrases your site will not rank high.

Content

Adding content is an important aspect of search engine marketing. Google loves websites that have new and unique content added to the site regularly. This might sound daunting but it is not. A blog is a great and easy way for you to add new content and is great for driving visitors. If you are trying to target local traffic in your county you can start by writing pages about each town, as I explained earlier. You will soon build up your site and before long your site will be hundreds of pages and be very authoritative and relevant within your chosen field.

Link Popularity

As well as strong keyword-rich text you also need links to your page from other relevant sites. Every web page gets to vote for other web pages. Strong links/votes from other relevant authoritative websites are what make your site popular and authoritative in the eyes of Google. It is just like being popular at school, if you are friends with the “cool kids” you get credibility. However, It is not just about how many links or friends, but the quality of them. One way to explain this is by using the friend example: Ann has 50 friends and Tina has 20. You would think that Ann is the more popular (so in website terms would rank higher), but one of Tina’s friends is the one and only Madonna. This makes Tina more popular because she has a credible friend who is far more popular than Tina or Ann put together. Tina is getting a massive vote by being friends with Madonna. In website terms, if your site is say a music site, a strong link/vote would be from the radio 1 website.

Finding links can be time-consuming but there are some shortcuts. There are a few strong directory sites that Google likes so being listed in these is a big boost. Look at the authority of any directory before listing.

Be the Best

Try to be the best in your industry. If you are up against some strong competition that has been around a while try and offer products and services that your competitors aren’t. Be unique in some way. Stand out from the crowd and be the best. If you do that and make your site the best you won’t even need an SEO campaign to be top in Google, people will naturally want to link to you.

To summarise:

• Do search phrase research
• Write content for the user but remember to add some keywords.
• Get links (be popular) to your website from authoritative sources.
• Write articles linking to your site and post on as many article directories as possible, remember the all-important link back to your page.
•Add content.
• Be the best!

If you do all of the above you should start to see an improvement in your rankings and traffic. Having hundreds of hits each day sounds great but if the conversion rate is low they are all wasted hits. What I mean by conversion rate is that if only 2 out of every hundred hits buy a product or call you for a quote then there is little use for those hundreds of daily hits and your rankings. First, you need rankings, then you have clicks, then you need conversions. So before embarking on search marketing, I would make sure your site is the best it could be. It might be worth a re-design to make it more search engine friendly.

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Contact me toto find out whywhy your site is not coming up in the search enginesI will reply with a quick analysis of your website and tell you why it’s not showing and how to rectify it.