So how is it done?

How to rank high in Google is a question I get asked all the time. It is simple really, you have to have the best website in your subject which means two things: great content and inbound linking. If you have the best content (unique and informative) and the best inbound links (from strong trusted sites), and you are doing plenty of social networking, you will rank top or somewhere close.

If a competitor site has more information on your subject and more quality inbound links it will rank higher than yours. You may have heard of the saying “Content is King”, this is true as without content your site will not rank high.

The first thing to remember is that search engines are text analysis systems, so they analyze the text on a webpage. The programs that crawl the sites (spiders) will look at all the words on your website including the actual domain name, the title of the page, and headings. What is important is that each page on your website has a descriptive title of what that page is about, with the keywords you targeting. I always say when you look at a webpage imagine it’s a sheet of paper, if you can tell what that page is about in 2 or 3 seconds, then the search engines will.

The other equally important aspect is link building. Inbound linking is where another website links to your website by placing a text link on their website, this is them giving you a vote. The easiest way to describe it is it’s like being popular at school, if you are friends with the ‘cool’ kids then you get some credibility. The same can be said from websites, if you have links from ‘cool’ websites you get votes and credibility. You need good links from strong trusted sites with different keywords in the anchor text as this tells the search engines what the page is about. Think Wikipedia.. that site is a pure SEO genius. It has thousands of other diverse sites linking to it and great inner linking. Every page on Wiki tells the search engine perfectly what that page is about.

Getting people to link to your site is simple! Make it the best! If you spend most of your time and energy on improving adding and making your site THE best out there people will link to you without you having to ask. However many businesses can’t keep adding content like a popular news website so there does need to be some active promotion in the form of link building. There are plenty of quality websites where you can list your site for free or at a little cost which will boost your link profile. Relevant directories, guest posting, and just approaching people by asking nicely.