Sunday, October 5, 2008

How can I get top search engine rankings?

How can I get top search engine rankings?

Anyone who has a website want to know the answer to this question. Getting top search engine rankings isn't that easy. Do not be fooled by the "get top 10 rankings in Google in the next 24 hours". This just is not feasible.

First of all, your website needs content. You can't expect to have a page or two and have search engines flocking to it. As it is commonly said "content is king". Search engines also use different methods when indexing a site.

Search engines have also become much wiser than in the past. Do not use black hat techniques to get listed in search engines. Some common black hat trickes are to stuff targeted keywords into the page by making the text the same color as the background of the page. This is done so viewers do not see the stuffed text while the spiders do. This practice can get you penalized or even booted from some search engines.

One of the best ways to get indexed in search engines is to have relevant and meaningful content. Whether you have a website or a blog like this one, you need to have content that the user is looking for. When the internet was pretty new, people would stuff keywords on a site that they knew people would be looking for. Take a google search sometime for "sex" or "make money" and see the number of results.

The term "sex" in Google shows 857,000,000 results and I am sure it is growning more at this moment. The term "make money" on Google shows 119,000,000 and growing. So if you are trying to get listed by having content with those terms, I am sure it will be a long time until you can even find your site.

Getting other sites to link to you is another important factor as well as some social site like Digg or StumbleUpon. The more users that bookmark your site, the more a search engine will think you must have something relevant to say regarding that tag.

Use good titles,descriptions,and keywords for each and every page on a site. Google for one does not like to index a website where the title,description,and keywords are the same on multiple pages. If you use Google Webmaster Tools, you can see what pages or problems Google has with a site you have.

Like most things in life, having a good website is hard work. Setting up a site and some pages can be done in a few hours. Adding good content and promoting a site requires a lifetime. One of the best things to remember is to have a site that is about something you really love or have an interest in. Also, never give up. A site takes time. Getting traffic takes time. Having a successful time requires persistence so don't give up in one or two years because you don't have the same amount of traffic as YouTube.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

very good points.