Natural SEO Ranking Obsession

Most Web site owners are obsessed and extremely frustrated with their natural (free) search engine rankings. They want to pull for every word combination someone may use to find them.

Better rankings, “Top 10″ or at least top page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are important. It is possible, but not probable for most sites because although the site owners want those rankings they are unwilling to do what is necessary to attain them.

Great search engine rankings don’t happen by osmosis, simply because you want it to, because you are good at your profession or because you think you have a better site than those above you. Even having a great looking site if not planned, structured and written, marketed and grown with rankings in mind — in the first place — will not attain the listings everyone salivates over.

It is what it is folks! You need the code and structure the search engine crawlers can read. You need to be relevant to what you want to be found for — extremely relevant to get on that top page. You need concentrated targeted content that caters to customers and crawlers alike.

Most of all you need to be realistic about the competition and saturation of the market you are trying to penetrate. You have to be prepared to be as aggressive as necessary to reach your goals or it simply doesn’t happen. Without this methodology; you’re lost.

Yes, you can spend time and money looking for “solutions” that negate the facts of how to get great rankings.

But you’ll just be wasting time and throwing good money after bad. The sooner you embrace the reality of what it takes to attain great rankings over the long haul, the sooner you will enjoy ROI.

5 Web Site Traffic Tips

I was recently asked “If a new site owner wanted to know how to start increasing traffic to their site, what would be first 5 things you would advise them to do?” Hmmm… As far as I’m concerned it is tough to limit to 5 things because their are literally hundreds of things you can do. Let’s start with the the basics below as a new site starting point for increasing visibility and therefore ROI:

1. Make sure you get listed with the major portals and search engines and then monitor and track your listings to ensure you can react to any changes or drops in positioning. This can take up 6-9 months or more for new sites. Getting listed is one thing; then attaining the top page positions is another that requires various other criteria be met, updated and improved upon continually. It’s called a long term plan. Have a written strategy and follow-up program in place.
2. Request reciprocal links or also called “smart linking” with complimentary sites. Don’t fall for linking schemes or link farms — those will do more harm than good. Many of the top engines use an algorithm that gives your site a popularity boost if you have sites linking TO you. And they can detect linking “programs” in place purely to manipulate search engine rankings. A properly executed linking campaign should be part of your marketing strategy.
3. Advertise your dot com in local newspapers if you are seeking a local market. Advertise in industry publications or topic specific magazines if you are going for a wider audience. Off-line advertising is imperative to building awareness with folks who may be interested in your site but may not have thought to look for you. Relying on Search Engine free/organic listings as your sole venue of exposure is no longer considered a viable business methodology.
4. Offer a content rich valuable newsletter each month and daily postings on your Blog that folks can sign up for and also recommend to their friends. This type of viral marketing has proven to be extremely effective in building awareness for your site. Be careful though, your newsletter and Blog must contain needed, unique and valuable information and not be a hard sell of what you want to commercially gain from. No hypey sales pitchy stuff!
5. Invest the time and the money necessary to reach your goals. This could include a budget for Pay Per Click Campaigns while your site is new and not yet indexed by search engines. (This depends on your market — I’m no longer an across the board fan of PPC services as of late.) Getting found online doesn’t just happen by osmosis and in actuality is getting more complicated each day — and it isn’t free. Ignore the hype out there that makes getting found sound as though all you have to do is have a dot com, stuff in some keywords and millions of Netizens will contact you. Keep in mind there are literally billions of pages online and you have to continually, consistently work at getting exposure – for perpetuity moving forward.

These 5 tips, when integrated properly, can help to produce increased visibility for your program and should be applied with a long term point of view. They are not the end-all-be-all but should be at the nucleolus of any online business’s core strategies. Most importantly realize that online marketing is a never ending effort!

Where Are Thee with the Top Three?

When your site was in development your consultant should have worked with you to determine what the keyword phrases were that your target market would likely use to find a site such as yours. If they didn’t, you now know for a fact that your site is not in a position to have a chance to pull relevantly for your targeted keyword phrases.

See, optimizing a site when working with those who really know what they are doing, begins even before a bit or byte of code is typed. Your top keyword phrases need to be considered during the design process to give you a running start when you launch.

Several times each week I get contacted about why a site isn’t pulling for a phrase that either isn’t searched (or researched) for properly or wasn’t considered during the development process. Time to do some educating on how search engines work and a bit of tweaking on the site to compensate for new targeted phrases!

Ever wonder how you rank with Google, Yahoo and MSN? Check out Marketleap who has some free nifty tools that can help you can get a better idea of even if you are being found by the phrases you want and how the search engines list your site differently.

Then, get to work optimizing your site!

“They Said They Could Get Top 10 Positions for My Site!”

First, who is “they?” “They” are always popping up as the experts on advertising to zeppelins!  I never seem to be able to get an answer when I ask who ” they” is…  Second, “Top 10″ for what? Your specific keywords? Or, phrases “they” deemed “they” could accomplish that for you? Very important distinction folks!

Those of use who do White Hat SEO, which basically means our first priority is to our site visitors needs and experience, then to search engines, realize there is no wave of a wand or snapping of fingers to make Top 10 rankings happen. And, we don’t break or bend rules, use tricks or anything stealthy to satisfy either.

When it comes to Top 10 Positions the bottom line is you need to be strongly about the phrase being searched for. One of the 10 sites/pages amongst the billions out there that are more relevant, important or linked to than any others. Top 10 out of billions — does that put things into perspective?

The way you accomplish Top 10 rankings it to have a long term view and consistently work on your site to be the best it can be in its niche. Write articles, include a Blog (Search engines love Blogs!) and add white papers that all cater to what your target audience wants, needs, desires to know. That’s what makes rankings happen!

Without valuable information, you won’t get the links TO your site that are part of getting into the Top 10. Remember, not just any links will do — all links are NOT created equal.

At the end of the day, be leery, very leery of anyone who promises Top 10 rankings as though it were a matter of flipping a switch, using “stealth” tactics, linking farms or shuffling some keywords. You know better than that!

Spiders, Crawlers and Bots Oh My!

Bots, Spiders, Crawlers are all nick-names for the little programs that are constantly scouring the Internet indexing every file they find. You can see which Bots have visited your Web site in your site’s stats.

For example, Googlebot is Google’s little indexing program. These Bots are how search engines become aware of your site and new additions/pages so you can be listed accordingly. Understanding how they work is pretty important to every site owner because you can control what they index.

If you don’t want to let these critters in to index certain areas of your site, (images, member or private directories for example) it is important that you set up a robots.txt file. These little algorithms, at least the well-behaving ones, will look for that file before they proceed in case you want to designate areas on your site/server that you do not want indexed.

Well-behaving ones? Yep, there are nasty little devils that ignore your robots.txt file requests. Shame on them!

Read up and understand what Webcrawlers, Webrobots, Bots, Crawlers and Spiders are all about @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler.  Then, use that information to create your robots.txt file and control what information on your site is indexed.

The Truth About Free Search Engine Rankings

13 years and counting and still on a daily basis I am faced with explaining the truth about free search engine rankings. And every time I do, the other side is clearly in shock and awe over this reality of what is required, the time and effort needed and the challenge to be embraced.

You’ve heard that phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch?” Boy, does that apply to search engines! Yes, the “free” listings don’t cost you anything like PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising does. But don’t kid yourself, there will be costs if you are serious about being listed on the top page ahead of the tens of thousands or hundred of thousands of other sites fighting for the same rankings.

Before we continue; keep the following in mind. If hundreds of thousands of sites all want to pull on the top page for the very same terms you do, and if just being on the top page is not good enough, know all your competitors also want to be in the top five or top three for those terms, it is clear that not everyone can attain those positions. There are only five positions in the top five — that means only five sites can make the cut. Each site probably desires those positions as much as their competitors — but desire aside, what makes the difference? Choices and action!

There are many great resources online that guide site owners on the reality of what is required to attain top page rankings in the free SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) on sites such as Google, MSN Live and Yahoo.   Do a search here on my site and find all the articles and posts I have on the topic — more than enough for you to know what you need to do.  Unfortunately, many ignore this reality to assume that they can tweak this, or do that, not spend any time or money and the rankings will happen just because they want them to.

Free rankings on the top page, top 10, top 5, top 3 are very difficult to attain. You have to take a serious look at the situation and consider “what makes my site so much better than the multitude of competitors for the same term that I warrant being above all the rest?” If you don’t have an realistic answer to that question, you don’t deserve top rankings.

Top rankings cannot be demanded — they have to be earned! To think that you can state, “I want to be top 5 –  make it so” without realizing that as a site owner there are things you have to do and consider, consistently and for the long haul, to put it nicely, is wishful thinking at best.

Each search site, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN all have their own proprietary algorithm that takes many factors into consideration when determining how to rank a site.  Albeit none are perfect, these algorithms are constantly evolving and changing all to offer the searcher the most relevant results based on a the search criteria used. That’s your mission; to be the most relevant quality site for the terms you want to rank for.

Remember Web sites and search engines are just computers talking to computers. The algorithm only has the content of your site to go on and the ability to know your link status throughout the network from quality “authority” sites. Even still, as complicated as these algorithms are — to get good rankings over the long haul is pretty black and white. Keep these 3 little tips in mind:

1. ADD VALUABLE CONTENT: You must continually grow your site with relevant useful information of value to your site visitors that also is worth linking to. Link exchanges and link farms are pretty much ignored when done between sites that have no commonality or synergy. Search engines know that anyone can exchange links — that doesn’t indicate quality or value. You want to encourage one-way links into your site — that is a vote of confidence that you have a good site and information.  Blogging, articles and a prudent use of social media tools can help you accomplish this task.
2. LESS IS MORE: You simply cannot cover all your keyword phrases on your top page or on any one page within your site (or in some cases with one site) for that matter and expect to pull on the top page. The more you are about; the less you are about any one thing. Search engines will list the most relevant site related to the term searched for. You need to have detailed concentrated pages about individual topics to accomplish this. You have to be ûber-niche!
3. LONGEVITY: Sites that have been online longer and updated more often will pull higher than those just launched or rarely updated. So use the test of time to build and grow your site to use this interactive technology for all it’s worth!

With the free SERPs you can’t “buy” your way into the top positions. Unless you take the above issues into consideration and have a long-term plan, you will most likely never enjoy top rankings.

So what is a Web site owner to do? Work hard at continually making your site the best it can be within its competitive market for your target customer.  Add articles, white papers, a Blog, directory, forums — the more the better! Strive to be the one-stop-shop for your target market and take the time to get out there and network and participate!

By having this approach, you not only make your site visitors happy but you give the search engines exactly what they need to rank you accordingly.

Next Page »