Increasing your website ranking - Content & Links are Key

My clients ask me all the time how to increase their ranking in the search engines. While you can indeed take steps to improve your placement, it really takes patience and the willingness to devote the time, in order for you to see results. Ulitmately, you will probably want to hire an SEO company to do the work for you (if your goal is to be on the first page of the major SE's), since maintaining a website's SEO can be a full-time job in itself, but if you would like to give it a try on your own, read on...


There are two keys to getting good rankings:


1. Content
2. Linking

What kind of content is good Web site content?

- Sticky content-meaning unique, relevant content that makes your prospects stay at your site.
- Content with lots of images and/or multimedia.
- Local, relevant content that changes not only day-by-day, but hour-by-hour.
- Highly visual and/or functional content.
- Viral content that people want to share with their friends, family and
colleagues.

Some ideas to increase quality/quantity of content:

- Write a monthly article about your topic
- Write a page about your keyphrase/product/service
- If your headers don't have your keyphrase in them, then be sure to add it Make sure the titles on all your pages relate to the content of the page Write, write, write (and then write some more!).

Some other things search engines consider when determining ranking:

* links to your site,
* what is written in those links,
* who is linking to the site that links to yours,
* what are the keyphrases used in those links,
* what is the quality of the site that is linking to yours,
* how many other links does that site have,
* how many links out (and to what sites) does your site have,
* and other such criteria.


How do you get links?

It all starts with having good, unique, content on your site. No one will link to you unless you offer quality information about your subject. If you are in real estate, you must offer information about the area you work in. If someone wants to buy a home, first he/she will want to learn about it, so you will need to have good local resources about it.

The next step is to find other sites that would benefit from your site's information; sites whose clients would potentially want to buy or sell real estate in your area.

Some potential types of site to link solicit links from:

- sites that promote activities in the local area and the nearby areas
- nearby water parks and ski hills
- nearby towns
- lake and boating associations
- local construction web sites


How do you solicit links?

Be prepared to spend some time, and have patience. Send out personalized emails instead of mass emails (spam) to the sites that you want to have link to you. Be friendly, and point out the benefits of linking to your site. If you are lucky, maybe 1 in 3 emails will get a response. It can be frustrating and discouraging, but is ultimately worthwhile in the long-run.

Many sites don't ever update their content, so your site won't get the link because simply because no one ever makes changes to the site. If you can tell that a site hasn't been updated in years, don't waste too much of your time on them.

Follow-up is very important as well (just like in working website leads). Until you get a flat-out rejection, keep saying "Hi", and keep it personal. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of what sites you have contacted, and what you have written or said--you want it to seem like they are the only person you are contacting.

Finally, don't forget to submit yourself to as many legitimate directories as possible, such as the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). Getting listed in DMOZ and other directories counts for a lot in all the big search engines.

When submitting to directories, take your time and choose the right category to submit to. Make sure you read how they want their descriptions and titles written, and then write them that way. This is the key to getting into the directories.

Soliciting links is a very time-consuming (and frustrating) venture, but it is essential to getting good rankings in the search engines. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of time. Getting your first link is like getting your first sale. It is just as hard - and just as satisfying.

I drew from these sources when creating this post:
Content Is King, But Linking is Queen
Content is King: Online Content to Attract More Consumers to Your Website