Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

10 Truths About Obtaining Better Google Rankings
By Kevin Gallagher (c) 2007

Introduction

I have read hundreds of articles telling me how to get better
rankings in Google. Some of this advice was very good and some
was not. Here you will find 10 truths about getting better
rankings in Google that I personally have found to be true after
years of research. So let's cut through the fat and get to the
lean meat of the subject.

1. The Quick Fix

First the bad news, unfortunately there are no quick fixes in
creating higher rankings in Google. You have to have a lot of
patience in the search engine optimization game. It will take
months for your efforts to come to fruition.  That's why it's
important to get things right from the start and plan out your
strategy.

2. Keywords

Keywords are the most important part of search engine
optimization. You must do your keyword research before starting
your website if you can, because this will form the basis of all
your search engine optimization.

There is no point going for broad keywords such as "website
design" since there is too much competition for those keywords
and you will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to reach
the top spot in Google. You are better off using long tail niche
keywords. They will have a smaller search volume, but it will be
easier to obtain top position. People are more likely to find
what they are looking for with long tail keywords. For example,
if someone needs a website, they may type "web design" into
Google and visit a few websites. They may then discover they
also need hosting and a domain name and do another search for
"website design hosting and domain name services" and this may
be your niche keyword or key phrase.

How do you find keywords that people are searching for? Well a
good free tool can be found at SeoBook.com
(http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/) or, if you want
something more professional, you can use wordtracker
(http://tinyurl.com/2uhcl4) an excellent service for finding
niche keywords. You should try and get at least 10 keyword
phrases.

Once you have found your keywords, do a search with them on
Google. First of all look at how many results there are. If it's
in the millions, then maybe your keywords are not that good and
would be too competitive.

If you can find keywords with results at about 50,000, then you
could be onto a winner. You should also check out your
competition. Click on the top result for your keyword in the
SERPS (search engine results pages) and check out their
pagerank. This will give you a rough idea of what you need to
achieve to get top placement. Also, you should check to see how
many links they have pointing to their website as this will give
you a rough idea of how many links you will need to get to the
top position. To do this, in the search box type link:
www.thedomain.com and you will get a list of websites that link
to that domain, but it's a good idea to do this in the Yahoo
search engine because it provides a more extensive list of back
links. Google will only show you a percentage of their links,
usually pagerank 3 or higher.

Remember, these are only rough estimates because every website
is different and less, more relevant links will achieve better
results.

3. Title Tag

Google sees the title tag as the most important and relevant
part of the webpage it retrieves. This is one of the few things
you have any control over in Google's search results. The title
tag is the underlined header for your result in the SERPS. It
also appears at top of your browser window. Keep this
descriptive and readable but at the same time include your
newly found niche keywords. Google will also highlight the
keywords in your title that were included in the search query.

4. Description Tag

The description tag is the description of the webpage which
resides under the title tag in the results. Again use your
keywords in here, maybe some of the lesser ones you discovered.
This is the only other part of the results you have any control
over. Google will also highlight the keywords in here that match
the search query. Again remember to keep it descriptive and
readable.

5. Domain Names

If you can, try and include your main keywords in your domain
name. Google will highlight them when they match the search
query. This can give your ranking a little boost bcause it will
show that your website is relevant to the search query.

6. Content

Content is very important. If you have ever changing fresh,
unique content on your website relating to your topic, Google
will love you for it and other websites will link to you. In
return, this will increase your rankings, but you should really
be doing this anyway. A website with no changing content is a
dead website. Your content should contain your keywords, but
don't spam your content with your keywords. Use them at the
start and end of your webpage and sprinkle them in-between. Also
use them in your header text and even bold a few as this shows
Google that these words bear more importance.

7. Pagerank

Why are people so obsessed with that little green bar on the
Google tool bar? Well I'm here to tell you that you can stop
obsessing about it right now.

The thing about the pagerank bar is it can be at least 3 months
out of date as Google only updates it in roughly a 3-month
cycle. Only Google knows your true pagerank which changes all
the time. Google regularly spiders your website and scans for
new content and links to show the most relevant content in its
results. Therefore pagerank is pretty inaccurate.

The other thing people get confused about is that it's called
pagerank not siterank. What I have determined is that your
website will get assigned a pagerank figure and then it will be
distributed through your indexed pages, for example if your
website gets a figure of 5, then your home page may get a
pagerank of 3 and your other pages get a 2 or maybe a 1 and so
on. If these other pages also have links to them, this will
increase their own individual pagerank.

The only advantage of that green bar that I can see is for
exchanging links. You can get a rough idea of what a website's
ranking is and you can decide whether or not to exchange links.

8. Linking

One-way links are better than 2 way links, but one-way links can
be harder to obtain. Why should someone put your link on their
website; what's in it for them? You can do this by writing
articles like this one and submitting them to article websites,
social media websites or on your own blog, but remember to add
an author's bio which includes some links to your website.

Reciprocal links are easier to come by, but in the early stages,
when you don't have a good pagerank will be more difficult to
obtain. Once your pagerank increases you can be more selective
of the pagerank you exchange with.

Don't forget about the guys starting out when your green bar
starts to increase. If they have a website with good quality
content, then you should consider linking with them. Remember we
all need to start somewhere and today's page rank of 1 is
tomorrow's pagerank 5. Try to link with relevant websites
because Google likes this, and you will receive quality traffic
from these websites for years to come.

Also, I have found a great little tool which checks potential
link partners to see if they are linking to bad neighbourhoods.
A link exchange with a penalized website could also result in a
Google penalty for your site. The tool can be found at:

http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm

Editor's Note: The page at the above URL might not be visible
in all web browsers but is visible in Internet Explorer.

9. The Open Directory (DMOZ)

You should always submit your website to DMOZ since it can take
an age to get listed there and Google uses these results in its
organic results sometimes. I recently wrote an article discussing
this topic and some people commented on this and said that they
haven't submitted to DMOZ and their rankings are fine. This may
be true, but one thing you should remember is that lots of
directory websites use DMOZ results, which in turn will get you
more one-way links.

10. Blogs

Blogs are loved by Google because they have lots of text and
are constantly getting updated; so start your own blog on your
website. Include articles, stories and anything that's related
to your website. If you give people something of interest, they
will come back for more and link to you.

That's all for now, take care and good luck! And remember, you
only get out of something what you put in to it.
================================================================
Kevin Gallagher is the managing director of Umbrella a custom
website design company (http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/)
in the Scottish Borders providing small business website design
(http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/website_design.html),
website builder software (http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/
web_b.html) and affordable company SEO services
(http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/search_engine_optimization.html).
================================================================

Copyright © 2007 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.