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Let’s assume you’ve been cruising around the internet looking for tips of Google optimization. You know that Google can bring the heat when it comes to delivering traffic to your website. Say you’ve been “getting links”, but apparently you just haven’t found the right one so far. Do you know what to look for?

A link from the top ranking page for a keyword is the best incoming link you can acquire, IMHO. It’s sort of obvious why. If you approached a professional for a recommendation to another professional, you’d also consider the merit of the person making the recommendation. The higher the regard you have for the referrer, the higher regard you’ll have for the referred service. The same concept applies to search engines. If you’re referred by the number one regarded resource in the subject, you’re likely to receive a heck of a boost to your own rankings.

How do you get a link on the page that already ranks number one? Chances are very good that you won’t, but keep looking in spots 2-100. The pages that already rank for your desired key phrase are the ones that will boost your rankings in Google the quickest. Google is a search engine that places a lot of “trust” in certain domains, and some of the trust rubs off on you when you get a link. That’s why you always have to look for links on well-respected domains.

It’s been said before, and it may seem corny, but the most likely method by which you’ll get authority style citations is by producing top-notch and unique content.

Content is one of the most over-rated and over-used words on the internet. Everyone agrees that content is King, but sometimes the discussion isn’t too clear on just what constitutes good content. “Quality content”, in fact, is almost completely subjective. It requires a human editor to make a qualitative judgment in order to label a content page “high quality” or not. As we all know, humans don’t make the call, but search engine algos guess at the page’s relative merit.

So the key for our discussion is to concern ourselves with how machines can predict the quality of content. One way to do so is to judge the words on the page. The words will be counted, and some sort of keyword density can be estimated. On-page analysis will be a part of how your content is judged, but it’s generally a small part. For good basic Google optimization, the following components, I’ve found, result in good rankings:

• Well written title with keywords prominent
• H1 with keywords prominent
• Mentioning the keywords somewhere in the text, and mentioning synonyms, as well

Continue reading “What do we mean by quality content? – Google Optimization Series Part 2” »

We’ll take a look into Google Optimization in this series. The subject is vast, so expect a series of posts that will be outlined in today’s main post. Google is the number one provider of free traffic on the internet. You can pretend they aren’t, but you do so at your own peril. Ranking well in Google is extremely important for any web-based business. The tactics that used to work for Google don’t really work as well as they used to, so some new directives may be in order. Our guide plans on looking at methods that fit within Google’s guidelines (although other methods certain work), because we stay focused on long term success and don’t want risk a complete ban.

What are they keys to ranking well in Google?

• Well-linked to websites with a wide range of content almost always do well. The more content your website has, the easier it is for you to get rankings. The more entry points your website has for the public, the more money you make in the long run.
• Focus on long-tail search terms early on – you can go for more difficult terms later on
• Do not make technical errors – check for broken links and 301 redirect your non-www traffic to www or you could end up in trouble
• Update often – the more fresh content you have, the more you can rank for entirely new phrases – a website that has fresh rankings tend to go up over time
• Anything you can do to attract real one-way links is a must. A free tool or free service could garner you hundreds of links. If you control the linking code, you can do very well.
• Deep links with the correct anchor text to are the silver bullet of Google SEO. Don’t be fooled by cheap imitations. This is the reason blogs do so well in Google: they have primarily incoming links direct to content pieces. This is the vast majority of their links, in many cases.
• Any incoming link that is from a page that is already in Google is always worth getting, no matter how you get it. Don’t become obsessed with the theme of your page, although it is important.
• Links from social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg are always worth getting. Encourage your visitors to link
• Recip trades can be worthwhile if 1) they’re on-topic or 2) produce traffic. If the page is already indexed in Google, it can only help
• Content pages that contain outgoing links to quality resources do well

Many of these concepts require further discussion, so we’ll go through them in great detail in this series. Google traffic is worth the uphill battle to get it. Without a solid source of new traffic, most websites will grow. If you can get substantial traffic through other means, you might be best served ignoring Google. But most webmasters will only benefit from the efforts.