How to get a good search engine ranking (in a nutshell)

To achieve a good search engine ranking (SEO), you will have to look at a lot of factors. You will hear experts throw around words like page titles, keywords, Meta tags, and links. The simple truth is that only two factors really matter—they contribute 90% to your link placement. Everything else is nice but really just icing on the cake. To achieve a good search engine ranking, you should focus on:

1. Your website content

   Wherever possible, you need to work in the search words (keywords) with which you want to achieve a good ranking. The home page and services sections are natural places to talk about what you do. Take a look at those sections to see where you can work your terms into the content. I must issue a word of caution here—don’t go overboard. It is a bad thing if you use your keywords so much that they become repetitive or sound like marketing gibberish. Having a blog or newsroom where you write articles related to your industry make it easy to naturally include those terms in your content without being obvious.

2. Links to your website

   They key with links is to get the linking source to use your keywords in the link. So have them link to your keywords “marketing advice” instead of your company name “910 West.” The higher ranking the site that links to you the more weight that it carries. This is why issuing press releases can be a good tool. If a major publication writes about your company or some service you offer or quotes someone about their opinion on a industry related topic and links to your website site that is huge. The same goes for having a high ranking blog link back to your website for more information on a topic.

Starting a link campaign is a great way to improve your ranking but it definitely takes a time commitment on your part. To run a link campaign, you essentially sit down and seek out partner sites (related to your industry but not direct competitors) and contact them about adding a link to your website. The secret to success is that you have to word the request in such a way that it benefits them. Or you could do is to offer to write reviews for your vendor’s website if they will link back to yours.

Linking programs walk a fine line between legit and seedy and if done wrong will hurt you more than they help. You must absolutely think it through before starting one or find a company who specializes in link campaigns to get the best results.

Note: This article assumes that you have already surveyed your market and competition, have identified a niche, and chosen keywords. Look for future posts for more information on those topics.

Additional resources

The Duct Tape Marketing blog posted a great article on how easy SEO (search engine optimization) can be. They give three easy steps that I think is the perfect formula for smaller businesses.

The Warrior Forum posted an article explaining Google’s algorithm (how it ranks your site) in 90 seconds. It’s a quick read but also right on the mark. The key to a good ranking—relevance, authority, and popularity.