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It's easy to pay a Search Engine Optimizer to give your pages some ranking power.Unfortunately, given the inherent time factor involved in climbing the ranks, yourmoney may be long gone before you know if you've spent your money well.
THERE IS NO MAGIC PILL
Forget any advertisement you see for instant number one search results or automatedthis or that. Most are scams, and the ones that aren't might get you positioned, butit will be very short lived.
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. Achieving and maintaining a highrank, especially on highly competitive keywords, requires constant maintenance. Ifyou do find a legitimate SEO firm, it is well worth the money to pay their monthlymaintenance fee and let them continue to help you after the initial project. Atleast for 6 months or a year as you establish yourself.
In this article we'll look at some of the intricate and complex tasks of optimizinga page for long term ranking power. You will learn how to read between the code andthe content to find what is necessary to bring you to the top. Being number one iseasy to say, but is quickly overwhelming when you stare at tens of thousands ofpages you want to out rank. So how do you begin?
The starting line on the road to that first page SERP (search engine results page)ranking is not as blurry as you might think. In fact, you can uncover the startingline, the route, and all the scenery along the way to the finish line withoutknowing the search engine algorithm.
STEP 1- YOUR KEYWORDS ARE THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT OF GRUELLING DAYS OF WORK
If you have investments in the stock market you know how much research and thoughtgoes into choosing those securities. Now take that same effort and multiply it bythree. That's how much planning and revision your keywords should take.
A simple, broad key phrase like "shoes" could hypothetically bring you up in acountless stream of different searches. Women's shoes, baby shoes, sneakers, highheels, etc. If somehow you manage to settle into a good ranking (which would bedifficult) you would have more traffic on your site than you could handle. Buttraffic is worthless is it doesn't get to its destination. Chances are, you weren'tthat destination.
Your keywords must be focused and precise, specific to what you are selling. Using akey phrase like "Gucci means black leather loafer" will bring a targeted lead toyour site. You may not reach as many people as the more generalized keyword, but thepeople that do come to you have a much deeper interest in the specific product youare selling.
Therefore you have much greater chance of converting that targeted lead to a sale.Your keywords are your magic beans, your winning lotto numbers, your energizerbunnies, your sales force, whatever you want to call them. They must be perfect.
STEP 2- WANT TO BE NUMBER ONE? LOOK AT WHO ALREADY IS
Competition Analysis- no SEO book can give you this information.
Now take your keyword list and type them into a search engine. Who comes up in thefirst ten results? That company that is number one is because they have most closelymatched what the search engine algorithm says should be number one. You can learn agreat deal from them.
A. INTERNAL FACTORS
Take that number one page, and the other top 9 pages and study them, look at thecode, break them down. You are looking at the first half of what is needed to rankin the top 10 pages for your key phrases on that particular search engine. The listof what to look for is enormous.
Studying the Internal Factors on a page is taking it apart to see how it's puttogether. Not how it works, but statistical research into the precise construct andlayout of keywords and phrases in relation to each other within the page.
Start with these areas:
URL address, Page Title, Meta description, Meta Keywords, First sentence on thepage, Body copy, Bold or Emphasized Phrases, H1 or other tags, Alt Tags, Navigationsystem
In each of those sections, look at:
Keyword densities- the number of times your phrase and each word in your phraseappears compared to the text around it
Where and in how many times the same phrase and words appear in different sections
The word and character position of each phrase in each
The total number of characters
The total number of words
The quality and thought of the content
Beginning with these comparisons should keep you quite busy for a while. Aspreadsheet is quite useful. Some commercial products are also available that canmake this daunting task much more feasible. Keep looking for other patterns anddifferences. You want to duplicate them in your own page. NOT copy and steal. Youwant to mimic the patterns that are bringing that page to the position it is. Thenmove onto to examining the external factors of these pages.
B. EXTERNAL FACTORS
External factors of a web page deal with the links to, from and within a web page,both inside the same site, and out into the web. This analysis usually takes moretime because it involves more dissection of pages beyond the one you're trying tooptimize.
In this analysis as with Internal Factors, you want to compare and contrast yourpage versus the top 10 competitors, find similarities and differences. Here is alist of criteria to get you started.
Number of internal (to the same site) on that page
Number of external links
Number of links pointing TO that page* (see below for details)
The link/anchor text- which keywords are used and where
Google Page Rank value of incoming links
Alexa Rank of incoming links
*To get a listing of the links that point to a site, type the following into Google,MSN and Yahoo searches: "link:www.domainname.com". Google tends to only show a smallportion of the links back, but MSN and Yahoo will give you much more pertinent data.
Now you want to compare the content on each of these pages to the one they point to.Is it of similar theme, in what context does the link back appear and where. Subjectof much debate, the consensus is that Google Page Rank does not mean what it usedto. However, if it is in some fashion a measure of how significant or "important" asite is, it is worth looking more closely at the sites that link back that are ofhigh page rank.
EVEN A SURGEON USES TOOLS
Now, this is definitely a ton of work to do all by hand. There are software programsthat can help do some of the digging and mathematical computations for you, figuringout densities and organizing information.
Tools like this are definitely ones a professional SEO will have in their arsenal.But remember, these are tools, not miracle workers. It takes a human being toevaluate and realize connections, similarities, draw conclusions and interpret thedata. Then, you have to extrapolate this data.
Remember, you want to do one better than every site you just examined. To do thatyou have to draw some conclusions and make some educated guesses and link to evenbetter sites.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You have access to the inner workings of every page that you want to beat. Learnfrom them and do one better. This process is not a one-time shot. It is ongoing.Check your key phrases every week. Do the same people still rank in the top ten?
Some have probably moved. Remember too that they're going to adapt to maintain theirpositions too. If you want the ranks, you have to spend the time, and not just once,or pay someone to do it for you.
Don't ever believe anyone who says they can guarantee any kind of results. And askthem how they will optimize your pages. If they explain to you something like theabove, then you've probably got yourself someone experienced and honest. You moneywill be well spent and you'll quickly recover it.
