Ten things you can do to get your website to Google’s first page and Google’s top slot

Details: Thursday, 14 April 2011 18:27; Hits: 315

Everyone wants their website to be on the first page of Google and, usually, the top slot on that page. Before I even begin to tell you how that is done I will start off with an example.

Just three months ago we started optimising a brand new website that’s operating in the ultra-competitive field of Yoga. This is a devil of a job to optimise properly because Yoga, which is its main search term, is so generic and not interchangeable that almost every search term is fiercely contested.

At the time of writing this the search term ‘Yoga Clubs in Greece ’ takes the website to the very top of Google’s first page against over 1 million competing pages.

The question here is how did we achieve it and can it be replicated for almost any website? The answer to this question is that in most cases indeed almost any website, given enough time and resources, can be on the first page of Google and, provided its content is original and it has been optimised properly, can reach the coveted top slot.

The stakes here are high. The difference between being at the top of the first page of Google and the bottom of that page is something in the order of magnitude of five. That means that the very top site gets five times more visitors than the one at the bottom. It is the difference between getting 200 visitors a day and 1,000. The difference between having a site that brings you money and a site that makes you rich.

What follows is a recipe for getting your site to the first page of Google and then getting to the very top of that page.

1. Use original content and update frequently – do not assume that you can put together a five page website, throw in some meta tags and some keywords and then expect to dominate the search engine charts.

2. Have a coherent link building campaign in place – do not buy links and do not get into any link exchange program. Instead do the leg work (or pay someone you trust to do it for you) which puts in place a set number of links from relevant Directories pointing back to your site.

3. Create a coherent, regular, social tagging strategy – promote specific aspects of your website to those social networks most likely to be interested in the contents of those pages.

4. Create an off-page optimisation program and stick to it – do not skimp on the creation of blog entries and promotional pages in forums, friendly blogs and relevant sites.

5. Create pages that others will genuinely want to link to (and then alert them to the fact they have been created)– add value to your site. Make sure the content that’s there is the kind of content you, yourself would like to read. Then don’t play coy. Alert those most likely to be interested about the content you have created. Mention they are welcome to link to it, or even copy it as long as they give you a link and acknowledgement.

6. Have a coherent cross-linking strategy in place – treat each page of your website like the web. Have relevant content pointing to other pages where there is additional content thereby increasing the value of each page for your website visitors and, at the same time. Making it easy for search engine robots to find other pages in your website and index it better and deeper. At the same time you are conferring valuable link juice to other pages thereby increasing the PageRank of those pages.

7. Have a coherent content creation strategy – ok, this is a deep one. There is simply no cheating or skimping on this now that can help you. It has to be done right. Create a twelve month plan for creating content for your website and make sure you stick to it religiously (even if, on the way, you have to change the original plan) updating your website each day (or week). This affects both the frequency at which your site gets indexed and the way it is seen by search engines in terms of relevancy, freshness and authority.

8. Do not overlook your meta tags – make sure you understand how to optimise each page of your site and you do so. Have alt tags in your photographs, and meta tags on each link and each page. Do not use more characters than you should in each meta tag and make sure it is complementary to the page content.

9. Link to relevant sources from your site – there is a lot of divided opinion on this and whether it actually weakens your own site’s PageRank. The answer is a definitive no and, if anything, it shows your site is current, relevant and vibrant.

10. Have a cohesive thematic approach to everything you do – do not, for instance, expect to have a site on cowboy hats and throw in a page on sports cars and expect it to do well. Thematic linking reinforces your entire site strength.

This list is far from comprehensive and there are some hundred-odd other things a professional search engine optimiser will legitimately employ to help your site get noticed. Do all of this however and your site will be the first in a million rather than one in a million.