Everyone who has a website wants it to rank high in the
search engines like Google and Yahoo.
A higher rank means more visitors,
and more visitors mean more sales, or more advertising
revenue.
If the phrase(s) you're trying to rank well for aren't
competitive (that is, few other sites are using the same
phrase) then getting good placement is pretty easy: Just
put the phrase(s) you want to rank well for in the
<title></title> tag and in at least one other
area on the page. For some reason this isn't obvious to
everyone: I can't remember how many times someone has sought
my advice about how to rank well for some phrase, and I
check out their page and that phrase is nowhere to be found!
A while back a friend asked me how to get her homepage to
rank well for her name, which was unusual enough that she
should have been at the top of Google with no problems.
After I checked out her page I felt like asking her, "And it
didn't occur to you to put your name somewhere on that
page?!" Actually, her name was on her page, but
in a graphic. Google can't read that, they have no
idea what words are contained in an image. And her
<title> tag just said "Home". How is Google supposed
to know that her page was about Sally Thunderpizza? (Not her
real name.)
So anyway, for non-competitive phrases, just put the
phrases you want to rank for in the <title> and in the
body copy of your page. For example, you should be able to
get to #1 in Google within a month for the phrase martian
pudding headache. Go ahead, try it.
Okay, but what if your phrase is
competitive? Then you're going to need to develop some
good content for your site, too. Here's the complete
recipe:
Write a <TITLE></TITLE> tag for each page
that accurately describes that page (no more than about
64 characters).
Try to create two new pages every week. If you can't
do that, try to do one page each week. At a bare minimum,
create a new page each month.
As much as possible, your new pages should be unique,
interesting, authoritative, and compelling.If you want to
rank well for the phrase electric widgets, then
make your site the best resource about electric widgets
available.
Make sure all of your pages are accessible through
normal <A HREF> links (i.e., don't use JavaScript
or Flash links exclusively).
Link to quality relevant sites. After you do so, ask
those sites to link to you, but don't make your link to
them contingent on whether they link back.
Follow standard website design
tips and avoid the problems listed on Problem
Websites. Your site should be not only attractive,
but super-easy to use, and completely free of
annoyances.
Most importantly, purge your mind of trying to
think of ways you can "trick" your way to the top of the
results. Do NOT think about the specific nuts and
bolts of how a search engine will rank your pages.
Instead, build good, quality pages for your visitors,
and trust that the rankings will follow.
But many webmasters don't get this. They write to
me asking such things as:
How many times should my keywords appear on my
pages?
What's the optimum ratio of keywords to
non-keywords?
Should I seek links from several PR4 sites or one PR6
site?
Will doing "X" cause me to rank higher?
Such webmasters are missing the point. You get
good rankings by building a quality site, not by trying to
figure out exactly how the search engines rank pages. It's
counter-intuitive, but you get good rankings by ignoring
rankings and focusing on quality. Focus on
quality and the rankings will follow. It works the same way
in business: If you focus on the money you'll probably make
less money. But if you focus on creating a great customer
experience then the money will follow.
But many of you came here hoping to find tricks, so
before you dismiss that, consider this: Your site
doesn't rank as well as mine, otherwise you wouldn't be
here. You want your site to rank better, which is why you
went looking for this article. And my site does rank well,
which is why you found it. In other words, I know what I'm
talking about. My sites are all over Google and Yahoo for a
variety of popular terms. When I tell you the best way to
get good rankings is to ignore rankings and focus on
building your site, it's not just theoretical, and it's not
a cop-out: It works, and it works well.
But maybe you figure that you don't have time to build
a quality site, so that's why you want some easy tricks.
In that case, your site doesn't deserve to rank well.
And don't be surprised when it doesn't. If you want better
rankings, you must make your site worthy of those rankings.
Look at the sites that are beating you. Assuming you already
have good <title> tags, is your site truly better than
the ones which are beating you? If yes, then you'll probably
outrank them eventually. If not, then why are you even
trying to get the search engines to give preferential
treatment to an inferior site? Make your site better than
the rest, and the rankings will follow.
Algorithm
-- The long, complicated, secret set of formulas
that a search engine uses to figure out where sites
should rank.
One problem with using tricks is that the effects are
temporary. Put yourself in Google's shoes: Do you want
to list the very best sites or do you want to list
the ones that are most adept at employing tricks? Obviously
you hate tricksters because when you return a list of crappy
sites instead of the very best ones then that reflects
poorly on you. So you do everything in your power to weed
out the tricksters. As soon as webmasters start using some
trick, you change your calculations to ignore that trick.
The algorthims are secret, and they're always changing to
boot. (About six changes a week, according to the
NY
Times.) As a webmaster, obviously your time is better
spent making your site better than screwing around playing
cat-and-mouse games with the search engines.
Many webmasters also can't see the forest for the
trees. Google wants them to create quality pages which
have certain attributes. Many webmasters mistakenly focus on
those attributes rather than the quality of the page. Here's
a good analogy: Years ago scientists found that people who
ate more fruits and vegetables and less meat and dairy were
much healthier and lived longer, and noted that fruits and
vegetables are low in fat. The proper response then would be
to eat more fruits and vegetables. But instead Americans
started eating processed low-fat junk food instead, which
didn't do them any good. Google doesn't want you to fill
your pages with crap in hopes of impressing them, nor do
they want you to get links from any and everybody. Google
wants you to build a high quality website. Why would they
want anything else?
Jill Whalen has a good article about the
"stages of understanding" that webmasters go
through as they try to learn about search rankings
-- which usually means that they progressively
graduate from one misconception to the next.
(read
article)
As Google says on its philosophy
page, "Focus on the user and all else will follow."
Google wants webmasters to feel the same way -- that if you
build the best site possible, your good rankings will
follow. This isn't the answer that most webmasters want to
hear. They want a few simple "tricks" that will rocket them
to the top of the SERPs. Sorry, but it doesn't work that
way. Even if that were possible, twenty sites all employing
the same tricks couldn't all fit on the front page of
Google.
People seek out my advice about search rankings because
they know my sites rank well for a whole host of search
phrases. And I promise you I didn't do anything special
beyond what's listed above. I certainly didn't worry about
keyword density, META tags, submitting my site to the
engines, reciprocal link requests, or any other nonsense.
I simply tried to build quality sites. In fact, early
on I didn't even consider my search rankings. I just built
good sites and then noticed that they ranked well. Really
well.
So what attributes does a page need to be considered
"quality" by a search engine? The same things it would
need to impress most of us, such as:
The page is relevant to the terms being searched
for
The page is considered an authority about its
topic
Relevancy
-- How well a page matches a user's query
(more...)
The page has good, useful content
The page has been around for a while
The page is part of a site with lots of
information
Keywords
-- Search terms that a webmaster wants to rank
well for. A "keyword" is usually actually a
short 2- to 4-word phrase.
The page loads quickly
The page doesn't have a bunch of broken links
The page isn't filled with a cheap list of
keywords
So ranking well generally means:
Creating many fast-loading, content-rich pages, with
the words you want to rank for on the page and in the
<TITLE> tag, and
Getting links to your pages from other sites,
especially from pages similar in content
Truth be told, that is 90% of it right there. Of
course there are more details, and that's why there's
thirteen pages of explanation that follow, but the summary
above is SEO in a nutshell. Honest.
Here's more about what the engines consider high quality
vs. low quality, according to what they recommend in their
guidelines.
Make pages for users, not for search
engines. Don't deceive your users, or present
different content to search engines than you
display to users.
Avoid tricks intended to improve search
engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether
you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've
done to a website that competes with you.
Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help
my users? Would I do this if search engines
didn't exist?"
Don't participate in link schemes designed
to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In
particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad
neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking
may be affected adversely by those links.
Don't use unauthorized computer programs to
submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs
consume computing resources and violate our
terms of service. Google does not recommend the
use of products such as WebPosition Gold™
that send automatic or programmatic queries to
Google.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or
domains with substantially duplicate
content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for
search engines, or other "cookie cutter"
approaches such as affiliate programs with
little or no original content.
Notice what they do NOT
say:
Make sure to "submit" your site, even though the
search engines will almost certainly find it anyway.
Waste your time META tags for every page.
Obssess over keyword density.
Annoy other webmasters with requests for reciprocal
links
This excellent animation from TrueMajority shows in
graphic detail (using Oreo cookies) how ridiculously, large
the military budget is, and how we could solve many domestic
problems with a modest 12% cut. A must-see. (watch
it now)
I was born into a
cult.
The Aesthetic Realism Foundation is a small
psychological cult in New York city. My
grandparents were members, so my mother was born
into it, and so was I. Recently I created a
website about the cult to get the word out. I
hope you'll check it out.
