Official Google statement: how to get high rankings

This month, the Google Webmaster blog published an article in which Google’s Maile Ohye officially explained what it takes to get a high ranking in Google’s search result pages.

The blog article confirms that the methods that are used by Complete SEO to get high rankings are correct. But read it for yourself:

Inbound links are important but content is even more important

Google’s Maile Ohye writes the following about inbound links in his article:

“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance.”

Nothing new here. If many related websites link to your site, and if these links look natural, this will help you rankings on Google a lot.

However, links are not the most important ranking factor. Maile Ohye gives a concrete example:

“Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site.

As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking. “

The website’s content is mentioned as one of the strongest ranking factors. The inbound links are additional. That makes sense. The content of your website tells Google what your website is about.

If you want to get a high ranking for the keyword “used cars in dallas” but your web pages are about microwave ovens then you won’t get high rankings for that keyword.

For that reason, it is very important that you optimize your web pages for the keywords for which you want to get high rankings before you try to get links from other sites.

Google analyzes over 200 ranking factors

According to the article in Google’s blog, Google analyzes more than 200 signals (we call them ‘ranking factors’) to specify the position of a web page in the search results:

“Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.”

It’s a simple two-step process

Getting high rankings on Google is a simple two-step process:

1. You must optimize your web page contents so that Google can find out what your website is about. Optimize your web pages for your keywords so that Google knows that your website is relevant to these keywords and your topic.
2. Other websites must confirm that your website is about that topic. That’s what inbound links are for.

It’s as simple as that. If your website passes Google’s analysis of all ranking factors, it will get a top 10 ranking.

 

How your web page titles can help you with local search

If you’re selling products and services that are related to a special area, it is crucial that your website gets found by the right people. One of the easiest ways to get found by people that live in your area is to optimize your web page titles.

What is the web page title?

The title of a web page is the text that is written between the <title> and the </title> tags in the HTML code of a web page. The web page title is displayed in the web browser window when someone visits your website and it is usually used as the linked text when your website appear in the search results.

Why is it important to use optimized web page titles?

The web page title is one of the main factors that Google, Yahoo and other search engines use to rank web pages. A good web page title greatly improves the chances of getting high search engine rankings.

In addition, the web page title is used as the bold linked text on search result pages. That means that it should be clear, concise and appealing so that web surfers click on it.

How to change your web page title so that it gets better local rankings

If you optimize your web page titles correctly, they will both increase your search engine rankings and they will attract people from the right local area to your website.

You’ll benefit from targeted traffic and you’ll get more sales than before. Here are some things that you can do to improve your web page titles:

• Include the name of your business, important keywords and your city in the title of your homepage:

     Smith & Sons – The shoe shop for inexpensive footwear in London

• Depending on your business size, change the order of these items. Well known businesses should list their company name first. If your business is new then it’s usually better to list the keyword first:

     The shoe shop for inexpensive footwear: Smith & Sons in London

  People are probably looking for a solution to their problem (inexpensive shoes) instead of your company name. Instead of your city, you can also use the name of the greater area if your service is available in that area.

• Use a different title tag for every page. This is important. The title should reflect the content that can be found on the page. For branding purposes, the titles should contain your company name and a popular keyword for which you want to be found on search engines:

     Smith & Sons: About our London shoe shop
     Smith & Sons: Buy inexpensive sneakers in London
     Smith & Sons: The best prices for boots in London
  

• Use short web page titles. Short titles are much easier to read for web surfers. Do not try to stuff keywords in your web page title. It is much more better if your website is highly relevant to one keyword than somewhat relevant to many keywords.

  If you want to optimize your website for different keywords, optimize different pages for different keywords.

• Do not use special characters in your titles. Avoid symbols and other special characters. They might not be displayed properly on all computers and your website might look strange in the search results.

If you change your web page titles as explained above, your website will get better rankings on search engines and it will be found by people who live in the right area.

Unfortunately, the web page title is not the only element that influences the position of your website in the search results of Google and other search engines. If you want to make sure that your site appears in the top 10 results, you should optimize all factors that are needed to get top rankings.

How To Select The Right Keywords For SEO

Keywords selection is a very important process before you start applying SEO to your website. This is because without proper keyword planning, your SEO effort will not bring you any conversion as visitors to your site are not targeted at all. Relevancy is the key here.

When you are doing your keyword research, it is important for you to choose the most relevant keywords for your business. Basically, keywords can be categorized into 3 types, which are: Too Hot Keywords, Just Right Keywords, and Too Cold Keywords. “Too Hot Keywords” are words like “florists”, “translation”, or “gifts”. These types of keywords are too generic, which do not seem to be targeted enough to get conversions. These keywords usually bring in high search volume (which is naturally tempting to optimize) but the conversion may not be as ideal as targeting keywords which falls into the “Just Right” category.  By optimizing those “Just Right” keywords, you can get more targeted traffic to your website and increase the chance of conversions.

For SEO, it does make more sense to target keywords that fall in the Just Right category. As for “Too Cold Keywords”, they are usually long-tail key phrases like “corporate gifts for any event and budget”. When SEO is done correctly, you will get traffic from the long tail phrases due to the overall targeted keyword theme. So what do I mean by targeted keyword theme?

In order to achieve a targeted keyword theme, it really depends on the content that you put on your website. Unique, informative and keyword targeted content is something that you need in order to succeed in SEO. This is because long tail keywords usually take up 60% – 70% of overall organic traffic of a website and it is something every optimizer must capitalize on. So when your website overall content revolves around a particular theme (for example: if you run a SEO consultancy firm, you should come up with articles that talk about SEO methodology, keyword selection and anything that you can think of with regards to SEO.) Although the traffic from long tail are spilled-overs from page 3, 4 or 5 of the SERPs, these traffic are very targeted and may result in conversions.

The bad new is that an optimizer will not be able to predict what kinds of long tail keywords that searchers will use. Therefore, long tail SEO can only be done by targeting the right keyword theme and creating relevant content.

When coming up with long tail content, just treat yourself as an educator. Write informative articles to educate your target market about the product or service that you are providing. In this case, you will be able to move your prospects that are in the research phase to the buying phase, which increases your chance of conversions.

SEO Link Building

Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?

Getting high rankings on Google is so important for the success of a website that some webmasters try anything to get on Google’s first result page.

Unfortunately, many of the methods that promise high search engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn’t like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized.

Which web page elements are cosidered spam by Google?

Google considers quite a few things as spam. The most popular ones are automatically generated doorway pages, cloaking and false redirects, keyword stuffing, hidden text or hidden links, paid links and automated linking systems.

What does Google do to penalize websites?

When Google penalizes a website, the website will either be removed completely from the index or the positions of a website in the search results will be lowered.

Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?

In a discussion in an online forum, webmasters shared their experience with re-inclusion requests on Google. One webmaster reported that it took over one year until a website had its old rankings back:

“One of my clients was completely banned from Google for a spammy link exchange program; we cleaned ‘em all up and filed a reinclusion request, and they are currently #1-3 for just about every relevant search phrase you could think of.

They’re ranking higher now than they ever did before the penalty – but it did take about a year to work their way up to that point.”

Another webmaster confirmed that it takes long until Google re-gains trust in a website:

“That’s what I’ve seen, too. A long, slow release from ‘probation’ as trust builds.

I do think Google always has a record of the past penalty somewhere, and any future infractions might be dealt with quite harshly. But you definitely can see a site get completely released from the ranking effects of a penalty.”

It’s very likely that Google keeps a record of all previous penalties that have been applied to a website.

What does this mean for your website?

You should avoid shady SEO methods at all costs. Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If someone promises you a quick and easy solution that requires no or little work then it is very likely that it’s spam.

If your website has been penalized, remove all spam elements from your website and file a re-inclusion request on Google.

It seems that Google does forgive penalized websites but it takes a long time until a penalized site has its rankings back. During that time, you’ll lose a lot of visitors and sales.

How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site

Suppose that you have a great website with great content. Your web pages are perfectly optimized for visitors and search engines and you have found many related websites that could link to your site.

How do you convince these websites that they should link to your website? Here are five tips that will help you to convince other webmasters.

1. Offer something in return

The easiest thing that you could offer is a link in return. However, not all webmasters want to exchange links.

There are many things that you could offer in exchange for a link. This could be a discount for your products, an ad on your website or even a simple hint.

If you find a broken link on a website, inform the webmaster about the link. Tell him that your own website might be a good replacement for the broken link (if it is).

2. Ask your current link partners

If another website already links to you then they might add another link to a different page on your website.

Getting a second link from existing link partners is much easier than getting new links because you don’t have to explain yourself anymore. The other webmaster already knows you and your site.

3. Make friends with people from your industry

Networking can help you to get links to your website. This works best with blogs that are related to your website.

Contact the blog owners and compliment on their sites. Do not ask for a link in your first contact. When you’ve a good relationship with the blog owner, you might inform him about a new product or a new article that you’ve written.

Chances are that you’ll get a link from the blog then. These links from related blogs have a great impact on the position of your website in Google’s search results.

4. Show that other webmasters already linked to your website

It’s easier for people to do something if they see that other people have done the same thing before. If many other websites link to your website, you could mention this in your link request.

If a well known website mentioned your site, that’s even better: “As you might have seen on NYTimes.com, we’ve published a new product. This might be interesting to the visitors of your website.”

5. Offer something that other people don’t have

This is the easiest way to get links. If you have a report with ground-breaking new information or something other that’s very interesting and only available on your website then it will be very easy to get links to the page that contains that information.

Increase your sales with less traffic

Search engine optimization is not about getting as much traffic as possible. It’s about getting the right kind of website traffic. Sometimes, less traffic can be better.

Many website visitors aren’t necessarily a good thing

Many webmasters try to get as many visitors as possible. They join traffic exchange programs and they optimize their web pages for keywords that have very many searches.

Unfortunately, getting as much traffic as possible is not the right strategy for a successful website. Traffic that doesn’t convert is useless traffic. If your website has thousands of visitors but only a few sales then you have done something wrong.

Why less traffic can be better

If you want to succeed with your website, you have to focus on the conversion rate of your web pages. A website with a good conversion rate will do much better than a website with many visitors. Here’s an example:

• Tom’s website gets 10,000 unique visitors because it has a #1 ranking for the keyword “buy inexpensive brown shoes”. The conversion rate is 2%.
• Peter’s website gets 1,000,000 unique visitors because it has a #1 ranking for the much more popular keyword “shoes”. The conversion rate is .02%

Both websites will get 200 conversions. But why does Peter’s website get the same number of conversions as Tom’s although it has 100 times the number of visitors?

There can be several reasons for this. For example, Peter’s keyword “shoes” is very general. People looking for one-word keywords usually aren’t interested in purchasing. They are looking for general information about a general topic.

Peter’s landing page also might have a poor design. His website might not offer what the searcher is looking for. That is very likely if the visitor found the website through a one-word keyword.

Tom’s keyword “buy inexpensive brown shoes” is very targeted. Web surfers who use that keyword know what they’re looking for and they are ready to buy. That means that Tom needs fewer visitors to get a sale.

Multiply your revenue without working more

Four word keywords such as “buy inexpensive brown shoes” have much less competition than one-word keywords such as “shoes”. That means that it is much easier to get top rankings for these longer keywords.

Suppose it takes Tom five hours of optimization per month to maintain the #1 ranking. Each working hour costs $100. That means that Tom spends $500 per month.

To maintain the #1 ranking for the one-word keyword “shoes”, Peter has to invest 30 hours per month because it is much more work to get and maintain high rankings for such a competitive keyword. Peter’s working hour also costs $100, that means that the spends $3000 per month.

As explained above, both websites get 200 conversions. If each conversion is worth $15 then Tom has a ROI (return-on-investment) of 600% for every dollar spent on search engine optimization. Peter has a ROI of 100%.

If Peter had not invested his 30 hours in a single keyword but in optimizing 6 good converting four-word keywords that each needs 5 hours then he would have multiplied his revenue by 6 without working more.

What can you do to increase your conversion rate?

You can do the following to improve your conversion rate:

• Do not waste your time for getting vanity rankings. It makes no sense to get high rankings for one-word keywords.
• Optimize your web pages for multiple-word keywords that attract visitors that are ready to buy.
• Make sure that your landing pages contain a clear call to action and that the content of your landing pages is related to the optimized keyword.
• Make sure that your website has a professional look so that potential buyers aren’t turned off.

Search engine optimization is not about getting visitors. It is about getting conversions. Search engine optimization is about creating conversion paths for the traffic that comes from search engines. If you optimize your web pages for the right keywords then you’ll save a lot of time and you’ll get more conversions.

Five mistakes that keep search engine robots away from your website

Many webmasters don’t get high rankings on Google and other search engines just because Google’s indexing robot has difficulty to index their web pages.

Search engine robots are very simple software programs. If an indexing robot cannot find the content of your website immediately, it will skip your site and go to the next link in the list. For that reason, it is very important to make sure that search engine robots can index your web pages without problems.

Here are the top 5 elements that drive search engine robots away:

Reason 1: Your robots.txt file is damaged or it contains a typo

If search engine robots misinterpret your robots.txt file, they might completely ignore your web pages.

Double check your robots.txt file and make sure that you use the disallow parameter only for web pages that you really don’t want to have indexed.

Reason 2: Your URLs contain too many variables

URLs with many variables can cause problems with search engine robots. If your URLs contain too many variables, search engine robots might ignore your pages.

Here’s Google’s official statement about web pages with many variables:

“Google indexes dynamically generated webpages, including .asp pages, .php pages, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for our crawler and may be ignored.”

Reason 3: You use session IDs in your URLs

Many search engines don’t index URLs that contain session IDs because they can lead to duplicate content problems. If possible, avoid session IDs in your URLs. Better use cookies to store session IDs.

Reason 4: Your web pages contain too much code

Of course, your web pages can contain JavaScript code, CSS code and other script code that is not directly related to your content. Visit your website with a web browser and select “View source” or “View HTML source”.

If it is difficult for you to spot the actual content of your website then search engines might also have difficulty to parse your pages.

Reason 5: Your website navigation causes problems

Fancy JavaScript or DHTML menus cannot be parsed by most search engine robots. Flash or AJAX menus are even worse when it comes to website navigation.

As mentioned above, search engine robots are very simple programs. They can follow HTML links, all other links can cause problems.

Optimized web page content and good inbound links are crucial for high search engine rankings. However, the best content and the best links won’t help you much if search engines cannot index your pages.

Make sure that search engine spiders can index your web pages without problems so that your web pages can get the rankings they deserve.