How long does it take to get top rankings on Google?

Many people who start a website think that it is possible to get high rankings on Google within a few days. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Competition on the Internet is fierce and there are several factors that influence how long it takes until Google lists your website.

1. How old is your website?

If you have a brand new website then you have to wait. You can submit your website to Google but Google will only index your website if other websites link to your site.

In addition, you have to prove that your website is not spammy. Google has several filters for new websites and you have to earn Google’s trust before your website can get lasting high rankings. A new website can get good rankings for less competitive keywords but it usually takes about 6 months to gain the minimum level of trust that is necessary to get high rankings.

2. How optimized was your website before?

If you have an old and established website that was blocking search engine robots due to a broken robots.txt file or a bad website navigation then it can be relatively easy to show up in search engines.

If you remove the factors that keep search engine robots from your web pages then search engines will list your website relatively quickly. Of course, this doesn’t work if you have a new site.

3. How many inbound links does your website have?

If you have an old website that has very few links then it will take longer to get high rankings on Google. If your website has many inbound links, then Google will pick up the optimized pages on your website much quicker. The more quality links your website has, the quicker your optimized web pages will show up in Google’s results.

4. Which keywords do you target?

This is a very important factor! The more competitive your keyword is, the longer you will have to wait to get high rankings and the more links and optimized pages you need. Start with multiple word keywords that are related to your business and then proceed to the more competitive keywords when your website has good content and inbound links.

5. Who are your competitors?

If the website that are ranked in the top 10 results for your keyword all have thousands of inbound links and more than thousand pages then it’s not likely that your website will be able to get in the top 10 results if it has 10 inbound links and 20 pages. You can either wait for along time until you get top 10 rankings for that keywords (i.e. when you have a similar amount of pages and inbound links) or you can start with other keywords.

How many days, weeks or months does it take exactly?

Provided that your website has good inbound links and optimized web pages, you can get high rankings on Google within a few months if you have a brand new site and choose a very specific keyword that consists of several words. Old and established sites usually need some weeks for such a keyword.

If you target industry keywords, which usually consist of two or more words, brand new sites usually need six months to a year to get high rankings. An established site might get the same result within 3 months.

Highly competitive one word keywords usually require thousands of good inbound links. A brand new website can need several years to get high rankings for such a competitive keyword and even established sites can sometimes need more than a year.

What to do when your Google rankings have dropped

Has your website lost its rankings in Google? Did your rankings drop or did your website vanish completely from Google? Many things can cause a ranking drop. This article explains what you can do to get your rankings back.

Three reasons why your Google rankings might have dropped

There are several reasons that can cause a ranking drop:

You changed your web pages. After a web page change, Google temporarily downranks web pages. This process has been described in a Google patent. In that case, you don’t have to worry about the ranking drop and you’ll get your old (or better) rankings back after some time.

Other web pages are better than yours. No web page can keep its rankings forever. Your competitors might have built better web pages with better content and better inbound links. In that case, optimize your web page content for your keywords and try to get better inbound links.

Google thinks that you use spam elements on your web pages and applied a penalty to your website. In that case, you have to file a reinclusion request.
How to find out if your website has been penalized

Search for your domain name on Google. If your website does not come as the first result, it’s likely that it has been penalized.

If Google cannot find any page of your website if you search for “site:yourdomain.com” (replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name) then it’s nearly sure that your website has been penalized.

Action plan: what you can do to get your rankings back

Before you ask Google to reconsider your website, you should make sure that everything is okay with your site:

Fix all on-site issues that might have caused the problem.

If you use hidden text or nearly hidden text on your website then remove it. Reconsider any use of display:none and visibility:hidden that you use in the CSS code of your website.

If you use keyword lists or any other form of keyword stuffing on your web pages, then remove these elements. Check your web page titles, the meta tags and even HTML comments.

Remove any unnecessary redirects, unrelated links and all duplicate pages. If you use cloaking or bot blocking scripts on your server, disable these scripts. Make sure that your HTML code is clean and that your web pages look nice. Don’t use any automatically created doorway pages.

Fix all off-site issues.

Off-site issues are often the reason for ranking penalties. If you participated in automated link exchange systems of if you paid a cheap overseas link building service to get links to your website then it’s likely that these links have been flagged as spam links by Google.

Google does not like automated link systems at all. Remove all automated link systems from your website and try to make sure that these linking systems do not link anymore to your site.

If you purchased links to improve your rankings, try to get rid of these links. Google has officially stated that they consider paid links spam. Do not buy links.
How to file a reinclusion request

When you have removed all on-site and off-site elements that could have been flagged by Google, you can file a reinclusion request.

Keep your reinclusion request short and to the point. Be friendly and explain what exactly you have done to clean up your website.

Ranking drops can cost your business a lot of money. For that reason, you shouldn’t use any search engine optimization services that promise quick-fix solutions. If something looks too good, too inexpensive or too easy to be true then it probably isn’t true.

If you use ethical search engine optimization methods to optimize your web pages then you can be sure that your website gets high rankings without offending Google. It can take longer to get high rankings with ethical methods but you will also keep your high rankings much longer.

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 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.

How long can a text link be if it should improve your rankings?

The words that are used in the links to your website have an effect on the search engine rankings of your website for these keywords. For example, if very many websites use the word “blue widget” to link to your website, it is likely that your website will get a high ranking on Google for the keyword “blue widget”.

How many keywords does Google consider?

It’s absolutely certain that Google considers the words in the links to your site. The question is, how many words or characters does Google count in a link? Is there an optimal length for text links? Blogger Shaun Anderson did a test to find the answer.

The test set-up

Shaun Anderson created a long text link with 50 nonsense words. Each of the nonsense words was 6 characters long. For example, he might have used a link like this:

wergsd woivsd mliwdc woiuby 3245sc plorxc werxcd …

Then he added that link to the home page of a website that has good rankings on Google.

After some time, Shaun did a search for a keyword that the linked website ranked number one for and added the nonsense words to the search. By doing so, Google would only list the site in the search results if links to the site contained the nonsense word.

For example, if a website has a number one ranking for “buy used cars in dallas” then the website will only be returned by Google for “buy used cars in dallas wergsd” if Google has indexed a link with the text “wergsd” that points to the website.

The result: the perfect length seems to be 55 characters

Out of the 50 words in the link text, Google counted eight. Everything after the eighth word was ignored. Eight words that consist of six characters make 48 characters. The seven spaces between these six words add up to a total of 55 characters.

What does this mean for your website?

You should make sure that the important keywords come in the first 55 characters of the links that point to your website.

As many websites use the title of a web page to link to it, you should also consider the way you write your web page titles. If your important keywords are at the beginning of your web page titles, chances are that these keywords will also be used in the links to your site.

If you want to know if your web page titles are correct and if you also want to know if all other elements of your web page are ready for a top 10 ranking on Google, you should analyze your website now.

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.