Don’t believe it when you hear that search engine optimization is totally free. The truth is that organic results themselves don’t cost a whole lot but the effort required to achieve those results are expensive. Whether you are paying someone to optimize your website or build inbound links, achieving top rankings for your website require time and money.
Before undergoing any changes to a blog or web site, you must determine what keywords people are using to search for your programs. You want keyword terms that are frequently used but have little or no competition from other websites. This improves the chances of increasing web page ranking significantly. Marketing professionals can research possible keywords by talking to current students and using free online tools such as Google’s Adwords External Tool which provides estimates of search volume and advertising competitiveness.
Once you’ve done the initial keyword research, its time to start investigating your competition for that given keyword. Do a search for the keyword or keyword phrase you’ve chosen and evaluate the websites that appear in the first three positions. You’ll want to evaluate on page factors as well as optimization factors like the number of inbound links to their website and directory listing. This research gives you a good understanding of your competition.
Another good way to learn about your competition is with the help of Alexa. Alexa is a website about other websites. Essentially, you can learn a lot about those websites you’re trying to outrank by collecting data related to web site age and the number of site’s linking in. I only compete with websites that have a small number of competing pages and in bound links. As a result of doing my research and finding the keywords that match this criteria, I almost always achieve number one rankings.
At the point when you’ve decided which keyword phrase gives you the best chance for success, it’s time to start focusing on making your site easy to read and easily navigated by search engine spiders. Consider designing you site with particular attention to navigation, meta tags, headings, keyword density and other on page factors. Once you site is well designed, its time to focus on building links from high authority websites. This signals search engines that your site has important content that delivers value to browsers and therefore improves rankings.
I’m often asked for the one magic formula that will raise someones search engine rankings above all others. The answer is quite simple, in bound links. Google evaluates the quality of a website based on a variety of factors but the most important are simply page rank and inbound links. Focus on building inbound links from third party sites that are well established, have a number of sites linking into them, and carry a Google page rank of three or greater. This will improve your rankings very quickly.
Succeeding with search engine rankings is easy if you take the time to optimize your site and focus on building in bound links. The result is a site more valued by search engines, improving rankings for keywords and keyword phrases. Stay the course and build links over time. This ensures that you rank higher than your competition over the long term.