Higher Rankings in Google: The Basics
Knowing how to get found on Google is easy to understand but in practice can sometimes become hard to implement. Google’s Matt Cutts spoke with USAToday.com to reiterate some of the basics, the video is embedded below.
Cutts covers some of the misconceptions about Google: you don’t have to pay to get to the top of Google and you most certainly don’t have to have PPC ads running get to the top either. Some believe that buying PPC ads automatically get them to the top, but it’s about many other important items.
Cutts suggests first thinking about what people are going to type in order to find your site, and integrate those keywords into your site. I think we all understand this fact, but fail to put it into practice within the content on our sites, in title tags, and description tags too. It’s not all about short tail keywords either, long tail keywords are good to hit too. Searches performed with long tail keywords are climbing month after month. It’s estimated that 75% of all searches are performed with long tail keywords.
Link building was skimmed over in the piece, but in general link building is key in seeing top rankings. Where do you get links? Cutts suggests adding a blog, just like ours, to your site. It’s easy to do and a fairly simple concept when implemented properly. Stick in a few links to your site within your blog posts, and don’t be afraid to link to others. That’s what it’s all about! Link unto others as you would have them link unto you.
One last word of advice Cutts discusses: be sure to add your top level page/sitemap to Google. While it won’t automatically get added to their index, and they can’t make any predictions on when your site will get crawled, there is a likelihood that you will be helping your site out if you add it.
What other words of advice do you have to those that aren’t familiar with how to get found on Google?
3 Comments
John Oct 20, 2009
Links, links, links…. I know Matt doesn’t like to emphasize it because it leads some people to spammy behavior, but the fact is that Google still rewards sites with an overwhelming number of links.
I recently fell off the front page for a profitable keyword phrase, and the sites that replaced me are using a ridiculous number of paid links, article directories, and other ‘self-generated’ links.
A year ago I would have said that good content + social bookmarking was the best way to get natural links, but these sites are increasingly rigged and discounting all but the most popular submissions.
So really, I don’t know. New content seems to help, so I keep adding it on the domain and off-domain as well.
gino Oct 22, 2009
link building for me is the best SEO job.. but sooo boring
Julie Hodges Oct 23, 2009
For those who are new to SEO heres what Google have to say, backlinks, backlinks, backlinks thats the way to go.
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