I would like to give you a few thoughts to think about, maybe something that, up until now, has not been a big part of your internet marketing toolbox. Perhaps you are just now embarking on your maiden voyage to the vast seas of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or perhaps you are an old sea dog, and you’ve been around the horn a few times and there’s absolutely nothing new about SEO to learn. Or, maybe you’re already tired of my sea-going metaphors and just want to move on the Zen of SEO!
The basis of measurement success is of course the Google Page Rank (PR). New sites start off with a PR of zero and, depending on all sorts of criteria, may stay at zero for what seems like forever. At the other end of the scale is a page rank of ten, of which very few sites achieve, unless you are one of the huge directory sites like Google or Yahoo. Even PR’s of eight and nine are illusive and out of reach of the most average businesses. So it is that area between PR four and PR seven where one finds their website getting potential visitors in the amount of thousands per day. Don’t get me wrong, even a PR of two or three is good, and you can congratulate yourself for achieving this; but the road to internet success is found in the area of PR four and above.
As with anything, there is more than one way to accomplish something. And with attaining a high Google PR, there are plenty of ways to try to trick the Google search spiders to give your site a higher PR. Sometimes you can attain a very high PR this way. These techniques include link farms, spamdexing, etc. This process is referred to as black hat techniques. On the other hand, white hat techniques utilize legitimate, organic search engine optimization.
As you move forward with your own SEO endeavors, it is probably best to make your choice of which methodology you want to use right off the bat. Will you choose a potentially quick rise to a high PR using any method possible? Or do you choose staying within the confines of what is ethical and falls within the specified Google SEO parameters? If your decision is to play on the dark side, be forewarned that if caught, Google will not think twice before taking your lofty PR five, six, or seven right back down to zero. In fact, you could face not getting indexed on Google at all.
With all that said, let’s assume you would like to take the white hat road to PR SEO. It may be more time consuming and take a little more work, but you’ll ultimately be doing something quite nice for yourself, your visitors and customers, and the web in general. And you’ll be providing something of value. Finally, the foundation of what you are building (your website) will ultimately be stronger and much longer lasting.
I’m going to share with you my personal plan for optimizing one of my own new website over the next six months to a year. That’s right, it may be a year before you will see the fruits of your hard labor. But if you want success with SEO and marketing your website, the kind of success that means 5,000, 10,000 or even 15,000 visitors each day, then just know it will be worth it. An interesting thing that I’ve learned, and this is really very helpful, is that giving yourself an expanded, slowed down timetable for your website’s SEO (like one year), will help you keep the proper perspective and maintain the patience you will need to not just give up. Google works at their own speed and cannot be rushed too quickly (if you stay with the white hat approach). Just know that if you have recently launched your site and are sitting at PR zero, you need to give yourself several months before you typically will see any kind of jump at all. Also know that Google will hold back making public a new site’s actual PR (one showing zero) for up to several months to keep the playing field fair. In their view, having a brand new site jump to PR five, would be more problematic in the long run. So take heart that your site may in fact be climbing in page rank far before you actually see the results. Once you do start seeing movement, continue being patient.
Tried and True Google PR Success
Okay, I’m going to give you a very abbreviated list of things you can do to consistently improve your site’s PR ranking. This is basically my list of how I’m taking my own brand new site to a PR five within the next year or so:
1. Become an expert in the field that your site is addressing. The more you know about the site’s contents, the more you will be able to build on that knowledge.
2. Outline what you want your site to accomplish and do. Who is your audience? What are you offering to your audience? Where do you want your site to be in one year, two years, and three years? These types of questions are important. Play out the direction you want to go in.
3. Plan on having a lot of text content on your website. This can be articles, how to information, customer testimonials, product user information, interviews, etc. Google (and the other search engines), love good relevant content. When your site is periodically spidered, the text that is easily available on your home page will be looked at by the search engines, ultimately helping your page rank. This is important: add at least one page of new content each and every day. That’s right, plan on having hundreds of pages (over time) on pertinent, related copy about your site’s subject matter.
4. Become familiar with what your site’s keywords are and how you need to ensure that the content you have on your site has these keywords imbedded there. There is a great deal of information out on the web about this. You need to do your research and implement a strong keyword strategy for your site.
5. Get high positioned links to coming into your site. Don’t be afraid to ask for links, everyone was once at a lowly page rank and most will understand where you are coming from. If you have taken the time to create a site with great content, others will be happy to associate with you by providing cross-links. Google will be the first to tell you that nothing makes for a quicker rise in PR status than having external high-ranking links coming in to your site.
6. Flex those typing fingers because you’ll need to start writing. In addition to having plenty of copy on your site, you will want to write relevant articles (refer to your site’s keywords and subject matter). There are tons of great websites out there that are looking for fresh new, well-written articles. You may want to check out sites like Idea Marketers where they have a huge selection of authors sharing their thoughts and ideas. Typically, you do need to sign up for a membership, but this just takes a few minutes and is well worth the effort. Spend a little extra time on filling out your personal profile and professional biography. This is very important because this is how your articles will ultimately be linked back to you and your included website’s URL. If you can get five articles written a day, so much the better. These articles do not have to be all that long, but between 500–700 words is a good amount to shoot for. Having several hundred articles with relevant content on multiple article sites, all with corresponding biographies with your website’s URL will get you spidered by Google and the other search engines.
7. Configure your site to have an ongoing blog area and contribute a new blog each and every day. Make the content pertinent and relevant to your website’s keywords and overall theme of your site. This will add ongoing content to your site each day.
8. Configure your site to have an ongoing forum area that you and others can contribute to each and every day. Make the content pertinent and relevant to your website’s keywords and overall theme of your site. This will add ongoing content to your site each day.
9. Remember that content wins over pretty images. Keep in mind that Google, and other search engines, will spider your relevant text, but big images, videos, and Flash objects will be (for the most part) ignored. You need to take a look at your website as if you were a google-bot, and ensure that your web pages (home page especially), are full of a lot of pertinent copy. And don’t be afraid to have a longer than normal home page, one that you need to scroll down to see everything. Have numerous links to other areas of your site as well.
10. Become a great communicator. Network with other similar minded website owners. Thinking in terms of competition will not work well for you over time. Look for ways that you can collaborate together to promote an idea or project together.
11. Create a dedicated page on your site for your favorite links. Then, when you can ask others to cross link, ask them how they would want to be represented or promoted on your website. If at all possible, communicate directly to a specific person. Make sure you use the person’s name when corresponding. Inject a friendly, yet professional tone. Do your research, and check out their website so you can specifically talk about what you saw there. People will appreciate the time and attention you give to their website.
These are just some of the things that I have found to be effective for attaining higher Google Page Ranks. Once you make content development an ongoing priority in your life, things will fall into place before you know it. Learning to enjoy the writing process is key. Best of luck!