10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google

Author: Titus Hoskin
Category: Internet marketing/online business


10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google
Most webmasters go totally "gaga" for top 10 rankings in
Google. And for good reason, Google is the most dominant
search engine on the net and will deliver the largest
amount of traffic.

More importantly, those same webmasters will also inform
you, getting top 10 rankings in Google often means your
site will prove profitable. Mainly because obtaining
targeted traffic is usually your first obstacle in creating
a viable online business. In other words, if you get top
ten listings in Google for good searchable keywords, it is
almost impossible not to earn money.

How To Proceed?

First, you must know the rudimentary basics of how keywords
work. Keywords and keyword phrases are the exact words
someone types into a search engine to find what they're
looking for online. If you have a site on "dog training"
then your goal is to get a top 10 ranking for the keywords
"dog training".

Now if no one searches for "dog training" it would be a
useless keyword, you would get no traffic no matter how
perfectly your site is optimized for that keyword.

How Do You Know If A Keyword Is Good?

To find out, you have to do some keyword research on your
particular keywords. Many professional online marketers use
keyword research software like Brad Callen's Keyword Elite.
However, you can also use the keyword suggestion tools
supplied by Google Adwords or Overture.

Now if you check "dog training", you will find it receives
around 4,469 searches each day. That's a lot of traffic but
you must realize that it may be too good, or rather too
competitive for your purposes, especially if have a new
site.

Biggest Mistake When Choosing Keywords.

The most common mistake most novice webmasters make is
targeting keywords which are too competitive. You simply
will not be able to compete or place for extremely
competitive keywords. Well established sites and businesses
with very deep pockets have the resources to completely
dominate those keywords.

While it is not entirely futile nor a waste of time to
concentrate your efforts on highly competitive keywords,
you will have better success if you target low to medium
competitive keywords.

Long Tail Keyword Marketing

Besides online marketers have discovered that longer
keyword phrases are usually the most lucrative. These
phrases deliver traffic which is better targeted and more
likely to convert into a sale. "Dog hunting training" which
gets around 100 searches a day will be more targeted than
the general term "dog training" and if you have a site
devoted to training hunting dogs then this keyword phrase
may convert better for you.

Always keep this "Long Tail" keyword strategy in the back
of your mind as you implement the following steps to
achieve your own Top 10 Rankings in Google.

1. Make A Master Keyword List

Your first step is to make a master list of the keywords
you wish to target. Obviously these should be closely
related to the theme of your site. Check the keyword
competition by seeing how many sites are listed in Google
for that keyword. Webmasters also check the Google PageRank
of the sites that hold the top 10 positions. If all those
sites are PR6 and above it may be hard to get ranked high
for your keywords.

2. Choose Related Keywords

Once you have your master list of keywords, find long tail
related keywords to target. Again, check out the
competition and daily searches made for each chosen keyword.

3. Use Quality Content For Your Keywords

Creating quality content should always be your main goal.
Write for actual visitors who will see and read your
content. First and foremost you must have good useful
content that your visitors will use themselves and
recommend to their friends or colleagues. Tie this quality
content in with your chosen keywords. Use one keyword
phrase per page.

4. Keyword In Domain Name, Title and URLs

Having your keyword in your domain name will score big
points from search engines. Plus, each page of content
should contain your keywords in the title & meta tags for
that page. Most experts also suggest you have your keyword
in the URL and use hyphens to separate your keywords.
Although the author has gotten good results by using an
underscore and htm in URLs.

Example: www.yoursite.com/your_keyword.htm

5. Do On Page Optimization

Keyword ratio is a much discussed topic by SEO experts and
many suggest you should have your keyword in the H1 or
headline title of your page. Sprinkle your keyword and
variations of it throughout your page. Don't over do it but
make sure the robot/spiders will clearly discover what your
page is about. Many webmasters make sure they include their
main keyword in the first and last 25 words on their pages.

6. Use Traffic Modules

One technique that works extremely well in Google is
clustering a closely related topic or subject into a
distinct separate section on your site. For example, if you
have a marketing site, you could create a whole section on
article marketing where you would have 50 to 100 keyworded
pages all relating to your subject. Writing articles,
formatting articles, submitting articles, article
software... place a keyword linked menu on each page to
connect all your pages together.

Keep in mind, your main objective is to supply quality
information to your visitors. One reason Google may favor
this type of structure is because they want quality content
returned in their SERPs.

7. Try Article Marketing

Article marketing is writing short informative articles on
keyword topics related to your sites. You then submit these
helpful keyworded articles to ezine directories on the web,
when your articles are picked up by related sites you
receive quality One-Way links. The higher the quality of
your article, the more links you will receive.

Another ranking tactic to use, if you're just starting out
your site will probably have a low PR rank and you will
find it hard to rank for even modest keywords. That's why
it's useful to take advantage of the higher PageRank of the
major ezine directories. Your keyworded articles on these
high PR sites will get picked up by Google and displayed in
the top 10 rankings. Now the displayed URL will be the
article directory site but the links in the resource box
will be pointing back to your site. Over time this article
marketing technique will raise your own site's rankings for
those keywords. Simple but effective.

8. Anchor Text And One Way Links

Off page optimization is important in obtaining high
rankings in Google. Getting quality One-Way links is very
important. Anchor Text simply refers to "the underlined
clicked on words" in your links. Most webmasters include
their keywords in their anchor text as this tells the
search engines exactly what the links are about.

9. Tags, Blogging And Web 2.0

Take advantage of Web 2.0 by using blogs, RSS feeds and the
social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg. Try
AddThis.com for a simple social bookmarking system. At the
very least your site should have a blog and RSS feed
attached to it as this is an effective way of boosting your
keyword rankings.

Tags have become very important for getting higher
rankings. Keep in mind, in free blogging software such as
WordPress, categories will automatically be seen as tags.
Blogger, which is owned by Google, now has a form where you
put your keywords (tags) for each post you make.

10. PPC vs Organic Search

Of course, one of the fastest ways to get your links
displayed on Google is to pay for them by using Google
Adwords. Your ad and links will sit side by side with the
organic link results. In Pay Per Click advertising you bid
or pay so much per click for your keywords and you only pay
when someone clicks your links. But smart marketers also
know since you're getting millions of impressions
advertising your products, acquiring name recognition and
branding through PPC advertising can be a major
side-benefit.

However, most webmasters would say that organic links
(SERPS) will return better traffic than paid links or
advertising. In most cases, this may be true because
Google's organic rankings are becoming more respected and
more trusted by users. They simply carry more weight with
surfers.

This makes it even more beneficial to obtain top 10
rankings for your keywords in Google. Depending on the
competitiveness of your chosen keywords reaching the first
page listing or even the favored number one spot is well
within any webmaster's reach. Just go for it. The rewards
are well worth your efforts.