Entry

How Can I Get Top Rankings In Google?

Apr 1st, 2006 04:14
David Cowgill, http://blog.davidcowgill.com/crash-course-in-getting-a-1-google-ranking.php

SEO Is Not Dead
Ok, now lets talk about what you really want to hear - how to get 
those coveted 1-10 ranks for your keywords. Remember this - SEO is not 
dead. In fact, it is very much alive and important. The first thing to 
do in order to raise your site rank is target specific keywords. I say 
specific, because you need to target “keyphrases”, meaning more than 
one word keywords. Some people use the words interchangeably (me 
included) so just ignore one-word keywords altogether. You will waste 
your money if you shoot for these, because chances are, there are 
other, MUCH larger companies who already have you beat, and will 
continue to have you beat unless you’ve got a bottomless wallet. Check 
Out Your Competition Take this example, for instance, if you sell 
computers, you should not try to optimize your site for the 
keyword “computer” or “computers”. First, think about all of the 
businesses that do ANYTHING with computers. Yeah, that’s a lot. 
They’ll all show up if you search for “computer”. Now try to think of 
who would show up at the top of that list. I’ll make it easy, it’s 
Apple, Dell, Computer World, Computer Associates, IEEE, Computer 
History Museum, Webopedia, ASUSTeK, WhatIs.com, and HP. I’m going to 
go out on a limb here and say that I 99.9% guarantee you that you’ll 
never get into that top 10 list. The HP link has almost 5,000 
backlinks (discussed later) and a PR of 7/10. Good luck.
Then What Should I Do?
So what should you try to target? Lets re-visit your computer store. 
What types do you sell? PCs, ok, what types of PCs? Custom. Ok, that’s 
a little better, “Custom Computers” is still a vague keyword, though. 
(How many people build custom computers?) What kind of components do 
you use? Intel? AMD? SoundBlaster? GeForce? There you go, that’s a 
little better - “Custom GeForce Computers”. That returned 476k results 
instead of our previous 633 million with “Computer”. Just a little bit 
less competition.
I Want More
Want to go further? Forget what types you sell, go for what do your 
customers want. What do they use your computers for? Gaming? 
Try “Custom Gaming Computers” - There are 672,000 results here, but 
the #1 spot has a PR of 5/10 and only 41 backlinks. That shouldn’t be 
too hard to beat, we’ve just got to know who is linking to them, and 
beat them at the backlink game.
Oh yeah, before we move on to beating the pulp out of your 
competition, don’t forget to SEO optimize your site for your chosen 
keywords before spending any time on backlinks. Otherwise, this next 
section won’t mean much.
But I Digress…
Ok, now that your site is thoroughly optimized, how do we find out who 
their backlinks are? Well, you can do it by hand, or you can purchase 
a VERY helpful tool called SEO Elite (http://www.GetSEOElite.com) that 
will analyze all of the backlinks to a site (and more). But, since you 
don’t have SEO Elite yet, we’ll do it the long way.
First, go to toolbar.google.com and download the Google toolbar, this 
will save you some time. Ok, now type in your keywords - “Custom 
Gaming Computers”. The first link should be overdrivepc.com (if it’s 
not, then someone may have already read this column and risen above 
them!) click to go there. When the page loads, go to your Google 
Toolbar, click on Options > “More” Tab > Make sure the “Page Info” box 
is checked. Then, click on the blue circle with the i in it. (This is 
the aptly named: “Page Info”) It should drop down and allow you to 
select “Backward Links”, choose it. Now you should be looking at a 
Google search page again, but this one is different, it only shows 
pages that link to overdrivepc.com. (Wow, that’s handy!) At the time 
of this article, there are 41 pages that link to the site, and you can 
view them all. Some are other pages in the site, others are third 
parties.
Get Your Site Some Friends!
Follow each third party link and check out the page. Does it have to 
do with your business? Would their visitors benefit from coming to 
your site? (The answer is probably yes) If so, email the webmaster - 
there should be an email address somewhere on the site. Ask him or her 
if they would link to your site. (Inbound link) Be willing to trade 
links with them, (Cross link) or be willing to pay for a good link 
with a high PR, if you’ve got the funds. Inbound links are ALWAYS 
better than cross-links, because cross-links are “artificial.” Meaning 
they’re set up specifically to raise your site ranking, so they don’t 
count as much as a “natural” inbound link.
Note: When you’re getting links, you want to have your keywords in the 
anchor text of your link, like this - Custom Gaming Computers
That reminds me – look just to the left of the Page Info icon on your 
Google toolbar, and you should see a green bar. That is the Page Rank 
of the page you’re currently on. You want to target pages with higher 
page ranks than your own, because for each of those sites that link to 
yours, they effectively “give” you a little bit of their PR. Kinda 
like in high school when the head of the cheerleading squad flirted 
with the nerd in the hallway, she “gave” him more popularity.
By the way, if you can manage to get a link from the #1 site itself, 
do it!
Do this for all of these links you can, then move on to the #2 listing 
for your keywords. Then #3, and so on. Don’t get discouraged if some 
webmasters don’t reply to you, it may take an email or two. If they 
say no, thank them for their time and move on. I try my best not to 
burn any bridges – you never know when you’ll need to contact that 
webmaster again, and if he remembers you were polite, that will make 
you look good.
Whew, Finally Done.
This is a very easy way to move up the Google SERPS, no “expertise” 
required, just good old-fashioned hard work. It will take some time 
for Google to re-index those pages and realize that they have a link 
to you now. And it will take even longer for your PR to go up (from 
what I hear, it’s been around 3-4 months since the last PR change. But 
be patient, get links upon links, and keep adding great content to 
your site, and you will jump up in the SERPS by leaps and bounds.
To Your Success, and Your #1 Website!