How do I get on Page 1?
Posted on October 29, 2008
Filed Under SEO |
Whilst I’m prepared to dabble with PPC I want visitors to come via the search engines too, so I’ve been working out what I have to do to get even vaguely visible.
As I understand it, it has to be a two pronged approach: content and linking. So, lets explore this further:
What is content?
Apparently content is king. Content is pages, content is information, content is words, content is keywords. Without these things there is nothing for all the search engine bots to index.
If you provide good content you should create a sticky site - a site that people will return to and return to. So whilst we’re talking about human visitors, they need well written content - grammatically correct, with headings and paragraphs and content that is all highly relevant to their search.
The search engines therefore take notice of page titles, headings as a guide to what the page is about - just like humans do.
What is linking?
Linking is is what holds it all together! It’s what joins the pages together - it’s what helps to create a sticky site - a natural path from page to page to page - or even site to site.
Humans like to be clearly led - they don’t want to be led blindfold - they are suspicious of what some websites contain - and equally they are made angry when there are broken links - or a link that leads to the wrong page.
I am using a link-cloaking WordPress plugin on this site, but that’s mainly because some of the links are affiliate links which sometimes to me look really suspicious with all the numbers and IDs in them. If you mouseover one of my links you should see the words “secure_link” which I hope is a bit more reassuring.
To help with internal linking on this site I am also using a similar posts plugin. I have set this text to appear at the bottom of every post - it will list 5 most related posts, and I also use it to provide a link to the previous post. I don’t have much content on this site at the moment so some of the results are a bit way off to say the least but as the number of posts grow this tool will get a lot better.
This will also help to keep the search engines on the site longer - there is deep cross linking going on.
But it’s not all about internal linking - the value of the links coming in to your site should not be underestimated. Search engines treat the links pointing at a page as a primary authority for what the target page is about. You can have both one-way links, and reciprocal links - a kind of “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” thing!
There are ways to find out who is linking to who, and also find out what sites are using what keywords, which I’m delving into at the moment - and all I can say is that it’s interesting - very interesting. Considering I’m writing this whilst watching Spooks - I feel like I’m carrying out my own espionage! I’m my very own Spook!
So to sum it all up here’s a short list of things you/I need to do:
1. Pick a search phrase you want your page to rank for.
2. Choose a title for the page which includes, or is a variation for, the phrase you want to rank for.
3. Write a headline that confirms what the page is about.
4. Write your content - making sure it contains not only the exact phrase you want to rank for, but also the separate words in that phrase. This helps everyone, humans and search engines understand what your site is about.
5. Create your internal links - using the navigation of the site - the main navigation menu, links in your footer, and of course a sitemap. Also try and link your pages together within the content.
6. Go out and get some external links to your site. This helps with ranking, but also with getting visitors from that site - cheeky!
So not much to it really! Seems like a daunting task - considering I have about two pages written of my main site written at the moment! If there’s anything I’ve forgotten please let me know!
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy these!or read my previous post: Affiliate Resources - Affilistore 2
or read the next one: The Power of the Link
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