The #1 Way to Get Google/Yahoo/Bing to Love Your Website
Everyone wants to rank #1 for a higly-competitive, highly advertised, and high traffic keyword. If you could be in the 1st, or top 5, or top 10 for debt consolidation, would you leap at the opportunity? However, it takes more than a willingness to work to rank highly in the search engines.
The Way of the Hack.
Typically, how do most webmasters try to get high rankings? They get as many links as possible! They trade links, write articles, create a blog, maybe a forum, submit blog comments, go to squidoo, myspace, facebook, etc. and HOPE that the search engines will index the links and move them up the search engine rankings.
This means living in the world of directories, social bookmarking & social networking wesites, link counters & checkers, link trading, and keyword tools. None of this makes your website better and doesn’t add value to your visitors. It is all a huge waste of time if it doesn’t work.
The Basic Problem.
If every webmaster is doing the same basic things to rank, then doesn’t that mean the established website is the permanent website in the search engine rankings? Is there a better use of your time than chasing links? Would you rather add value to your visitors and give them something they can use?
Today, even for the most competitive terms, the only thing separating one website from another is links and age. The top websites don’t really offer the visitor anything more than lower-ranked websites. You can almost guarantee the content isn’t unique because it’s not as if they are the sole knowledgeable source in the world. For commercial websites, such as electronics, apparel or music, you get the impression the search engines rank certain sites higher (such as Amazon and EBay) because of behind-the-scenes trade agreements.
So, how do you beat all this competition as an unknown, newly-started webmaster who wants to be noticed on the web?
The Solution.
Since it doesn’t seem to be any real reason one website should rank above another, you have to look at how you can use the search engines own tendencies to your advantage.
If the top websites aren’t giving the visitor anything more than ads and an opinion, you have to give the visitor something more. It must be something they can use and for which they find real value. It is these websites that are almost impossible to beat in the search engines.
What type of websites are these? They are software websites.
A Little Background.
Software developers are a very logical group. It is required to have the patience to create software that people want and to find and fix bugs. So, when they create software, they usually name it according to its function. They will name a zip program after compression, or “something’-zip, or file packer. They will name an image program “The Ultimate Icon Editor” or “Image Maker” or “PhotoEdit” or something similar. They would never name it “Debt Consolidation” or anything like it.
Why is the name of the software so important? It is because this is the name people will use to search for your software on the web. And, that is important if you want to rank for that term.
How to Become An Authority.
The best way to get a search engine to love you is to become an authority. One of the simplest ways they determine that is by looking at the domain name. For instance, if you want to rank for debt consolidation and your website is “debtconsolidation.org” then you get credit for being an authority for that keyword phrase.
There is more to it than domain name, but it is a start. Next, they look at the content. If the content matches the domain name, then it is further confirmation of your website’s purpose. If they see many links to your website, that adds more confirmation.
In the case of Google (maybe others), they look at the anchor text of the link and maybe the site where the link is coming. If the anchor text matches the name of your website and the website where the link is coming has authority of its own, then that makes your “debtconsolidation.org” website look that much better.
If you can put all this together (domain name, content, links, and links from an authority site), then your site will become an authority for that keyword phrase.
You will be a content authority.
The Next Step.
As a content authority, the search engines still may not move you up the rankings (could be too much competition, could be your site age, could be not enough content, etc.). Or, they may not move you up far enough to make any difference. What next?
You need to become a software authority.
The Software Authority.
When you create software and submit it to the shareware/freeware/software directory sites, you create a lot of links to your sites. If you name your software with the keyword phrase in your domain name (Debt Consolidation for debtconsolidation.org), you have added a lot of websites with authority linking to you as the authority for this software, with the keyword-rich name in your domain.
You are now a software authority.
To the search engines, they see all these authority websites linking to you, with software, domain name, and content all matching a specific keyword phrase. Not only that, but since none of the other keyword-targetted websites above you have these software websites linking to them, you are seen as the software AND content authority for this phrase.
In many cases, this will dramatically move you up the search rankings. In a world of content-only websites, the software AND content website reigns supreme.
The Catch.
There are several problems with becoming a software authority. A few of these are that you must create the software, it must be good, and it must be unique.
Creating software is a time-consuming, frustrating, and expensive effort. You have to design it, write it, and test it. The hardest part is creating software someone will want. But, one nice thing is that you really don’t have to worry about competition. If you create yet another word processor, but it has one unique feature, that alone may justify its existence.
One Last Word…
Do understand that these shareware/freeware/software directories are not dummies. They know people will try to harvest them for their authority. They will check your software, use it, test it, and some will check it for viruses. It is not worth their effort to go through all that if they believe you are using them to get search rankings and not to provide useful software.
If you can get past this issue, you are well on your way to crushing your competition in the search engine rankings as the clear authority for your keyword phrase.
Popularity: 5% [?]
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
- Making Money with Yahoo and Google – My story Getting Started as a Webmaster I first decided to make...
- Google Ranking and the Changing SERPs While doing an experiment with Google, I learned something that...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
[...] phrases, get new web pages indexed, and to establish your web page as an active page on the web (building authority). These all help in search engine [...]