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Google Optimization – So You Want To Get To The Top?

by Noel Swanson

How do I do it?

Without all the myths, hype and nonsense, you can develop a logical strategy to promote your website.

Firstly, what places a site in the higher rankings?

Through use of top secret algorithms, Search Engines rank sites based on relevancy, accuracy and up-kept status of information. This counters SEO experts whose sole purpose is to get clients at the top of the rankings.

Two “strategies” can be applied to get into the top rankings:

“Black Hat Optimization” and “White Hat Optimization”

White Hat strategies deliver relevant, accurate, quality and timely information to help reinforce Search Engine design.

Black hat goes against the Search Engines by cheating and exploiting loopholes. These strategies can work but are only effective for a short time until the programmers at Google find out what you are doing, ban you and fix that loophole.

There are certain strategies that have been proven to work, have survived the test of time, and make sense for raising ranking factors, thus furthering the goal of the Search Engines:

1. Well thought out content that relates to your theme. The more the better. Search Engines are getting better at interpreting sites though a process called “latent semantic indexing” with is a more complex way of saying that artificial intelligence is being used to determine what the site is about, as opposed to simple what keywords are within. Littering the site with as many keywords as possible simply doesn’t work anymore. Keywords are still required but now also require other phrases and words that are related to your topic keywords.

2. Links to your site. In general, the more the merrier. But not all links are created equal. Links on themed sites are worth more than on pages that are not related to your theme, ie links to your fishing site from another fishing site are worth more than if they come from a cooking site. Links from “bad neighborhoods” count for nothing. They don’t penalize you for other people linking to you, but they certainly don’t reward you for links coming from link farms, Free-For-All pages (FFA), and any other sites they consider to be bad. Links from “authority sites” are worth more. Some indication of a site’s value is given by the Google Page Rank – the higher the better. In time, the Page Rank will probably become theme specific – ie your site could have a high PR for one theme, and a low one for another.

3. Sites that are older -PR generally rises in time if all factors are equal. Sites that have been around for longer are more valuable than new ones due to this.

4. New sites – New sites generally get initial priority as they may have some recent, hot news, which is after all what Search Engine’s are looking to deliver. Links pointing to new sites are also worthwhile as they may indicate recent news on the site being linked to.

5. Links OUT to authority sites are also worth points. But don’t have too many. While you are not penalized for any bad links coming in, you can be penalized if you link out to bad neighborhoods.

6. The keywords themselves – obviously some keywords are a lot more competitive than others. Aim to get ranked for your most specific keywords first. If you are a local business, then tag on the name of your town or state to the keyword.

7. Unique content. This is the key to both pages that link to you and your own site itself. Search Engine’s are out to deliver original content; no one wants to see multiple pages of the same information. The most common way of people letting all their hard work go to waste is to copy the same pages everyone else is using. Search Engines are quick to filter out duplicate content.

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