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Articles Index >> Marketing
How to Get High Search Engine Rankings
by Michael Cheney
Every single website master wants to get to the top of the search engine rankings.
Despite me telling them that often this doesn’t produce the best quality
traffic and that there are many other sources of traffic, every website owner
I know and I’ve spoken to wants to be at the top of the search engines;
Google in particular.
So if you want to be top of the pile for all your key phrases and keywords,
how do you actually do it?
Well, you need to play the search engines at their own game. What I mean by
this is don’t try and beat the search engines system. Too many people
get caught up in the trap of trying to beat the system. They hear about a new
trick or a new gimmick and they think it will send them to the top of the search
engines.
Don’t forget that search engines, Google in particular, spend millions
and millions every single year trying to combat these types of techniques. They
have scientific buffoons in white coats trying to keep people from beating the
system. So don’t try and beat the system with the search engines. You
need to play by their rules.
Now although all search engines are unique, they do have some similarities
when it comes to the criteria on which they rank websites. The criteria behind
the search engines algorithms are always kept secret, but generally they are
looking for the same things.
Search engines are looking for which phrases you have on your website and the
weighting of the key phrases and keywords. They also look at how much of a resource
they think your website is and at how many quality websites are linking to you.
Finally, and most importantly, the search engines look at how relevant they
think your website is.
Google’s ethos, for example, is all about relevancy. The more relevant
you can be to people looking for some information on Google, the greater your
chances of being highly ranked.
Now this means changing focus and becoming a leading authority and a number
one resource for your particular business sector. You need to move away from
one narrow theme and extend your content to other related areas.
When search engines look at the phrases that you have and the weighting of
these phrases, they’re making sure that you don’t have too many
key phrases on one page or that you don’t have one particular word mentioned
over and over again. When they measure how much of a resource they think you
are, they look at the amount of content that you have and where that content
has come from.
When they take a look at how many quality sites you are linking to, they spider
backwards and see which sites are linking back to your site and what those sites
are actually saying about you. They want to know how these sites are linking
to you and how well ranked they are themselves.
Ultimately, a good search engine ranking comes down to being relevant. The
more relevant content you can have on your website and the more you can become
a number one relevant resource, the higher your rankings will be.
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