Want High Google Rankings? Build it for Humans!
If you want your website to receive lots of free
search engine traffic from Google, or any other search engine for that
mater, build it as though it was mean for human beings to read.
Seriously. The search engines are way too smart for us to waste our
time trying to outfox them. Instead, give them what they want.
I repeat, if you want high rankings in the search results you must begin
by writing for humans
If people would put as much effort into building a
user friendly site with value for its visitors as they do in trying to
outfox the engines, they would have what they are seeking…high Google
rankings and plenty of free
traffic. I think part of the problem is that so many people are
thinking short term. Folks, it takes time to build organic search
engine derived traffic. But then you end up with a nice long-term
income.
There are of course a variety of factors that
determine how much organic traffic you can obtain that are out of your
control. For instance, if you choose a topic that very few people are
interested in, it will be very difficult to get large numbers of
targeted traffic. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it may well
be a good thing. I have a website about one of my inventions, a
selective asparagus harvester. I think that in the United States there
are only a few hundred asparagus growers, and hence I expect very few
visitors to the site. If only one visitor buys one machine it will be a
$100,000 plus sale, and well worth the effort of putting up the site.
What I consider to be one of the most important
rules for getting high Google rankings in the search engine results is that
you write for a human, and for the most part, an English speaking human
with good grammar and use a spell checker. This doesn’t apply if you
are a non-English speaking site, obviously.
The reason should be obvious, if word processing
programs can not only check spelling, but check grammar as well. If I
was a search engine and I was comparing sites to see who to put on the
first page of results, and one site had poor grammar, then that would be
an obvious point to consider. Spammy sites are far more likely to have
poor grammar and bad spelling than legitimate sites.
A word about keywords; do your research and use one
of the online keyword research tools. A common problem with websites is
poor keyword research. If people do not search for the keywords then
even though you are #1, you still don’t get any traffic. There is no
substitute for keyword tools and good research.
Optimize each page of material for one or two
keyword phrases. Do not attempt to optimize for single word keywords
unless there are some very unusual circumstances. It is far easier to
capture multiple word phrases. Where ever you put your keyword phrases,
make it sound natural. Don’t use them too often. The engines are
watching. Work them into your title tag. If your title does not mention
you keywords, then the search engines give it far far less importance.
It doesn’t hurt to have some keyword phrases in your image alt tags, and
in your description tag.
Use a simple clean layout. In recent patent
documents Google brings up the idea of web page clutter being a factor
in ranking of web pages. If you make the site design simple and
pleasing to the eye, you will have a better chance of a good ranking
than if your design is sloppy and cluttered.
Content is of course, as always, king. Great
content is an absolute requirement. The better your content the more
visitors you will get. Part of great content is lots of it. I like to
find the best keywords I can, then put up at least 10 pages of
information relating to each set of keywords. By having your keyword
phrases in a number of different settings you have a much greater chance
of visitors picking your site to visit when they search for those
keyword phrases. If your content is poor or your usability is not good,
your visitors will “bounce off” of your site and the search engines will
notice. If your visitors stay for long periods the engines notice that
too.
Another thing that great content will attract is
links. Lots of inbound links can do wonders for your ranking. If you
have really valuable content the links will find you. It does take
time, but it does happen. You can actively seek out and trade links
with other appropriate sites. Write some articles and submit them to
the article marketing sites. They allow you to include links to your
site. You not only pickup links, but the articles will drive traffic to
your site too. Will defintely help you get those high Google
rankings.
Once you have it all put together, then you have to
wait. It just takes loads of time to gain Google’s trust. Often I begin
getting some search engine traffic within a few weeks of getting a new
site up, but then a month or two later my traffic drops to zero. Then
after months and months of little or no traffic I begin to get s trickle
of traffic and it slowly grows till about two years after publishing
it. If it isn’t doing well after two years then you best start changing
things and doing testing to see what’s wrong.
Keep improving your site keeping in mind that it is
for humans, not search engines. The search engines are getting better
and better and finding high quality human friendly and useful sites, so
by creating just that type of site, you assure your website’s future.
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