A Step By Step Plan To Rank Higher in the Search Engines
Today, I’m going to outline a plan to rank higher in Google for a certain keyword phrase. Before I tell you exactly what I’m going to do, we must first understand how things work.
In my experience, there are three primary ways that search engines (namely, Google), will determine the rank of your website relevant to certain keywords:
1. The number of backlinks to your website. We all know that one of the biggest things search engines look at is not the quality and quantity of websites that we link to, but the quality and quantity of websites that link back to us. It’s no wonder then why there are tools dedicated just for finding backlinks and showing you exactly which websites are linking back to you.
2. How active your website is. Have you ever heard anyone say that “Google loves blogs?” Well, it’s true – Google and other search engines love blogs and will often rank them higher than static websites on the same topics. This is because they know that blogs are more active and there is an actual discussion about the topic on the website itself. I’ve also noticed that some of my posts will get a little “bump” in keyword position soon after a new comment on that post was made.
The cool thing is, the more active your website is, the higher you will rank. The higher you rank, the more active your website will be. It’s a nice little perpetual cycle once it gets going.
3. Relevancy. This is the biggie that ties everything together. How high you rank for certain keywords is determined by how relevant the information on your website or post is to those keywords. Relevancy can be determined by:
- The Domain / url. Duh.
- The Title or Headlines on the Page. These are usually wrapped by the <h1> tags, and they tell the search engines exactly what the page is about. If you create a title or headline that doesn’t encompass the keyword or key phrase, you’re not giving yourself the best chance to rank as high as you could.
- Vocabulary. If your website or post is just sprinkled with the keyword that you’re trying to rank for and nothing else related – it’s plainly obvious to the search engines that all you’re doing is trying to rank higher for that keyword, and you’ll be penalized. For example, a title or headline shouldn’t look like this: Fly Fishing Tips for Fly Fishing in California that Fly Fishing People Use to Go Fly Fishing. Use vocabulary throughout the page that is related to the keyword or keyphrase you’re trying to hit, and you’ll be far better off.
- Backlinks. How relevant the websites are that are linking back to yours is very important too. If your site is about Fly Fishing, and you have a link coming in from a Model Train website, that really won’t do anything for you. Why should it? However, if you have a link coming back from a Fly Fishing Magazine website, then that will definitely help.
- Backlink Text. You can think of backlink text as the clickable, blue, underlined text that contains a link to another website. That particular text matters. If it contains the keywords or any related vocabulary, it will help show relevancy of your website for those keywords. This is why it’s smart to have keywords in your business name or domain. When people link to you, chances are they will include the keywords for you automatically. For example, when people link back to this blog, they might say something like,”Pat at Smart Passive Income writes…”. My top keyword, is Passive Income.
- Media. If a website has media, such as pictures and video, those will be taken into account for relevancy as well. Of course, the search engines won’t actually look at the pictures or watch your entire video (unless a manual review of your website is done), so the relevancy happens through the name and description of the media. Are you optimizing your media for keyword research?
There are many other factors involved with keyword rankings and search engine results, but these are the major ones that will have the most impact for you. Taking these into account, I’ve created an experimental plan. I’ll go over what I’m going to do, why it should help, and how long it should take.
The Plan
In my previous post, I had asked you to help me determine a keyword to focus on for this experiment. Here are the results below:
Thanks again for your input. The keyword selected was actually the one I ranked the lowest for (I wasn’t even on the radar), which makes this even more interesting.
Here’s the Plan:
1. Create a New Post That Contains the Keywords in the Title. Besides actually having a home domain name that exactly matches the keywords, the second best thing you could do is have the keywords in the title. This will show relevancy to the search engines via the <h1> tags, and also from the keywords in the domain name from the blog post title. Also it will help when people link to it from their websites with relevant backlink text. (1 hour)
2. Create a YouTube Video That Contains the Keywords in the Title, Description, and Tags. Putting a video on You Tube will definitely help show relevancy for the key phrases and will make the process happen even faster. Hmm…who owns YouTube? Oh that’s right…Google does. (30 minutes, including upload time)
3. A Call of Action to Comment. In the video, I’ll throw out a question at the end so that people will be more inclined to comment and will keep the post a little more active. It’s tempting to offer a “prize” or something like that to generate even more comments (especially from readers who rarely comment), but I don’t want you to think you have to do some kind of contest in order to rank higher in the search engines. So, I’ll stay away from that for now.
4. Utilize Social Bookmarking. After the blog post is published, I’ll bookmark the post on various social bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and a variety of others. I’ll use Social Marker to bookmark the post to the lesser known social bookmarking websites even faster. Of course, I’ll be including the keyword phrases in the descriptions and tags for all of these. This will create backlinks to my post from higher ranking websites with relevant backlink text included. (1 hour)
Please note that you should never use these websites just for bookmarking all of your posts for the sake of search engine optimization. For many of the sites, if you create account today and bookmark a bunch of your own material, you’ll get kicked out. You should have an account with many of these sites already and have a history of healthy, bookmarking etiquette, in which case you won’t have any problems if you bookmark your own site, especially if it’s something useful.
5. Utilize Social Media. I’ll also use my social networking connections (Facebook and Twitter) to bring people over to the post and hopefully keep it active. Although the links you post on many social networking websites won’t actually translate back to you as backlinks that will help (because they use a “nofollow” rule, which helps control spam), putting my post out there will give more people the opportunity to come by, as well as the opportunity to see a good post that they may eventually link to on their own websites. (15 minutes)
6. Write Related Articles. After a day or two, I’ll probably write an eHow article, an article on eZineArticles.com, and Squidoo.com to create some high-quality backlinks going back to the post, as well as just expand the “network” that’s connected to my blog and the particular post. It might be smart to link some of these articles to each other in addition to back to my post as well.
These articles won’t be entirely new articles. To save time, I may transcribe the video from my blog post and just use that instead. (2 hours)
Total Time: 4 hours and 45 minutes (over two days)
The Results
After the post is published, I’ll check the search engines every 2 hours to determine when something happens, if anything does. I’ll be keeping a log of my results. After a week (I’ll be doing other posts in between), I’ll do a fancy report. Fun times =)
As pointed out before, this may be fairly easy for me to accomplish since I already rank high for passive income. I am, however, off the radar for the key phrase I’m trying to hit, so I think this will still be useful as far as how fast it can happen and how powerful these techniques may be. I’d be up for doing the same thing with a keyword that I don’t currently “own” in the future as well, if this work out.
Thanks everyone! I’ll be starting the experiment on a Tuesday to give people on Monday a chance to read this first.
Cheers!
Posted on : October 18th, 2009
Related posts:
- Keyword Search Engine Position Experiment – One Week Report
- A Keyword Position and Search Engine Optimization Experiment – Day 0
- Niche Blog vs. eHOW: A New Game Plan
- The Idea Room – White Markerboard Wall Plan
- 5 Free and Random Tips for Bloggers You Probably Didn’t Know – My 100th Post!
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30 Comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below)
I love your detailed plan and how you make it look so easy. Good luck, I voted for “Passive Income Business”!
Ahh, sorry your choice wasn’t picked. I’m sure I’ll eventually do stuff to optimize that keyphrase. Thanks, and keep on blogging!
This test should be good! I’ve been thinking of doing something like it myself.
I recommend Bookmarking Demon if you can afford it, it’s a really useful tool. Obviously I wouldn’t get it if you are just doing this once off.
Hey Glen, I’ve definitely checked out Bookmarking Demon. I like it because it’s even more automated than SocialMarker. I’m running on a Mac though, so that makes that decision a lot easier for me =P
Cheers mate!
I’m looking forward to seeing the results of this ambitious experiment! Thanks for letting us tag along, Pat.
Hey Will! Thanks, I’m always happy to have people along with me on the ride =)
Great post Pat! Its so funny I was just reading an eBook on SEO and then I checked your site and Vola I found another great resource for SEO and ranking high.
I’ll tell you the little things really do make a huge difference, I’ve been learning this the last few weeks and noticed a jump in traffic because of it.
I’ll be implementing your suggestions too
Now I gotta get another cup of coffee cause i have a feeling it’ll be a late night of blog tweaking!
Hey Maren,
First of all, I’m crazy jealous you got to go to Blog World Expo. I’m definitely up for it next year, if you think it’s worth it (and I can tell from all of your tweets and posts that it is!)
Don’t stay up too late, and congrats on your October breakthroughs!
Hey Pat!
Great post! I like the idea of using video to get your posts to rank higher, definitely something I want to start doing.
The whole world of SEO is so interesting, I have much to learn:)
Have an awesome day!
Cheers
Diggy
We’ll see how it goes, but like Vincent says below, a lot of more people seem to be using rich media for SEO purposes. I think it makes the content a lot better from a reader/viewers perspective too.
Keep at it! Cheers!
Hi Pat,
I am looking forward to see how this whole thing works out. I haven’t been trying to use video to work on my SEO but I will do so in the future. Seems like more and more people are getting into rich media for traffic.
Cheers,
Vincent
Vincent, you’re absolutely right. I’ve noticed the same thing, which is why I’m trying out this experiment and seeing how fast things happen (if they do.) Let me know when you setup a vid on your website.
Hi Pat,
Thanks for such an objective and straight to the point article. There are tons of “lookalikes” in thousands of blogs about the same subject but your post really summarizes what’s important in a simples and direct language.
I’m already using a couple of tips
Thanks again
Regards
Antonio
Antonio, that’s one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever given me about a post. Thank you so much. I hope I can provide you with even more tips in the future. Cheers!
Nice post Pat.Here are some more tips that i think could be useful for everyone.Most people just dive into seo without knowing whether the top serp sites are beatable or not.Everything is beatable ofcourse but people really need to decide whether they are capable of waiting so long to see the serp results or not.If they are ready to wait then that is fine.But if they cannot wait for 12 months to see results then it is better to go for microniche blogging
Here is a tool that will be useful for people who want to analyze if it is possible to beat a serp or not:
http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/
What they need to do is see the anchor text and the no.of links having the target anchor and think whether they could be replicated or not.
Here is one more tool that can be used to know how many domains really link to a web site:
http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape/
Or they can use seo elite to simplify the job.hope that helped.
Awesome resources Arshad, these are really important.
I think you make a great point about knowing whether or not you can actually beat out other websites who rank high for the keywords you want. I use Market Samurai, but I didn’t use it here in this experiment because most people don’t have that software. I will be doing a post about Market Samurai fairly soon though. Cheers!
Does Gizmo blog too?He seems to be so.Is gizmo he or a she?
Haha…I was thing a Gizmo blog a while back, but decided to focus on other things instead. Gizmo is a he =)
Thanks Pat
I am going to run a parallel test using the method you have outlined above. My website is very new, doesn’t have very many incoming or back links, and I do not have any keywords ranking higher than 20 right now. It will be interesting to see the diference.
Anyway, one question. Once you do the above for a particular keyword do you do it again with another post and article, video, etc. or do you purposely not use that keyword again? If it is a long-tail keyword I was wondering if you would start competing against yourself.
Thanks in advance for the help!
Ken
Hi Ken,
Well, I’m not an EXPERT, but I would definitely say that it’s ok for your website as a whole to use the same keywords again in a new article, especially if it’s something useful that could grab more attention from Google and other people who may end up linking to that new post or article. You can’t really do yourself any wrong by creating more good content. If anything, it solidifies your position with that keyword or keyphrase. Now, ideally, you’d eventually end up with 2 top ranking posts for that keyphrase. Imagine how much traffic you’ll get from that, and how much “proof” that is for people looking to find information about whatever it is.
Good question. Thanks and good luck Ken. Let me know how it goes. It may take a little longer for Google to “find your post”, but it should work. Cheers!
What a great detailed and informative post. This should definitely be a great help especially to those new to web marketing and SEO.
As someone who runs multiple networks of sites generating consistent passive income I can vouch for the fact that spending some time on properly promoting your sites can make a huge difference as far as the success of the sites goes.
Now, is income generated from such sites truly passive?
I’d say kind of but not really, since I spend considerable amount of time promoting my sites. But then again I do run hundreds of sites. Currently I spend about three hours per day promoting various sites in my network, and another hour or so interacting with my outsourced staff. So in essence it has become my full time job. But the income it generates is definitely better than any full time job I’ve had in the past including my corporate jobs, and if I want to take some time off I can do so easily and still earn a substantial return.
Further I’d have to say that it is extremely important to diversify your passive income stream as much as you can. Each month for example I take a percentage of my online earnings and invest it in high yielding dividend stocks and funds, in essence growing another passive income stream that has nothing to do with the Internet. There are many various ways to collect passive income which I’m sure your readers can find by reading some of your other posts.
Best wishes and keep up the great writing.
Have been working online for more than 5 years, and am always ready to learn more, and your article has a lot to think about, thank you will use your great tips
I’m looking forward to following your progress with this “experiment” Pat. My blog is only 2 months old, but I do wish I could get more search engine traffic. I get relatively good traffic, but most is from referral sources (other sites, social media, commenting on blogs, etc.) and less than 10% from search engines. It’s tough to compete with the old, mega sites related to marriages, so I think my key may be to focus on posts with long-tail keywords to “sneak” my way to the top.
I’ll be following along anxiously to see what I can apply!
[...] over at Smart Passive Income shares with us a step by step plan to rank higher in search engines. Wow a real eye opening post. Pat shows us exactly how he plans on building up his blog with [...]
[...] A Step By Step Plan To Rank Higher in the Search Engines [...]
Is anyone elses head spinning? I have to remember to pace myself, I read all this and I want to get it all done in single day off.
Okay I’m going to give you a money making tip here: Please create a checklist for us newbies that we can print out and complete on a daily, weekly and monthly time frame. cha ching$$$ you’re welcome
Really appreciate your ideas. Simple and direct which works for me. The art of communication is clarity. I am trying some of your ideas and keen to boost my blog.
Keep it up, please
Suz
Hi Pat!
You are an awesome DUDE! Thanks for a great link to your website! I will also be following you closely on twitter.com
Hi Pat,
Vic, here again! Just read some more on your site. I must say this is awesome. ALL OF IT!! My company helps Attorneys from across the country optimize their respective rankings on google.com, bing.com and a number of other sites! We have been very successful so far, however, with your help I know we will be boosting production and sales tenfold! When you get a chance please stop by our site and see what you think it needs. I would love to hear your thoughts. my number: 954-234-1191 my site: http://www.breakthroughmarketingteam.com . I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Hi Pat
Going to start the test today and will report back in 7 days. So glad I found your blog, excellent structure and content. The way in which you share ideas is so helpful
Good luck with the baby
Suz