Starting a successful website is a multifaceted challenge. Think of it this way: the Internet is a book with several million pages. Some of those pages (Google) are cardboard and preternaturally thick and the book seems to open right to them. Some of those pages have those little post-it sticky notes on them and some of them are so thin they stick to their neighbors– readers can’t find them unless they know the page number. Once you get your website up and running, there are several things you can do to make your pages stand out.

Pay Attention to Every Page

Each page of your website is valuable. The more pages you have (provided those pages have real, useful content) the better your site will be ranked. The more information you provide, the more search terms you organically introduce to your site. Remember to create a site map that outlines all of your pages with links. These links will facilitate crawling (more on crawling below).

Use Robots.txt Files

Using the Robot.txt file in the appropriate locations tells search engine bots which pages they should crawl and which they can safely ignore.

Build Incoming Links

Incoming links are critical: they demonstrate to the search engines that your site is part of a larger network of sites. The bigger and better the sites that link to you, the better your indexing will be. Try to build incoming links to multiple pages in your site, not just your front page. This will create the dynamic 3-dimensional link structure that search engines love. Be careful to avoid external sites that have poor reputations. Search engines penalize these sites and they’ll penalize you by association.

Monitor Your Site

Keep tabs on how well your site is indexed over time. As you make changes to your content or site structure, you will see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to try new tricks! Read tutorials and implement what you learn. Building a good ranking takes a lot of work and time. Don’t give up!

Content Rules!

It’s important to be consistent about adding new, quality content to your site. The more often you update your content, the better. Make sure it’s actually legitimate, useful content though. Search engines are getting better and better at identifying fake content designed solely for the purpose of improving rankings. One way to avoid trouble is to monitor your use of keywords. Make sure you only use a few keywords for each 500 words.

Quality Metadata

Good content shouldn’t be limited to your visible pages. Make sure your metadata is well-written too.

Be Patient

There is often a time delay between page updates and search engine indexing. Don’t despair if you don’t see an improvement in your ranking immediately after making updates. It’s also the case that the longer your site is up and active, the better it looks to the search engines. So keep working at it and, over time, your rating will improve.

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I don’t know about you but I’m getting kind of sick of SEO. Obviously it’s an incredibly important thing to know about when it comes to marketing. Getting your website to come up on searches is probably the single most important element for fiscal success. But how possible is it for one person to make that happen? Are SEO techniques really that helpful and, if so, why do they seem like such a mystery? And then, of course, there is the topic every discussion of SEO must inevitably broach: what of that slippery Google algorithm that seems to change every other week?

If I got paid for every clown who claims to have THAT figured out, I’d be a very rich woman.

Steeped in mystery, Google’s algorithms determine, based on nobody really knows what, which sites rise to the top of searches and which sites disappear into obscurity. And of course, just as they claim to understand the algorithm, thousands upon thousands of professionals claim to be able to help you “optimize your SEO” within it—to crack the enigma code anew, just for you, for $39.95. Surely there are plenty of legitimate professionals who really do have some idea of how to use this system. They are the real experts. You can find them wherever the big bucks are sold.

For the rest of us trying to make it, what do we do? Who do we trust? How can the individual marketer sift through the malarkey and find the real SEO tips and tricks that will improve page rank? Well, for a one-time payment of $39.95…

Just kidding.

In my experience, if you’re willing to put in the time, to experiment with all of the various techniques on all of the various blogs, it *is* possible to improve your rank. It won’t happen immediately. You won’t be number one on the Internet, but you WILL improve and that improvement can be significant. Here are the four tricks, courtesy of real live SEO expert Cal Hesson over on hostingdiscussion.com, that have helped me get TurnKey Internet higher up in the charts:

(1) Keyword Phrase Research and Analysis

Identify the keyword phrases that people are using to find your products and services. This can be done in several ways, many of which cost money. There are, however, lots of tools that are free or relatively inexpensive, that can fill you in on your analytics. Google Analytics is one that many swear by. Here at TurnKey we already had an analytics tool installed on our servers. I used that.

(2) Study the Competition

Pay close attention to who holds the top 10 positions for the keyword phrases you want to target. You need to look at your competitions On-Page SEO (the text and content of their pages) and their Off-page SEO (the inbound links, etc., that contribute to site ranking). Part of the Off-page SEO analysis is counting the back links to your competitor’s web sites. You’ll have to either get more or better back links than they have.

(3) Good On-Page SEO

You need to pay very close attention to the titles, keywords, descriptions, body content, etc., of your site. The search engines have to really understand what your web site is all about, and good, editorially sound content provides that. The good news is: you have complete control over this content.

(4) Back Links

As the title implies, for a good SEO profile, good back links are essential. There are myriad ways of getting back links, although understanding what good back links are has become more difficult as Google continually changes how they are valued.

There you have it: a quick and dirty set of simple tips for improving your site ranking. Sure, there are trade secrets to SEO and, if you really want them, I’m sure you can find someone who will take your money. Barring that, why not do what I do? Dedicate yourself to the process, take the time, follow these rules, read all you can and figure out those secrets for yourself. To your success!

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