Top Ranking in 24 Hours! Tony Bury 2002-05-25 Reader Ratings: 68 - Average score: 8.4 Getting your Website a number 1 ranking at Google is easy -- when you know how! My site has been ranked number 1 or thereabouts for the past year at Google for the keywords "expired domain names" and I did it with less than 24 hours' work! This article gives you a step by step description of how I achieved it, and a blueprint that shows how you can do it too. When I first developed the site, my target was less ambitious that top ranking. I'd read all the articles describing how much work it was to achieve a high ranking, how you had to have pages and pages of content, and how you had to have hundreds of inbound links to your site. So I didn't follow all the rules, and my initial target was just to get onto the first page of search results for my selected keywords. I though this positioning would be good enough to generate significant traffic to my site. However, when my site reached the number 2 position after about 3 months, I decided to do a little more optimization and go for number 1. Sure enough, the following month my site was there in the top spot! My ranking does occasionally slip to 2 or 3, but it's usually back up to number 1 again the following month, and if it slips for the phrase "expired domain names", it's often up at number 1 for "expired domain" at the same time. Of course, things change fast in the search engine world, and this article is definitely tempting fate. By the time you read this, my site may have disappeared from view altogether! But in the meantime, here's what I did -- and what you should try - to get top ranking. Step 1 - Keywords Task: Choose your keywords Time Needed: 2 hours This is of course the most important step of all! It would be easy to get a number 1 ranking for the keywords, "Red Hot Domain Names free expired domain name lists", but it would be entirely useless as nobody would ever search on those keywords. On the other hand, lots of people search on the keywords "mp3 downloads", but the traffic generated would be wasted on my site, as the visitors wouldn't find what they were looking for, and would depart very quickly indeed! The trick is therefore to select a search phrase that is commonly used and will bring significant traffic, but which is also specifically relevant to your site. In selecting keywords, ask yourself this question: "Is my site really what people are looking for when they type these words?" My own site is dedicated to providing free expired domain name lists, so some obvious search phrases were "domain names", "expired domain names", and "expired domain name lists". But which of these would bring the most traffic? Of course, you might want to go for a number one ranking for a number of different key phrases for different pages on the site, but let's take this one step at a time. Keyword Popularity Fortunately there are tools to help you find the most commonly used search phrases. The first is the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool (previously the Goto suggestion tool). This allows you to enter a search term, and returns a list of suggested related search terms and how many times each search term was searched on at Overture last month. Entering "Domain Names" threw up a lot more suggestions, including "unclaimed domain names", "unregistered domain names" and so on. By far the highest number of searches was performed on the term "domain names", but it seemed clear to me that it would be better to go for the more highly targeted traffic that would come from one of the phrases specifically related to expired domain names -- and this phrase was indeed the most used of these. At the time that I completed this exercise, the Search Term Suggestion Tool gave separate statistics for singular and plural words, for example "expired domain" and "expired domains", but unfortunately it no longer does so. This is, however, important at Google (and indeed at Overture) as the two phrases return different search results, as Websites are ranked differently for each. However, the next tool we'll look at does make this important distinction. Keyword Competition The other important factor in the choice of keyword is the "competition" for that keyword from other Websites. It is more difficult to achieve the number one ranking, or even a first page ranking, if there are 10,000 (rather than 100) other Web pages indexed on your chosen keywords. The tool at http://www.WordTracker.com takes this factor into account and also differentiates between singular and plural words in search terms. There is a free trial version that you're free to use as often as you like, which uses statistics from Alta Vista. There's also a full version priced from around $6 for a one day subscription. The full version looks at the statistics from most major search engines and allows you to analyse more keywords. As well as suggesting alternative keywords and giving you the number of searches performed on each, this tool looks at the number of competing Web pages for the keywords and calculates a "Keyword Effectiveness Indicator" (KEI). The KEI gives a high rating to popular keywords with few competing Web pages, and a low rating to unpopular keywords with many competing Web pages. It is therefore useful for identifying the keywords that should be the most effective in generating traffic. However, remember that it is equally important to select the keywords most relevant to your site, as it is to choose frequently-searched words with little competition. It's pointless being listed number 1 in the search results if users fail to click through to your site because it doesn't seem relevant to their needs. Step 2 - Content Task: Develop content Time Needed: 5 hours Let's just repeat that... "Content, content, content!" We all know link popularity is the most important thing at Google. But think about it: without content, not many sites will link to you. You don't even need much content, provided what you do have has the right sort of keyword density. It's definitely a question of having the right content, rather than having a lot of content. My Website really has one purpose, which is to allow visitors to subscribe to the free weekly expired domain names email list and newsletter. So I needed content to: * give visitors a little background on expired domain names, * explain what a good opportunity they provide for acquiring a good quality domain name, and * provide a subscription form. I planned to do all this on the home page in order to make it as quick and easy as possible for visitors to subscribe, but you really do need more than one page to get a good search engine ranking. I therefore started out with a four page Website, containing: * the Home page, * a Links page with links to other domain name sites and Webmaster sites, * a Partnerships page explaining the partnership opportunities I offered to other sites, and * a Link To Us page with text and banner links which other sites could use to link back to mine. There must be some text on each page -- usually at least 100 words (though other search engines need more) on most pages. And, most importantly for your ranking at Google, make sure you use your selected keywords throughout the site. You must repeat them sufficiently to achieve the right sort of "keyword density" without repeating them so excessively that Google perceives your site as "spamming". The easiest way to do this is actually to forget all about keyword density, and just sit down and write the sort of content that will interest your visitors. After all, what Google ranks highly is the sort of keyword density that is believed to occur in "genuine" non-optimized content. Having written the content, you can then analyse it and fine tune the keyword density. The free tool that I used to fine tune my keyword density was the Keyword Density Analyser at www.keyworddensity.com. If you plug your URL and selected keywords into this site, it will calculate the keyword density for your visible text. It also analyses all the other places in the HTML where you can insert keywords, and even allows you to compare your Web page against another. This gives you the information you'll need to analyse the differences between your Web page and competing pages that may be ranking higher in the search engines. However, you do have to remember that keyword density isn't the most important factor in a Google ranking -- the other Web page may be ranked higher for different reasons (such as link popularity). I put my keywords in the following places: * HTML Title -- The Title is absolutely vital as this is what Google displays in the search results as the title and link text of your page. The text in the title therefore must make sense and encourage the visitor to click through to your site. * Visible Text -- I went back and edited my text until the keyword density was around 5%. * Image ALT Tags -- I made sure the ALT tag for my logo, which is the first image displayed, was "expired domain names". * Domain Name -- Yes, you should choose your keywords before you choose your domain name. I missed this one and only have two out of the three keywords in my domain name! * OutboundLlinks -- It helps to have the keywords in both the text and the URLs of outbound links (we'll cover inbound links and link popularity later). * Heading Tags -- I have a <

tag with "Free Expired Domain names" at the top of the page. Keywords at the top of the page probably carry more weight. * Bold Text -- I have used bold text where it makes visual sense, and this probably helps with Google as well. * Close together -- Keyword proximity is important. In other words, the phrase "expired domain names" carries more weight than the words in the sentence "Using a domain that has expired is a good way to get good names". * Throughout the Website -- Google recognises "themes" by the use of keywords repeated consistently throughout the Website, and increases the ranking of each page for those keywords. * Meta Tags -- These are covered in the next step Do not use invisible text (text that's the same color as the background). This is considered to be spamming and will get you banned from some search engines. Do not repeat keywords too much. You may end up being penalised for it. (Note to self -- check the keyword density in this article -- this page may end up with the number 1 spot at Google!). Step 3 - Meta Tags Task: Select and enter your Meta tags Time Needed: half an hour Despite all that's said about the importance of HTML Meta Tags, they have very little impact these days. After all, Google is trying to figure out the relevance of your site for itself -- obviously it's going to pay very little attention to what you might have to say about your own site. However, these tags take very little time to set up properly, and a well-worded Description Meta Tag is critical with other search engines that display this content as the description of your site in their results listings. Include your keywords once in the Description Meta Tag, but, more importantly, make it a description that will attract visitors. The Keywords Meta tag is probably less important, but you might as well include your most important keywords here. Step 4 - Submit Task: Submit your site Time Needed: 2 minutes This step is the least important step of all -- even less important than insterting the Meta Tags. To get any sort of ranking at all you must follow the remaining steps, and ensure that other sites link to you. And if you already have sites linking to you, then the Googlebot will find your site and spider it eventually. But I suppose there is a chance that submitting your site might just have it spidered earlier. There's no guarantee that submitting will get your site spidered, or see it listen within a certain timeframe, but the delay will allow you to get to work on your link popularity. So you might as well submit -- I did and it only takes a couple of minutes! Just visit www.google.com/addurl.html and enter the URL of your site. Once you've done it, forget about it and start to concentrate on your link popularity. Link Popularity The next 3 steps all focus on link popularity, but it's not just the number of incoming links that is important, it's: * who they're from, * how they link to you, and * how many links there are from their site. Google provides a search option through which you can find which Web pages link to you by entering a search term in the form "link:www.yoururl.com" Note, though, that this system only seems to return pages with a PageRank above a certain level. According to this tool, my site reached number one with links from only about a dozen other sites. I have another site on Flash which has just achieved number 3 rank for the keywords "Free Flash Animations", and according to the search, it has links from only 6 other sites! However these are probably just the higher ranking sites -- I do know for a fact that Google has indexed more sites than this that do link to mine. But one lesson I've learnt is that with Google, quality matters more than quantity. Step 5 - Establish Links Task: Establish links from high ranking sites Time Needed: 5 hours The most important thing about incoming links is who links to you. Google applies more weight to links from sites that are themselves ranked highly for your keywords. The fastest way to the top is therefore not to spend days submitting to FFA lists (a waste of time!), or even spend days setting up reciprocal links with other sites. Instead, the best method is to concentrate on getting a small number of links from important sites. The most important site of all is the Open Directory Project at DMOZ. Getting listed at DMOZ is also the slowest step of all because all submissions are reviewed by the editors, and this can take up to 2 or 3 months! There are several reasons why DMOZ is so important to your ranking at Google: * Google uses DMOZ as its own directory, so you get two links for the price of one -- free. Also, Google weights links from its own directory quite highly. * A large number of other sites use the directory at DMOZ, so you'll probably generate a lot more than two incoming links as a result of your listing there. * A listing at DMOZ adds two lines to your site's details in the Google search results. The first line is your site's description at DMOZ (where you're allowed some control over the details shown in the search results). So it's important to submit a short, snappy description that encourages visitors to click through to your site. The description must, of course, be accurate if it is to be approved by the DMOZ editors. I used "Free expired domain name lists", which was a slight mistake as it contains "name" in the singular rather than "names" in the plural (which would match my chosen keywords of "expired domain names"). The second line that displays is the category in which your site is listed at DMOZ, so make sure you submit your site to the most relevant category. As it takes so long to get listed at DMOZ, make sure you submit early, but make sure your site content is complete and ready for the editor's review. After you submit to DMOZ, the next step is to get links from a few other high-ranking sites. As my site provides a free resource for Webmasters looking for domain names, I searched for sites that listed Webmaster tools and resources, such as Webmaster Tools Central, and submitted links to them. A less obvious way to obtain high quality links from a high ranking site is to write an article for a site like SitePoint. Although SitePoint, along with most other sites that publish articles, will not publish an article that solely promotes the author's site, they will publish a link to the author's site in the bio about the author. Clearly, writing an article takes a little time and effort, but as well as getting yourself better known as a source of useful information, the link to your site has the added advantage of not being buried in a page full of other links. This is important for your ranking at Google, because the more links there are on a page, the less weighting is attached to each link. So think about writing an article for a large, popular site that's relevant to the topic of your Website. Step 6 - Review Links Task: Look at how you're linked Time Needed: 1.5 hours The number of other links that appear on the page that links to you is certainly important. But the other important factor is the form of the link itself. Google applies the most weight to text links that contain keywords in the link text, so in my case I was looking for links like Expired Domain Names rather than links that simply included my url. Obviously the places where you have the most control over the form of backward links are your own sites. Step one is therefore to ensure that the pages in your site are cross-linked to each other using the keywords in the link text. One useful technique is to include a site map, remembering to use your keywords in the page descriptions as well as the link text. Step two is to ensure that your other Websites inter-link, again using your keywords as the link text. You do have 2 or 3 (or more) Websites linking to each other, don't you? It's the easiest way of all to get links! A word on Flash and Google -- One of the objections to using Flash for Website navigation is that search engine spiders can't follow the links. Effectively, a Flash navigation won't add to your link popularity, and worse still, pages may not be indexed at all. However it's not well known that Google has been experimenting for some time not only with indexing Flash files (.SWF files), but also with indexing the links contained in them. Over the last few months I've seen links from .SWF files coming and going from the Google link results for my sites, although recently they've disappeared again. It looks as though the time may be nearing when this one last objection to Flash disappears. It's too early yet to abandon HTML for navigation, but provided you already have sufficient text or image links, it is definitely time to start using Flash where you need visual impact -- but make sure you're prepared, and have included links within the Flash files too! And of course for maximum keyword weighting, a text link will still be best. Step 7 - Maximise Links Task: Maximize incoming links Time Needed: 10 hours The number of incoming links is an important part of link popularity, but if you've followed all the steps so far, you should already achieve a high Google rating once your DMOZ listing and the other links to you have been indexed. As I've said, the DMOZ listing is probably the slowest part of the process, and will probably take about 3 months. Once you've set up links from your own sites, it's worth seeking out other places where you have control over setting links. In my case I use Yahoo Groups to distribute my email newsletter, and this gave me a page at Yahoo Groups that I could customize with links back to my site. Another Web page I have control over is a top sites list for Domain Resources at www.TopSiteLists.com. As the list owner, I was able to customize the Web page to include a text link to my site at the top of the page. Google is able to index dynamic Web pages with name/value pairs in the URL search string (like http://www.topsitelists.com/bestsites/topresources/topsites.cgi?ID=1 ), so each member's link is to a separate page as far as Google is concerned, but as the links are to similar (identical!) pages, they don't carry any more weight at Google. And this practice may even have a detrimental effect at other search engines. Once you've exhausted your options at places where you have control over links, the final step is to request reciprocal links from other Websites. To achieve this, the first thing I did was to make it easy for other Webmasters to link to me. I set up a "Partnerships" Web page, which, along with free content, also offers reciprocal links to other Webmasters. I also set up a "Link To Us" page that provided other Webmasters with the HTML code for both text and various sizes of button and banner links. While text links that incorporate your keywords are more beneficial to your Google ranking and for generating traffic, many Webmasters prefer to use graphics links, and at this stage, any link is better than none! Simply placing the invitation on my Website was enough to get a few reciprocal links, but every article you read on the subject tells you that you should search out similar high ranking sites to your own and email the Webmasters, inviting them to swap links. This is excellent advice, but I have to confess that I have just been too lazy to do it! By concentrating on obtaining a smaller number of links of the right sort in the right place, I have managed my number 1 ranking at Google with the minimum of time and effort. But complacency is dangerous! If I am to maintain my ranking, I will have to start building up my reciprocal links. Once you have a high ranking site, be sure to tell this to other Webmasters, and encourage them to swap links with you by explaining how your ranking makes a reciprocal link with your own site so much more valuable to those sites to which you link. Step 8 - Update Task: Keep updating Time: ongoing The last step is to keep updating, as I believe Google attaches more weight to recently updated pages. You will probably want to update your content anyway, but as far as your Google ranking is concerned, little updates often is best. In fact, once you have a high ranking, be very careful not to make major changes that may upset it! Finally So that's it! It worked for me, and it may work for you. In the process, I got some things right and some things wrong. Unfortunately, I can't tell you for sure which were which! So what's next? Start on those doorway pages for other keywords? Start on that reciprocal links program? Start on the next Website? No! The sun's shining, and I'm going out for a walk... But when I come back, maybe I'll start on those reciprocal links!