Get Your Website To Top Ranking In Google
I know it’s a bold claim: To Get To The Top Of Google.
I can easily get my new websites to rank on the FIRST PAGE of Google search results, sometimes in a matter of days.
I don’t mean to boast about it - I just want to share what I know. :0)
I’ll also let you in on a new INCOMING LINK BUILDING METHOD that I just discovered, about which I’m excited. I’ll talk about it near the end of this post.
WHAT IS SEO
SEO is search engine optimization - it is actually not that difficult. Short of writing a book about it, I’ll explain in layman terms.
SEO has 3 main factors:
1) On-page optimization
This means the site structure, meta tags (title and description) of each page. Wordpress for example, is a good platform to use, provided it is used with the right SEO plugins.
A MUST-HAVE plugin for SEO purposes is All-in-one SEO Pack.
2) Off-page optimization
Simply, the incoming links to your website. Not just any link, but related quality links that are not seen by the search engines as manipulative. More about that below.
3) Contents
Continually updated and well themed contents. Which is why Web 2.0 sites (social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook etc) are doing well because the contents are freshly and regularly contributed by users.
–
I’ll cover more on off-page factor, because it is by far the MOST IMPORTANT of the 3.
Just remember this:
INCOMING LINKS => HIGHER PAGERANK => MORE VISITORS
Except for Google which awards Pagerank to websites, it’s the same principle for all search engines: more QUALITY incoming links means the site will rank better in the search results, which means MORE VISITORS if your website is among the first page (top ten) of search results.
THE TRICK IS WHERE OR HOW to build incoming links.
Before that, let me relate what’s happening right now.
It saddens me to learn that many people I know literally have their online livelihood wiped out overnight, as a result of the recent Google algorithm update.
These are the professional bloggers who get paid to blog for others. Google tracks these (some of the services leave behind footprints like “Sponsored Post”), and decided to penalize these blogs, by downgrading their blogs which are enjoying Pagerank 4, PR5 or even PR6, to a PR ZERO.
As a result, they cannot meet the requirements to blog for earnings, as their blogs no longer have Pagerank value.
This leads to what I said earlier: the incoming links must not be seen as manipulative. Other examples are reciprocal links, paid text links, link exchange networks etc. As long as there are footprints, the search engines will come after them.
HOW TO GET INCOMING LINKS
The traditional link building methods are:
* Article submission
* Posting blog comments
* Forum signatures
* Trackback posts (if you have a blog)
The newer ones are:
* Squidoo Lens
* Social bookmarking
* Yahoo Answers
* Video sharing sites
These are big topics on their own, so I’ll not discuss here. Don’t worry, just search for these terms in Google - there are lots of resources about them.
–
HOW TO MEASURE WEBSITE PERFORMANCE - FREE TOOLS
Once you have good contents and several incoming links, you should begin to see traffic from the search engines. The time taken for this to happen depends on several factors, notably the competitiveness of the niche.
I’ll now show you the free tools you can use to monitor how your website is PERFORMING, including the exact search terms that visitors are finding your website - you’ll BE SURPRISED what these terms are.
The tools show you the number of visitors, where they come from, and which search terms that they used to arrive at your website. Isn’t that exciting ?
For Wordpress blogs, I’d recommend WP-Slimstat-EX (don’t be confused with WP-Slimstat, which is a preceding version).
For other types of websites, you can install Firestats (free for personal use)
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CAN A NEW WEBSITE GO FROM PR0 TO PR4 IN 5 WEEKS ?
It was easy to get high Pagerank 1-2 years back. Nowadays it is increasingly difficult to get good Pagerank as Google tightens its criteria in awarding Pagerank. A Pagerank 4 or 5 is considered good these days, compared to a PR 5-6 months ago.
Now there’s another interesting method of acquiring incoming links that I just came to know about.
These incoming links are from high traffic, high Pagerank sites, so you get traffic AND Pagerank benefits flowing to your website. (No, it’s not social bookmarking sites which have been heavily abused.)
With this method, it is proven that a new website can get from PR0 to PR4 in 5 weeks.
This is new to me, and I’m excited about it. Based on my years of experience in dabbling with SEO, I know this is a workable method, with NO RISK of being penalized.
I’m certainly going to spend the next few days trying out this technique for my websites.
Discover more about this technique HERE.
The website actually tells you what this technique is, shows you the test site, and where he got the links from. No wishy-washy beat-around-the-bush hype. It will cost you only $7 to know the step-by-step methods of doing it.
There you have it - my years of SEO experience compressed into one post. Hope you find them useful.
I invite you to leave your comments.
Craig
del.icio.us Digg it Furl ma.gnolia Netvouz Netscape Onlywire reddit Scuttle StumbleUpon Yahoo MyWebDecember 14th, 2007 32 Comments posted in Search Engine Optimization
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December 14th, 2007 at 9:41 am
What’s the difference between slimstat-Ex and statcounter,GA, Awstats?
December 14th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Thanks for this great information. I have been hearing about this method of high quality links so I know it’s a viable way to optimize a site. Do you have specific suggestions on how to do this or is this for an upcoming blog entry?
Especially appreciate the links for getting feedback on where traffic is coming from. Thank you!
December 14th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Hi Craig
I read your newsletter with interest…keep it up.
Just one thing, you talk above of the possibility of getting good page rank with through incoming links etc. Perhaps you could give the plans a try on this site and we can watch the progress (hopefully!) of its ranking and it can be put forward as good proof of the methods.
All the best for Christmas
Tony
December 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Hi craig,
Great Information! But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
I concur with Tony. Please show us the way on this web site
so we can see the improvements in ranking.
Merry Christmas
Rajan
December 15th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Hi Craig
Here is another good free webstat service, they also offer guest book and forum. The info is basic but well illustrated with the essential graphs.
webstats.motigo.com/
It costs nothing to try it and I am not an affiliate!!
Regards
Chris
December 16th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Chris, thanks
I checked out motigo.
Do you have a link to one of their forums so that I can see what they look like?
It may be handy to have a forum set up on their servers, but I would like to see one first.
cheers
Tony
December 17th, 2007 at 3:56 am
Raymond,
Without going into full comparison, here are the major differences that I know:
WP-Slimstat-EX:
- It’s a Wordpress plugin, easy to set up
- stats are collected on your server
- no need to insert special code on any page
- very easy to view traffic results
Statcounter:
- Need to insert Statcounter code on every page (hence providing incoming links to statcounter.com resulting in it having a perfect Pagerank 10!
- has a limit (log size), afterwhich you need to pay to upgrade
- stats are stored on their server
GA: What is GA?
Awstats:
- though graphically nice, doesn’t have as much traffic details compared to WP-Slimstat-EX
- not as easy to interpret traffic results
The thing I find most useful in Slimstat is the list of search results that visitors are finding my website. I just need to click the hyperlinks which brings me straight to the search results where I can usually find my website within the first few pages.
In this way I can monitor the keywords that I’m ranked in the first or second page.
—-
Sharon,
You’re welcome.
The detailed instructions are in the 123-Ranking report (link at the bottom of my blog post). Quite easy to follow I must say.
Hmmm….maybe I’ll do a case study and share it here.
—-
Tony and Rajan
I do incoming link building mainly for my money-making niche sites, not this site which I reserve specially for my subscribers.
Reason is it’s so much easier to rank well for sites which are not “Internet marketing” related, or “make-money-online” type, which are hyper competitive.
Nevertheless, I’ll consider doing a case study on a new domain, or even this site, and share the results and findings here.
Have a Merry Christmas!
Craig
December 17th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Hi Craig,
Thank you for your detail explanation. That is indeed very useful.
GA means Google Analytics.
December 24th, 2007 at 4:15 am
Hi Tony
I don’t have any further info on the forum, I only use the webstas at the moment and that is very good for a quick analysis.
I did set up the guestbook but I was not so impressed with that. With the forum I would suggest you open one…it’s free….If you don’t then like it just forget about it!!
Hope that helps
Regards
Chris
December 24th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Thanks Chris
I will give it a go and report back.
Merry christmas
Tony
December 26th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Wow! Slimstat is awesome. Thanks for the recommendation.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Great tool. I highly recommend it to everyone expecially people who are using wordpress.
www.healthlifestyleforever.com/salesemail
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:55 am
Have you thought about putting some of your “techniques” to work? This blog has a pr of 0!
Furthermore, you cannot guarantee a PR in 5 weeks - if you knew anything about PR then you would realize that Google only updates PR every few months. Usually once per quarter.
I suggest you stop kidding yourself and really learn what SEO is about and stop foolling people simply to make a lousy affiliate commission on some dodgy ebook.
[Edit: See Craig’s response to his comment in Comment 42 below]
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 am
Thank you Craig for the great information. SEO equals free traffic from the search engines so you can never know enough. I love learning about it and I appreciate your knowledge.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:03 am
I’ll give slimstat a try thanks.
thebahrainpropertysite.com/
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Great Stuff Craig. Thanks for email notifications of the great work your doing.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Chris. I have reservations about 123 Rankings such as
1. No ranking for that site despite the claims of overnight rankings?
2. No author name ( and a really crappy cover ) This may not be exactly relevent and I am the last person to demand a glosssy look if something just plain works.
But if the sales page is poor quality the chances are strong that the info will be also.
3. No guarantee policy so what are the claims worth if they aren’t backed up.
Sure it’s only $7 but surely that’s not the point.
Where is the evidence? You have to buy the report to get the evidence about the report?
Still if you have personal knowledge or intuition about its effectiveness then I would factor that into the equation, but otherwise I’m dubious.
Hope I’m wrong… but?
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
[This is in response to Anthony Feint’s comment (Comment 37)]
Anthony, have you seen my earlier response (Comment 31 on Dec 17)?
I explained that I do incoming link building mainly for my money-making niche sites, not this site. The reason is it’s so much easier to rank well for sites which are not “Internet marketing” related, or “make-money-online” type, which are hyper competitive.
It’s true this blog has a PR of 0, because I’ve spent ZERO effort in building incoming links.
Why didn’t I?
With the limited time I have, I need to do activities which bring either benefits for my subscribers, or for myself.
For this Internet marketing blog, I do not need to rely on search engine traffic as the target audience is MY SUBSCRIBERS.
Anthony, I seriously doubt you know a lot about SEO yourself, based on your shallow comment about Pagerank and hasty conclusion. So let me educate you a little.
Though you’re right that “Google only updates PR every 3 months”, did you know that it’s only for the visible PR shown on Google toolbar?
Did you also know that PR is actually being updated in real time in Google’s servers? Any new incoming links are computed and considered, which is why search engine ranking changes dynamically, and not only once every 3 months.
“Google representative Matt Cutts has publicly indicated that the Toolbar PageRank values are republished about once every three months, indicating that the Toolbar PageRank values are historical rather than real-time values.”
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
This simply means that the PR you see on the Google toolbar is old info from the last update. The real PR is real-time. It is this real-time PR that we are talking about, and it is this that matters.
The author did show that his new site went from PR0 to PR4 in 5 weeks, because he was at the right time to catch on the 3-monthly Google PR update.
Even if he didn’t, the incoming links would have a real-time equivalent of PR4 in 5 weeks, which will show visibly in Google toolbar at the next update.
And how did you know the book was “dodgy”? Did you even read the ebook?
Before you go around judging a book by its cover, let me tell you that the 123Ranking sales page is a classic lesson in “What Not to Do In Salesletter Writing”. On the other hand, I’ve seen so many attractive sales pages with crappy products.
I’d say that his 123Ranking ebook is fairly well written and concise, with plenty of screenshots and proof, though it’s hard to please everyone.
Do you really think I would risk my credibility and reputation for $7?
Oh yes, Anthony. Thank you for showing others how to get website visitors: by posting a comment intended to stir trouble, so people will go check out your website. But in this case your attempt doesn’t carry much weight as your Pagerank view is flawed, isn’t it?
—
Hmmm, maybe I’ll now consider seriously to start a new website, document everything, and see how many days I take to be on the top ten of Google. Not just to proof to you guys, but also to start another new niche to add to my stable of websites.
I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, but at least I know enough to rank well on Google Top Ten in a short time with minimal effort, using all white hat techniques.
Will keep you guys posted on the results and methods used.
I’ll end with this note of caution: Though search engine traffic sounds good, one must always build multiple sources of traffic. Over reliance on one source is never healthy.
Craig
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Hi “Real Estate Private Sale”
>> 1. No ranking for that site despite the claims of overnight rankings?
A: That is the ebook selling site, not the test site. The test site was shown on the sales page.
>> 2. No author name ( and a really crappy cover ).
A: As stated in my earlier response, the 123Ranking sales page is a classic lesson in “What Not to Do In Salesletter Writing”. I’ll say that his 123Ranking ebook is well written and concise, though it’s hard to please everyone.
Some people just don’t like to see their name on sales page, I don’t know why.
>> 3. No guarantee policy so what are the claims worth if they aren’t backed up.
A: There’s no stated guarantee, but I’ll back up with my personal money-back guarantee within 60 days.
>> Where is the evidence? You have to buy the report to get the evidence about the report?
A: The sales page showed two important sites: his test site, and the site he got the links from.
Hope this helps.
Craig
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Hi Craig,
I appreciate most of your take on this market. I too, am in the SEO business. Since I’m not here to promote myself I have listed one of my Ecommerce sites.
One of the things that makes it rough on those of us who discover, little-by-little just what goes through Googlebots head, is the the daily flim-flam we have to denounce. My clients are continually asking me to perform the latest hat-trick they’ve seen advertised.
Keep up the good work, I like your blog and newsletters
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Hi Craig
These comments are certainly great.
I am a little wary of the product like some other commenters.
Its not the price…I spill more than $7 of beer on a quiet night out!! but more the time and effort when I should be getting some more social backlinks or something that I have confidence with.
Would love to be part of a case study if you do one and see results from a new site set up using those techniques in the 123 report.
If we see some scores on the board, I am sure all your readers will jump in.
happy New Year
Tony
January 19th, 2008 at 5:30 am
Hi,
Good advice! Thanks for the info on different
linking approaches.
I’d like to read more information on the pros
and cons of reciprocal linking?
All the best,
Laurie
January 20th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Well Laurie, reciprocal linking still helps but if i require the same effort and time to get a backlink, i’d rather go for a backlink instead of reciprocal linking.
In order to appreciate linking, you’d have imagine that when someone links to you, it’s kind of indicating to Google that someone has voted for you.
But if you vote for someone and that someone votes for you, it can mean 2 things. (You could either be voting for each other because both would benefit or you could vote for each other because both have really good content?)
Now, if someone vote for you without you voting back for the person, it could highly mean that your contently is really good enough that someone would bother recommending you.
Google gives more points to those that has only backlinks instead of reciprocal linking. It’s only common sense that google will think that someone with more backlinks/votes is considered more important than a website with reciprocal links.
If you can’t get one-way backlinks, reciprocal linking would still help.
CJ
January 21st, 2008 at 2:26 am
Thanks! I’ve learned something new today. BTW what is Trackback post?
January 21st, 2008 at 2:42 am
Well Kevin,
A trackback is a notification when someone votes or mentions or links to any of your blog post.
This is to keep track of who is linking to you or how is mentioning about you.
What happens is when someone post on their blog that mentions about you and links to you or
when someone post a comment on other people’s blog with comments linking to your blog post,
you get notified usually on your blog comments.
Some people are using it as a way to get free reciprocal linking. In other words, if you do a trackback, you’d make a reference to another blog on your blog. Subsequently, your website link would also appear on the other blog (usually in the comments area).
but for this to work both blog must support the TrackBack protocol/function.
CJ
P.S: Below is an excerpt on trackback from wikipedia:
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Hi Craig,
Thanks for your feedback on reciprocal versus one-way linking. The way you put it does make a lot of sense. As you say, reciprocal linking still has some value — I’ll likely still exchange some links on my sites with other sites of similar content.
Your comments are much appreciated.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Great information , thank you .
May 7th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I just recently came across your blog. I always enjoy learning more about SEO. Keep up the good work. I enjoyed your information.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Thank you for sharing. I will implement on my site whether it work.
steve
www.powerfullistbuilder.com
May 15th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Hi Craig
As you say, to get ranked by Google is not that easy anymore.
The best was is probably as you say Blogs and Forums. the problem with forum posts is that they cannot be obvious adds, as that is against the rules.
I will try some of your tips and see what happens.
Thanks
Krystian
www.filiksco.com
May 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
what do you think of the method of receiving backlinks through making software & uploading it to the various software sites… ala 30minutebacklinks
May 31st, 2008 at 1:34 am
Great info on method of acquiring incoming links
Just found your blog great content