7 Effective Ways to Increase Search Engine Ranking
We have already talked about quality traffic vs quantity traffic, but the number one way to dominate your niche is to own the search engine result. Easier said than done, but if you can manage to rank on the first page of Google search for a few key phrases in your niche, then your average traffic will easily sore higher.
While I was always trying to get high Google search ranking, I never really comprehended the importance of it until a few weeks back. On my financial site, The Wild investor, I had published an article about 4 stocks to buy in 2009. Since than, that article has ranked in the top 3 for all the different ways to say the phrase “stocks to buy in 2009.” This alone has added hundreds of people to my daily traffic. So I did it, but now how do we see these same results for other articles?
By the way, TWI was recently hit to a level 0, so does page rank even really matter?
The following is a list of things that I feel should be done to rank high in Google searches:
- Formatted Titles
- Targeted Theme
- Creating an Enticing Description
- Tag Your Images
- Cross Link
- Quality Content
- Get Linked
(To better demonstrate how to increase your search engine ranking we will pretend we are making an article on how to better your golf swing)
Formatted Titles – Be direct. Don’t use inside jokes, slang, or comparisons. Say exactly what you are doing in the article. Also make sure in WordPress that your permalinks are set to display the post name in the url rather than the string of numbers you may have.
To do that simply go into your WordPress Admin > Settings > Permalinks > Select custom structure and fill in /%postname%/
Example: 4 Ways to Improve Your Golf Swing, How to Improve Your Golf Swing
Targeted Theme – Constantly reiterate what you are talking about in your article. If you are talking about ways to improve your golf swing, then make sure you remind the Google bots that is what you are talking about. Also throw in many related keywords. A good way to measure this is to throw an Adsense ad into your article and then see what ads come up. It might not be directly connected, but it also should not be horribly off.
Example: Use a keyword tool like Adwords and see what recommendations they give you. Once I get the results I like to order them by traffic volume and then use some of the keywords with good relevance, a longer phrase, but not the ones with too high of traffic. Try to go after the best words with the least competition.
Create an Enticing Description - If you are not already using the ALL in One SEO plugin, then make sure to check the 7 plugins I use on every site to make sure you are not missing any others. The plugin allows you to write a customized description for your article, so that people know what they are clicking on from the search page. Obviously the better the description; the higher conversion rate. The description should not be longer than 160 characters.
Example: 4 easy ways to increase your golf swing and lower your handicap.
Tag Your Images – Your images are not in there just to make your article pretty, they should also boost your search traffic. How do you think images are found when you do an image search? Either they are found through the file name or alt tag. If you are using WordPress, then you can easily add it through the media manager or just directly add it in the html. Simply add alt=”Your tag here” within the “img” code.
Your keyword should be related to the image. Usually people are not searching for the same thing between images and actual article.
Example: alt=”correct golf swing”
Cross Link – Link from within the site and outside the site. If you have related or helpful articles within your site, then link them within the article. Searches also see if you link to popular third party sites. Another good plugin for this is SEO Smart Links.
Example – You may link to a previous article about picking custom made clubs because they can help your game as well. At the same time you may link to golfchannel.com.
Quality Content – Lastly, just write good stuff. While you should not necessarily bother yourself with each and every method, odds are if you write a good article then you should perform well in the searches.
When I wrote my article on 4 stocks to buy in 2009, my first goal was not to rank high in the searches. I was in a stock picking competition, and I was just trying to put out the best article.
Get Linked – The great part about my stocks to buy in 2009 article was that all the members in the contest linked to each others work. So right away that was about 8 links. These links also managed their way onto several different social networks and even front page of a popular finance portal. Obviously the more prominent your article; the better results. Learn a simple method to get quality back links.