Google Gold...How Do I Get It?

Everywhere you look there are more and more gadgets and gizmos. Everyone is going high tech. Blackberrys, iPhones, Ipads, tablets, laptops..... it’s all about information and just how quickly I can get it. Everyone is surfing the web and, between the businesses that want to promote themselves and the social media craze with sites like facebook, twitter, linked in and so on and so on anybody who is anybody simply must be online. Well, that makes internet real estate a very hot commodity. Everybody wants to be seen and heard and, though there is plenty of virtual space out there, just like with anything else, the prime space is very sparse and very costly. Or is it?

The problem is that in order to be “seen” or “noticed” you have to be at the top of the Google listings. Especially if you’re in business or are trying to start or expand your business, Google Gold, as I like to call it, is what you want and so desperately need. A report that I read about 2 years ago said that “95% of all small businesses do not use the internet to their advantage.” I was shocked, appalled, flabbergasted and stunned all at once. I thought to myself that there was no way that this information could be true. The very same report said that when people do searches on Google, they ignore the results listed at the top and along the sides (the paid or sponsored ads). Again, I was shocked, appalled, flabbergasted and stunned all over again. My thought was why would someone pay to be in those spots if most people ignore the results that show up there? The very same report also said that if you didn’t show up on the first page of the search results, chances were very slim to none that you would ever be found. Once again.....you know the drill.

I asked myself how these things could be true and decided, almost immediately, that they could not be. But to be sure, I conducted a survey of my own. Over the next 3 weeks I asked every client, business owner, friend or relative that I ran into about these things and every last one of them gave me the exact same answers that I had read in the report. I was amazed. That’s when I decided that something had to be done. If these things were all true then I needed to know how someone would go about getting themselves the coveted top spots on Google. I read and researched and asked questions and ultimately was confronted with a very big problem. It seemed that the only way to get to the top of Google was to spend an awful lot of money!

Since my main company is a computer company, I wanted to be listed at the top when someone did a search for certain “keywords” (words that you add to your website that tells google and the other search engines what your site is about). Adwords, PPC and other such programs would cost tons of money because the field of computer repair is very competitive and thus the price per click was very high. Besides, a PPC campaign would go on forever which would mean paying month after month after month an indeterminate amount of money with no guarantee of any ROI (return on investment). Plus there was no way to account for (or avoid) accidental clicks and the companies out there that were advertising SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) services were very expensive as well. I had to come up with a solution that would give me the results I needed and not cost me tons of money.



After plenty of research, trial and error, more research and studying, I finally was able to create a methodology that seemed to work. I was elated but also cautious and a little skeptical. I figured that it couldn’t really be this easy. If it was, I figured that everyone would be doing it and thus the same problem would still exist.... how would one site get “ranked” higher and thus placed above another site? Well, I had to put my theory to a complete test so I created two separate websites that were totally identical in every single way and I used my methodology on one and didn’t use it on the other. To my surprise and elation, the one site that I used the methodology on skyrocketed to the top of the google search results in a matter of weeks. This was truly great news. I had developed a method to ensure the ranking and placement of a website but just to be sure, I did it again. Once again the results were the same.

Now, I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, ok Mr. Guru, so tell me how you did it? Well, I can’t disclose my methodology, but I can tell you what the key components are that will make you and your site a hit on the internet. The key ingredients are as follows:


Indexed Pages:
The more pages that your site has, the more credible or “relevant” the search engines will find you. They tend to feel that the more pages you have with information pertaining to your sites main focus, the more informed and informative you are and thus the more “relevant” you become.


Readability Level:
You want to make sure that the information on your pages can be easily read and understood by the average person. The higher your readability level is, the more people you alienate.


Metadata:
Metadata tags allow you to tell the search engines what your site is about. Your title and meta description coupled with your “keywords” tell the search engines to consider your site when someone searches for something in particular.


Keywords:
These are the words and phrases that you feel someone might type when they are doing a search for what it is that your website is about. Be very careful and thorough when you set up your keywords because they are very important.


Headings:
Similar to how newspapers and magazines use headings, websites can have special tags in their code. These tags help search engine spiders and robots better understand the content on a page and what is most important. It’s a good idea to use heading tags to further help the search engines figure out what the web page is about.


Pictures:
Images are a great way to enhance a website, but you have to be careful not to have too many. A website comprised mostly of pictures or images will not be read properly by the crawlers or robots and thus will hurt your chances of ranking favorably. Place images carefully and make sure they are interspersed within text. Also make sure that the images have “alt text” tags.

Domain Info:
The longer you have until your domain expires, the better. If your domain has less than a year left then the search engines feel like you may not be around for much longer so this will negatively impact your ranking.


Linking Domains:
Other domains that have a link on their site to yours are very powerful. The more domains you have linking to your site, the more relevant the search engines will find you to be. Be careful, though. You want to make sure that the domains that are linking to you are relevant in some way to what your site is about. For instance, if you are a dentist, you may want other dentists or medical magazines or medical organizations to link to you. Also, trading links (i.e. I’ll link to you if you link to me) doesn’t give you very much credit if any at all.


Conversion Form:
Having a form by which you can obtain information from the people who land on your page is not only a great tool to farm for potential new customers.... the search engines see it as you being helpful and willing to answer questions and be responsive. Not having one is not necessarily a detriment but it can’t hurt to have one.

Traffic Rank:
The amount of traffic that your site sees compared to other sites on the web is also a factor in the way the search engines see you. The more traffic you get the better.


There you have it. These are the main ingredients that will help you to reach Google Gold and be ranked higher and listed at the top of the search engines. If you are in the market to obtain Google Gold and don’t know how to achieve it, there is a great company in the DC Metro area called “Top Spots SEO’. They are friendly, reliable, inexpensive and have a similar methodology to the one that I created. Their motto is “Don’t just be on the web.... own the web!” I really like that motto and they have shown that they can help their clients achieve that goal. You can look them up at www.topspotsseo.com or give them a call at 877-398-3242 and be sure to tell them that Mr. Guru sent you.