Organic or natural search engine listings, the free ones you don’t have to pay for, require some strategy and forethought to acquire. One of most important factors when it comes to free search engine rankings is relevancy. To pull on that coveted top page your site has to be one of the most relevant sites pertaining to the search at hand.
When a search is performed, those sites that are deemed the most relevant, at that point in time for the search being performed, will be listed in order of their level of perceived relevancy. Be about a ton of things - you are on page 100; but using the “less is more” methodology you may just be able to get on that coveted top page.
One of the most common misnomers I get approached with on almost a daily basis is the assumption that one’s site should pull on the top page for any term they desire simply because they will it to. First and foremost you have to be realistic and think about why your site deserves to rank higher than those already listed. “Wanting” has nothing to do with rankings unless it is backed up with a long-term consistent proactive strategy to acquire the desired results.
Don’t fall for the hype or misinformation that is so prevalent on this topic. The noise can be overwhelming and confusing when actually the solution is quite simple. When it comes to your search engine rankings, if you remember anything, remember that less is more. The more you are about or try to cram on one page, the less you are relevant for any one thing and the more difficult it will be for you to hope to get on the top page.
Being searchers are looking for one targeted issue, topic, service, or product - you want to determine what those most searched for terms are for your product or service and make sure your site is optimized for those terms. In addition, by simply concentrating on targeted phrases you will benefit from a more targeted site visitor too!
Using your top page as an example, integrating 30-40 “keywords” covering every possibility of how you want to get found does not make you relevant about any one topic. You are a mishmash of 30-40 things - your efforts are clearly diluted by not being solidly about any one thing! Less is more! The pages or sites that are solidly about one single topic that the searcher is seeking will naturally be listed before yours. No way around this - this is the way search engines, for the most part, work.
To try to pull for one word terms is a futile effort at best; the numbers are against you. And to guess what you “think” folks may use is not your most productive approach either. What if the phrases you “think” searchers are using is not what searchers are actually using to find a site like yours? That is why it behooves you to investigate the available data at sites like Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing to see what your potential customers are in fact using before and during the development of your site, and then moving forward as you grow your site.
Begin by rewriting your top page to include no more than one or two of the top phrases your target market is actually using. About 250 words of readable, customer catering verbiage will do. No more! Remember, the more you add, the more you will dilute your efforts. Then for every additional keyword phrase you would like to eventually have hopes to acquire reasonable rankings for, write an article around that topic and give focus to that individual keyword phrase on its very own page. Turn your wealth of information, knowledge and experience into an article archive or Blog! Now that’s how you get rankings!
Moving forward, as topics arise and time allows write a white paper, resource page or article on each topic/phrase you feel is of importance to your site visitors. This approach automatically translates to you improving the chances of your site getting found. Don’t try and fool the search engines with random babbling and incoherent text - you want to have valuable information. Information that serves three critical purposes!
First, having targeted pages makes your site visitors happy because they have found the helpful, useful information they were seeking and will be more likely to contact you. Secondly, valuable information and articles also better your chances of acquiring those cherished inbound one-way links that contribute to your search engine popularity factor (another factor in achieving healthy rankings). And, thirdly, more content combined with the above will naturally help your rankings to improve.
Remember, we don’t care which page your site visitors enter your site through! If you have a quality design and consistent navigation, every single page of your site should be thought of as a potential doorway to the rest of your site. So go take a look at your site now and integrate the “less is more” methodology and watch your rankings turn from less to more too!
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