A Basic Guide to Ranking

Posted At : September 3, 2007 8:41 AM
Related Categories: Online Marketing

Having your site penalised in the biggest search engine in the world is no laughing matter. One day you can be ranking well for your most important key phrase and the next, you're gone, nowhere to be seen. A deep search may reveal you languishing around the 450 or even worse 950 mark and that means no one is ever going to find you. This usually happens as a result of an algo tweak but what you've done with your site in the past is what's being reflected by that algo tweak now.

Clean up

The first thing to do is clean up your site. Thoroughly check for broken links, duplicate content and anything else that could be considered irrelevant or unhelpful to site visitors. Make sure that your titles and descriptions are unique to each page. Make the necessary changes to make the site as 'clean' as possible.

Content

As an ongoing process you should be adding relevant new content to your site. This content will not only keep the site fresh in the eyes of the search engines but will improve the site for your visitors and keep them coming back for more. Make sure that your content is not 'over optimised'. It's really simple - write your content for your visitors, not the search engines.

Links

Let's make no mistake here - this is what it's all about. The more relevant links to your site from good quality sites that are 'trusted' by the search engines the more chance you have of ranking well. There are 2 factors in play though - the quality of the links and the number of links and ultimately a combination of both. Extensive testing has shown that as part of the algo there is some kind of ratio 'number of quality links vs number of links'. Get this balance right and your site will fly but get it wrong and you're gone. Good quality one way links are more important and can save you from a multitude of sins including getting your site ranking well again.

Sitemap

There's no harm in adding the Google site map. If anything thing it gives you a clear indication of indexing problems that your site may have - but keep it updated. If the site map's not updated regularly and the site appears to have become stale with old content Google may reduce its indexing and caching frequency which could be an indication of loss of trust.

Re-evaluation Request

It seems that every 6 months or so Google will automatically review your site status. In your Google webmaster tools dashboard you also have the ability request a re-evaluation if you believe that your site has infringed the Google guidelines. As long as you've made the necessary changes and you're honest about the mistakes you've made you'll find your site popping back in where you expect it.

Stop changing things

Now you've made the changes (or not) forget the site. Don't be reactive to every fluctuation in the SERPs you see. Improvements don't happen overnight and you shouldn't expect to see stable results return for 6 months or so but it will happen. Be realistic and most importantly keep building quality inbound links from trusted resources and adding new unique content.