If you’ve been in internet marketing for even a brief length of time, you will know that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is key to boosting traffic to your sites. In this post, I’ll show you how straightforward SEO can be to get traffic from Google and other search engines.
Let’s start first with the purpose of doing SEO.
Some of you may be thinking, “hey, my content is great, why do I need to do additional SEO?” Even if you’re a terrific writer, you need SEO to get the search engines to pay more attention to your content or pages, and rank them higher in their search results.
The bottom line is this:
Google and the other search engines want one thing – they want their search results to return the very best for a given search term. For example, if you type in “bird house building,” they want the ONE page that is the very best page for the phrase “bird house building” to show up in their results in the number one spot. That’s their goal. And in a perfectly fair and balanced world, where no one cheated or tried to manipulate things, then the ONE page that is the very best in the world for that phrase would come up #1 in the search engines.
Google’s goal has ALWAYS been to find a way to effectively rank pages so that the very best content gets featured. Their original page rank formula was designed to do just that – and if there were no manipulation of the system, then all you would have to do is focus on creating the very best content in the world, and you would get the top ranking.
So let’s think about this for a second. If that is the case, Google WANTS to feature your page in their search results. And not only do they want to feature YOUR page in their search results, they want to do everything possible to prevent others from manipulating the search results by doing illegitimate inbound linking, and other crazy things like keyword stuffing, writing for the robots, and so on. Their goal is actually for YOU to get the top ranking, if you deserve it.
So given that Google actually wants to feature your content, and they are actively working to eliminate from the search results content that tries to manipulate the rankings, why not just work with Google?
Why not just create the very best content on earth, publish it online, tell relevant people about it, send relevant visitors to it, get relevant links to it based on interest, not spamming, and simply let the algorithms do their job?
Your gut reaction might be, “I can’t do that. Because then I won’t get the rankings – unscrupulous people out there will just outrank me.”
Now that used to be the case. With the latest Google algorithm changes, they are going out of their way to get manipulated results out of their rankings.
We have literally come to a time that we can give Google what they want (which is relevant content), and let them do their job (which is figure out what is the best content). And not only have they told us exactly what kind of content that they want, they have also told us exactly how to get them to notice your content.
That’s right. It might come as a surprise – but they have!
Here’s their document that tells exactly what they want in the content you put on your content page:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
If you follow the advice on that page, you will be creating the kind of content Google loves and is looking for.
So now that leaves the next step: how to get Google to recognize your content and rank it above the search results of your competitors.
Let’s go back to Google for their story. This page tells you exactly what google wants and doesn’t want:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en
Not only do they tell you what they are looking for, they tell you what NOT to do – things like spamming links and duplicating content across multiple domains.
So now that we know WHAT they want, how do we give it to them in such a way that we get the traffic instead of our competition, who might be using unethical techniques to game Google?
It used to be very hard to give them what they wanted and still get the rankings, especially for a competitive term or phrase. But I have found that the new algorithmic changes are working very effectively for eliminated gamed results, which means that your content has a real chance of getting a higher ranking.
You’ll want to get very familiar with Google’s SEO Starter Guide in order to make sure you are playing by the rules.
Now I imagine after you read that you may still think, “how will following those guidelines give me an advantage over people who are trying to manipulate Google?” Here’s the reason: the algorithms are now doing a great job of recognizing a wide range or markers and giving higher rankings to sites that do a little of all the right things, instead of doing one or two things on a huge scale. For example, instead of buying 1000 links from one company, which triggers all kinds of red flags in Google, get multiple individual sites to link to your content naturally.
And I don’t mean find automated ways to get multiple sites to link to your content naturally. I mean really get multiple individual sites to link to your content naturally.
There’s an awesome formula for making that happen, which I’ll be sharing with you in my next post. In the meantime, take a look at the Google SEO Starter Guide and get to know what Google wants. If you give them what they want, they will reward you with rankings.
One last thing before I wrap this post up.
The hard truth: If your content is lousy, giving Google what they want won’t work, because no one will want to read your content. And if no one wants to read your content, no one will share your content.
Here’s the key:
You must create excellent content that people WANT to read, then release that content to the world in a way that will encourage people to share and link to that content.
Here’s how it works:
Create great content. Then ask yourself this ONE question: Is this the BEST possible content in the world on this subject? If it is NOT, your content is not worth publishing. Every piece you create should be the BEST. If it’s not the best, why should Google even consider giving you a spot in their search engine? It is theirs, by the way. Imagine if you held a party at your house, and you asked everyone to bring their best dish to your home. And if they brought their worst or second best, it would be your right to no longer invite them to your dinner parties, right? It’s the same with Google – if they ask for something and you refuse to give it to them – then they have the right to NOT feature your content. Totally fair, right? Work with Google instead of against them.
Be sure to check out the upcoming post where I’ll share the formula for getting your great content read and ranked in search engines.
As always, feel free to comment or ask questions below!
Would you like to know the exact system I am using in my online business?
To find out more about it, click here.
