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Thread: Step by Step Instructions to get Higher Ranking in Search Results

  1. #1

    Default Step by Step Instructions to get Higher Ranking in Search Results

    Hello all,

    This was a recent article we did in our blog, a "SEO for dummies" type of article.

    It is a basic blueprint for SEO of a new website and I just thought I would post it to get some feedback from other SEO experts that we could add to the list.....

    Step by Step Instructions to get High Ranking in Search Results



    I have written a few articles about the specifics of SEO techniques but I still get a lot of emails from people asking me what all the things they can do to get ranked high in search results. So here is your list, your instructions, on how to get a site well ranked within the first 3 months of its publishing date provided you complete all the things on this list within 6-10 weeks.


    1. Verify the code in your page using the W3c validation tool and fix the errors.

    2. Optimize your keywords for the most popular keyword terms if you feel you can
    compete, if not, optimize for the "mid level" keywords or the ones used some of the time (middle ranked keywords using the Google keyword tool)

    3. Create a blog so you have something to submit to Digg, Blog catalog, Technorati, EzineArticles, etc. Wordpress is best for the platform, make sure to use the SEO plugin for Wordpress and fill out all the SEO options for an article. (tags, keywords, descriptions, etc.)

    4. Submit a sitemap to Google, Bing, and Yahoo

    5. Write another article for your blog.

    6. Participate in “dofollow” forums, post comments and questions. Make sure you include links to your website so people and search engines can see you outside your webpage. This creates vital links to your website and DOES help with page rank over time. This is very very important, something you really need to do, and this is the easiest way to do it. I can not stress this enough.

    7. Write another article for your blog

    8. Build a Squidoo lens for your website

    9. Look into a traffic generator service to help boost your Alexa rank

    10. Write another article for your blog

    11. Submit your website to the DMOZ directory

    12. Comment on some blog articles related to your business. Don’t forget to hyperlink your name to your website. Don’t just post an http link, use your first name, or company name and make it an http hyperlink to your website. That is what the search engines will see as a link back to your page.

    13. Get all your friends to bookmark your site in Google Bookmarks and in Yahoo's Delicious, at least 20 of them.

    14. Write another article for your blog.

    15. Promote your website on Twitter and Facebook

    16. Write another article for your blog

    17. Make sure you have updated all your accounts in Technorati, Digg, Blog Catalog, and EzineArticles

    18. Make some more comments in forums

    19. Write another article for your blog

    20. Pay PRweb for a press release

    21. Make sure you get a listing on the Yellowpages website.

    22. Write another article for your blog

    23. Submit a new sitemap to Google, Bing, and Yahoo

    24. Pay Yahoo to be listed in their directory ($299)

    25. Invest some time with a Traffic Generator like TrafficGenie

    26. Write another article for your blog

    27. Build a web page on MerchantCircle

    28. Write another article for your blog

    29. Submit your website to the ZoomInfo directory

    30. Make some more posts in forums

    31. Write another article for your blog

    32. Submit another sitemap to Google, Bing, and Yahoo

    34. Make sure you have updated all your blog submission accounts at Technorati, Blog catalog, Digg, EzineArticles, or any others you have used.


    Follow this list to a “T” and in 3 months you will have a well ranked page in the SERP's and make sure you devote at least 4 hours, every two weeks, to one or more of the steps above, writing articles, participating in forums, etc.

    ____________________________

    So what else would everyone add to a crash course SEO step by step list?
    Last edited by royhunters; 08-04-2009 at 09:33 PM. Reason: typo

  2. #2
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    First, I can see why vangogh originally deleted this thread. It pushes the limits on what we allow on the forum. Now that we decided to allow it, it could generate some interesting discussion.

    I believe you missed a very important step if this is a "step by step" process. I would even say it needs to be in the #1 spot:

    #1 Develop a site with good, unique, useful content. All the SEO in the world is will not help a site that won't interest human beings. Make your site for people, not search engines. Only then does the process of SEO begin.

    On #4, I disagree. I NEVER submit sites, yet they get crawled and indexed. Google even states in their help files that submitting is not needed and will not necessarily speed up the process. They will usually find you before someone gets to your submission anyway, and yes, Google also states this fact.

    On #9, yikes, snake pit! Although there may be legit services, there are also some dangerous scams.

    I'll leave room for others to comment. That's what stood out to me, and serves to get the discussion going.
    Steve Chittenden

    Web design, graphic design, professional writing, and marketing.

    "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." -- Theodore Roosevelt

  3. #3

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    Yes of course your number one is assumed before my number #1

    Most people do not set out to create spammy sites. Try not to plug in false assumptions here, most people who create a site are business owners and are using the Internet for legitimate marketing purposes. The context of the list makes that intent clear and that is what we need to assume with this, that the reader has already created a decent website for his business.

    I will also agree there are a lot of traffic generators that are not legit but there are definitely some that are. It is usually pretty easy to tell which one are and which ones are not. A little common sense dictates this. If a site says it will bring you 1,000,000 hits for $29... It is pretty obvious it is not legit.

    Look at those companies that pay you to view web pages, .10 per 30 second view.. It is no different than an Adwords program only the chance of getting a sale are nill but that is not what you expected anyway when using their service. All you want is traffic. You need traffic to get traffic am I right?

  4. #4

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    About the sitemap submission, our site was not indexed by Bing until we submitted a sitemap and the next day we had placement. It also took 2 weeks before our new website was indexed by Google, and the indexing of the site was done 2 days after the sitemap was submitted. If they do not want it, then why even have a place in webmaster tools to submit it? Does it hurt anything? Does it teach a newbie how to access webmaster tools? Does it teach a newbie what a sitemap is and what it is for?

  5. #5
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    I jumped too quick on the submission point. Submitting a sitemap is not the same as submitting a site. I was referring to the latter, so I should have read more carefully.

    On your premise that a good site is already a given, I see your point. I agree that "most" are probably not done with spammy intentions, but I'm not so sure I would call the majority "good" sites. Good intentions, yes, but that does not automatically lead to a good site.

    Good sites only happen when the person creating them avoids the temptation to talk about themselves, and figures out in advance what the needs of the visitor are. When you address the needs of the visitor, SEO will be much easier, and more rewarding. Unfortunately, this is not how most sites are created.
    Steve Chittenden

    Web design, graphic design, professional writing, and marketing.

    "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." -- Theodore Roosevelt

  6. #6
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    There are a few things on your list that I don't really agree with and I wouldn't suggest that anyone following it exactly is going to see the same results you are. I don't think there are one size fits all approaches to seo.

    First since you've been talking about submitting sitemaps to search engines, I don't think it's necessary. If you've done a good job organizing your content the engines will crawl fine and the xml sitemap isn't necessary. There's no hard in submitting it and it can help get pages indexed that for some reason aren't getting crawled. However I've never submitted one and I don't have problems getting pages indexed.

    1. Verify your code - important only to a point. Yes clean code is better than poor code, but as long as you've fixed the major problems that would block crawling I don't think you need to validate every line of your code for search engines. The engines are interested in ranking content and as long as they can find that content they can rank it.

    2. The most popular keywords aren't necessarily the best. For example a real estate agent trying to rank for the phrase 'real estate' is mostly a waste of time. It would take a lot of effort and most of the traffic wouldn't be interested. Better to rank for 'real estate Kansas City' which would lead to targeted traffic.

    3. Blogs are great - I don't think the point is to use them to submit your content though. You should blog to build relationships with people

    6. I'm not so concerned with dofollow. I doubt any link from the comments section of a blog is worth all that much. dofollow is probably better than nofollow, but it's still likely a low quality link

    9. Alexa is a useless metric and has 0 to do with seo.

    13. I wonder what the search engines would think of that? Yeah sure it would work, though it can also become obvious if the same people and only those people were bookmarking your content

    25. Complete waste of time. It's useless traffic that only exists to pad your stats. If your goal is to see nice pretty stats pay me to write a robot that will visit your site as many times as you'd like. Nice pretty stats and 100% useless traffic.

    I think people place too much thought and time into trying to manipulate rankings when they'd do better to build a great site and market it well. The secret to search engines is they try to follow what real people like. If you can get real people to visit your site and offer them something worth coming back for while there, the search engines will inevitably follow.

    There are a lot of little details to SEO and it's a good idea to learn them if you can, but in the end it still comes down to building a site worth visiting and marketing that site. For example I'd much rather leave an intelligent comment on a blog who's readership is likely to enjoy my blog even if the link has a nofollow added than I would to a random site that doesn't have the nofollow. The individual link might be better on the dofollow blog, but overall the comment will generate much more for my site if it's on the blog where our audiences overlap. And if done well and enough the blogger will likely take notice as well.

    The big secret to seo is that you don't always need or even want to make every decision based on what's specifically better for a search engine in that particular case. If you do, you end up chasing your tail a lot.
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  7. #7

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    Ok so you are not happy with the traffic generator idea.

    Just for grins a giggles I had a look at one I have used in the past that did a great job of generating real leads, bookmarks, and sales, it is the one I mentioned in the post reply that actually paid people to view the adds.

    You as the advertiser get to choose who views your ad based on demographics. Age, income level, etc.

    The ads are listed like SERP's (only with a photo) the viewer gets to choose from so they choose the content they want to look at.

    Ad clicks pay from .01 cent to .10 cents.

    I set up a small and campaign just so I can report he stats to the forum. The company is called ClixSense. I chose 400 hits to pay .05 each for a total of $20, with the ClixSense fee of 20% the campaign cost me $24 to get 400 hits on my website to view my services.

    As I don't sell anything on my website all I can really report is what shows up in my Statcounter account. Considering we only get about 25 hits a day this will be easy to track. I should see a huge spike in unique visitors if ClixSense does what it says it does.

    I have pointed the ad to a page of our website that does not get a lot of hits (event marketing) and I will track the page with rank checker to see if the hits have any affect on its rank in the search results, as well as track it in Google Analytics to see if the campaign has any affect on the stats there. I will be looking at the bounce rate as well as the average time spent on the page to see if anyone actually was interested in my website and had a "look around".

    So after the 400 are used up I will report what it did to "pad my stats". I assume this will only take 2 days to deplete the campaign.

    What was interesting was who the other companies are that were also using this service. I thought I would list a few:

    National Geographic Novica (their online store)
    Lending Tree
    Net Zero
    Lonely planet
    Wall street journal
    USA today
    Forbes
    Kodak
    Comcast
    Wallmart - yes Wall-Mart (their online store)
    Vonage
    Rossetta stone
    Sandals resorts
    BMG music
    Skype
    Rubbermaid
    Godaddy.com
    Vista Print
    Verizon (online store)
    Discovery Channel (online store)
    Adobe (ad for CS4)
    Ebay
    Starbucks
    Serius radio
    Monster.com
    Jc whitney

    And they were the big companies I am sure all of you know. Obviously if they were not getting sales from this they would not be using the service.

    So if this is such a complete waste of time... then why are they doing it? Even if they are not getting any sales they are increasing their Brand Identity and that is always a benefit.

    This company, ClixSense, says it has had 11,258,716 million views of ads in the last 30 days and paid out over $650,000.

    Considering who is using them I would consider them to be VERY legit.

    They even have a section for your enjoyment that has a swimsuit model category and a girl of the day.

    How can you possibly call that a complete waste of time???

    LOL

    The Alexa metric may be worthless to SEO directly, But I don't believe it is.

    To clarify that statement: I mean Alexa itself may have nothing to do with getting your page ranked any higher, but the more hits your website receives, the higher it will rank in Alexa. If you are improving in the Alexa rank, you are improving in the rank of the other search engines. Alexa is a simple measure of total traffic.

    I mention Alexa in my article because if you use the tool at websitegrader it shows your Alexa rank. Rather than explain to a reader another way of watching your stats such as StatCounter, it is just easier for me me keep the article as simple as possible for the readers sake and considering they are a newbie, Alexa is fine and I am working within the website grader report categories.

    The moral of the statement is you need to work on getting traffic to your site to improve your SERP rank. Everything I have seen in the past has shown me the more traffic your site gets the higher it ranks. I am sure all of you agree with that.

    Remember, the article is targeted to beginners. It is a great starting point for them to learn the basics of SEO, it gives them something to build on.

    One of the biggest challenges you face as a professional marketer understanding the level of thinking of your target audience and putting things into terms your audience can understand. You really need to understand your audience's level of comprehension varies greatly and you have to adapt your strategy to fit that level of comprehension.

    If you took a person that has never developed a website in his life, took him to an adobe convention where they were promoting everything in the CS4 suite, that person is not going to have a clue what is going on, what they are talking about, what any of the watercooler chat in the lobby is about, and will walk away with zero understanding of how to use the products or what the hell went on over the weekend.

    It would be the same if you took me to a Steven Hawking speech about what happens to matter when it gets absorbed in a black hole!

    I have to be able to put this in terms that newbies can understand and follow easily because that is who it is targeted to.

    If I was standing in front of Matt Cutts I would use a totally different approach because of his level of understanding.

    You have to think at the comprehension level of the people you are addressing in order to make that communication connection. That really is what marketing is all about.

  8. #8

  9. #9

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    So,

    based on that graph I paid too much to have my site viewed. Lets say I reduced the price and set up ads for all the pages, paid more for home page clicks and less for the rest, It would be pretty easy to get some sustainable traffic to the site and because I am setting up different ads for different pages I will have repeat visitors.

    Is it unnatural? Certainly, Very similar as what you would expect from an email campaign advertising a special. Will I create links because of it? If people like the content, sure.

    If I am selling something useful that the average person is interested in will I get sales?

    Most likely. Just because of the law of averages. SOMEONE who looks at your site is going to like what you have.

    Does it have an SEO benefit? If traffic makes the site rank higher, yes.

    Can it help you get traffic until the site gets ranked high enough to get traffic on it's own and possibly get you some sales, bookmarks, new users, in the process?

    Most likely. Just because of the law of averages. SOMEONE who looks at your site is going to like what you have.

    The ad was also targeted only to users in the United States.

    Is it still a snake pit? Is it still a waste of time?

    Is a service that gets you unique visitors by forcing them to look at your ad for 30 seconds a "trick"?

    For me, a trick implies deception. Maybe it can be a trick to a search engine, but in an advertising campaign it is a tool to get sales and a perfectly legitimate tool you can use to get those sales.

    I dont see it as anything different than an Adwords campaign. I am still paying to have my web page looked at.

  10. #10

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    UPDATE:

    As of 11:15 I have received all 400 unique visitor hits to the website.

    Dam!

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