You may not have heard about the Google High Ranking Secret Society, if you have great, go write about it more. If not, listen up. Bloggers, Web people, attention all: You’ve probably seen ads and e-books that, for a price, claim they will tell you the secret to generating high ranking on Google’s search engine, don’t fall for it.
Stop paying these sites money, don’t buy that new e-book, it’s not worth it. The secret to high ranking on Google’s search engine is a simple, yet complicated process. Yes, that’s an oxymoron, but hey, it’s the best way to describe the actual process.
The secret lies in some simple, defined areas that need every site needs but each area requires time and attention, careful attention which makes the simple, defined outline complicated.
1) Google Sitemap
The sitemap is a file that will list all of the pages contained in your Web site which Google will use to ensure that these pages get indexed. They also include which pages are most important, as well as how often these are updated. This file will tell the Google bots where ALL of your pages are and ensure that they get into the Google search engine. Don’t leave home without it.
2) Keyword Optimization
You hear about this all of the time, it refers to how much the content on your Web site refers to what you are trying to get your site to reference to (yes terrible grammar). But in essence it means that if you want your site to be found under say for example, horses, Google will search the content on your site to see how much of the content refers to horses. This, however, gets complicated because it’s not enough to put the word in a bunch of times. Google reviews density (meaning how often the keyword is used compared to other keywords), it also reviews the placement of the keywords on the Web site (yes, placement matters), how the word is referred to (links, headers, titles, etc.).
3) The ULTIMATE SECRET: WHO LINKS TO YOU
This may be one of the single most important source to getting higher rankings and also higher pagerank rankings. You can’t get to the top without getting high powered (high ranking) sites to link to you. Think of it as a club, the high Google ranking club, and just like most private clubs, you have to be sponsored by a member before you can join. You can’t join the high ranking club without having one of the high ranking clubs sponsor you through their links. You can make it only so high before you reach a ceiling.
The most difficult step of all to acheiving the high ranking on Google is going to be getting those high powered links to your site. You may think that the other two steps were complicated but the last step will seem nearly impossible, but if not, at least you will find it expensive. Yes, very expensive. Why? High ranking sites know about the secret of the high ranking link and they will use it to their advantage. You won’t get free links on those sites, and if you do, there won’t be many.
Because of my position and experience in the Web field, I’ve come across a lot of the little secrets of the Web trade, this being one of them. It takes a lot of money to get a link on some of these sites. Some will require joining some organization and paying yearly membership dues (in the tens of thousands of dollars $$$). Some may require you to buy certain products or services from the company before you can be linked to them. If it doesn’t cost any money, then it will certainly have strings attached. I’ve come across some legitimately free sites out there but most end up being diluted with links since there are so many people trying to get listed there, it really minimizes the exposure you would be getting. It’s better to research and just write good, solid content that people want to make available on the Web.
And don’t worry about people stealing your content either…another little secret is that Google penalizes sites that have simply copied content from another site, so please don’t try and do that to help your site get good content. Remember what I have said before, writing on the Web is hard work.
