The Best Ways to Get Found Online
Those with websites want one thing: traffic to their website. This means that they want to rank well on Google and boost their site up the SERPs. But with Google’s ever-changing algorithms, how is that done?
To rank well on Google, you have to do 3 things. Sure there are other factors, but these three will provide the most bang for your buck. Tackle these 3 and the others almost don’t even matter.
Write High Quality Content
The best way to rank well on Google is to have high quality content that is regularly updated. This is the number one factor that you can directly control.
What you don’t want is:
- Hastily thrown together content.
- Content with terrible spelling and grammar.
- Content that isn’t unique to your site.
- Content that is “thin” or doesn’t provide value.
What you do want is:
- Content that is well thought out.
- Content that reads easily and “flows”.
- Content that is entirely yours and not published elsewhere.
- Content that makes the reader a better person.
If you write content that is great, Google will track that content. The search engines will see it, and they will move you up the ranks. If it provides value, people will read it and share it. That will drive more traffic, helping move you up the ranks even further.
The bottom line: excellent content gets read, shared, and ranked well.
Have Plenty of Backlinks
Having fantastic content is great, but there’s another important factor that helps with ranking well on Google. That is how many websites are pointing back to your site? More backlinks means that you are seen as an authority around the internet. More authority means better ranking on Google.
What backlinks you don’t want:
- Links from non-credible sources.
- Links from spammy directories.
- Links that you purchased.
What backlinks you do want:
- Links from other quality sites.
- Links from sites with similar interests.
- Links from quality directories.
Not long ago a backlink was a backlink. It didn’t really matter where it came from, it was a simple formula: more backlinks meant more authority and better rankings. Google caught on to that pretty quickly and started to devalue some of the junkie backlinks. This was the creation of the “no-follow” backlink. But people were still selling their services (something like 10,000 backlinks for a $100). These would post a link to your site on junk sites that had nothing but thousands of links on them.
Google’s latest changes have made is so that if you have too many junky backlinks, your site could actually move down the SERPs. Don’t risk it, go with quality links. This means you have to spend a lot of time developing a network and having other people link back to your site.
The bottom line: be seen as an authority.
Let Your Site Mature
The last SEO tip is the easiest to do, but takes the longest. You need an old website. The older your site, the more highly favored it will be for Google. Currently if your site is over 5 years old, you will have a much easier time getting it ranked favorably than if your site is younger. That could all change, in 5 years that will likely not be the case any longer, but Google will most likely always give a better SEO pull to those sites that are older.
Look at it this way: would you rather give your business to a brand new company, or one that has withstood the test of time? Generally speaking an older company will know more about what they are doing, make fewer errors, and provide an overall better product. When a website can withstand the test of time, the end result is they are usually better. Google knows this, so they rank them more favorably.
The bottom line: an older site is easier to rank.
The Key to Ranking Well on Google
For the most part, write great content and share the heck out of it. Doing so will bring you up the ranks and help people find you. The rest will fall into place naturally.
How do you get ranked better on Google? What are your tips and tricks to get found online?