Is there a secret sauce for getting a web page to the top of the search engines?

Personally, I don’t think so, but I do have a recipe that to date, has never failed to work for me in all of the years I have been online. It’s also been constant through all of the changes that have occurred – and I’m talking about the days when Google was a newcomer.

Here’s how to get your web pages ranked consistently.

Content Over Design

If you’re going to build a web site about a subject, then you need to know that subject well and you need to be able to write about that subject in terms that people can understand and find useful at the same time. People use search engines to find answers to questions – so answer them!
Search engines are often referred to as “voting engines” because you are rewarded by the search engines for each unique click that your page gets. The only way to do that legitimately, is to have good, useful content.

Keyword Rich Domain Names

I was tempted to leave this out, but there’s no doubting the power of a good, keyword-rich domain name. Wherever possible, I try to build sites using strong keyword-rich domain names. If I’m promoting something in the UK, then I use a .co.uk name – not because search engines favour them, but because UK users do. Same would be true of using the .de  extension in Germany I imagine.

Keyword Rich URL’s

I use WordPress for my site development these days, but have also used XSitePro, XSitePro2, Dreamweaver, FrontPage and even raw HTML when I was starting out, which I learned from the HTML Dummies web site all those years back. Many database driven sites, especially WordPress, have horrible URL’s that have no value to search engine placement. I therefore change my permalinks so that the URL’s reflect the content of the page or the post I am publishing. These page URLs are as important as the domain name, probably more so in my experience.

Title Tags

The title tag is the next most important element as far as I can tell. It’s also often referred to as the SEO Title. I pay a lot of attention to this on all of my important revenue-generating sites, but less so on this site, since SEO doesn’t really matter to my blog. That said, I do try to make my title tags reflect the content of the page or post in question. The Title tag content appears at the top of each open browser window, so can be useful to site users. On my revenue sites,where possible,  I include a telephone number, because the title is always present in the search engine results – so people can call me without having to click through to my site – and they do!

Description Tags

Also known as  “Meta Description” this is an important tag to include in all of your pages that you need indexing. I include the search term as close the the beginning of the tag as possible, where it counts most. I then construct the rest of the content as though it’s an advertisement – rather like a Google Adwords ad. I try to include a sales message and a call to action – perhaps even placing a request to call me on the phone number used in the title. The description is often used as the excerpt that appears in the search engine results, though sometimes, search engines will display the opening content of your page instead. You can force the search engines to use the description tag by using the “No Snippet” tag.

Keywords

I don’t tend to use the Keywords tag on my own sites since the major search engines don’t use them. I do use the keyword tag for research though, as many webmasters still stuff their sites with them, so it’s easy to see what they’re targeting! The Keyword tag is the most misunderstood and mis-used tag of all – it provides your competitors with all the ammunition they need.

BackLinks

A lot has been written about back links in the various SEO forums and there’s a whole industry built up around it. There are many tools available, some that are cheap and worthless and others that are very expensive and worthless. I don’t try to get backlinks to my sites – in fact very few of my sites have any at all. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have them, it just means that you shouldn’t necessarily pay them as much attention as people say. There is only ONE backlink that’s important and that is the one that gets your sites indexed in the first place. I have never submitted any of my sites or client sites to search engines – yet they all get indexed within 24 hours of going live. Why? Because I place a link in a prominent place in ONE of my other sites – sometimes this one – it depends which is most relevant to the subject.

Content

Yes, I put that in twice because despite everything else, content is the number one factor in getting top search engine positions. See the title of this post? It asks a question. That’s because people researching subjects, tend to ask questions in their search engine queries. I not only ask the question on the page, I ask it in the title, the description and in the content. Then I answer it – no funny links, no affiliates, nothing that decieves my readers. But it is useful. I hope!

And really, that’s it – how simple and old fashioned is that?

For WordPress users, I useYoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. It’s the best I have ever come across and I can’t see me changing any time soon. It has far more features that AllInOneSEO that I used up until November and I can’t recommend it highly enough – it does everything I’ve highlighted above and more.