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How To Be #1 In the Search Engines in 2012
or for those who see the glass half empty...
How to Waste Money and Get Banned from Them
Back in March of 2007 I wrote a paper with almost the same title and it contained seven pages on how
to get your website on to Page #1 of a search engine. I figured it was about time for an update, so what
follows are those seven pages along with new material that I didn't think of then.
In 2007, the target audience was real estate professionals. Fast forward five years and audience this
time is fun food. Why the switch? Food is more fun than real estate, but it's also the point that the
audience doesn't matter. The topic can be food, golf courses or lesbians wearing raincoats. Everything
presented here is 100% applicable to any industry.
What's also different this time is that the update includes a demonstration of the techniques. In 2007, I
didn't do a before and after snapshot so any discussion about performance, timing and focus would
have been pure conjecture.
In 2007, I referred to this activity as SEO, or search engine optimization. I'm not using that anymore
because I don't like it. What techies do is make up terms to make things sound complex. I think we do
this because it makes others feel like they need to pay someone to do it for them.
SEO is nothing more than the application Rule #1 of how to make sales. To begin let's start with the
four rules of how to make sales:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Make sure people know you exist
Make it very clear what you are offering
Offer something of value
The offer must be something believable
Unlike five years ago, people today use the word google as a verb. Five years ago, big thick yellow
books existed in offices and homes. Today, a Yellow Pages is about as common as a phone booth.
So Rule #1 is when people google you, they find you. Of course there are other ways to get people
to know you exist, but for the sake of this paper, we'll pretend that everyone begins with a keyboard
and an internet connection.
Rule #2, when it comes to people googling you, is to decide what words people will use to find you.
Every business needs a tagline. A good tagline should be something that contains at least one solid
keyword that defines the business activity.
When people search for things, they use keywords. In the U.S., people search using one keyword 35%
of the time.
That's not extremely effective especially if locality means something. Two keywords are used 30%
and three 16%.
© 2012 – APIN.COM
Setting Goals
When you decide you want to implement Rule #1, you begin by setting goals of what you're trying to
achieve. As with any project, it's good to be realistic. For example, the keyword "bacon" yields about
180 million results. (I'm not sure about that because I didn't count, but we'll assume Google isn't just
making stuff up.)
It would not be a realistic goal to attempt to surpass Wikipedia's reference to the word. If we add
another keyword BBQ the two word search scope is reduced to 16.9 million. Better, but still not great
because it's going to take a long time to climb that hill.
Add a location "Ann Arbor" and now you're down to 182,000. This is a bite we can chew.
Benchmarking
You start your Rule #1 project by looking at the Page #1 list of results. This is your competition.
These are the people you need to beat. Assuming that people are looking for you with Bacon, BBQ and
Ann Arbor, we need to push at least one of these out of the top 10. In any given search there
are only ten in the top 10. Keep in mind that only 23% will look on page 2 of a search. 10% make it
to page 3. Source
So beyond page 1: It's not an option
For our experiment, as of August 15, 2012 here is the leaderboard for "Ann Arbor, BBQ and Bacon"
Satchel's BBQ - Don't Overthink It. It's BBQ | satchelsbbq.com
satchelsbbq.com
Zingerman's Camp Bacon
zingermanscampbacon.com
Third annual Camp Bacon coming to Ann Arbor this weekend
annarbor.com/.../third-annual-camp-bacon-coming-to-ann-arb...
Alabama Bacon BBQ Dinner, Ann Arbor | Events | Yelp
yelp.com/events/ann-arbor-alabama-bacon-bbq-dinner
Dinner Menu Blue Tractor Brewery & BBQ
bluetractor.net/bta/a2/dinner_menu
Carlyle Grill menu - Ann Arbor, MI 48103 - (734) 213-9900
allmenus.com
Red Hawk Bar & Grill menu - Ann Arbor, MI 48104 - (734) 994-4004
allmenus.com
The Calendar - Food & Beverage - Ann Arbor Observer
arborweb.com
Best Bbq Bacon Burger in Ann Arbor, MI
dishtip.com
The Bacon - Baconfest Michigan
baconfestmichigan.com/thebacon.html
© 2012 – APIN.COM
Now that we have our hit list, we need to do a bit of research to find out how these ten have come to
reside on Page #1. If we plan to knock one of these off, it's helpful to know what they did to
get there. Once we have that, then all we need to do is do it better. It's really just that simple.
At the conclusion of this paper, we'll show you the results of how we moved into the top 10 in about
one month.
And now, the 2007 paper, updated with 2012 comments in bold.
When people say, "I need SEO!" what they are really saying is "I want more traffic, I want my phone to
ring, I want more leads!" But SEO is not some snap your-fingers magic that happens overnight.
TRUE: It takes about a month to start seeing results assuming you have selected reasonably
narrow keywords.
If there is one undeniable truth about SEO, it is the fact that it is a time-consuming endeavor that
requires consistent effort, creativity, specific market knowledge, clear understanding of optimization
techniques, and yes, risks. It is is a conscious effort done by someone who is able to set a well-defined
target and find ways to get there. In short, it’s not rocket science but it’s also not something to be
trivialized. Everything is time-consuming. The point should be that Rule #1 efforts should be
always be at the top of your list of things to do. Never stop telling the world you exist.
We have encountered many times this "easy to do" attitude - to varying degrees. This ranges from
clients that realize that SEO implies some work, but do not really understand how much, or the role that
they have to play in it, to the naïve expectation that, once set up, the website will automatically be
"highly visible" to the search engines. In other words, a complete lack of knowledge that such a field of
expertise may even exist. This is easy to do as long as you think typing is easy. You need to write
copy that people want to read. If this is difficult, then this isn't easy to do.
This is for businesses that have their own website and want more RESULTS by improving search
engine rankings. It does not intend to explain in detail how to build your SEO strategy. Such a subject
can easily fill pages and, unless you want to get knee-dip into such effort, it may get really confusing or
boring, especially if you're not the computer-savvy type. Instead, the following pages attempt to only
develop your awareness related to what SEO involves and why you should reevaluate your expectation
that your website will land on the first pages of search engine results through some kind of magic.
Sure TRUE. But let's not over-think this. It's about three things: (1) Deciding on your
keywords (2) Having a website that's easily updated and (3) Updating it
What we will cover
✔ What's involved with this type of project?
✔ Do I really this?
✔ How long does it take to see results?
✔ What does it look like when it's done?
✔ Are there any shortcuts?
✔ What is my role in the process?
✔ How can I measure my results?
✔ Is maintenance necessary?
© 2012 – APIN.COM
What's Involved In This?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the part of the website optimization strategy that aims to making
search engines easily find your website and place it among their top results. A well-designed SEO
strategy will drive traffic to your site, as it will appear in the first pages of results for specific queries.
An alternative to SEO is a paid advertisement campaign. While we can help in that field too, this paper
does not address this subject. What we are focusing on is that your website will become part of the top
organic results, that account for 60-70% of users's clicks. Everything here is about an organic
effort – the kind of results you get without paying for links.
Do I Really Need This?
You have a website and want people to know about it – so you should want this. If you want your
website to become an additional source of profit instead of an expensive little vanity product that you
have for the sake of having it, you need it - period.
Implementing a good strategy is a necessary part of your marketing solutions - and it may turn out
to be the most important one. When your website appears among the top results for a popular search,
the exposure that you get can bring fantastic results in the form of leads which we all know, is step #1
to sales.
Provided your strategy is effective, the money you spend on it will be one of your best advertising
efforts. Unlike placing an ad in the newspaper, once your site has been “optimized” your efforts
last beyond the initial expense.
How long does it take to see results?
Everyone asks this question. To their disappointment, much too often they are answered: it depends.
This is our answer too. This is not a recipe with steps written in stone, which can guarantee results
when followed correctly. It is rather a combination of marketing strategies, that, as all such strategies,
involve risks and uncertainties.
Success in this area is much similar to success in your industry. It depends on how competitive
the market is, how much effort or resources you are willing to put into it, and how fiercely your
competitors are doing the same.
If any firm promises quick top rank results, run away. The reason for this: nobody but the search
engines has complete control over the outcomes of a specific search. There are many rules that search
engines use in selecting results, and few are made public. All a SEO professional can do is use
techniques that are well known as effective, and study the behavior of successful (or unsuccessful)
websites, in order to figure out what works and what does not.
All this aside, you should see results in about three months. Remember this is not a guarantee. How
high your site will rank will depend on what you do and how sharp your competition is. Consider this a
sporting event. Just because you land the triple axle, doesn't mean the gold medal. Play your own
© 2012 – APIN.COM
game, be patient and don’t worry about being first.
Also remember that search engines are moody. They can be difficult to please, and you won’t know for
weeks or months the effectiveness of your strategy.
The natural conclusion is that what you should look for is not necessarily a fast rise among the first
ranked sites, which no one can guarantee, but steady progression towards page one results. With
patience and commitment, your website can end up somewhere near the top.
Search engines are not moody. They use math to determine what constitutes good and bad. A
high rank is better than a low rank. What search engines don't do is tell how exactly how to get
the high ranks as then people would cheat. Three months is a reasonable estimate however
results can happen in 30 days.
What does it look like when it's done?
When starting any project it's good to know what success looks like. Look around you. Just about
anything you can point to began as a sketch on a cocktail napkin, then likely evolved to a blueprint.
How detailed you want to make your plan is up to you, but it should contain specific measurables so
that you can check and adjust as needed.
In this case, success is telling a potential customer, “You can find me by googling for blah blah”
because unless you have a really catchy name, they're more apt to remember relevant search terms.
If you’re not on Page #1, then the conclusion is simple: You must be different than you are now.
Different isn’t always better, but better is always different. And if you’re not on Page #1, then you must
change something. But "better" does not come overnight. It takes work, commitment, knowledge, and
beyond everything else - time.
The task may seem impossible but it’s not. There are techniques known to work, and you can always
find a way to outrun the others, but it takes patience. Don’t let all this overwhelm you, but instead
inject you with a dose of realism and motivation. There are many techniques that can yield an
improved ranking for your site.
Here are the important ones, without which it is impossible to impress any search engine:
Valuable Content (#1 thing you need)
Value cannot be overrated. Random pages thrown into a messy design will not take you far. Actually
there's technically nothing wrong with random or messy because search engines don't give points
for being tidy. However random and messy will reduce the human experience resulting in less
time on-site. Search engines do give points for sites that are popular and you can't become
popular with random and messy..
Without good content, ranking isn’t all that important. So you must create copy that people want to
read!
© 2012 – APIN.COM
Search engines use sophisticated lexical analysis to evaluate the relevance of your content. Therefore, a
great deal of time should be spent on substantial, useful, original and plentiful copy.
Size matters. More is more. If you want to compete with the top 10 in an industry your web site needs
lots of content on many pages that people are want to click. Search engines know when someone
connects, then hits the BACK button. That's called a bounce and when people bounce from your site,
it lowers search ranking.
If you don’t have a home page that keeps visitors there, your ranking will suffer -- and of course it
won’t do much for lead generation either. Your site is often the first impression you will make with a
new client so it’s critical you gain their trust, immediately. Keep this same attitude when you’re looking
to impress search engines.
As you already know, is it necessary to research the market to learn what type of information your
potential clients want. If you don't know this already, then screw it as you'll not find much
success. If you don't know your clients well, then you'll never be able to offer something of
substantial value. The content must be designed from the beginning according to some important
rules, as relevance to the keywords that you want to target, web copy structure, natural flow through
pages. Yeah yeah yeah. This is pretty long-winded. What, was I getting paid by the word
when I wrote this five years ago? You just need to write good copy that “legitimately” contains
the words you want associated with your website. In our example here, that's bacon, BBQ and
Ann Arbor.
To create huge value with your content, reserve 15 minutes per day to write or find something new that
adds value to your site. TRUE TRUE TRUE. I typed that three types because it's important.
Inbound Linking (must be meaningful)
Search engines endeavor to find the most relevant resources for a certain topic. If many other sites with
similar or adjacent content link back to you, search engines will be inclined to consider you a valuable
resource and give you a higher rank.
Getting other sites to link to you is a seriously important task. It involves a great deal of patience,
research, networking, and marketing abilities.
Also, very important is your website's internal linking structure. From the search engines point of view,
these links will serve both as hints for the content of your website, and as their facilitators in getting to
pages with a not so obvious position on your website. The path to each page must be clearly defined.
Make sure your website has a site map, both HTML and XML. That's what Googles likes.
Networking (should be your favorite because it's very important)
Why do people order business cards? It's part of the human-to-human networking protocol. If
you go to a meeting without a business card, don't expect big results. Your website is your other
business card and it's your job to give that to as many people as possible.
© 2012 – APIN.COM
As in the case of your other marketing strategies, your website needs to get as much exposure as
possible. This involves being listed in directories, press releases, presence on relevant forums,
paricipating in community blogs, creating relationships with credible and established entities or field
experts whose acknowledgment can boost your own credibility.
This is also why it's someone important to have a good domain name. Imagine your talking about
your business on the radio. If you have to spell your domain name, you're losing traffic. When you
talk to people, they have a very tiny amount of brain space they're going to devote to what's coming out
of your mouth. If you're domain name is something they can remember easily, say it often.
There are always others businesses that are complimentary or at least non-competitive. You
come in contact with them every day. Coffee shops, muffler repair, real estate agents – all of
these want traffic too. Any business with a website should be a potential place where you can
establish a reciprocal link relationship. “You add me, I’ll add you” should be your default attitude.
Metatags and keywords (are over-rated)
Metatags are elements that describe the content of your a page. They are not visible to humans, unless
of course you do Ctrl-U from most any browser . They must be relevant, accurate and cleverly
populated with keywords that you are competing for. Choosing them is an art and a science as are all
the other elements of your strategy. Some people still think this is something to study. It’s just one step
in many. An art? I don't think so. It's just common sense. Read the page and then find a
handful of words that describe it. Anyone who thinks that's art needs to get out more.
There are many other things to consider when optimizing your site: forms and applications
functionality, files size, navigation, design, usability etc. SEO is the art of fine tuning all these elements
into a product that suggests profesionalism such that vistors trust you and stick around to click things.
Tip: Always learn from others. If you perform a search and find a competitor is ranked well, do a
Ctrl-U and see how they have structured their metatags. What keywords does satchelsbbq.com use?
<meta name="keywords" content="bbq, barbecue, ann arbor, restaurant, carry out,">
In the old days, way back in 2007 meta keywords were not all that important relative to the other
variables. This is still true today however, it doesn't take long to “tag” your pages with
keywords so this is something you should be doing with every page you write. (And don't
duplicate the keywords that are already in your copy. Rather, use the keyword tag to expand the
reach of the article by using words that describe what the article is about.)
Are there shortcuts? (yes, some that will hurt you)
If all this seems too much for you, you may be tempted to go for shortcuts and fall for promises that
nobody can deliver. As in every other aspect of your life, whenever something is too good to be true,
the statement is usually correct.
You can pay for generous link exchanges to companies that require that you subscribe to their
© 2012 – APIN.COM
"guaranteed" services for some period of time. Some are good, some are not. If you do pay a firm to
do this, make sure their site is proof of their skills. A bad SEO strategy can backfire. Beware of quick
fixes, or of the unethical "black hat" strategies. Things like "link farms" can have the opposite result
and cause search engines to penalize or ban you Once you are demoted it can be a long hard climb
back up.
If you pay someone to do this for you, that's fine. But YOU should come up with the plan that
they execute. Remember that nobody knows your business as well as you do and nobody else
will ever care as much as you do. Make your cocktail napkin sketches, refine them to an
outline/blueprint and then look for someone to help you execute.
What can you do? (don’t panic, take your time, but do it)
As you may have guessed, all the techniques above will take time to implement. You MUST play a
lead role in at least the planning process. You may come up with content following the specific
request of your marketing team, or you may have to submit information. You may have to work on
networking, a role much similar to the one that you play in your company's everyday exposure. You
may have to allocate time and efforts to some basic training of the team. After all, they must
understand how you do business before marketing it.
There are three ways to do this: (1) Hire a professional marketing group (2) Hire a writer or
(3) Do yourself.
Remember this expression?
Quick, High Quality, Cheap. You can only have two at a time.
If you want something rushed and of high quality, then the price isn't cheap. If you prefer
something cheap and quick, don't hold your breath for high quality. You get the idea.
Same thing here. If you hire a writer, they can write copy for you but they may not know how to
get the copy correctly inserted into your website. If you hire a professional marketing group,
they likely can prepare the entire meal for you, but expect the check to be at least $1000 a month
– just for the marketing copy. If you do it yourself, that's one more thing you need to fit into
your day.
Tip: You don’t need to hire an expensive marketing firm to do this! As long as you have a strategy, you
can pay high school students to do most of what needs doing. TRUE, but be careful to make certain
your plan is well written and understood.
How do you measure results?
When paying for services, they should come with periodical reports on the progress of your site. NO.
You should define the measurables, not them. The price you're paying MUST be based on the
specifics of what you expect them to do.
Such reports should take into consideration factors such as incoming links, traffic or rank, and give you
a good enough feeling about the success or inadequacies of the strategies followed. You should be
© 2012 – APIN.COM
reviewing your ranking stats at least once per month. e.g., Go to Google and enter
site:yourdomainname.com That's an example of a measurable. Traffic is another important
measurable. If don't know how many visits you're getting per day now, that's where you need to
start.
Improving your search ranking is generally done for the reason of increasing revenue. This is a
very distinct and positive correlation between traffic and revenue. If you have lots of traffic, you
can generate revenue. This is my opinion based on experience. How much the traffic is worth
depends on how you convert your traffic.
8. Once my site ranks well, is more work needed?
Yes! As you know, there are always sharks in the water. The balance of forces within your specific
market (and on the internet) is constantly changing. Websites are added every day. However, it is your
choice if you want to outsource this service, or transfer them to your in-house team, for such work as
monitoring search engine rankings, traffic tracking, adding new content, website structure and
navigation tweaking.
Develop a plan, then stick to it. Do your 15 minutes a day and the rest will fall into place.
Now that you know what to do, let us finish with our ten favorite ways to waste time and money. A few
of these are so effective at this, you can jump your Google page rank to Zero!
Point is this: Being in business is a race. Everyday you need to be running. If you're not,
someone will pass you. Assuming of course, you're going somewhere someone else wants to be.
So a website should always be changing.
© 2012 – APIN.COM
10 Quick Ways To Kill Your Reputation with Search Engines
Be overly focused on keyword metatags - They are important and are of use, but not for page
ranking, not so much. This trick ended years ago. Search engines rely on visible text in your site.
Jamming a tag with keywords won't get you banned, it just reduces the importance of tha page.
Stuff keywords all over the place and add some as invisible text. If you do this with any intensity,
your Google rank will drop to zero... with almost no chance to recover!
Try to buy your way to the top with purchased links - Ever end up at a page that's stuffed full of
Google ads? Google doesn't think all too highly of that. So a good link is a real one that was put there
because it has real meaning to the surrounding content... and to the humans too.
Keep it all to yourself (Be a link scrooge) - This used to be "rank leak" thinking that if you have
lots of outbound links you are less valuable. That's stupid. Lots of useful links are valuable to humans?
This is how the search engines think now. Put GOOD links all over the place, just stay on-topic.
Engage in Meaningless Link Swap - In the old days you could pay some company with no mailing
address $19 a month to have your domain name sprayed all over their millions of crappy web pages.
Now, that’s a really bad idea. Never swap with anyone that doesn't have real value for your human
visitors. Your mantra: I wan't good traffic
Duplicate Your Content - Less is now more. Again in the old days, search engines were not so
clever. If you had 1000 pages to crawl, you might have been ten times as good as someone with 100.
If you have 1000 pages of content, it better be good stuff as your overall score will be factored by that
number.
Use Session IDs on your URLs - Put your parameters in a cookie. Live with the fact that 3% of the
paranoid surfing public disables cookies. If your URLs look like something from NASA or the CIA,
you're not going to impress any search engines.
Use lots of Flash to look "really cool" - Flash is one of the biggest rank killers because it's
invisible to search engines. I think there should be a search engine of "most invisible sites" so we can
easily find all the Flash maniacs out there.
Use lots of Javascript to dazzle them mouseover fireworks - If you're Pink Floyd, accomplished
artist or a movie production company, you can ignore this one and #8. Everyone else, get with it!
Try your hand at cloaking. Ever see an ad that "PROMISED" to launch you to the top of page 1
overnight. This is a pure SCAM now with a nasty downside: Cloaking is a great way to end up being
blacklisted by every search engine in town, and in this case, it's a really small world. (because search
engines share references, just like everyone else)
© 2012 – APIN.COM
Our example for Ann Arbor, Bacon and BBQ:
BadAssMunchies.com
The site was launched in early August of 2012. At that time, it was a single landing page with about a
half dozen external links. Aboud the 17th of August, an open source CMS was installed and we began
to load the site with content.
Measurables
Today this site result count within Google is 559. We have intentionally done nothing to promote the
site other than telling locals about it via business cards. Traffic has gone from 0 visits to about
150/day with a single day high of 273. BadAssMunchies.com can now be found in the top 10 when
searching for Bacon, BBQ and Ann Arbor.
© 2012 – APIN.COM