Throughout this article I'm going to use some terminology you may not be familiar with.
Inbound link - Theses are one way links coming into your website
Outbound link - There's are one way links that are leaving your website
Cross Links - These are link exchanges, eg you link to site A and site A links back to you
Page Rank/PR - This is on a scale of 1-10 and is how Google measures how important your website is
SEO or Search engine optimization is key to driving traffic to your website from search engines. People often wonder how to get those coveted 1-10 ranks for your keywords, but struggle in doing so. The first and most important step in obtaining those rankings is to target specific key phrases. Its better to target a specific phrase than an individual word, as competition for the individual words is very high and usually dominated by massive businesses.
1) Check out your competitors
For example, lets assume your business sells computers. It would be an impossible task to optimize your site for the keyword 'computer' or 'computers'. If you do a Google search for 'computer' you will see there are 1,330,000,000 results and the top ranking sites include apple and dell to name a few. You will never get into that top 10 list, there is simply to much competition.
2) So, what do I do?
Have a look at your website and ask yourself what do you sell? Is it computers specifically built to play games? If so you should try 'custom gaming pcs. This search term returns 413,000 results much easier to beat than the previous 1,330,000,000 results and the #1 spot only has 53 inbound links. This should be fairly easy to beat and take their precious #1 spot.
Before we start looking at how to build links, you need to make sure that your website has being optimized for your chosen keywords. I recommend a piece of software called http://www.seoelitedirect.com
3) Checking out competitors inbound links
If you haven't purchased SEO Elite (http://www.seoelitedirect.com) which has this superb feature built in. I will show you how to check out your competitors links, the long way...
Access toolbar.google.com and install the toolbar on your browser. Type your keyword into the search (in this example 'custom gaming pcs') and then click on options > more tab and tick the page info box. Simply click on the blue circle icon with an I in it and then choose 'Backwards links'. This will show you a sample of the incoming links a page has, as you can see the #1 spot has 53 inbound links.
4) Make friends with other websites
Look at each inbound link the #1 spot has, see if each page is relevant to your website, it probably is! Browse around the site and find a way to contact the webmaster, there is usually an email address somewhere. Simply contact the webmaster and ask if they would like to trade links with you. Take not of the green bar on Google tool bar, this tells you the Page rank of the page. Links from sites with higher PR are better than links from sites with low PR.
Do this for every site that is linking to the #1 site for your keyword. Then do it for spot #2, #3, #4 and so on. Some webmasters will just ignore your email, don't get disheartened, there are plenty more links out there waiting for you! If a webmaster refuses to trade links, thank him gracefully.
5) Results
After doing the above for a couple of weeks, Google will re-index their rankings and you will jump up the search rankings. It can take a few months for your page rank to be updated though so don't worry about that. The more links you build, the higher you will rank. The more you put in the more you get out of it.
Inbound link - Theses are one way links coming into your website
Outbound link - There's are one way links that are leaving your website
Cross Links - These are link exchanges, eg you link to site A and site A links back to you
Page Rank/PR - This is on a scale of 1-10 and is how Google measures how important your website is
SEO or Search engine optimization is key to driving traffic to your website from search engines. People often wonder how to get those coveted 1-10 ranks for your keywords, but struggle in doing so. The first and most important step in obtaining those rankings is to target specific key phrases. Its better to target a specific phrase than an individual word, as competition for the individual words is very high and usually dominated by massive businesses.
1) Check out your competitors
For example, lets assume your business sells computers. It would be an impossible task to optimize your site for the keyword 'computer' or 'computers'. If you do a Google search for 'computer' you will see there are 1,330,000,000 results and the top ranking sites include apple and dell to name a few. You will never get into that top 10 list, there is simply to much competition.
2) So, what do I do?
Have a look at your website and ask yourself what do you sell? Is it computers specifically built to play games? If so you should try 'custom gaming pcs. This search term returns 413,000 results much easier to beat than the previous 1,330,000,000 results and the #1 spot only has 53 inbound links. This should be fairly easy to beat and take their precious #1 spot.
Before we start looking at how to build links, you need to make sure that your website has being optimized for your chosen keywords. I recommend a piece of software called http://www.seoelitedirect.com
3) Checking out competitors inbound links
If you haven't purchased SEO Elite (http://www.seoelitedirect.com) which has this superb feature built in. I will show you how to check out your competitors links, the long way...
Access toolbar.google.com and install the toolbar on your browser. Type your keyword into the search (in this example 'custom gaming pcs') and then click on options > more tab and tick the page info box. Simply click on the blue circle icon with an I in it and then choose 'Backwards links'. This will show you a sample of the incoming links a page has, as you can see the #1 spot has 53 inbound links.
4) Make friends with other websites
Look at each inbound link the #1 spot has, see if each page is relevant to your website, it probably is! Browse around the site and find a way to contact the webmaster, there is usually an email address somewhere. Simply contact the webmaster and ask if they would like to trade links with you. Take not of the green bar on Google tool bar, this tells you the Page rank of the page. Links from sites with higher PR are better than links from sites with low PR.
Do this for every site that is linking to the #1 site for your keyword. Then do it for spot #2, #3, #4 and so on. Some webmasters will just ignore your email, don't get disheartened, there are plenty more links out there waiting for you! If a webmaster refuses to trade links, thank him gracefully.
5) Results
After doing the above for a couple of weeks, Google will re-index their rankings and you will jump up the search rankings. It can take a few months for your page rank to be updated though so don't worry about that. The more links you build, the higher you will rank. The more you put in the more you get out of it.
