As always, things are always changing with Google and how they tabulate and position the organic search results. If you’re new to online network marketing, you’re almost lucky, as you can get started out with a clean slate in terms of getting your website positioned well in Google. For those with experience in online marketing under your belt, you’re going to have change some of your thinking.
Neither one of you can fear change. Make change a focus of your marketing plan and spend time continuously implementing change. The leading search engines like Google really operate on a monthly cycle for their updates and scans of content, so you only have to really look closely at your tactics a daily event. Check your position and your strategies, tactics and methodologies about once a month and set aside time to actually implement revisions. Professional SEO consultants say to put aside 3 hours a month on review and continuing education on the search engines and how they operate, and to budget about 5 to15 additional hours per month to actually revise content and programming. This formula matches what an SEO consultant would use if they were charging you $650 – $1,500 a month in fees for their time.
The core elements driving Google and how they rate and position websites are related to content, content and content. As a small business or individual, you will need to develop other techniques to compete, as you won’t be able to create as much content as larger firms. Here’s some tips on gaining search engine position. Short term results build up to long term success, so doing these things as part of your strategy will help Google to rank your website much higher than if you just sat there “waiting for something to happen” on its own.
Learn to target keywords:
The biggest issue facing internet based businesses is a perceptual one. You have to find the exact combination of keywords that fit your website’s themes and products. Google’s Keyword Tool provides the search volumes for the keywords that you are curious about. Only choose keywords that have traffic hitting them! More importantly, select the keywords that have the highest search volumes, as these will be too competitive. You need to find the “sweet spot” for you – keywords that are relevant and targeted, but with medium to medium high search volume. Save this core set of keywords, as you’ll need to be consistent in your efforts in the long term. These are the foundation for carving out your own niche in the online world.
Build a blog:
Layers and layers of text is very attractive to Google’s automated search tools. The way blogs are structured with long postings and a hierarchy of themed areas fits perfectly within how Google sniffs out content. Set up a free blog outside your website and link it back heavily, or build it into the structure of the site. Use a unique domain if you build the blog separately, as the blog will count as an a very valuable back link to your website from day one of its launch.
Use social bookmarking:
The best and fastest way to move your small website up quickly is through getting strong, relevant, themed back links. Every time you release a blog entry, release it to the world through a social bookmarking service like Social Marker. You will get large amounts of immediate traffic if you make Digg or the other bookmarking websites. And that traffic will GREATLY help your website appear in the results.
Use the social networking sites:
Set up Facebook and Twitter pages for yourself and tie them together so that one triggers the other. That way you only need to ever update one of the accounts. Set up your auto-responder software so that periodically an email goes out to your list telling them to join you on Facebook or Twitter. Every time you create a new blog entry, release it on these 2 devices. Again, you’ll get traffic flowing into the website from relevant back links.
Piggy back on others’ position:
Take a step back and look at things from a strategic standpoint. There are a lot of text rich websites that have very strong search position. Some of these websites are free article directories that will carry any themed or relative content submitted to them. Get yourself a program like Automatic Article Submitter. It makes the next part easy, efficient and pain free. For every blog entry that is tied to education or products (not personal posts), spin the content using the program’s built in spinning feature. The spinning feature makes it easy to create custom, non-duplicate content featuring your name and back links to your blog for over 300 article websites. You will receive the benefit of very valuable back links from the article websites that carry your submissions, and these are websites that Google already ranks high in the results. You see why we call it piggy backing? If done correctly, your articles can temporarily appear high in Google with your name on them and links. The article directories are used as a sort of trampoline that bounces traffic over to your blog and website.
Again, embrace change:
Check your placement every month in Google for your target keywords. Take notice of something important our associates use in the SEO consulting game. Once you appear in the search engines, take notice of which websites are a page ahead of you. Identify the websites there that appear to NOT belong there in terms of relevancy. Examine their website closely and look at their Title tags (the top of the browser window) and their Meta Descriptions (the description under their name in Google results). Their Titles and Descriptions will most likely have some of the keywords you are focusing on. Go back and tweak your website to match, then go into your content, particularly the homepage, and add more instances of the same keywords that you’re targeting to your text on the pages. Make sure you use them in a way that makes sense! If you’ve considered using Adwords, now is the best time to do it for best SEO results. Revise the landing pages for your Adwords to feature those same keywords, and hot link them back to pages in your blog or site. Our friends in the SEO business call this “guerilla warfare.”
These are a good set of hints. SEO is a complicated business on its own. You can see some return on your time investment this year by following some of the pointers we’ve mentioned. Running an online network marketing business is all about getting some success early, so you can keep your enthusiasm high and build upon the results.
