What do you need to get top rankings on Google? There are many ingredients in the mix, but here are three of the most important that you need to concentrate on.
1.) Keyword Relevant Copy and Content.
Whatever the keywords you want to get ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), be sure that you have enough copy and content about those specific words which will give Google a reason to rank you in the first place.
If for example, one of your priority keywords is "virtual assistant software", create a separate page or section for this keyword (at least a few paragraphs) using the keyword in the headline, the first sentence, the last sentence as well as wherever it makes logical sense in order to achieve the keyword frequency and "density" that search engines are looking for. Ideally, each page will only have one or two keywords and will be very focused on that specific topic.
Additionally, by including on this specific keyword page either articles, pdf files or news items about your keyword, it will help you improve your chances of a better ranking. Give Google a reason to rank you at the top. He with the most relevant copy wins - so make it rich and deep.
2.) Can the Search Engines Read and "Crawl" All the Pages and Content on Your Site?
Probably the biggest surprise to most marketers is that the search engines are unable to either navigate or read most of the content on their website. If they can't read your copy, then it's not surprising that you're not getting the rankings or traffic to your website that you aspire to.
The only thing a search engine can read is words. Sites that are dynamic, or created in other formats such as Flash or Java often can't be read by the search engines. Even if they can read the content on your site, many times they can't navigate it properly or just bounce "off the walls" as there are no specific links or site map to tell the proper sequence or where to go next.
Want to see what Google is indexing on your website? Go to Google and type in: site:www.yourdomain.com This will show you the title and description of the pages of your site they know about. If they are all the same or they don't have a title or description listed, chances are very good that your site is invisible to your target market.
3) Links... Why Are They So Important?
Link popularity is one of the most important factors search engines use in determining where you will rank in the search engine for your keywords and phrases, as it helps them to determine how important or popular your site is and what it's reputation is. In essence the search engines are saying "we're going to give top ranking to pages that have important and relevant sites linking to them".
Link Building is the process of finding related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you. Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others will link to. But to get these links people have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has gotten sophisticated in the last couple of years. Today you need a mixture of links from many sources including articles, press releases, social bookmarks, directories and social media sites.
How many links do you need to have? It depends on the individual keyword or phrase you want to be found under and how the links are structured. The search engines look at inbound links as a popularity contest but more importantly, they are looking at the quality of the pages that are linking to you and the "anchor text" - the "clickable link" and what it says about the page that it links to. The key to linking is to have the right anchor text on a link that points to a page that has content using the same keyword phrase.
You do not want to boost the overall number of links by more than 10-15% each month for an established site with history because this may trigger a filter from the search engines as an indicator of artificially inflated link popularity. New sites have an advantage since there has not been a history established and the link building can be done at a faster rate. Linking is critical not only with your search engine placement, but also because it helps stabilize you positions in the search engines and delivers traffic directly from the sites that link to you. But linking is not a once and you are done process. Generating new links is an ongoing process.
In summary, successfully implementing the above 3 strategies either through your efforts or through employing search engine promotion specialists will deliver the "triple punch" and the knockout punch you need to get top rankings on Google and the other search engines as well.
<meta name="robots" content="index">
This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.
<meta name="robots" content="follow">
The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It's important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.
When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don't want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.
There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you've created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.
As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:
"Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages."
In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the "no index" command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you're just redirecting them.
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
This tag tells search engine spiders that it's OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn't follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow attribute to the meta tags, and basically not pass on any of your Page Rank to any of the sites to which you are linking. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags – and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, "Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index."
This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A website might have both a page for the United States and a page for England that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won't be penalized.
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">
Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, provide a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your website that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward.
For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business's site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, "This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don't want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time."
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