SEO to Get Top Rankings

How Much SEO Do You Need To Get Top Rankings?

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by

industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO

strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common

SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index

your site more quickly, it doesn’t guarantee by any stretch of

the imagination that following those SEO guidelines will propel

your site to the top of the rankings.
If only search engine optimization was that easy!
No doubt, there are some SEO faux pas that will do harm to

your site’s rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate

hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any

misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword

spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms,

pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted.
But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine

optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a

whole lot or do you need very little SEO?
Actually, after 10 years of marketing online, the answer to that

question varies depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish

with your SEO efforts? If you’re operating an online business in

a very competitive (read lucrative) market, SEO will be high on

your agenda as you go about annihilating your competition.
Even if you’re an ordinary webmaster or website owner you’re

probably fussing over your rankings in the search engines. The

higher the rankings you achieve for your chosen keywords; the

more traffic you will get. Good quality traffic that converts

well into loyal subscribers and fans of your site.
Many webmasters and companies spend thousands of dollars each

month in order to get their keywords and sites up to the top of

the list. If you’re into affiliate marketing, your daily income

will rise and fall almost parallel to your rankings. Now, if my

earnings increase, I know automatically my rankings have gone

up, usually in Google. If my earnings go down, I know my

rankings have gone south. Some times even a drop or rise of one

place on the first page SERPs will affect how much you earn.
Obviously, because of this fact, SEO or how well I am optimized

for the search engines is extremely important to me. I am

constantly building quality links and quality content for my

sites. Some keyword battles you win, some battles you lose. I

have been fighting some keyword battles for over 3 or 4 years

now!
But how much SEO is enough? How much SEO should you do with your

sites? Many webmasters make sure all their on page set-up or

lay-out is done exactly to what the SEO experts say you should

do. This is not a bad idea. Make sure your Title, URL,

Headlines, Keyword Density… are all laid out right. These are

things we can control and adjust to meet the SEO standards.
Other SEO or ranking factors are much harder to predict, many of

them are simply out of our control. How other sites link to us,

what they put in the anchor text, what they say about us…

simply things we can’t control.
I believe the over-riding reason why your site is listed at the

top of any rankings has to do with the number, the quality and

the quantity of sites linking back to your page. The higher the

number of related quality one-way links you have flowing back to

your site, the higher it will perform in the rankings. Your

anchor text is very important (underlined part of a link); it

must contain your keywords or variations of it. The content on

the linking page should also be related to your chosen keywords.
Get this part right and you will get high rankings.
Or at least this has been my experience – all the other ranking

factors do count but this is the over-riding factor in my

opinion.
Another major ranking factor lately, has been the importance

Google is placing on social media links. Get your content to the

first page of Digg with lots of diggs and it will rank high in

Google. This is not surprising when you consider the nature of

these social bookmarking sites… it really is an actual “vote”

for the quality of your content. Getting Delicious bookmarks has

a similar positive effect.
Another prominent factor, from my observations, is having your

major keyword in your Domain Name. Use hyphens if you want but

having those keywords in there, does help rather than hinder

your rankings.
Now if you’re wondering about how Google ranks pages or your

keywords…. Google has around 200 ranking factors (with filters

and penalties thrown in to make all our lives interesting) which

it uses to rank your keywords/pages. This is still the best

online resource that lists all of Google’s ranking factors:

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm
Now the question still remains, how much SEO do you need? How

much time should you spend at optimizing, building links,

worrying your head off over the latest Google Itch?
The answer always comes back to quality content. Create a site

that has quality content and the SEO will take care of itself.

People will link to your site, you will get bookmarks in all the

social media sites, Google will find your content and rank it.

Your SEO will grow naturally as your site grows. Keep building

more pages, keep targeting more and more related keywords in

your niche or subject area and you will get higher rankings.
Now, of course, some webmasters are a little more aggressive in

how quickly they want their rankings to rise to the top of the

search engines. Here’s something you can do if you want to go

into the SEO battle full-force.
1. Download SEOquake (http://www.seoquake.com/) and place this

free SEO toolbar plug-in on your Firefox (or I.E.) browser.
2. Go to Google and type in the keyword or keyword phrase you’re

targeting with your site or content.
3. Click on the number one ranking and observe how many pages it

has indexed, PageRank, how many backlinks it has, age of the

site… and so on.
4. Then click the page info button and study all the on-page

factors this site has and notice what it’s doing with its page

and keyword density lay-out.
5. Check all the backlinks this site has in the different search

engines. Copy or try to get the same backlinks for your site

that your competitor has acquired. Then get more backlinks

and/or higher quality backlinks than your competitor.
6. Watch your rankings rise…
Just a few more words of wisdom and we’re done. Some battles

will be too tough to fight, the competition will be so stiff you

just can’t compete. Other battles will take a long time; months,

even years before you rise to the top. Your best bet is to

choose long-tail (multi-worded) keywords that have little or no

competition. You can rise to the top within days, even hours.

The sweet thing is this: long-tail keywords are often the most

lucrative and bring in the most sales. For in the final

analysis, you just don’t want SEO, you want smart SEO. And you

will quickly learn, most times you can often out-smart your

competition, even if you can’t out-rank them.

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These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily: SEO Tips

(http://www.bizwaremagic.com/seo_tips.htm”). To learn more

Internet Marketing Tactics try: Marketing Tools

(http://www.marketingtoolguide.com).

Copyright 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely

distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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Tagged with: SEO • Top Rankings

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing • Information Marketing

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