How To Achieve Higher Search Engine Ranking

Author: Jeremy Schooley
SEO Web Designer

If you have been using search engines on a regular basis for the past 10 years, you may have noticed something. It is very common to see blog sites showing up in the top 10 of many search strings these days. Often when I perform a search on Google or Yahoo, the first page of results has a few blog sites listed. Why is this? Some of these blog sites have achieved high search engine rankings of the top 10 to 20 results much faster than did their predecessors. How did they do this? The answer is simpler than you might think. When it comes to achieving higher search engine rankings, content is king.
The reason that blog sites do so well at search engine ranking is blogs are like mini content factories. They churn out fresh content on a regular basis and the content is optimized for search engine ranking for particular search strings. Over time, the amount of content grows and grows – so does the site’s search engine rank. If a blog pumps out 2 articles a week for 1 year, that is 104 articles being indexed by Google for that site!

Quality vs. Quantity

It’s not enough to turn out high amounts of content. If I ever end up on a spammer site that a found through a search engine, I immediately click “Back” on the menu bar when I realize the site isn’t legit. Usually, the first thing that raises a red flag is the content. Content that has been “loaded” with search strings and contains very little useful information is easy to spot and will destroy your website’s image. Search engines are very keen on these kinds of sites and will/do penalize them. This is where balance comes in.

Make your content informative and put yourself in the shoes of the reader. Balance is a philosophy that extends beyond engineering and design. If your content focuses only on achieving high ranks, no one will want to read your content. If you write content worthy of the Pulitzer but don’t optimize it for search engine ranking, no one will find it. Having quality content will encourage other web sites to link to your page, which will help improve your search engine ranking. After the content is written, go back and make sure your keyword density for the search string(s) you wish to optimize the content for is at about 2% to 5% of the total word count.

Duplicate Content

Avoid duplicating content at all cost! Search engines penalize for excessive duplicate content. The vast majority of your content should be original material. Don’t risk anything less.

Consistency

Many website owners or business owners simply don’t have the time to do 2 articles a week. The key is to find a number you can do consistently over time. Don’t put up 10 articles all at once. Spread them out over time. Search engines want to see fresh content coming from your web site consistently over time. It takes time to convince search engines to trust your site.

The alternative way to putting up fresh content over time is to hire companies that specialize in writing optimized articles for you, such as Directory One, Inc. This will save you the time and headache involved with writing these articles consistently, doing keyword research for search engine optimization, and tracking the results.