How to Rank in Google

Have you any idea which Google update has affected your rankings? Google Panda & Penguin are very different. If your Google search engine traffic fell significantly on the 24th April 2012 then the launch of Penguin is the cause of your penalty.A large drop in search engine traffic near the 24th April 2012 indicates that Google Penguin is the cause of your ranking penalty.

You will also notice that the keywords you have used the most in your back-link anchor text are the ones penalized the hardest. The free back-link checking tool at majesticseo.com is the easiest way to analyse your present keyword anchor text.

Back-Link Structure

Back-link anchor text density requirements dropped overnight and today you need the highest for any keyword to be 5% or lower. Keyword rich links should be replaced with Brand links, URL links and ‘junk’ links.

Brand links are your website name or your registered company name. Use different variations. Use a variety of different styles of your URL for your website address links.

Links from the same IP addresses are not as powerful as from different IP’s so focus on building new links from different servers. Target your link building on domains with a similar niche topic to yours. The sites that link to sites linking to you are more important than ever, for this reason, look for a good ‘trust’ score for your back-link building. Google Penguin likes to see links coming from domain pages that are linked to themselves, so look for established pages to get links from where possible.

Google and Linking Networks

There is no such thing as a good quality automated link network, so you must avoid using them because in the end, Google will locate the automated low quality networks, and you will be penalized for the links you have in the network.

You should be aware that many search engine optimization services often use link networks as a part of their linking strategy because they offer a cheap, efficient way to build links. This is a short term strategy that will ultimately cost you far more when you are penalised, so becareful who you employ to carry out your SEO.

On-Page Requirements

In order to keep Google Panda happy, your on-page keyword density shouldn’t exceed 2 or 3%. Add an external link within your page content to an authority .gov or .edu site because Google’s quality algorithm loves to see external authority links.

Quality and Quantity of Web Content

Only publish high quality, unique, well written content on your pages. Creating links from within your content is called contextual linking and is a sensible practice, which helps your on-page quality score. You can link internally or externally.

Images and Graphics

Videos and photo’s are very useful content. Images are a great way to break up large sections of text and help to explain your content. Videos are ideal for increasing the time that visitors spend on your website. Every image on your pages ought to have relevant alt text that describes the image using a variety of long-tail keywords where necessary.

By assessing the ‘reading age’ of your content, Google can establish if a child or a graduate has written it. Spell check whatever you publish so it is of the highest quality. Writing over 500 words on a page is proven to give you a ranking advantage. You should always write as much content that you need to in order to cover the subject, but 500 words is a great benchmark to strive for.

When you are writing new content, write it for the benefit of your visitors, not to manipulate search engines. Your readers need to engage with your content rather than see optimized text created purely for ranking purposes. Word association or semantic indexing (LSI) is the process that Google uses to associate keywords and phrases within your content together. This allows you to write more naturally without having to use exact match search terms

Using Metadata Tags

Make sure that all your pages contain unique meta-tags because if your tags are duplicated across several pages you will receive a ranking penalty. The click through rate from Google  SERP’s to your site can be improved by writing more compelling meta description tags. Make use of meta description tags to encourage more clicks and increase your sites user engagement metrics.

Bounce Rate

It is important that your web pages load quickly otherwise you will never rank very high in Google search. The bounce rate is the volume of traffic that hit the back button rather than engaging with your content. You need to work to get this figure below 55% or else you will be penalized in search.

Getting the balance of all these SEO elements right isn’t always easy. Click here and visit deehoseo.com if you need help with your search engine optimisation campaign and take the first step to moving to the top of Google for your most important terms and phrases.

Average Visitor

Google looks at your site to see how many pages your average visitor looks at, the bigger this number is the better. Keeping your visitors on your site for as long as you can will assist your search engine rankings. Longer site visits indicate superior quality, relevant content.