A Beginners Guide to High Search Engine Rankings

Ranking on the first page in Google, Yahoo and other top search engines is a great asset to any business. Small and medium sized businesses without massive marketing marketing budgets can particularly benefit from the exposure provided by ranking highly in search engines.

If a business can rank highly on search terms relevant to the product or service that they offer then this could secure large new revenue streams for a business. The advantage that comes from placing your brand in front of customers in your area who have just searched for services that you offer is immeasurable. In what other form of marketing could small businesses receive such phenomenal coverage? Small and medium sized businesses just cannot afford to neglect Search Engine Optimization.

In this article I will provide tips on ranking highly in organic search engine results. Organic search engine results are the results that most people use after searching for a term in a search engine. They are not sponsored links and the search engine provider has not been paid to place them highly. In my experience ranking highly in organic search engine results has more credibility with those making a search than paid-for rankings.

The first thing to consider is the quality of your website. It is no good investing time and money into the promotion of your website if it is unattractive, doesn’t work properly or if it doesn’t provide users of the site with relevant information about the products and services that you offer. These are all things that will affect how potential customers rate your site but will also affect how search engines rate your site. At the very least you should ensure that the text on your site clearly sets out what it is that your company offers. You should also give consideration to the meta tags, page titles, and keywords used on your site. Compare your site to your competitor’s, it may be worth considering a website redesign to set you apart from other companies.

You should be targeting keywords that your customers are likely to use when searching for the services that you offer. A good way of testing this is to use Google Adwords. This allows you to type in some key words likely to be relevant and shows you the extent to which people use those search terms, how much others are targeting those search terms, and suggests alternatives. If you are just starting out or if you don’t have too much time and money to spend on Search Engine Optimisation then targeting keywords that have ‘very high’ competition probably isn’t worth it. If you are thinking of targeting these keywords it may be worthwhile contacting a professional internet marketing firm. Play around with Adwords until you have selected up to about five search terms to target. Ensure that these terms are included on your site.

A large part of achieving good search rankings comes from getting a lot of what are called ‘inbound links’ to your site. These are links from other sites to yours. If high status sites provide links to your site then that is better than if the local chippy provides a link. Many people achieve this by writing articles and other content then getting them published on sites which provide them with in bound links. The way that you do this will change from industry to industry. If you manufacture and sell headlamps for vintage motorcars then write articles which customers will want to read for vintage car websites, not only does this provide in-bound links but makes your customers aware of you. If you can write content which other people find interesting and useful then this can be very successful. Another option could be to ask clients and business partners to mention you on their sites.

Hopefully, this article will have provided you with some idea of how to achieve better search rankings and therefore much better exposure to potential clients. Remember, Search Engine Optimisation is something you must work at, don’t make one big push and then leave it. You must work at it or you will lose your high ranking. Good luck!

Author Bio: Owen Stevens is an Internet marketing expert and Project Manager at Skyblu, a forward-thinking company providing web design in Worcester.
Category: Marketing
Keywords: web design, search engine optimisation, seo, search engine marketing, sem, online marketing