Winning Top Search Engine Placement Is Hard, People!

Getting top search engine placement isn’t impossible, but it’s hard typically. It’s hard because you have to do it right, and to do it right is to create a site that is architecturally optimized (clean code, hierarchical navigation and organized content) and writing content that your target audience not only wants to read, but finds helpful and authoritative.
 

Myth: Top Search Engine
Placement Can Be Achieved
By Stuffing Keywords

No. No, no, and no! You can’t reach search engine success-ville by sticking keywords all over the place. If you’re a wedding planner, you can’t just stick “wedding planner” all over your site. There’s more than one way to refer to a wedding planner: bridal consultant, wedding consultant, event planner, etc. In addition, someone searching for “wedding planner” could be looking for a bridal consultant, a wedding planning guide, or the Jennifer Lopez movie.

To get top placement on search engines for your vertical, you have to carefully construct your site. You have to write your content in a way that allows you to convey to humans and non-humans that you are a consultant who helps brides plan weddings. You have to provide valuable information to your audience about what you do, why you do it better than other consultants, and the geographical area in which you serve. You have to provide free information to your users about planning their wedding, without giving away the whole store, while still giving them something they won’t get elsewhere. Doing so will provide value and therefore incline people to link to you. This helps with search engine placement much more than just sticking some keywords into crappy copy.
 

Myth: Getting a High Rank In Search Engines Can Be Accomplished By Friends Linking To Me

Links aren’t bad. Typically, I take what I can get. However, links for the sake of links do very little. Search engines know the difference between a “links” or “friends” page and a blog post where someone is talking about how much they were blown away by the information they received on your site. Search engines know the difference between a page that has 100 outgoing links on it versus a page that has 1 or 2 outgoing links. Search engines know how to follow links and determine the importance the writer was putting on the page he or she has linked to.

Another thing about links… having your Uncle Carl link to your photography business from his auto body shop’s website is not going to be as good as having your DJ friend link to your site from his site. You’ll gladly take the link from Uncle Carl, but it’s not as valuable as your DJ buddy (as long as your DJ buddy isn’t linking to every other photographer in the area.)

Lastly, when someone links to your website, it’s much better for you if they add a link to some text that describes your business instead of linking your company name. For example:

For landscape design services in Atlanta, I highly recommend Pollock and Associates

is much more valuable to you, from a search engine perspective, then this:

Check out Pollock and Associates, Inc.
 

Myth: I Can Just Launch This Site With Little Effort and Make Money When I Land at the Top of Google

Uh, no, that’s not going to happen. I’m helping someone currently who is starting up an online store selling some supplies. They’ve spent a lot of time entering products into the system they’ve purchased. The problem is that these products can work with several different kinds of machines. They’re entering the products so that each product is entered only once, has a vague product name (that is mostly useful to them for quick identification), and includes all of the machines the product fits in the description for that product. They’re also not wanting to upload photos for each product.

The problem with this is that the product is far from optimized. I’ve recommended entering the product once for each machine that it fits, using the name of the machine and the product as the whole product name. The company owners do not want to do this because it would take a LOT of time (there are thousands of products.) Here’s the problem…

Let’s say you’re selling alternators. You have hundreds of alternators, but each of those could fit any one of 100 cars. You could enter each alternator once, but that’s not optimized. If you do that, then someone searching for “1965 Ford Mustang Alternators” isn’t going to find a product entered as “Alternator 2304″ in Google, even though that Alternator works for a 1965 Mustang. What they WILL find is someone else’s product who took the time to enter the product separately for a 1965 Mustang (their title tag says, “1965 Ford Mustang Alternator”, as does their <H1> tag.) The guy who took less time and entered the product as “Alternator 2304″ now has a title tag and an <H1> tag of “Alternator 2304″, and only someone searching for Alternator 2304 will potentially find it.

By the way, the friend in question does not sell alternators. At 1 in the morning, it’s the only thing I could come up with!
 

Yes, Top Search Engine Placement Requires Work

It’s just not easy. You have to be willing to put some time into making sure your site is right, your content is well organized and optimized, and then you have to be willing to measure the results and make changes as needed. Too many people want to take shortcuts. I understand that to a degree, but you have to make yourself think differently. Otherwise, high search engine rankings will just be a pipe dream and the money you spent on your website, ecommerce package, etc. will have been wasted. I’ve seen it happen lots of times.