I Can Put Your Site at the Top of Search Engine Listings

I just got my eighth email in the past two days with the following “invitation”:

I can put your site at the top of a search engines listings. This is no joke and I can show proven results from all our past clients. If this is something you might be interested in, send me a reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options.

If you believe this, I have some property you might be interested in, very cheap, along the Mississippi coast line. Wanna buy a bridge in London? If you think this is the answer to getting serious attention from search engines, or increasing your search engine page rank, honestly, you need to be put out of our misery for being an idiot.

DO NOT REPLY. DO NOT CLICK THE LINKS IN THESE EMAILS.

This is typical crap to lure you into believing there is a fast and easy way to pay someone to increase your search engine coverage. It’s crap. A big load of crap. Are you listening?

Getting to the Top in Search Engine Listings

In my popular article, “How Google Ranks Websites”, I wrote about the various elements used in form of score card that Google and other search engines use to judge your site in order to determine its rankings. As a reminder, here are some of the items evaluated on your site:

• Incoming Links
• Outgoing Links
• Historical Links (Link Age)
• Domain Age
• Historical Site Changes
• Click Through Rates
• Click Through Age Rates
• Historical Trends
• Historical Fads
• Seasonal Activity
• Posting Frequency
• Post/Article Age
• Keywords/Keyword Density
• User Behavior
• Author Behavior
• Competition Comparisons
• Web Traffic
• Domain/Site Host Type
• Geographic Location
• Language/Localization
• Site Structure and Code
• Misspelled Words

The majority of items on that list are content based. Search engines look through the content you have on your site with a strong searchable keyword density with good spelling and quality links coming in and out of your site. The site structure and code helps the search engine flow through your site gathering information, so while that isn’t top of the list, it plays a critical role in helping your site be “search engine friendly” or search engine optimized.

The search engine algorithms and analysis look at how people use your site over long periods of time, how they arrive, what they look at, how long they stay, and what pages they leave on. The more content you have that keeps people on your site for longer periods of time, the more repeat visitors you have, the more likely you are to score well in that area.

The rest of the criteria is based upon age and comparisons. Incoming and outgoing links are critical to your page ranking in search engine results, but how old the links are, as well as to and from whom, makes more difference than how many you have. The age of the site you link to or which links to you, as well as their criteria and analysis, goes into the count. The age of your domain is vitally important on the search engine score card as they give points for sites which have been around for a while, and few to the new kid on the virtual block. If your blog is a few weeks or month old, paying someone won’t speed up the clock.

Google has the ability to analyze a variety of information, comparing your site with other similar sites, and they toss that analysis into the mix of how they judge you. Much of that analysis is based upon content and keywords, as well as age and traffic.

Okay, this all sounds complicated, but it boils down to this:

1. Write good, consistent, well written content.
2. Write about a single or narrow range of topics to build a body of related content.
3. Link to quality sites from within your content.
4. Write content worth linking to.
5. Write content people are searching for, so include searchable keywords in your content.
6. Wait. Be patient.

The only way you will score consistently high in any search engine ranking is to buy a spot at the top, or have site traffic that makes advertisers stand up and shout. That’s earned, not paid for. Even then, it’s a maybe promise. Someone doing it right, for free, may still out rank you in the search engine search results page ranking.

Being at the Top of Search Engine Listings When my mother started helping me with our family history research, she scoured the web looking for family names and clues. She complained that every other search she would find an article mentioning one of our relatives, get really excited and click it, only to to find out that it led to my new family history blog started only a few weeks before. “It’s not fair! Every search turns up you!” When you are searching for a narrow subject like “Robert Knapp Wisconsin”, you turn up the search results with those keywords. If I have one of few sites on the web with those three keywords, then my blog is going to be in the results. The rest were just “Robert”, “Knapp”, and “Wisconsin” where only one or two of the words were on the web pages, not all three. So my blog turned up at the top of her searches. That’s part of the key of understanding how sites get to the top of search engine results. The web page has all the pieces the searcher is looking for.

Without that, you are just like the rest of us. Even if you pay someone to write and run your site, it’s all about content and keywords. It’s about solid, consistent content, published consistently over time. It’s about sharing what you know with others through comments and interaction within your blogging community or industry. It’s about giving your audience what they want, establishing a reputation for quality and consistent content. It’s not just about grabbing as many first time visitors as you can. It’s about creating something of value to make first time visitors become repeat customers.

Don’t fall for the gimmicks. Don’t pay attention to the scam artists who think you will fall for their sales pitch and SEO snake oil products to sell you search engine optimization and instant page ranking. It’s crap. Just like it’s crap to pay for the free WordPress. Whether the SEO snake oil sales pitch comes via email or comment spam, unless you have money to burn, please, don’t give them a click or a visit. Ignore them and they might go away starving.

The “Get to the Top of Search Engine Listings” gimmicks are no different from the “Get Rich Quick” schemes. Don’t buy it. Don’t click it. Don’t reply. Not even to tell them to stop sending you emails. Just mark it as spam and get rid of it.

You can get all the information you want to know about how to push your site at the top of search engine listings for FREE by checking out my Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide.

The Only Reason to Pay for SEO?

If you are serious about developing a serious website or blog, and high traffic and income is critical to your career and business, then research a professional web developer and web designer whose mortgage depends upon getting it right.

They are the professionals you go looking for, not those who come in through your email or comment spam. They are the ones who other companies talk about and recommend. They are ones with thorough business and communications training, who understand not only how the web works but how your company works and what you need to make your business a success on the web.

There are some wonderful experts out there who know what they are doing. And part of what they are doing is not wasting your email, blog comments, or bandwidth marketing their promotions. They are letting their reputation and resumes speak for themselves, and are too busy working to be selling SEO snake oil.

Related Articles

• Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide
• Site Optimization: Optimizing Bandwidth and Cleaning Out the Code Closet
• How People Search the Web and How They Can Find Your Blog
• When is the Best Time and Day to Post on Your Blog?
• Are You Missing Out By Not Practicing SEO Techniques?
• Search Engine Friendly: Helping Googlebot Crawl Your Blog
• See What Search Engines See When They Visit Your Website
• The Power of the Link
• Testing Search Engine Page Ranking Techniques
• Beauty is Only Skin Deep: Designing Blogs For Feeds, Search Engines and Audience
• One Year Anniversary Review: Keywords
• One Year Anniversary Review: Web Development
• See What Search Engines See When They Visit Your Website
• Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog
• Creating Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles
• Hook, Line and Sinker: Luring Blog Traffic to Stay
• One Year Anniversary Review: Searching and Search Engines
• SEO Secret: Exploring How Search Engines Explore
• Creating Attention Getting Linkable Content
• Don’t Buy WordPress – It’s Free

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network