SEO – How to go from zero to hero

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It's the question every web site owner wants the answer to: "how do you get your site from nowhere to page one of Google fast?"

The correct (i.e. honest) answer is, you don't.

Google's own webmaster guidelines spell out why with these warnings...

  • We strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the Quality Guidelines, which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index
  • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings

Now these 2 sentences are very interesting, don't you think? It's clear that attempts to trick their search engine into ranking your site highly will be punished. But what does this mean in practice?

What constitutes trickery?

I read the spirit of the webmaster guidelines as follows: A site has a better chance of ranking well if it contains content useful to its target market.

By content, In mean the following...

  • Text-based information, such as articles and blog entries
  • Images, such as photos or illustrations
  • Audio content such as podcasts or music tracks
  • Video content such as product demonstrations or tutorials

Content of this nature can be useful. What's more, the better the quality of your content, the more likely it is that other people will link to it. And it's these back-links that increase your chances of securing a good page rank.

Page one? Sure, but for what search term?

Of course, it's easy to get your site to page one of Google for search terms nobody uses. The trick is to get to page one for terms plenty of people use, and that have less competition.

It may be unrealistic to get to page one for "florist", which attracts over 400,000 searches/month in the UK. It's much easier to get to page one for "florist london", which delivers around 12,000 searches/month in the UK.

This is where a London-based SEO expert earns their money. Your SEO professional will find out which battles are realistic for your site, given your budget, how long your site has been up, your page rank, and other relevant factors.

This will save you a lot of time, money and frustration. Especially if your competitors haven't had the foresight to employ SEO talent.