Top 5 SEO Tips To Achieve Top 10 Rankings In Google

I thought I would follow-up my “How to get indexed by Google in ONE hour” article with my top 5 SEO (search engine optimization) tips.

The following 5 items are by no means in order of importance, it’s best to try the ones that you think you can do first.  When you are implementing the following 5 SEO tips, it’s important to not rush anything.  When you are creating a web site and writing content, it’s important to take your time, write good content, read it, update it to better market your keywords, and read it again to ensure you are marketing your keywords to the best of their potential.

Title Tag

The title tag, this must be the oldest SEO optimization tip that there possible is.  I remember when I first started creating web sites back in 1996 that this is how you got find.  This and of course META keywords and descriptions.

Why is the title tag so important?  Well, when you search for something, this is most likely the first thing a person will see.  The next thing they will see is a few words of your content (which we’ll focus on later).  Not only is it the first thing a person will see, it’s one of the highest weighting factors of search results.

How to write a good title tag?  In the old days, title tags would be just filled with keyword after keyword after keyword.  This was completely useless to people searching for content.  I am a strong believer in making a useful, keyword rich title tag.  For example, the title tag for this page is “Top 5 SEO Tips To Achieve Top 10 Rankings In Google | End Your If“.

Let’s analyze this for a moment.  The keywords I am targetting are: SEO, Top 5 and Top 10 rankings, and Google.  At the very end I simply include the title of my blog.  The purpose of this is to help people remember the name.

A lot of times, you will see people focus on the name of their site first, by simply reversing the order you can quickly move up into the top 10 in Google. 

For more information on this, see this A Simple SEO Trick To Boost Your Rankings I created earlier.

Domain Name

Next up is a domain name.  For the purpose of my blog, I am not overly interested in having a keyword rich domain name, but if you are fighting for your life to get indexed in an extremely difficult keyword, a domain name can significantly help you with that.

Over the past few years, dashes (-) seem to be very prominent when purchasing a keyword rich domain.  It’s best to target 2 or 3 words/keywords in your domain name.  Much more than that and it will become to vague to be useful.

In fact, if you wish to target multiple keywords, purchase multiple domains.  This might cost a few dollars more, but can significantly help you gain top rankings with several different keywords.

Along with a domain name, it’s also important to create pages with content rich keywords in them as well.  My rule of thumb is to attempt to repeat the title tag as it helps prove the importance of the keywords you have chosen.

Content, Content, and more Content

If you have not figured it out yet, content is the king.  Having a good domain, solid title tag helping the user find exactly what they are looking for, if you cannot back it up with solid content, you won’t keep the visitor.

Do you think if I didn’t write anything useful in this article to follow-up with my killer title tag that you would still be reading?

When you are writing your content, the most important thing is to write for a person and NOT for the search engine.  Don’t get me wrong, keywords are important for SEO and targetting them is even more important.  But don’t simply write text that will get you indexed and not be useful.  People will respect your site a lot more if you provide them something useful.

When you are writing your content, don’t be shy to create header tags (<h1>, <h2>, or <h3>) for important titles and bold (<strong>) your keywords.  Search engines are intelligent enough to identify these and help weight your content.  It’s important to use it appropriately, if you overuse it, you will get flagged and your ranking will even decrease.

Link Popularity

Link popularity, this one dates back to the day Google was created.  When Google first started, their entire weighting system almost solely focused on link popularity.  They still offer high importance to this, however, with the creation of link farms and all sorts of other programs to cheat the system they take into account many different things now.  But, the importance is still there.

How to create and get good links.  Unfortunately, there is no magic answer or simple solution.  It takes time and effort to achieve good and useful links.

A great place to start is directory web sites.  These are web sites that contain category organized web sites.  Simply visit the category that applies to your web site and submit it.  Some are approved automatically, some within days, others in months, it’s an excellent idea to submit to as many as you can. 

Because time is of the essence, it’s best to focus on the ones that have a higher Google Pagerank.  3 or above would be my rule of thumb.

The other great way to gain in link popularity is to visit several web sites that are listed in the categories that you just added your web site too.  It is extremely important to exchange links with web sites that are related to yours.

Sitemap

For the most part, I don’t think this is completely a mystery anymore.  Most people are starting to learn the importance of a sitemap.  First, let me begin by explaining what is a sitemap.

A sitemap is exactly what the name states, a map of your web site.  There are two tips of sitemaps, an HTML version that you would include in your links and an XML sitemap that you would submit to places like Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, or MSN’s Live Search Webmaster Tools.

The latter of these is not organized like an HTML sitemap, it simply contains all of the web pages your site has to offer.  By creating an XML sitemap and submitting it to the three aforementioned places, it’s a great way to get all of your deep content indexed.

An HTML sitemap is quite similar in the sense that it should also include all of your links on your web site.  The only difference is that it should be organized in a visual, useful fashion.

For example, if I were to make a sitemap for this site it would look something like this:

• Home
• Categories
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
    • Top 5 SEO Tips To Achieve Top 10 Rankings In Google
    • How to get indexed by Google in ONE hour
    • etc…

Many people find some web sites confusing to navigate or find the deep content they are looking for.  This is where a sitemap may come into handy.  Also, this use to be a great way to get all of your deep content indexed by a search engine.  It’s just not as important anymore with the invention of XML sitemaps.
That is the end of my top 5 SEO tips.  I hope you enjoyed the article and found some useful information to help you achieve top 10 rankings in the search engines!