Insider Secrets to Getting Ranked in Google

If you have a website, you need traffic. In today's world, that means you need Google. But Google just doesn't give out the G love to anyone. No, big G is a lot like those popular girls you remember from high school. They only respected you if another pretty girl gave you some props.

For example, if you were ever lucky enough to have a pretty friend or cousin go with you to the mall or out somewhere where the popular girls from your high school might be, then your popularity would really get a lift if one of these girls happened to see you. It's as if the attractiveness of your companion is somehow miraculously transferred over to you.

That, in a nutshell, is how the big G works.

Instead of physical attractiveness, Google likes something called "PR". Not the PR you might be thinking, but Google's PR is called "Page Rank". The term, named for one of Google's original founders, Larry Page, is essentially a popularity score (there's more to it than that, but popularity is a huge piece of the puzzle).

The Google PR Score

The main driver of your Google PR score is the number of links your site has on other sites that have a higher PR score than your own. PR scores range from 0 which is essentially no PR, to 10, which is unheard of, off the charts PR. Google themselves have a 10, so does Adobe. Microsoft has an 8, most all sites fall below 8. If you have a PR rank of 6 or better, you are considered an "Authority site" in Google's eyes.

So, in essence, your site will rank higher in most cases, if its PR score is higher than another site that is optimized for the same keywords as your site. This is not always the case however; I've seen sites with lower PR scores outrank sites with higher PR scores for a given keyword. This is where the "Secrets to getting ranked in Google" part comes into play.

It takes a few years and many backlinks from higher PR sites than your own in order to build up your site's PR score. In most cases, you can get to a PR3 in about a year or so with a moderate amount of backlinks, but it much harder to get to PR4 than PR1-3 combined.

So, what is the secret that allows sites with lower PR scores to outrank sites with higher PR scores? The answer is on-site SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO tends to get a bad name in some circles because it denotes building sites for search engines rather than for humans, which is a definite "NO, NO" in the eyes of Google (though their WebCrawler certainly appreciates and rewards those that do).

First you need a great Title

For your site to excel at on-page SEO, you need to have a great TITLE, H1 tag and a keyword density of between 6-12% for your main keyword phrase. Do this and you can consistently outrank higher PR sites for the same searches in many niches (A niche, or even micro niche is a highly defined market and is usually identified with 3 or more keywords, "alienware gaming pcs" for example, rather than "computers")

What makes a great title?

A great title needs to match, as closely as possible, the exact keyword phrase someone is likely to type into the Google search field when you want your site to appear in the top search results. For example, if your want your site to appear at the top of Google's SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) when someone types "alienware gaming pcs", then your main page title needs to be "Alienware Gaming PCs". Another facet of a great title is something I like to call it's Tabloid factor. If you saw your title on the cover of a supermarket tabloid, would you be likely to pick up the tabloid to read it?

Next you need a great domain name

A great search engine friendly domain name will ideally contain the exact search term used when you want your site to appear in the SERPS for that phrase. In our example, your best domain name would be alienwaregamingpcs.com (it's usually best to get the .com, but .net and .org rank equally well all things being equal). If you don't believe the power of a good domain name lies in its keywords, then just do a search in Google for the term "Search". One would expect that Google itself would get top billing there, especially from its own search engine, right? Nope. Check it for yourself, the top listing (as of this writing) goes to search.yahoo.com. See the power of a keyword rich domain name now?