The Truth About SEO: Can't Buy Google's Love

DIY Sprocket Solutions

So you wanna be at the top of the search engines you say?  How much is it going to cost you, you ask?  Nothing. Nada. Zip.  Google’s love is not for sale folks.  You’re going to have to wine and dine her; you’re going to have to work for it a bit.  So, if you can’t buy a higher ranking, how does it work then?  And what, exactly, do you have to do to make it to the top?

Well first, let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about. When someone goes to a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. and enters in keywords (EX: Long Beach Chinese Restaurants) results are then returned.

These organic results are those that Google has handpicked for you. Google has determined that these pages are the best fit for the keywords you entered. They base this decision on the content of the pages alone. The results that come up on the first page of organic results did not pay a cent. Even if they would have liked to buy their way to the top –it is impossible to pay Google to have high organic search rankings likes this.

On the other side of the coin, you have paid search results. These results are from Google’s paid search program, AdWords. AdWords is what’s called a Pay-Per-Click program (PPC). This is a program where website owners create their own ads and pay whenever another user clicks on the ads. The website owners have placed a monetary bid to have their ads shown when a specific search term is typed into Google. It’s not magic, however, and it’s not as simple as just “buying your way to the top”. Several factors determine which ads they will choose for placement and position. Basically, if you choose to pay for search results, you are choosing to pay to have an ad displayed alongside the free organic, or “real”, search results.

So, now you know the differences. The real question is, how do you improve your free organic ranking? Well, there are a few quick solutions to boost you up a bit.

• Find out what people are searching for.  Hard to improve your search results for keywords if you don’t know what those keywords are. How are people finding you? What terms are they using? Choose your Meta Keywords on your website carefully.
• Great, you’ve got your terms. Now, are they listed on your website? Include them in your content. When Google is scanning for Chinese places in Long Beach and you haven’t written Long Beach or Chinese restaurant into any of your content; why would they send customers your way?
• Get some fresh content on your website (relevant to your keywords). Keep your content updated and changing. You don’t want Google trapped in a cobweb when they're peeking in to check on how relevant you are to what people are searching for. Change something, add something, update something.
• Take a look at your competition. They wouldn’t be your competition if they weren’t doing something right.
• Don’t post duplicate content on your site page after page.

Google is smarter than you think… I’ve gotten you started; get out there and improve your rankings.

Breanne BannonBreanne Bannon

Breanne is a Content Writer, Social Media Marketeer, and Sales Associate for Sprocket Websites.

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