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King + Queen = Royal Success
By Shawn Campbell
Ever wonder how or why your competitor gets better search engine
rankings than you do? Does he know something you don't? Well, maybe
he actually does…And that's where I come in. I'm here to unveil
the secret tricks of the trade that may be giving your competitor
that much-needed edge in search engine rankings and to show you
how you can reclaim your position without skipping a beat. Quite
simply, I am going to give you the key to unlocking the secret chest
of information that your competition is using to get better rankings.
It is not that difficult.
There are two main criteria to getting good rankings:
- Content (which is king)
- Linking (which is queen)
Content is King
Content is easily viewable and just as easy to measure. It basically
includes what you see on the site: the text. If your competition
has more text than you, consider increasing yours; if he has more
keywords, consider increasing yours; if he has bigger headers, consider
increasing yours. By all means, I am not saying to make a carbon
copy of his site, but do look at the "on the site" factors
that you are lacking and evaluate whether to increase them on your
site. A note of caution - make sure that any changes you make actually
improves the site and increases its value for your customers.
In other words, don't sacrifice quality for quantity unless you
believe that the added text actually serves to better the overall
look, feel and quality of your site. Some ideas to increase quality/quantity
of content: Write a monthly article about your topic Write a page
about your keyphrase/product/service If your headers don't have
your keyphrase in them, then be sure to add it Make sure the titles
on all your pages relate to the content of the page Write, write,
write (and then write some more!).
Linking is Queen
Linking requires more research. Look up your competitions site
on Google by typing in:
link: http://www.competitorsdomain.com/ into the search box (replace
competitorsdomain with the URL of your competitor). Now the search
results you will be looking at is a list of all the sites that are
linking to your competitor. Go through that list, and for each site,
figure out how he got that link. Some links might be paid for, some
might be link exchanges, some might be directories like dmoz.org
or Yahoo, and others might be references or testimonials. Make a
spreadsheet with each site linking to your competition, and jot
down how he got the link. Then, for each site that is appropriate,
get it to link to you.
Remember to stay away from link farms and low quality links. Link
farms are sites that have nothing but links. Low quality links are
sites with little to no content. These sites will often try to exchange
links with you: Don't do it! Only link to a site if it will enhance
the user experience of your clients. For more about linking, see
my article entitled Linking is Queen (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/promotion/0409.html#feature)
Royal Success Getting links takes time and patience, and writing
is not usually done overnight. To top it off, once these projects
are done, you then have to wait for the search engines to discover
and re-evaluate your site. Both the link campaign and the writing
projects should be something done on a regular basis, not as a one-shot
injection. Try to create new pages every month, and to get some
links every month. That way your site will make the gradual climb
to the top. And who doesn't want that?
Shawn Campbell Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the
ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion,
Inc. (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/).
He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve
more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn
is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization
field.
Contact: shawn@redcarpetweb.com
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