6 Step Guide to Improving Existing Rankings in Google

You know the scenario. You get an occasional click from Google for a certain keyword. You go to find out why you aren’t getting more clicks, and you find out that you’re ranked in the 30's, 50's, or heaven forbid, the 300's. “Great”, you think, “I finally get ranked for a good keyword and it’s a worthless ranking”.

Not necessarily.

If you got ranked for a keyword you wanted At All, the game’s not over yet. If your site’s content is geared towards that subject, you can get your ranking in search engines increased, at no cost. How?

The first thing you want to do is find out how well you are ranked for this keyword. For Google in particular, this used to be a difficult chore. In the old days of 2003, you’d spend your valuable time doing a search on your desired keyword, then a sub-search for your site, and crawling through pages of listings to find out exactly where you stood.

Now there is hope in the form of the following website. Direct your browser to:

http://www.googlerankings.com/index.php

You can use this site to find out what number you come up for in the Google listings, which can be very powerful information if used correctly. If you’re ranked in the top 1000, you have a shot at raising your listing for that page by tweaking the page to be a little more relevant.

So, secondly, you have to know how good a shot you have at getting a better listing. Go to:

http://www.searchguild.com/difficulty/

I posted a tip about this a month ago, and it’s also in the free beginner optimization guide I released the week of March 7th. It tells you how hard it is to rank well for certain keywords in Google. You’ll need a free Google API key to use it. You can get it here:

http://api.google.com/createkey

Now that you know your chances, the third piece of information you need to know is how much traffic you can expect. Digital Point has a free tool that gives an approximation of how many hits per day a good ranking gets. Access it here:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Okay, let’s say everything checks out so far. You rank in the top 1000. The term you want won’t be that hard to get, and will get you enough traffic per month to justify your efforts.

Our fifth step is to take the term you chose and optimize your page.

This site does periodic reports on the search engines, and their February report gives their analysis of what the best ranking pages in Google have in common. And as a free bonus, it will also tell you what Yahoo wants. Follow the following link for details:

http://www.gorank.com

Now that you know what to shoot for, you also need to know how the page you want will measure up- you need to calculate your keyword density. You can also do the sixth step at gorank.com - it has a free tool that will calculate it for you. Prepare your page with that in mind, re-upload, and you’re almost done.

Great, you’re all set. Now you should submit your site to Google, right?

Wrong. Absolutely not. If you can help it, you should never, ever submit any page of your site to Google. Let it find you. HOW it finds you can affect your page rank. I don’t mean that there is a standard penalty for submitting. There’s been speculation on that for a while but I have yet to prove it matters.

What I DO know from personal experience and testing on my member’s sites, is that getting the Googlebot search engine spider to happen upon your site through a link also shaves up to 6 weeks off the standard time it takes for indexing. You can show up in Google in as little as 4 days.

Which site links to you can also affect your Google Page Rank. While this is not as important as it once was, it still carries significant weight- my main didn’t start getting spidered on a daily basis until my Page Rankincreased to 5.

So even if the spider comes to your site on a Monthly basis, you’re better off waiting for the spider to come back by. That’s the seventh step, let your page be re-discovered with it’s great new changes.

And yes, there’s an even faster, better way to get Google.com’s search engine spider to re-index that page, but that’s another article, isn’t it?

Updated daily
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Your Business with Google For Dummies' (June 14, 2004)
This should help you if you're brand new to search engine optimization.

The Search Engine Ranking Your Website Deserves: : META Tags Yield To Google's PageRank As Search Engine Standard' (March 17, 2003)
A good newbie guide. If you're not new to this you probably don't need this book but for $7, even if one of the ideas gives you some insight it would be well worth the time spent.

Results with Google AdWords' (November 9, 2004)
If you are going to be using Google to boost your search results you ought to find out as much about AdWords as you can.

Engine Advertising : Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (Voices That Matter)' (February 24, 2004)
Here's a book about buying yourself the traffic you want that is already on the market.

Engine Optimization for Dummies' (April 12, 2004)
Popular and rightly so. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, this can save you hours of time.

Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools' (February 1, 2003)
If you're brand new to using Google period.

Building Your Business with Google For Dummies' (June 14, 2004)
In ebook or paperback. Some of these tips can be applied to sites other than Google.

How to Do Everything with Google'(November 21, 2003)
Written after the "Florida update" - good tips for the intermediate site owner.

'How to Use Google : The 30 Most Important Tips, Hacks and Tricks' (May 10, 2003)
Slightly out-dated, but still an essential tool for a Googlers library.

'Search Engine Visibility' (December 30, 2002)
A Wee Bit Outdated, but still a good reference guide.