Can page one be done?

MoreVisibility - September 5, 2007

If I had a nickel for every time a client told me that they wanted to show up on page one in the natural section of the major search engines, I would be rich! The truth of the matter is that it can be done, although it takes patience and effort. Not unlike most, patience has never been one of my best attributes! It is all about instant gratification in today’s day and world…we all want to see immediate results. Unfortunately, Natural Search does not work that way. Anyone who guarantees first page positions in Google is not being honest. There is no magic formula or a quick fix to achieve first page, natural results. That being said, if you play by the rules to get your site in better shape from an organic perspective, you will see positive results. All you need is a little patience!

The following are a few suggestions that you can implement to improve your site organically in the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Again, this will not immediately get you first page positions—that will take time—but it will help get you there sooner!

Blog…

Wikipedia defines a blog as a website where entries are written in chronological order, and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs have fresh and regular content on them, which engines love when crawling. The Blog can either be placed on your website or hosted offsite by the blog software host. It is preferred that the blog be placed within your domain to achieve the best results possible. A business oriented blog is often a blend of what is happening in a company and also within the industry that it operates. Publishing this type of content has benefits from both marketing and branding standpoints. One benefit is the opportunity to gain increased traffic and consequently site visitors through individuals who sign up to receive the blog, as well as through valuable distribution channels (such as My Yahoo! ).

Link Building…

This has become a more important part of any site’s SEO strategy. Though it should be a very gradual process, building qualified and relevant inbound links can help your natural progress in the engines. When requesting a link from another site to your own, there are a few scenarios you may encounter. Some sites will allow you to simply submit your URL while other sites require a purchase or registration fee. These sites are most often verticals in particular industries, or directories that have categories that fit the services that your company provides. Paying for a text link from another site to your own is within the scope of best practices when that other site is a relevant, credible site.

Sitemaps…

Every website should include an HTML sitemap, as well as Google and Yahoo Sitemaps. By adding engine-specific Sitemap files, you are allowing your website to be crawled faster, help pages be indexed faster, and help to identify bad links or page errors throughout your site. You want to make is as easy as possible for the engines to crawl your site, and these sitemaps are another tool that should be utilized.

There are a number of other optimization strategies that our SEO Team suggests to get any site better optimized for natural search, however, the above suggestions are a good place to start!