WARNING: please be advised that this is just advice based on information available right now. SEO is a moving target and things change rapidly in this industry. I will try to keep this guide updated as best as possible but there may be information that is out of date. Act accordingly.

This is a long guide. If you are really interested in learning how to rank in the first place or page of Google, go grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the read.

As I mentioned, this post stemmed from a question that a new client had asked me not too long ago. I always keep my clients close when I work, teaching them as much as their are willing to learn and telling them the rest so they can at least follow along and stay in the know. However, this was the first time that a client has ever asked me how to be number one on Google.

This business was actually interested in learning SEO. I started to write a quick email that an hour later turned into thousands of words. Instead of simply hitting the send button, I thought I would share it here, for anyone else wondering how to be number one on Google (or even to break onto the first page).

Choose the right keywords

I stress this over and over again when starting any project. The keywords you choose in the beginning will lay the foundation for the entire SEO initiative. Make sure you do proper keyword research to identify what your potential customers are searching for online and how they are finding your products and services. Knowing whether or not a certain set of keywords will convert into paying customers can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

For example, if you are a local real estate agent serving a specific city (lets assume Halifax), then although your website would get a lot of traffic if you ranked on the first page of Google for the term, “real estate,” it would be very time-consuming and expensive process to get that rank, AND that traffic would not convert nearly as well as a keyword such as “Halifax real estate agent(s).” The latter is also much easier to rank for.

Produce awesome content

The term content is king simply won’t die. That’s because no matter what changes occur in the search engine optimization world, the statement always remains true. Great content will drive traffic to your site, brand you as an expert and leader, and build a community of customers, potential customers, and fans. Give Google a reason to rank your website number one by providing the best content that solves the searchers query, and give your visitor a reason to return and link back.

How do you create and generate excellent content on an ongoing basis? Good question. The short answer is blog. Blog posts and articles are an excellent way to generate new content for a website. It is also very important to describe and write about your products and services rather than simply listing them. Tell your audience about them and why they are so great. Convince them with content. Be creative.

Content doesn’t have to stop at the written word either. Think about doing some product demo videos, or tutorial videos for your products and services, or speak to your audience via pod casts and videos every now and then. Not only will this help create a better community and put a face to your website, it will attract a lot more attention from the search engines.

On-site Optimization

On-site optimization simply refers to the things that a webmaster or website owner can control on their website. It includes a variety of aspects such as programming, page hierarchy, meta information, and much more. Here are some of the things you can do right away that will increase your chances of ranking in the first place on Google:

Page Titles

The title of your page should tell a searcher (and the search engine) what the page is about. Far too often business websites simply have the name of their business as the title for every page. This doesn’t help the searcher looking through the results the same as it doesn’t help Google rank the page properly.

Make sure that you put in a proper title (ideally one that includes the keyword or term you are trying to rank it for) in between the “< title >” “< / title >” tags. This is what typically will show up as the title when a searcher sees this page in the search engines.

Meta-descriptions

Meta descriptions are also very important for ranking on the first page of Google for your particular keywords. This is a part of the meta data that should be unique for every page. Instead of using a text-book business description for every page (which again, far too many businesses do) write a short summary of what the page is about, naturally including your keywords and terms you are looking to rank for.

The meta-description is the block of text that gets displayed in the search results under the title of your website. The great thing about this, is that you can also optimize it and test it for click through. If your website is ranked #1 for a particular term and you are getting less traffic than you had originally thought, it could be because the #2 and/or #3 ranked sites have very compelling meta-descriptions that are making searchers skip your site and click through to theirs. Consider making yours more appealing.

While we’re on the topic of meta-data. Meta-keywords are dead and here’s why. Don’t let an SEO tell you that the key to ranking is in the meta-keywords tag. They are stuck in the 90s.

Permalink structure

A permalink is the exact URL of a page. The permalink of this page for example is “http://www.batemedia.com/how-to-be-number-one-on-google/.” It is important to pay attention to what your permalinks are showing for a couple reasons. Many content management systems have ugly default settings, such as www.domain.com/?pageid=4 – this tells nothing to the visitor about what this page is about, nor is it any help to search engines.

If you run WordPress, you can change your permalink structure under “Settings” > “Permalinks.” I like to include the keyword in the permalink if at all possible, but it is not the end of the world if it can’t be in there. Just make sure it is something that makes sense to both the user and the search engines.

Internal linking

I touched on internal linking and the one small change you can make to increase your Google ranking in this post here. Along with optimizing your logo alt tag, it talks about the importance of internal links.

Linking between pages in the body of the content is especially important for pages that do not appear on your site-wide navigation (such as most blog posts). It is a great way to make sure search engines are realizing the importance of these posts and that visitors have a chance to find them.

Keyword placement in content

Although this sounds pretty straight forward, it can be quite difficult to get right and everyone has a different opinion on it. How many times should the keyword occur? How many times is too many? Should it be bolded? etc. Make sure that the keyword appears naturally in your copy – trying to force the keyword into the page is obvious and awkward.

An old industry standard is no more than 2% keyword to content ratio. Personally, I think as long as it’s in the title, and appears naturally in the copy then you’re fine. That said, it is important to have your keyword within the text – after all, you are optimizing this page for this particular keyword because it is supposed to be directly related.

Domain and Page Authority

This is a hard one for most people to wrap their heads around. Although Google ranks pages, not domains, the authority of the root level domain is an important factor for rankings pages within it. There are two major types of authority when it comes to SEO – link authority and social authority. Link authority is essentially how many links your domain receives and where those links come from (the higher the authority of the sites linking to you the better).

Page Rank is a good indication of the level of authority your domain has. That said, page rank itself isn’t an indication of whether or not your website can rank for a particular keyword. Page rank is the link algorithm that Google designed (also named after Google founder Larry Page) to assign a numerical weight to interlinked sites (read: the entire Internet).

In a nut shell, the more links your website receives the better it typically is at ranking content, as Google has a bit more trust for the site.

Social Authority and Social Proof

The second type of authority I mentioned above was social authority. This is something fairly new that is still receiving some debate and testing. Essentially, with social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and more importantly, Google+ (more importantly for ranking within Google anyway, in my opinion), you can identify websites that you own and operate. Google can also crawl these social networks to find out how many followers or fans you have, or how many circles you are in.

It’s this social authority that can essentially be lent to websites to help them rank. Adding them to your G+ profile (with the rel=”me”) and adding a rel=”author” from within the site is a great way to boost your website with your social credibility. I will touch on this in a lot more detail in another post as I think it is going to be increasingly important in the future.

Social proof is a little different in that it is more the measure of how often or how many times a particular piece of content gets shared, etc. If you have an awesome piece of content on your website that has thousands of Facebook likes, tweets, and +1s then Google will realize it is probably an important piece of content.

Inbound links & anchor text

I touched on the importance of inbound links when dealing with domain authority, however it is important to recognize that each article, blog post, or page within your website can also receive links. These links will also help each page rank for the terms they are optimized for.

Another important thing to know is that the anchor text of the link – or the text within the “< a >” “< /a >” tags is what Google associates with the linked-to website. So if someone links to your website about field hockey with the term “field hockey”, that’s much more beneficial than using the term “click here” or “this website.”

Note: there are a lot of interesting things going on with anchor text. Google recently made some fairly large changes to how it handles anchor text interpretation in March, 2012, which included an over-optimization anchor text penalty, and the weight of importance of surrounding text to the link.

Bottom line, try to get well anchored links, but if you are building your own links in high volume, make sure to vary the anchor text – a lot more than what was previously recommended – as it is very unnatural that 80%+ of a website’s links come in the form of “field hockey,” for example.

Common sense, hard work, and a lot of testing

Common sense plays a large role in learning how to be number one on Google. Do not spam your website – neither by stuffing keywords or by building spamming back links, and do not violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Things like this will all come back to haunt you later. Search engine optimization takes a lot of hard work. Things will not always work out the way we wanted them to. You need to be able to understand why, isolate what is working and what is not, and fix the ones that are not.

So again, there is no secret as to how to be number one on Google, but hopefully these things can get you started in the right direction.

Thoughts or opinions? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

This is an increasingly popular topic in the local business SEO industry. For many local search terms, Google will display 7 local results above the regular 10 organic results. This is what is referred to as the Google Maps A to G listing. I have included a screen shot of this that you can see.

Being included in this listing is equally if not more important as having high organic results for local keywords. The reason for this is because it is displayed about the organic results in most cases. If you are wondering how to get your business on Google Maps, you’ll first need to make sure you exist within the system.

How to add your business and website to Google Maps

Adding your business website to Google Maps is as simple as creating a Google Places listing. This process can take up to a couple weeks so I suggest you do it sooner than later when launching a new website or business. The reason for the delay is because Google will send you a PIN that you will need to enter to verify your business and address.

Once you have created the Google Places account and completed the verification process, your website will start appearing in Google Maps. However, it doesn’t end here. There are ways that you can increase your changes of being listed in the A to G listings.

Optimizing your Google Maps and Google Places listing

When it comes to Google Places SEO there are a few things that really help boost your ranking in the A to G listing. Most of these things can be done quite quickly on your own and will help with whatever local SEO initiative you are running.

Get links from local business directories

The more Google associates your website with the specific town or city that you compete in, the more likely you are to show up in the local business listings. One of the great ways to do this is to get listings from local business directories, such as a city listing of businesses or the local chamber of commerce directory.

Cite your address on other websites

Wherever possible, include your address when you link back to your website. For example if the local directories allow you to include a description, be sure to add you address as well. This way Google will associate your business and website with the address and you are more likely to be shown on the A to G list. You don’t need to use the address as the anchor text, just try to include it wherever possible if it looks natural.

Promote your Google Places page on your website to get reviews

Have a link to your Google Places page on your website. You should be able to find the URL in your Google Places account – it will be in the following format: http://maps.google.ca/maps/place?cid=#########. It is also very beneficial to encourage customers and visitors to leave their reviews of your business on your page.

Follow good organic SEO practices for your website

The higher your website ranks in the organic search results for local keywords, the more likely your site will be included in the Google Maps list. Promote your website to get back links and make sure your on page content is optimized well and the listings will follow.

As always, remember to be patient. Good things don’t happen over night.

Identify The Best Keywords

Doing proper keyword research and identifying the best performing keywords is extremely important when it comes to local search engine optimization. Both companies and consultants can waste a lot of time if this step is taken care of before any work is started.

I have a video outlining the best way to identify keywords for local businesses. Follow these steps to make sure you are starting at the right spot.

Get Your Website on The Map

The local search engine maps, that is. Both Google and Bing-powered search engines have a local Maps listing with most of their local keyword results. The starting point for this is to get listed on Google Maps by creating a Google Places account. This will take a couple weeks since you will need to wait for a verification PIN to be sent via snail mail, so the sooner you start on this the better.

Getting on the list can often be more valuable than having a number one spot on Google. These are the coveted “A to G” where Google returns 6 Maps results. The reason these are so sought after is because they are not necessarily the top ranked results for the organic search, but they are displayed above the rest of the results. This means your website and business has a chance to getting a top ranked Google Map result in addition to your organic result, which will double your exposure on the first page.

Research Your Competition

One of the main reasons why local seo services are typically less expensive than if you were competing for a global keyword is that local search terms are are typically – although not always – less competitive than their root keyword. If less people in your market are using local search engine optimization techniques, your hard work will have a quicker and greater return.

The best place to start is by seeing who has the top results in the search engines. Once you know who is ranking, take some time and use free tools to check where they are getting their links and promoting their site. Is there a local business directory site that is proving most of their value? Get your site listed as well. Many local links can be duplicated relatively easy and then you can typically outrank most sites with a little extra hard work.

Track Your Results

It’s important to know where you started with your local seo service as far as rankings and traffic goes. Make sure you have Google Analytics and Google Web Master Tools. These are two excellent free tools for tracking your traffic and rankings.

Test and Optimize Your Conversions

An increase in targeted traffic is only good if you convert that traffic into value for your business. Most of the time this is done through converting the traffic into leads and sales. Test your site’s layout and call to actions to see what works the best to get your visitors to stick around. This is one of the most important steps in local SEO that is often overlooked.

When it comes to local traffic, it is very important that it is easy for them to contact you – have your phone number easily accessible on the website and make sure it’s easy for them to connect with you if need be. One of the things I noticed that really works is to add a live chat option to your website so you have the chance to connect with visitors in real time while they browse your site.

Why is keyword research important?

The major reason to do proper keyword research while you are building or optimizing a website is so you learn how your customers are searching for your products and services online. You can stop the guess work and learn the exact keywords they are using to find you – they may be different than you thought. Having this information allows you to better tailor your content to attract these searchers without having to pay for them.

Using the Google Keyword Tool

There are a lot of paid keyword research tools out there that do an excellent job at finding you excellent keywords. For the sake of this lesson, I wanted to assume that most local businesses wanted to operate on an extremely tight budget when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (read: no budget).

The best place to start your keyword research is with the Google Keyword Tool. This tool gives you a variety of information on keywords such as global and local search volumes and the cost to advertisers.

Using the GKT isn’t that difficult, but I have made a quick 4-5 minute video to help you better understand what to look for and how we use it to determine the best keywords for our clients. This video is the same process we use to start any keyword research.

Note: click the expand button on the bottom right to get the video in a larger screen.

How many keywords should I target?

This really depends on how much content your website has, how many pages and articles you may be creating, and much more. To keep things simple, we recommend 2 core keywords for your main home page. Most of the time, these are city keyword and keyword city (eg. Halifax web design and web design halifax).

For your product and service pages, you may want to target a service-specific or product-specific keyword such as buy keyword in city or just buy keyword (eg. buy fishing rod in Halifax).

Every blog post you write on your website, should also be somewhat targeted toward a keyword. Even if that keyword only has a dozen or so searches per month, it is beneficial to capture those visitors with your blog post and have the opportunity to convert them with your website. Without proper keyword research, they wouldn’t have found your site in the first place.

Need some help?

Our Web design service includes basic on-site SEO. If you’re looking for a hand doing some competitive and keyword research, or with anything else Internet marketing related, send us an email and we’ll be happy to help.

So what’s the tip?

Simply use an alt tag for the image you are using as a logo in your header.

Sounds simple enough, but lets look at why this is important:

Internal links are extremely valuable

Good site structure and proper internal linking can be the difference between a first page ranking and a first place ranking. For many websites, every page is linked to from every page from within the site navigation. However, for websites that target keywords with deep pages or blog posts that may not get links from the main navigation, it’s important that you work in links to these posts from other pages and posts on your site.

For example, on this site, I have a post about Google Places SEO, or optimizing your website to rank in the A to G listings within Google for local keyword searches. Once this post gets pushes off my front page, it won’t have a direct link from my homepage. So what I should do is make sure I work in some links to the post whenever I mention Google Places SEO.

It’s important to remember that Google ranks web pages not websites. Nicely anchored links from other pages on your domain are just as valuable as links from outside your domain.

Only the first link to a specific URL counts from any one page

This might sound a bit confusing so I’ll use an example.

You’ll notice that I linked to that blog post about Google Places SEO above. That link will pass Pagerank and anchor text and will tell Google that essentially, that page is about “Google Places SEO.” However, many people think that if you send another link to the same page that it will send double the link juice and value. This is wrong. Stop wasting your time.

If I were to send this link to the same page, Google won’t care. The first link is what matters – especially when it comes to anchor text.

It’s not going to hurt you if you have multiple links going to the same URL, but you must remember that anchor text only passes through the first link.

Optimizing the alt tag in your logo

Now that we know that internal links are important and that the first link is what matters, we can quickly see why optimizing the logo’s alt tag is important. Your logo is usually the first link on every page that points to your homepage.

The alt tag acts as the anchor text when linking with an image. This means that you are likely sending dozens or even hundreds of high quality links to your homepage from within your website without using optimized anchor text. Even if you have another optimized link to your homepage in your navigation bar or sidebar it won’t matter because your first link has no anchor text or alt tag.

Follow this one simple tip and I guarantee an increase in rankings. This is what pushed my business website to the first page in Google Canada for the term Internet marketing.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

Quick history of the meta-keywords tag

Meta tags are bits of metadata that describe your website. There are a number of tags, the more popular being the meta-keywords and the meta-description tags. The meta-keywords tag was made popular in 1995 when the search engines AltaVista and InfoSeek encouraged webmasters to use it. There was a best practice behind it – it was meant to tell search engines the keywords that each page was suppose to be about. It was used extremely aggressively by SEOs back in the 90s and even early 2000s as a primary way to try to rank websites. SEO back then had a huge emphasis on this tag.

Around 1998, when new search engines (including Google) came to the market the meta-keywords tag started to fizzle out. This is because Google did not support the meta-keywords tag. That is, they knew webmasters used keyword stuffing (see image below) in the meta-keywords tag and therefore didn’t use it as a ranking signal. Many people placed irrelevant keywords, or even competitors’ brands, over and over in the meta tag to try to increase their rank – especially back when link analysis wasn’t very popular. Sounds great, but why do I recommend not using them?

Why you should not use the meta-keywords tag

Google does not support them. This has been stated over and over again yet I know many people (and even huge companies like Web.com) that offer SEO services that promote the use of meta-keywords as a way to increase rankings. This frustrates me because it’s just ignorant. Here is a blog post from 2009 where Matt Cutts discusses Google’s view on the meta-keywords tag. There have been even more since then.

Bing uses meta-keywords tags as a spam signal. I suspect they have found a correlation between spammy websites and the use of meta-keywords. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land touched on this in this blog post back in October 2011. It stemmed from the fact that Bing announced that they do use meta-keywords tag information as a ranking signal back in summer of 2011, which caused some commotion in the SEO world. Turns out they use them as signals – but mainly as spam signals.

They give away your keywords to competitors. This might not matter to a lot of people, and frankly it doesn’t matter much to me either, but I know some SEOs that would sacrifice their loved ones before giving away low competition and high volume keywords. There are gems of keywords in any industry or niche that good keyword research will find that are much easier to rank for with decent search volume. You could get away without any competition on these terms if you’re careful enough, but if you decide to list them in your meta-keywords tag you’re simply giving them away to competitors.

A good example of this is a website I run, Cash for Gold Headquarters. I compete on the main higher-volume keywords in the industry – cash for gold, sell gold, selling gold, etc. most of which after a few months I rank in the top three. However, I found a nice keyword – where to sell gold – that had a decent volume and that none of the other main competitors were targeting. I had first place rankings within a month for that keyword and an easy extra 6-10 visits per day from it. These are the types of keywords you risk giving away if you list them in a meta-keywords tag (or I suppose if you blog about them on your personal blog).

If you’re still stubborn, use them right

It’s not the end of the world if you use the meta-keywords tag. There are a lot of WordPress SEO plugins that will add this meta tag based on the categories or tags of your posts for example. A few relevant keywords isn’t necessarily going to make or break anything – just make sure that you are not trying to abuse the tag as there may be some issues with Bing from it.

Here’s what I mean by an obvious spammed and keyword-stuffed meta-keywords tag:

Don’t do this. Don’t think it’s okay. Don’t tell others it’s okay. Don’t think that this is what SEOs do. This is an extreme example, obviously, but people get carried away when they think that the meta-keywords tag will help their rankings.

Hopefully this helped shed some light on the use of meta-keywords. Have any meta-keywords horror stories? I’d love to hear them.