In life you normally expect to get a guaranteed service for an agreed price, unfortunately is not as simple as that. So for this newsletter I want to give some reasons why no one can promise a number one spot, even though number one is the goal you are constantly aiming for.
In a nutshell the answer is this:
There Are Too Many Un-controllables
Here Are 2 Examples Of Things That I And No One Else Has Control Of:
1/ You Are Playing In An Ever-Changing Playing Field. Nothing Stays Still.
It is not just what you do to your website, but what others are doing to theirs. As you are constantly trying to improve your results, so are all the others around you.
Even those who you have a relationship with and link to you, can affect your rankings. If they change theirs, say by adding different content or doing something wrong, it can affect the link value back to yours and affect your rankings also. Many of my sites have thousands of links from hundreds of others linking to me. If any of these change what they are doing, this could affect my rankings.
2/ We Have No Control Over Algorithms
An algorithm is just an equation that calculates where certain websites should rank for certain terms and is different for every search engine. No one knows exactly what the algorithms are, but we can have an educated guess of many of the factors through trial and error. These algorithms can be and are changed in a heartbeat, if Google decides it wants to refine its results. There are no warnings; there is no notice of change, we have no control, we do not even have a legal right to be included in their rankings at all should we complain.
Engines change these algorithms to suit the millions of pages of information added everyday and to combat spamming techniques and improve results. Again this may not have a direct affect on your website, but it may affect those linking to you which may have an indirect affect, losing you rankings. (Or improving).
The good news is that the opposite is also true, for every website that loses ranking another must improve. So at every algorithm change there are losers and winners, but I would never guarantee which is which beforehand. What I do know is this. Quick win tactics never last through change. Only clean quality techniques have the best chance of surviving change or improving though change.
There are many more examples but too much to write in one newsletter. Just remember this, if you want a guaranteed natural result on Google then you must first own it
So if anyone guarantees you a top place then ask him or her. “Do YOU own Google?” and if the answer is no, you know what to do.
Some Advice To Get You Going.
It is not about optimisation for you trading name (unless it is a popular brand name), it is about optimising for the terms that your potential customers are looking for. Before I even start making a website I research these to ensure my page names are named after them.
Knowing what enquiries are the most popular and ensuring your pages (notice I said pages not just the homepage) will give you the most traffic. Make sure they are optimised by writing unique quality content on that subject including those keywords within this content, this will give you the best start. Never copy and paste anything.
You should only write content on one page for a maximum of 3 terms, 2 is better and 1 is ideal.
So if you have 30 terms that you know will bring in traffic, you need at least 10 pages (3 each) but ideally 30 pages of content, i.e. 1 page of content per term.
Big Mistakes
You can see from the above that not many 6-page websites will now ever deliver a high amount of traffic for competitive keywords, yet most new ones consist of just that, 6 pages. For example: 1, home page, 2, about us page, 3, services or products page, 4, contact page, 5, privacy page and 6, sitemap.
So if this examle has 30 terms it wants to be high for, then it should have ideally 36 pages. The more keywords you learn and the more pages you write the more unique doorways you have to let your customers in. It is a bit like having several shops down a high street rather than just one all belonging to the same company.
Every day I see professionals asking for quotes for 6 page websites. Unless they have a separate budget that will send visitors through other channels, they are wasting their money. Why have a website if it is never seen? What I find worse is so called professionals advising a client that is all they need. Of course there are always the clients who even after good professional advice will opt for a cheap option rather than the one that will give a return on their investment. A website is not just a colour brochure. It is a silent promotion machine that will deliver you customers and more profits if done correctly, but a waste of money if not.
How Do I Find My Terms?
You can buy software to find these terms, (do a search on Google, no advertising products here) but you can also get a few free terms a day from wordtracker.com. You would multiply this figure by around 10 to get the full amount of enquiries over all the internet.
That’s it for now.
