In this article we have featured Strategies to Take Your Domain to the Top of the SERPs, When you have a presence on the web, your ultimate goal is to get ranked as high as possible in the search engine results pages. When you look at the image below, you’ll see a common SERP (Search Engine Result Page) from Google.
- #1 is the sponsored spot that advertisers pay top dollar for.
- #2 are the organic results that are returned when a user enters a keyword or phrase.
- #3 are the Google AdWords ads that marketers use to bid on keywords for exposure to searchers.
Your goal is to not have to use the #1 and #3 paid spots – you want top ranking in the natural search engine results listings. Sometimes, depending on what term you’re targeting, the competition can be tough.
For starters, you have to cater to what Google wants. They boast that they want to provide their searchers with relevant content, not spam. So the best thing you can do is create a website, whether a regular content site or a blog, that has lots of great content centered around keywords and phrases for which you want to get indexed high.
Aside from content, you also want to make sure the design of the site is appealing to spiders and robots, like Google bots, that crawl your site. If a spider encounters a design flaw, it can affect your indexing and rank because it may block it from getting to the good content.
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Some other SEO tips are:
- Don’t use JavaScript – spiders can’t read it. Some people create links in JavaScript and then wonder why all of their pages didn’t get indexed. It’s because the spider couldn’t recognize that it was a link to follow it.
- Don’t use frames on your site. Instead of the spider easily being able to maneuver around your page, it gets blocked as if there are actually many little pages on your one page. Use tables instead, if you need to break up content.
- Use text links using your keywords. Instead of a link that says, “articles,” have it say, “dog training articles” if that’s one of the keyword phrases you’re shooting for.
- Use the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com to stay abreast of where your current PageRank is, so that you’ll know when a change you’ve made on your site helps or hurts your ranking.
- Register a top-level domain. Your site will rank higher if you create it on your own domain and hosting account rather than use a subdomain that’s just added onto someone else’s primary domain.
- Use Meta Tags in your HTML code. A title tag is 40-60 characters and is enclosed in the following code: <TITLE></TITLE>. A description tag is like this: <META NAME=“description” CONTENT=“up to 250 characters”>. Your keyword tag will appear like this: <META NAME=“keywords” CONTENT=“comma-separated list”>.
- Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead of headers or in conjunction with them to make it easy on Googlebots to get through content.
- Keep the size of your files small enough to reduce load time and give them text code so that spiders can read what they are, even though they can’t “see” them. The following code will tell the spiders that they’ve encountered a picture of a dog, helping you get indexed for that keyword: <IMG src=“dog.gif” WIDTH=“400” HEIGHT=“150” ALT=“Dog”>.
- Use a tool like the one at www.netmechanic.com to determine what design flaws you need to fix to appeal to search engines.
What Types of SERP Results Are There?
There are two types of results on a Google SERP or any other search engine results page: organic and paid.
Paid SERPs
Websites can use Google AdWords to appear at the top of the SERPs for specific keywords, and they pay Google every time someone clicks on their ad. The words “Ad” are boldly placed next to the URL in these results, which appear at the top and bottom of the SERP.
These ads can play a critical role in driving targeted visitors to your website, as seen by their prominence at the top of the SERP, and paid advertising campaigns are usually implemented in conjunction with search engine optimization (SEO).
Organic SERPS
The diversity of methods a site can generate organic traffic from the SERPs is demonstrated by our example search phrase “CRM software” mentioned above.
We’re all familiar with the typical organic listing, which includes a meta title and description, but Google has recently added more SERP characteristics. These elements, like the Featured Snippet and Knowledge Pack in the example, can have a big influence on organic traffic.
While sponsored ads are a quick way to the top of the results pages (the highest bidders usually win), organic results are more difficult to rank for.
What Role Does SEO Play?
The majority of an SEO’s hard work is reflected in the SERP. SEO ensures that your website appears in the search engine results pages (SERPS), receives its fair number of clicks, and that users locate what they’re looking for once they arrive at your site.
The search engine results pages (SERPs) and SEO are inextricably related. The actions you take in this section are crucial to increasing organic traffic and attaining your traffic objectives. When people hear about SEO, they typically assume it’s too difficult. However, it is a process, and following easy SEO guidelines might help you reach the top of the search results.
Small changes in SERP results have a significant impact on your traffic.
The basic goal of Google and other search engines is to offer the user with the best possible search query results. To do so, Google employs algorithms that consider hundreds of different parameters to determine the best possible search results for each individual.
Because of this amount of customization, SERPs might vary substantially. Here are some of the most important elements of the SERPs that can have a significant impact on your organic traffic.
With your content, you want to focus on making sure each page ranks well for its own keyword or phrase. Density should fall in the range of 3-5%. The tool located at: www.keyworddensity.com will tell you what your density is.
To keep rising in the SERPs, you want to freshen up your site and give Google bots new content to index n a regular basis. They start out on a 90-day crawl, but if you have new content each time they come back, the time span shortens until you could get on a daily crawl schedule.
Some people get by this freshness quota by creating a news feed for their site, automatically giving it new content on a regular basis – usually daily. You can create a feed from your own blog or use Yahoo News Feed to create a feed by subject matter.
When you’re trying to rank high in the SERPs, one thing you can do is bulk up your content. Google likes it when you have more than 10 pages, and more than 100 is even better.
Don’t add them all at once – instead, gradually build up to show Google you’re making a effort to create a valuable site and not a spam domain. If you can’t crank out content quickly, consider investing in PLR articles for your niche.
Make sure you add your domain to Google to get indexed as soon as possible – don’t wait for the spiders to find your site. Add it here: www.google.com/addurl and then check to see if they’ve indexed it.
You also want to start getting links pointing in your direction. Relevant links from sites about the same subject matter will give you more of a boost in the SERPs than links pointing your direction that are not relevant at all.
Try to get a site with a PageRank of 4 or better to add a link to your domain. You have to contact the site owner and request a link, and some will want a reciprocal link back to their own domain.
As your site rises in the ranks and you achieve a top 10 spot in the SERPs, your traffic will increase. Go after long-tail and prime keywords and phrases because the long-tail will have fewer competitors.
Next, let’s look at how you can use pay-per-click search engines to generate targeted traffic to your domain. You have to be careful, or else you’ll wind up penniless because you didn’t pay attention to your spending limits.
Quick Links:
- The Key to Using Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engines Without Losing Your Shirt
- Using Social Networking Websites to Promote Your Blog
- 11 Best Genesis Child Themes For WordPress Blogs
- How to Use Effective Meta Tags With Example
Conclusion: Strategies to Take Your Domain to the Top of the SERPs
A SERP is merely the page that consumers see after typing a query into Google or another search engine, but it has the capacity to help you realise your website’s full potential.
While it may appear difficult, there are concrete steps you can do to improve your SERP rankings and attract the organic traffic you desire. While search engine results pages (SERPs) are always changing, SEO and high-quality, relevant content can help you stay on top.
Now that you know what the SERP is, it’s time to start improving your SEO to help your website reach its objectives.
