How To Get To Number 1 In Google - SEO

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, but I have been an avid reader of the likes of SEOmoz.Org, SEObook.com etc for the last 18 months. Also through my “day job” I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with a couple of UK’s best SEO agencies. On a scale of 1-10, I would give myself a five out of ten. So when a friend asked for some help to improve the search engine ranking of a well known brand name I was more than happy to help, for a reasonable fee of course. Orignially i was asked to look at the Promotional Code website, but then it was decided to work on Aerobed.co.uk

The results

I know you don’t want to waste your time reading hundreds of words only to find out that I only achieved position 157 on Google, so before we go any further I wanted to show you the results I have achieved, using the strategy I will explain below:

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As you can see when I first started work on Aerobed.co.uk in September 2006 they weren’t in the top fifty for 90% of their top twenty keywords. Since then I’ve managed to get them into Google’s top ten for 80% of the keywords but even more impressive is the fact that 45% of the top twenty keywords are now in 1st place on Google. What to know how I did it?

The Brief

My friend at Aerobed had very little SEO experience so to start off with I gave him a lot of free advice on SEO, what sites to read up on and which forums were a good source of information. To give him a good grounding I suggested that he read http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization.

I gave him a fair bit of advice about on-site optimisation which he under took himself. Below is the advice I gave him regarding keyword research and on-page optimisation.

Keyword selection

I explained that it was vital to identify the most popular keyword phrases and then to evaluate whether he has have a reasonable chance of achieving a top ten position on Google, if not move onto the next most popular keyword.

1. Make a list of keywords phrases and the number of times they have been searched for using SEOBook’s Keyword Tool.

2. Put these in descending order, most important at the top.

3. Then research each keyword on Google, you are looking for the number of competing sites using the keyword in the title (use command allintitle:) and the number of backlinks each site has. This will give you indication on how difficult it would be to obtain a top 10 position.

4. If you think you can compete on the term keep it, if not delete and move onto the next most searched for term.

5. This should give you a list of top keywords you should target. I suggested he should have a target list of about 20-40 top keyword phrases.

On-page optimisation

This was undertaken internally, I just give some top-line instructions even though they did always follow my instructions:1) Add a keyword rich title tag to every page - The title tag is the single most important element on a webpage from a search engine’s point of view. Here are some vital tips for that perfect title tag:

a. Make each title tag unique
b. Target no more than three phrases per title
c. Separate each phrase with a hyphen “-“ or pipe “|”
d. The shorter the title tag the more “weight” each word will receive
e. Only include “keywords”, try not to using words like; the, and, their, etc.
f. Try to keep the title tag shorter than 63 characters (including spaces) to get the best results.
g. Put your main target phrase at the beginning of the title tag, ensuring maximum exposure.

2) Add well written and motivating Meta Descriptions – I said that Google gives very little weight to the contents of the Meta description, so don’t write it for Google, write it for humans.

3) Add Meta Keywords – Again not given much important by search engines, because they have been abused in the past. However, they do no harm and can be used for adding misspellings, etc. But keep them short, no more than 5 words.
Link building Strategy

When I started work on Aerobed they only had a handful of links, so I had some serious link building to do. After looking at their competitor’s backlinks using a link command on yahoo “linkdomain:www.domain.com –site:www.domain.com”, I set a target of 2,000 backlinks. Here is the 6 point plan I adopted:

1. Link mining following by 300 email requests – This was fairly straightforward, I simply looked at the backlinks of their top 15 competitors. Then email any suitable websites with personalised email, which either suggested Aerobed.co.uk as a suitable site for their resources page, or offered a small payment for a link. Below is a sample email:

Hi XXXX,

I hope you are well.

I stumbled upon your site today and would like to say that I found the link section very helpful.

I do have a suggestion for your link section. Aerobed probably make the best inflatable beds around. I brought one recently and can’t believe how good they are. Airbeds are so much better than used to be, plus it inflates in about 2 mins, with no blowing.

The site is www.aerobed.co.uk check it out.

Thank you for your time,

Julian.

2. Submission to 17 quality “paid for” directories – I got the list of the best web directories from here: http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html I then hand pick 17 of the best and most suitable directories.

dir.yahoo.com/
www.stpt.com/directory/
www.joeant.com/
www.ezilon.com/
www.botw.org/
www.elib.org/
directory.v7n.com/
www.rlrouse.com/
www.uncoverthenet.com/
www.abilogic.com/
www.sunsteam.com/
www.alivedirectory.com/
www.site-sift.com/
www.wowdirectory.com/
www.socengine.com/
www.octopedia.com/
www.massivelinks.com/

3. Submission to 350 free directories – I hand picked 350 directory from the list of about 480 from over at http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php

4. Wrote and submitted 6 articles to about 30 directory sites – Here are the sites I submitted to.

Searchwarp.com
buzzle.com
ezinearticles.com
articledashboard.com
goarticles.com
isnare.com
Articlesender.com
biz-whiz.com
ideaviewer.com
digg.com
articledepot.co.uk
ezine-writer.com.au
article99.com
ireprint.info
ezineplug.com
articlebiz.com
bigarticles.com
articlealley.com
amazines.com
ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm
articlehub.com
ezine-articles-planet.com
linksnoop.com
365articles.com
pnnonline.org
freezinesite.com
articlecity.com
simplysearch4it.com

5. Submitted 2 press releases to 4 press release sites – I submitted two press releases which were already written by Aerobed to the following site:

pressbox.co.uk
pr.com
prweb.com
i-newswire.com

6. Purchased a few links direct from site owners – Buying links is not recommended by Google so I won’t go into this.

So there you have it, a clear guide which if followed should help you to obtain that allusive goal of being number 1 in Google.

Good luck.

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