Bruce Townsend, ecommerce software supplier, Actinic
As a search engine optimisation specialist, people often ask if I can guarantee to get their web pages into top three positions on Google. The answer of course is, ‘no’ – at least, not for useful phrases that lots of people are actually searching for. Anyone who gives such a guarantee is either focussing on the wrong phrases, or using questionable techniques that could backfire in a big way.
For any given phrase there are plainly only three top three places, and probably hundreds or even thousands of web pages competing for them. Moreover, with Google’s heavy emphasis on inbound links, rankings take time to build.
That doesn’t mean that top rankings are no longer achievable. But it’s not a short-term ambition, and it cannot be guaranteed.
Fortunately, it’s no longer just your web pages that can get you into search.
All the main search engine listings now incorporate results from a variety of sources, not just web pages. They include images, video and news; links from blogs and social bookmarking networking sites like del.icio.us, Facebook and Twitter; and in the case of Google, product listings and results from Google Maps.
So as well as optimising your web pages, try some of the following:
· Upload video about your products to YouTube, optimising the title
· Save useful bookmarks, including some of your site pages, to del.icio.us
· Join Facebook and Twitter
· Build up networks of friends and followers on all of the above
· Optimise image filenames and Alt attributes
· Submit your products to Google Products
· Get listed on Google Maps
· Publish news to online PR sites
And if you do those things and constantly link back to your own web site, guess what? You will gain traffic from many more sources – and your page rankings will improve as well.