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King + Queen = Royal Success
by Shawn Campbell
Ever wonder how or why your competitor gets better search engine rankings
than you do? Does he know something you don't? Well, maybe he actually
does…And that's where I come in. I'm here to unveil the secret tricks of
the trade that may be giving your competitor that much-needed edge in
search engine rankings and to show you how you can reclaim your position
without skipping a beat.
Quite simply, I am going to give you the key to unlocking the secret chest
of information that your competition is using to get better rankings.
It is not that difficult. There are two main criteria to getting good
rankings:
1. Content (which is king) 2. Linking (which is queen)
Content is King
Content is easily viewable and just as easy to measure. It basically
includes what you see on the site: the text. If your competition has more
text than you, consider increasing yours; if he has more keywords,
consider increasing yours; if he has bigger headers, consider increasing
yours. By all means, I am not saying to make a carbon copy of his site,
but do look at the "on the site" factors that you are lacking and evaluate
whether to increase them on your site. A note of caution - make sure that
any changes you make actually improves the site and increases its value
for your customers. In other words, don't sacrifice quality for quantity
unless you believe that the added text actually serves to better the
overall look, feel and quality of your site.
Some ideas to increase quality/quantity of content:
•Write a monthly article about your topic •Write a page about your
keyphrase/product/service •If your headers don't have your keyphrase in
them, then be sure to add it •Make sure the titles on all your pages
relate to the content of the page •Write, write, write (and then write
some more!).
Linking is Queen
Linking requires more research. Look up your competitions site on Google
by typing in: link: http://www.competitorsdomain.com/ into the search box
(replace competitorsdomain with the URL of your competitor). Now the
search results you will be looking at is a list of all the sites that are
linking to your competitor. Go through that list, and for each site,
figure out how he got that link. Some links might be paid for, some might
be link exchanges, some might be directories like dmoz.org or Yahoo, and
others might be references or testimonials. Make a spreadsheet with each
site linking to your competition, and jot down how he got the link. Then,
for each site that is appropriate, get it to link to you. Remember to stay
away from link farms and low quality links. Link farms are sites that have
nothing but links. Low quality links are sites with little to no content.
These sites will often try to exchange links with you: Don't do it! Only
link to a site if it will enhance the user experience of your clients.
For more about linking, see my article entitled Linking is Queen
(http://www.redcarpetweb.com/promotion/0409.html#feature)
Royal Success
Getting links takes time and patience, and writing is not usually done
overnight. To top it off, once these projects are done, you then have to
wait for the search engines to discover and re-evaluate your site. Both
the link campaign and the writing projects should be something done on a
regular basis, not as a one-shot injection. Try to create new pages every
month, and to get some links every month. That way your site will make the
gradual climb to the top. And who doesn't want that?
About The Author: Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the
ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded http://www.redcarpetweb.com Red
Carpet Web Promotion, Inc. He has been researching and developing
marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine
results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search
engine optimization field.
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