This topic gets discussed quite a lot but a lot of people still don’t know how to get ranked higher on Google. Although, no one knows exactly how Google functions, a lot of us have tested out different things that have worked and just took it and ran with it. Of course, some of the testing that I have done seem to contradict in some ways which leaves a question mark for myself. But either way, search engine traffic has been key to a majority of my online income.

Before I go on, I would just like to point out that your sites layout and design really have nothing to do with you getting ranked higher in Google. I have built some of the ugliest sites just to get something out there and ranked and surprisingly, some of those ugly ass sites rank a lot better than my well designed ones.

Anyways, let’s get to the things that I know have worked and then I’ll follow with things I didn’t know before which seem to work now.

What Has Worked in Getting Ranked Higher in Google

Picking your Keywords – I always try to use keywords that I know will be searched for and the less competition that keyword has, the better. If you want to know how I do keyword research , check out that post. If you want to know the easy way of seeing how much competition a keyword has, just do a simple search in Google and put quotes around it.

For instance, “make money online blogging” and then you would see how many results you get back. It’s not always accurate but you can get a rough idea just based on that.

Titles – If you’re making pages, posts or whatever, those specific keywords you’re trying to target within that specific post should be included within your title. Personally, I try to put the specific keyword as the entire title rather than just the main ones. And so far, it has seemed to work just fine.

For instance, if you wanted to rank for “make money online blogging” then I would just use that entire keyword phrase as the title rather than something equivalent to “I make money online blogging doing some easy things!”

Both ways work but the second way would probably need a lot of more link building than the first. And in my experience, it’s a lot easier just putting the keyword phrase as the entire title.

Permanent Link Structure – Speaking of putting the keyword phrase in the post title, you should probably have your title included within your URL as well. In the instance given above, it should look like “http://www.datmoney.com/make-money-online-blogging.html” or something equivalent.

Text and Content - Usually if I’m trying to rank for a specific keyword on a post, I include that keyword phrase within the first sentence and I try to bold it. The reason why is if you have an auto generated description for search engines, it usually takes the first 160 characters and uses that.

For instance, I would start a sentence off like “I have used various ways to make money online blogging by doing X, Y, Z…”

In addition to that, I try to put as much content within the post without sounding completely repetitive or spammy. I set a 200 word weight as my average word count. Of course, I do this in addition so the correct Adsense ads show up.

Meta Tags – Meta tags do still work and if you use Wordpress and have SEO plugins installed, you can have it auto generated for you. But just make sure you choose the keywords specific to your website/post or else it might hurt you more than anything.

Headers – If you get a chance to use a header within your post, use that instead of bolding it. The reason why is the header tags get picked up by search engine bots a little better than just bolding it. And when I say “it”, of course I’m talking about your keywords.

Link Building is Key! – There are tons of ways to build links and it’s pretty important for you in terms of getting ranked for a specific keyword. The more backlinks you have, the more search engines look at your site as “important”.

Google Pagerank Doesn’t Mean Anything! – Don’t fall for these rumors on having a good pagerank means your site will get ranked better. Just as long as your site being indexed in Google, that’s all that matters. And yes, I know PR0’s getting hundreds of thousands of visitors…

Create a Sitemap – If you haven’t done it already, I would suggest creating a sitemap for your site. It’s not hard and if you’re using Wordpress it just takes a simple upload of a plugin to do it automatically for you. On top of that, I would suggest putting a link to your sitemap on your footer so search engines know to check it out too.

Things I Didn’t Know About Getting Ranked Higher in Google

Keywords in your Domain - I actually found this out earlier this year, if not, last year and it has worked miracles for some of my smaller sites. If you can manage to find a domain name that is still available with a highly searched for keyword phrase then buy it now! You can easily get ranked on the first page of that keyword phrase… or instance, if you had makemoneyonlineblogging.com, I can almost guarantee that if you did just the basic link building, you would probably outrank a lot of those bigger sites.

Google Dance – I actually didn’t know this and I found this out later. But there’s a thing called “Google dance” in which you’ll see a brand new site getting ranked higher than most sites. And the reason why it’s called that is the fact that the ranking dances up and down because it takes some time for Google’s updating system to process everything. So if you’re ranked first for a keyword and than 9th the next day, you might want to build some more backlinks.

Private Policy Page – Now I’m still in the middle of testing this out (I think its been about a couple of months) because it takes some time but supposedly private policy pages may help you rank better. I can’t back it up yet but either way, if you’re using Adsense ads on your site (which I’m sure you guys are) then you need to have it anyways.

Misspelled and Misleading – Although you can get lots of traffic from misspelled words, you can also tend to get in trouble as well. I used to use misspelled words to get search engine traffic but decided to stop especially since one of my keywords just cut out dry from any traffic. Though, I read that if you mislead with a misspelled word, you can easily get in trouble.

For instance, say you typed in “Gogle” and you find another site that’s claiming they’re the biggest search engine, I’m sure that will hurt you in more ways than one.

So, there you have it. I tried to cover the things that I reminded off the top of my head. I’m sure I missed a bunch but feel free to add whatever you guys know has worked as well!