Search Engine Top Ranking - How to Get and Keep a Top Ranking

Before you begin any large online marketing campaign, your greatest focus should center around improving your search engine rankings. The major search engines determine your ranking based upon many factors, including elements like keyword relevancy, inbound links and tagging. However, sites like Google, among others are now working to also include social media within their algorithms. Though many businesses have social media profiles, not all companies update these streams effectively. One of the best ways for your company to gain a search engine top ranking is to update regularly and work to get your posts promoted through social media sites. When your blog posts or articles are posted by other users, the search engines see that others have found your content to be useful. Getting other users to link to you may not be as easy it seems, though. In order to increase the relevancy of your page, you need to update regularly, socialize your content and pay attention to gaining links and posts. Consider some of the following questions that you may run into along the way. Why is Social Media Important to Search Engine Rankings? When the major search engines initially established their algorithms to determine page rankings, the results were based upon clearly measurable factors and sets of data. However, the development of social media has brought out new opportunities to improve their process. Where search engines used to desire a way to know that their results were relevant for users, social media now allows them to see what users have found helpful before changing the page rankings. When a blog post or article gets re-tweeted numerous times or linked to extensively on Facebook, the search engines take note and will look at the site. Many of these popular posts often receive a search engine top ranking much more quickly than they otherwise would. Why is it So Important to Update Regularly? Your site should be posting regular updates in order to ensure that your content is fresh. When search engines are looking to determine a page's relevancy, they will quickly check to see when the content was posted. Many websites employ poor SEO practices and will leave up stale, keyword-stuffed pages that provide little value to customers. When you take care to update your site regularly, search engines will know that you are generating new material and providing useful information to your visitors. The best way to post regularly is through a blog or a news section, so that you can keep customers up to date on what's going on with your company or discuss important topics in your industry. Updating regularly helps to prove your relevancy to search engines. What Can I Do to Socialize My Content? Updating your page regularly has another benefit. It also helps you to stay in the loop of what's going on within the community. Producing new content helps you to develop an authoritative position and also keeps you in the forefront of your customers' minds. In order to further socialize your content beyond regular updates, strive to create posts that are extremely relevant to your community. You may want to pursue thought-provoking discussions that will get people talking in the comments section of your blog, or you may want to provide a thorough tutorial for visitors about something pertaining to your business. It's also important to keep your audience in mind with each post you write, as this will help you connect your material to them more easily. When you're naturally writing about topics your community is interested in, they will be more likely to share your work. In turn, you'll begin to receive even more visitors to your site from your improved search engine rankings. How Can I Get Other People to Link to My Posts? Now that you understand why it's important to get other people to link to your articles, you may want to consider a few strategies to encourage people to do so. The articles that receive the most re-tweets and links are those that have something new to say. The number of articles you post is not necessarily important; rather, focus on creating engaging and thought-provoking posts that people will be excited to share. One of the best ways to get a search engine top ranking is to create content that will start conversations. As people share these links with their friends, your search engine rankings will increase along with your traffic. You should also focus on building relationships with others in the social media community. By sharing links from others, you can encourage reciprocity. As you work to regularly update your content, keep an eye on socializing your posts and working to gain more links. The search engines understand that social media links to your site are a powerful predictor of the relevancy of your content.