5 Guidelines For Reaching #1 in Google Rankings

 

Written by: Stoney deGeyter

How do you get top search engine rankings?That’s what everybody really wants to know, right? It’s amazing how often that question is posed and, to this day, nobody has been able (or willing!) to provide a definitive answer. When asked, SEOs dance all around it, never quite giving you something to grasp on to.


You hear answers like, “There is no magic formula,” “The search engines look at a lot of different factors” and “The search results are different for everyone.” None of these answers provide much comfort — or value — to the average business owner or newbie web marketer who’s looking to push their site to the top.

It’s time someone stepped up and truly answered the unanswerable question. Like a magician who reveals his tricks, I’m going to put myself up for ridicule, open hostility and possibly even excommunication from the “club.”

However, I can be silent no longer. There is a formula to #1 rankings and I will now reveal it to the world!

1. Education

If you want to get #1 rankings on Google, then you have to start with a solid base of education. More and more colleges are offering courses on online marketing, but there is no better education than getting down in the trenches. The most up-to-date information you’ll find regarding web marketing strategies can be found online.


Be careful though. You can’t believe everything you read. You’ll have to learn which sources and individuals you can trust to provide the most accurate information. But even still, most everything you see online is opinion-based. It’s an educated opinion, but still an opinion.


There are a lot of people out there publishing their tests of algorithms. You can learn from those, but the best education is your own testing. Learn by doing. Start with optimization best practices and then begin to branch out with your own theories. Test them and see what does and doesn’t work.

Most importantly, never stop educating yourself. Web marketing changes rapidly, and if you don’t continue to read, share and politely argue thoughts and ideas, you’ll find yourself stuck doing yesterday’s web marketing tactics for tomorrows algorithms. Keep current. Don’t stop learning, ever.

2. Hard Work

Your education only pays off with old fashioned hard work. There are very few sites that we market that don’t have a good deal of issues that need to be worked through and fixed. Whether it’s keyword research, fixing site architectural issues, or developing an on-going promotion plan, there is a lot of time, energy and effort that goes into each web marketing campaign.


There are a lot of quick fixes on websites, but each one is only part of the solution. I love seeing results quickly, but the real results generally come with time invested in the campaign. The work you do marketing a site may change — today it’s architecture, tomorrow optimization, the next day social promotion — but the hard work never ceases.

3. Build Authority

Google doesn’t want to rank sites because you were able to manipulate the algorithm. They want to rank sites that have already proven that they deserve to be there. And what makes you worthy? You have to have a site that people love.


That means you need to build authority into your site. Authority moves you closer to the top for your keywords because Google sees that you have created a site that people have already demonstrated they love.


Authority is created in many ways. It starts with having content that demonstrates that you know what you’re talking about. If you’ve proven your knowledge, you then have to provide it in a way that your visitors enjoy. Finally, you have to engage with your audience, answering their questions, pointing them to other resources, and simply making them feel valued.

Doing these things on a regular and consistent basis will earn you authority points that will ultimately translate into better rankings. It’s simply all about delivering what your audience wants.

4. Invest More Than The Other Guy

Moving past all the other sites that currently hold top search engine rankings for your keywords is, ultimately, a matter of investment. I’m not just talking money here. I’m talking about time, skill, know-how and money. Money only works if you’re paying someone else to do all your web marketing. And that’s fine. But it still comes down to time; theirs instead of yours.


So let’s wrap all that into a single word: invest. How much are you investing in your web marketing campaign? If your competitors are investing more, you’re going to lose. If that other site you’re trying to overtake in the search results is doing a better job investing in social media, you’re going to fail. If they are investing more in building a better web site, you’re going to fail. If they are investing more in customer outreach, you’re going to fail.


See the pattern here? You are simply unlikely to outperform anyone who is investing more than you. So that means you have to go one better. And depending on how much of a lead they have, you might need to do more than one better, maybe five or ten better, just to catch up.

5. Patience

Everything in web marketing takes time. If you’re smart, you’ll go after some quick wins so you can start seeing some benefit of the work going into your campaign. But those quick wins are small victories compared to the big victories that come with time.

It takes time to fix a site’s architecture. It takes time to research, organize, select and optimize for keywords. It takes time to build up a strong social presence. So give yourself time to succeed. Don’t expect to be at the top overnight.

So there it is, the five unbeatable tactics that get you to #1. Do these five things and you will get the success you want. If you don’t get to #1 after doing these five things, it just means you haven’t done them right. Don’t expect to earn rankings you truly don’t deserve. How do you know if you do deserve to be ranked #1? You’re already there!

Source: seoarticles.com

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How To Promote Your Business or Brand With AdWords for Video

How can you test out titles and search terms with AdWords for Video, and why does it help? How and why to get viewers to click rather than skip ads in the first five seconds? How can you grow subscribers with TrueView Remarketing? We answer these questions and more this week on ReelSEO TubeTalk: YouTube Video Marketing Tips, with your hosts:

Tip #1: Test Titles and Search Terms with AdWords for Video

Matt Ballek likes to test titles via YouTube TrueView using an old SEO pay-per-click tactic that transfers over nicely to the video world. By paying to have a combination of titles, descriptions and thumbnails put in front of a statistically significant audience via In-Display video ads, you will get enough data to help you find the versions with the highest click-through rates. Then you can change your title to match the best title from your paid media testing. This increased click-through should continue over into organic traffic sources such as search results and related videos.
Matt Gielen says he uses In-Display TrueView to track thumbnail click-through performance. They do A-B testing using very similar text but different thumbnails to see which will perform best. In two-and-a-half years at Frederator, they've evolved through six distinct types of thumbnail templates until they found the type that works the best.

Tip #2: Get Viewers To Click, Not Skip Ads In The First 5 Seconds

 

Dane Golden says that experts such as Jake Larsen, Gideon Shalwick and Tom Breeze agree that the timing of TrueView In-Stream ads is key to getting the highest conversion rate. Today we're just going to sum up how to optimize the first five seconds of the video.

Audience Targeting

First - properly narrow down the audience you'd like to show your ad to. Your goal will be to get the highest clicks possible (sending them to the landing page of your website) per ads shown.

Clicking vs. skipping

Sometimes it's better to get people to skip rather than click. Today we're using an example from RealTrucks.com, one of the clients of Jake Larsen and Video Power Marketing. Why would you want someone to skip right away? Two reasons:

• They're not going to buy from you anyway
• If they skip before 30 seconds, you the advertiser don't have to pay for the ad they watched.

Let's just be courteous and save everyone a lot of time and get this ad over with. They're not going to buy because they don't like trucks.

Pre-qualify Advertising Viewers

Jake will sometimes prequalify viewers. Instead of begging them not to click the "Skip Ad" button, he says quickly in the first five seconds that, 1) this is what we're selling, and 2) if you're not interested, please skip this ad here. That way, he's going to have a much higher likelihood of only paying for views of people who might be interested. But there's a flip side. In the RealTrucks.com video in our example Jake has the presenter saying these words right at the start: "Make your vehicle stand out from the crowd while keeping bug splatter off your hood and click the shop now button." And she's actually pointing to a physical-looking button at the top of the screen. It's big and yellow and says "Shop Now." She's also standing in front of a truck in a garage, so you know right off the bat that this is about trucks, and if you're not interested, you can leave at any time.

So the shoppers have been prequalified by quickly telling them what the video is about, and they've already seen a call-to-action with a very tactile-looking button. This means that even before the first five seconds are up (and before they're able to skip), there will already be some customer conversion. And importantly, the advertiser pays nothing for these clicks because it's before 30 seconds. You never pay for clicks before 30 seconds unless the ad is shorter than 30 seconds.

Now in an In-Stream ad it doesn't actually matter where you click. If you click anywhere other than the "Skip ad" button it will take you to the landing page. But if you target your ad to the right audience, and then make a specific request with a specific place to click, a lot of people will do just that.
And whether the viewer skips or clicks "Shop Now," by giving them clear options, you've saved the viewer time, and they probably appreciate that and they can do whatever they are going to do several seconds faster. And you've dramatically increased the click-through rate on the ad and received some free clicks besides.

Tip #3: Grow YouTube Subscribers with TrueView Remarketing

Matt Gielen says that remarketing, also known as retargeting, is advertising to people who have already been exposed to your brand in some form. In YouTube these campaigns can include someone who has watched your video, subscribed to your channel, liked, commented or have been somehow exposed to your content.
Matt Gielen says that you should begin your TrueView ReMarketing campaign by first linking your AdWords account to your YouTube account. This gives you deeper insights into how your campaign is working.


Someone who has been exposed to your brand is more likely to click on one of your ads on YouTube, because they already know what it is. Title and thumbnails combinations help users decide whether to click on a video by having an expectation of what they will see when they click. If they've already been exposed to your brand, and your thumbnails make it easy to recognize your brand, they're more likely to click, and you'll have fewer errant clicks as well.
At Frederator they focus on viewers who haven't yet subscribed to one of their channels. So they may serve the video anywhere someone is on YouTube. The ad will show up at the top of the right-hand column of related videos. The user is reminded of content they've enjoyed, and by clicking they return to the Frederator ecosystem on YouTube and will be more likely to subscribe. It's the same as when you've seen a movie trailer more than once, you'll be more likely to see the movie because it's top of mind.


Matt Gielen says that once someone has subscribed, they've indicated to YouTube that they want to see more from your brand. Then YouTube will serve them more videos in their feed, email inbox. And they're more likely to return and become superfans and download the app, and like on Facebook and be engaged and continue watching. This is much more effective than just paying to get someone to watch once.

Source:http://www.reelseo.com

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