What does it take to rank number 1 on Google

Getting to the top of Google

Ranking Number 1 on Google is the goal of every website owner that ever considered, dreamed about or implemented an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.  The benefits can far outweigh the cost or effort.  Companies have literally been transformed overnight because of this achievement.  Check this post out if you have ever wondered What Organic Search Engine Optimization Can Do For Your Business.  That article is filled with data and statistics that can blow your mind, they are staggering to say the least.  So let’s assume that you are convinced.  You are ready.  You want the fame and fortune that can come from the claiming the #1 spot on Google for your best keyword.  What exactly is it going to take to get there?  A lot of hard work, a little luck and some patience.  But if you do it right….this is what you can expect to see one day:

How to rank #1 on Google

Position #1 out of 171 Million Results

 HAVE GREAT CONTENT ON YOUR WEBSITE

I know, I know….you are tired of hearing this.  However, don’t discard this as another content is king post, it’s not.  Bottom line is this, people visit sites and send their friends to websites and LINK to websites that have great content.  If you don’t have great content, now is the time to develop a new content development strategy.  This may include redoing, updating or revising your “on page” content or it may include installing and building a business blog and the beginning of content generation in that form.  Blogs are wonderful tools for developing fresh, unique content on a regular basis.  If you don’t have a blog and are not posting on it on a regular basis, you will lose in the search engine to someone who is.  WordPress is a 100% FREE platform that is SEO friendly and more importantly, user friendly.

HAVE GOOD ON SITE TECHNICAL SEO

Make sure your site is coded properly and that you are “search engine friendly”.  Here are a few things you should look at and make sure that you are 100% optimized for:

  • HTML Meta Tags – Meta tags like <title>, <Meta description=”XXX”/>, <Meta keywords=”XXX”/> are all still very important and you should definitely be using your best keywords in these tags properly and often.
  • On Page Content – Use your keywords in your on page content. 
  • Image ALT Tags – Make sure every image has <alt> tag descriptions with your chosen keywords.
  • URL Structure – Make sure your URL structure is clean and concise.  That your URL’s don’t use random character strings and that you do not have any broken links on your site.

LINKBUILDING

Assuming that you have great content and that your website is properly formatted, that still may not be enough to rank you on Page 1 of Google, never less position number 1.  You may have to perform some website promotion, otherwise known as link building.  When another website links to your site, Google sees that as a “virtual vote” from another webmaster and considers this the highest possible compliment.  So promote your site and get as many industry related and relevant websites as you can to link back to you.  Remember, quality of links is better than quantity.  You can literally outrank a competitor that has 10,000 low quality links if you have 500 high quality, industry related and highly relevant links from high PR and trusted sites.  Most people choose to outsource this particular function.  Finding, cultivating and tracking quality backlinks can be very time consuming and monotonous.  Finding a quality SEO service provider that offers Affordable SEO Services will save you a lot of time and a lot of mistakes and potential Google penalties.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Don’t like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Pintrest?  Think they are for younger website owners or teenagers and there is no place for your business on these social media sites?  Think again my friend.  Google and Bing have both proclaimed loudly that they are using social media signals to help rank websites.  What does that mean?  It means, the more Facebook “likes” you have, the more Tweets you have with links to your website, the more YouTube views and “likes” you have the better your rankings will be.  This is compounded to the “Nth” degree with Google+.

PATIENCE

Lastly, you do need to have some patience.  If you just launched a brand new website you can pretty much forget about ranking on page one of Google anytime soon, unless you are ranking for a very long tail keyword or a keyword that has ZERO competition, meaning it will have few (if any) searches for it and thus useless to you and your business.  It takes time to build trust and authority with the search engines, in some cases it may take a few years to rank for a highly competitive keyword, and that’s with the help of some good Professional SEO Services.  So patience is a MUST.  If you push too hard or get sucked into “black hat” techniques in hopes of speeding up the process, you may very well find yourself in the Google penalty box or worse, removed from the index altogether.

Follow these steps and you will be well on your way to some top rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing!  If you did just launch a website and HAVE to be on page one tomorrow, then you need Google Adwords and you will need to be running a Google Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaign.  Our suggestion would be to split your marketing dollars on Adwords and SEO, that way you don’t get stuck on 100% Adwords for the life of your website.

If you found this article helpful and you enjoyed it, please take a minute and share it through any of the social media share buttons located throughout the site.  We love our social media friends and the shares we get and we certainly will return the favor when and where possible.  You can also comment in the comments section below and regular commenters receive “Do-Follow” link status to help you with your SEO program!

Click-finders.com offers a full range of Internet Marketing services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Management, Social Media, Inbound Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and more.  Contact us through www.click-finders.com, Twitter, Facebook and our Organic SEO Blog to learn more about Organic Search Engine Optimization and even request a FREE SEO Website Analysis.

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23 Comments

  1. Maria Bates

    Another great post! You make it sound so easy. I learn something every time I visit this blog. I am so glad I subscribed.

    Thanks for sharing!

  2. @Maria – Thanks so much for reading and the very kind words! They are much appreciated!

  3. Jon

    This article is lacking substance and real information. When I saw the title in the search results I was expecting a much more detailed road map on how to rank #1 on Google.

    Disappointing for sure.

  4. @Jon – I am sorry to hear that you are disapointed. I can certainly understand your frustration as I have followed a link many times only to find the information was lacking or not what I thought it was going to be at all.

    I will say that this post is written for “beginner” level SEO enthusiasts or people who do not yet know what SEO is at all. And for those people, this post allows them to begin to understand what SEO is and what it takes to rank well on Google for any particular keyword.

    That being said, I’m sure if you poke around a bit, you can a few articles on this blog that are quite substantial and very detailed on certain topics within the SEO world!

    Thanks for reading and thanks for taking the time to comment!
    Mike Glover recently posted..What Does It Take to Rank Number 1 On GoogleMy Profile

  5. Hii,
    It was an interesting post. Could you please suggest me the strategies for link building. I need to increase referral traffic to a website. I have been posting in social bookmarking sites, commenting in blogs and forums
    As the website is related to Real Estate no one is interested to visit the site from social bookmarking and social networking sites.
    So can you guys please suggest what are the alternative methods to generate good referral traffic to Real estate website.

  6. Great post – id love to hear more on the link building side of things

  7. @Michael – Thanks for reading and comment!

    Linkbuilding is hands down the toughest part of SEO. Building quality links that matter to the search engines is not easy and can be very time consuming. We usually start with an existing link profile and one on the competition so we can work up a good strategy. Then we go to work on building great content and sharing which builds our clients LINKS.

    We will do a comprehensive post soon about linkbuilding, so stay tuned 🙂

  8. Great post, Mike. It sure does take patience to get ranking. And agree with you about how tough link building is. But if you can do it right, you’ll reach out to your current and even future readers. I’m looking forward to your upcoming post on link building.

  9. @Julia – Hi Julia! Thanks for reading and the kind words!

    Keep an eye out for the Link-Building post 🙂 Is forthcoming soon!
    admin recently posted..How to Win With The Latest Google Panda UpdateMy Profile

  10. Alphonse Dunsworth

    I have added it to my mixx bookmarks

  11. Emile Lamond

    You made a number of nice points there

  12. Last week I dropped by this site and as usual great content and ideas. Love the lay out and color scheme

  13. Parker Downin

    Outstanding piece, thanks for sharing!

  14. I have been checking out a few of your posts and it is pretty clever stuff. I will surely bookmark your website.

  15. Shaun

    Quality article and puts things into perspective. I have an online business and find it difficult to get any serious sort of content. How would you go about getting a blog feed into a page? Do you know of any good software you can recommend? Thanks

  16. Hi Shaun – Thanks for reading.

    We use WordPress. It’s a FREE blogging platform that is easy to install, configure and burn feeds on.
    admin recently posted..Does SEO Still Work After the Penguin and Panda Updates?My Profile

  17. Aw, this was a really nice post. In thought I want to put in writing like this additionally – taking time and precise effort to make an excellent article… however what can I say… I procrastinate alot and by no means appear to get one thing done.

  18. fvo

    I think this is among the most important info for me. And i am glad reading your article. But wanna remark on few general things, The site style is perfect, the articles is really excellent : D. Good job, cheers

  19. An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a friend who had been doing a little research on this. And he actually ordered me dinner due to the fact that I discovered it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending time to talk about this issue here on your blog.

  20. Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with SEO? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good gains. If you know of any please share. Many thanks!

  21. @READ – I use the plug in “all in one SEO pack” and it works very well!

    Thanks for reading!
    admin recently posted..Does SEO Still Work After the Penguin and Panda Updates?My Profile

  22. There are a few things wrong with this article, but overall it is very good.

    ->>Image ALT Tags – Make sure every image has tag descriptions with your chosen keywords.
    This would be considered spamming. Alt tags are to describe the contents of the image and not for keyword stuffing.

    LINKBUILDING
    Linkbuilding is not necessary to get a #1 position.
    In fact, Google has turned off linking influence in SERPs.
    I had a site with 1 link get a #1 position on the first try and #2 had over a million links and a PR8

    SOCIAL MEDIA
    It is not regular tweets but retweets that will improve your SERPs.
    This is only temporary.
    Get G+1’s for permanent boosts

    PATIENCE
    If you do your SEO correctly, results appear shortly after your site is visited by Google.
    Your choice of keywords is the determining factor.
    Ranking for a competitive keyword is not a function of time, but one of the amount and depth of your information silo on the topic.

    Best,
    Reg

  23. I have website http://pixelwebz.com can you send me the quotation.

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