Tips on how to rank 1st page of Google and stick

[ann1986]

Hi,

I have seen many who struggle to make their website rank 1st page so I'm sharing some tips and test we did recently.

Side note: off page SEO requires a lot of work so if your up for a very competitive niche prepare to work very hard or just simply hire and outsource

So our test involves 2 websites. We have chosen a keyword with 505,000 results for exact search(in Google) and has 9k exact searches per month.

website 1- The 1st site was optimized for the targeted keyword. Optimization was almost perfect that the end results was it had very low bounce rate 30% to be exact for the target keyword.

website 2-The 2nd site have content that is not even related to the keyword we are targeting. For example our target keyword is "law" the content of website 2 is weight loss related. No on page optimization was done. No keywords about law mentioned on the website. All content written are about weight loss. Title tag, description tags are all about weight loss.

The test was about "can we rank both sites on 1st page of Google while the other site(website 2) is just pure off page SEO? Can pure off page SEO make a website remain in 1st page?"

After many months of off page labor website 1 was on 1st page. The following month website 2 has also started showing in 1st page(we used different private proxies to check rankings. We also use rank trackers like SEscout - SERP tracker for web professionals)

It was a little funny because a weight loss site is ranking 1st page for a "law" keyword. So the conclusion is that with pure off page SEO your website can rank 1st page.

After a week website 1 is showing more progress and ranking higher. On the other hand website 2 just vanished from SERPS.

Conclusion: pure off page SEO is a waste of effort. Google will just reflect your website back to nowhereness

Now for the tips

If you want to reach 1st page work hard on your off page SEO campaign. Get as many quality backlinks. Yes backlinks can get you to 1st page(but backlinks is not the only factor that can make your website remain in 1st page.) The amount of work depends on how your competitor are also doing their campaign.

Put 3 layers on your backlinks. Layer 1 pointing to your main site, layer 2 pointing to your layer 1, and layer 3 pointing to your layer 2. This requires a lot of work but very effective. If you have a high budget then just buy high PR links from related websites make sure the exact page has the PR.

Now for most people that are wondering why they have been slapped by big G try using google analytics and google webmaster tools for once and evaluate every data available.

Many have reached 1st page and wondered why the next day their site is nowhere to be seen in the SERP. Try to evaluate your bounce rate. Are the visitors of your site actually think your site is useful to them? Do they visit other pages of your site? Does your visitors come back to your site?

Your on 1st page now and your bounce rate is 90-100%. In our test website 2 has very high bounce rate so google can easily determine its not related to the keyword it is ranking. Dont make Google think your site is irrelevant to your keywords you are trying to rank. Its a program bot so it will slap you right away. And even if you dont use analytics(thinking you would get away) google bot can still evaluate your data So just use analytics to your advantage.

Bottom line crappy sites gets slap by big G bots. Google also has manual reviewers so you also might want to watch out. They do review manually but can only do as much per day.

When your already in 1st page take advantage of your title and description tag. In the test website 1 title and description is very catchy that just by reading many people would click it even if its ranking on spot 8-10. If your site is ranking number 8 but its getting more click than site number 7 then its logical that your website is more relevant than site number 7 therefor google would basically rank your higher next update.


Combined with less bounce rate and more click through your site can easily reach top 3 ranking within a month.

I'm tired of typing now so I'll ad more next time

Please feel free to ask and share tips here. Learning is fun!

[App Developers]

hey, thanks for this post. I am glad you shared your testing with us because there were a few questions I have had but not tested out! This certainly answers a few questions for me. Nice work.

[dburk]

Hi ann1986,

I applaud your idea of testing and thank you for sharing. However, i must say that your test only produced anecdotal evidence which is not sufficient to draw a valid conclusion from. I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, just that your data was not ample enough to draw a valid conclusion.

You did one test with a sample and a control. What happens when you repeat the test? Do you get the opposite result half the time? Based on your single test subject you do not have enough data to draw any valid conclusion. How were you able to balance the difficulty in ranking between the test and the control? How where you able to isolate rankings due to QDF verses normal ranking?

There is so much more data needed to draw the type of conclusion that you made. I challenge you to continue with your experiment to see if you can repeat the results and how consistent those results will be with varying ranking difficulties. You are off to a good start, but you stopped too soon and drew conclusions based on anecdotal evidence.

Another option would be to simply conduct a study. Use the ample data that already exists. You don't always need to build websites and promote them yourself. You may be able to simply data mine from a database of SERPs and group web pages the emulate your test parameters to see how often and consistent your hypothesis is repeated.

[Open Net]

Do you think it's just the bounce rate? I have an exact match domain name that is now ranking 7th for my target keyword. I'm pretty happy with this, and in just three weeks, I'm jumping over PR3 sites in the rankings.

However, people are coming to my page for coupons for a specific retailer. I have them clearly above the fold on my main page. It's entirely possible that someone comes to my site, gets the coupon code they need, and clicks one of my affiliate links to the retailer to use the coupon.

That would be 100% bounce, right? Even though my content was exactly what the user wanted? This troubles me.

[bfas]

I agree with Don; a very nice post with some interesting info, but your conclusions can't be supported. There are so many variables at play that in this kind of 'experiment', it is impossible to draw a cause-effect conclusion solely on what you've listed.

Among the data you would need to take into account are, relative on-page strength of the Page 1 competitors, their relative off-page strength (age, backlinks, 'authority', etc.), length of observation, etc.

Keep at it and you'll have more, and more valuable information.

Michael

[jonnyhardbaked]

Good post. Thanks for the information.

[Thirty3Down]

Superb Post Ann
Always nice to see knowledgeable warriors giving out good info.

Rock on!

[dungdenvn]

thank for the good test, nice information

[queeni]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi ann1986,

I applaud your idea of testing and thank you for sharing. However, i must say that your test only produced anecdotal evidence which is not sufficient to draw a valid conclusion from. I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, just that your data was not ample enough to draw a valid conclusion.

You did one test with a sample and a control. What happens when you repeat the test? Do you get the opposite result half the time? Based on your single test subject you do not have enough data to draw any valid conclusion. How were you able to balance the difficulty in ranking between the test and the control? How where you able to isolate rankings due to QDF verses normal ranking?

There is so much more data needed to draw the type of conclusion that you made. I challenge you to continue with your experiment to see if you can repeat the results and how consistent those results will be with varying ranking difficulties. You are off to a good start, but you stopped too soon and drew conclusions based on anecdotal evidence.

Another option would be to simply conduct a study. Use the ample data that already exists. You don't always need to build websites and promote them yourself. You may be able to simply data mine from a database of SERPs and group web pages the emulate your test parameters to see how often and consistent your hypothesis is repeated.

No you wrong! I agree with the OP thread. I ever try with Xrumer to spam links to my site which has nothing to do with "Click here" KW not even in the title, meta etc but when i link with that Click here KW, i see several of my sites start Ranking for that KW

[dadamson]

Great post!

Very useful info here. Better than the spam I have been seeing here lately!

Cheers,

[dburk]

Originally Posted by queeni

No you wrong! I agree with the OP thread. I ever try with Xrumer to spam links to my site which has nothing to do with "Click here" KW not even in the title, meta etc but when i link with that Click here KW, i see several of my sites start Ranking for that KW

LOL, which part is wrong? Do you think Principles of Science are wrong, my partial explanation was wrong, or that I was wrong to bring it up?

And where exactly do you agree with the OP? Your spamming adventure seems completely unrelated to the OP topic.

[Andrea Wilson]

I heard of your backlinking strategy before in the form of an ebook. I think it was called hybrid traffic formula or something like that. I agree that off page optimization is working for SEO but we must treat on page optimization as important as well as it shows how on-topic our site is with the keyword we are actually targeting.

Andrea