How I made the first page of Google against 33 million competing sites...

Congrats Dana.

I just checked and your site was listed #5. Hope you have fortified your servers :-)

Methinks twitter has something to do with it.

Congratulations. I'd say it's a combination of a number of factors. Google is now tracking (the last few months, more explicitly) visitors surfing habits, so basically if someone 'finds' what they are looking for (i.e., it is the last page visited), then you get ranked higher.

So chances are, you happen to have a very good 'landing' page, so clients don't look at 'competitors', then you go up in the ranks.

Also, what you see is not 'necessarily' a true ranking. Google does 'modify' search results based on who you are, etc. However, that being said, you do currently rank #3 from where I am looking on that particular phrase.

Congrats!

Thank you for your motivational post and sharing your success story.

The only thing I found a bit misleading is the title, because ...
The number of Google Search results for semi-competitive phrases such as yours, made up of 2, 3 or more words aren't necessarily an estimation in regards to the # of competing sites out there.

Example search phrase: five dog red

This results in 177 Mil results. It would take very little effort to have a site rank on top for the exact term "five dog red", but this doesn't mean that you are out-beating 176.999.999 other sites.

Congrats Dana_W.

What kind of traffic increase are you seeing? If it's a new result, it would be interesting to see how your traffic skyrockets (hopefully).

I think what Sup3rskunk was trying to say is that if a phrase doesn't have a lot of searches, it isn't the best situation to be #1. Hoping that's not the case for you - since you say others have found you already, that's awesome!

All success.

Gary
I think what

Updating your blog regularly can sure do help readers to come back for more

Quality.... Just shows you, even in a competitive market you can reach the top if you tweak your marketing to a specific niche

Well Done :-)

Good job. The double-quote search is returning 13k results only though. But still, if you are getting the first page fot the very keyword you desire then nothing can beat that. Congratulations.

Congrats! I think it has to do with a little age, daily content updates, twitter visibility, etc.. Awesome!

Dana,

To me it is obvious. I suspect your blog is chock full of what a lot of people would consider "great content". Frankly, I've not seen your blog YET (I'll go check it out later) but I've seen you here and other places and I get a warm feeling about your abilities. I think that must be a branding technique? It doesn't have to be a conscious effort to brand, but I think you've done this and somehow the electronic bots sense this as well - as a large accumulation of concise and meaningful content.

I also suspect that you have had your blog up for quite a while. True?

I think people think artificial methods are what it takes. Not so. I have a few websites that dominate Google but I have not done anything special to push them up in the SERPs. Just consistent dripping of on-target content.

Google rewards websites that give the searchers what they are looking for. I doubt you've done any article spinning, for example.

Good job.

you might be able to jump all the way to #1 and #2 with some more off-site SEO and backlinks! Do it

Higher for more backlinks?

Perhaps. The field above you looks a little soft, meaning I don't see a Wikipedia or a major news org. Like George said, give it a try.

I see you at position 6 on page one, with 32million competing sites - good going.

Wow, you must be doing something right! Also interesting to know how many searches per month on that exact phrase. According to google keyword tool, there's about 1,600 per month globally.

ps. Appreciate if you can also send me the person who did the SEO work.

Excellent Dana. Your site is #5 page 1 on Google as of March 6, showing in Australia.

Thanks for your posts.

Hi Dana,

I think you know the answer - it's your content and the links of people pointing to it.

Although with that said - you could easily do better.

You have just under 300 incoming links and most of them do not use that keyword phrase in the link - if all your current links had that phrase you'd probably be number 1 already.

So, I'd recommend doing some link building and making sure your phrase is in the link text.

I have a blog that comes up number 1 out of 90million results and not content's not half as good as yours, so do some linking and I think you'll get good results.

I just did 3 press releases this week and paid prweb $360 each for them in order to get decent exposure, but all you need is a little social bookmarking and a video or two to snatch your top spot I think.

Andy

Glad to see you active again Dana. Glad to hear all is going well.

Here in Canada I have you at #3 for the term press release writer (without quotes)

Right above you in #2 is a wikihow.com link entitled "Write a Press Release"

When I do the search with the quotes you are ranked at #2

Important to note here as well is, at least here in Canada, is that Google is not listing additional internal pages of your site in the listings. So it should not be too hard to gain additional spots in the listings.

For example my site lists 1, 2, and 9 for the term best choice for ebooks (without quotes) My number 1 listing also has 8 additional links to internal pages of my site that Google determined is relevant. There are 7 million results for the term.

Doing the same search with the quotes shows me at 1 and 2. But also shown are 3 additional results in the top 10 that are directory submission results. There is 229,000 results for the term.

The only promotion I have completed was my own SEO on the site, forum signature links (3 maybe 4 different forums), and scattered directory submissions over the past couple years.

So I am sure if you want to move up the rankings with your keyword you can do it easily. Everyone knows the higher you are listed the more clicks your site is goign to get. But I guess that depends on if you want or can handle the additional work load.

Heres where most your link juice is coming from: Craft News Releases to Grow Your Business: Free On-Demand Webinar from PRWeb. Make sure you dont lose that link!

Also, having a 16 month old help ALOT

well done...good for you my friends

BTW: I don't think signature links could help you.... I think they are marked as NOFOLLOW and google doesn't take themas back links !
Try to ask forum administrators how it is exactly...

Hey, not to burst your bubble but 'press release writer' is only a 880 exact gloabl search phrase in google, thus not very competitive and pretty easy to rank for. Good job though.

Havign lots of good links and updating the site regularly really helps in my opinion. And totally a wordpress blog is a great site to use to do this.
Thanks for sharing this.

The ALT tag applies to images only. I doubt they have a strong SEO value but I've seen people say that a lot. I just don't agree.

The two tags that are important for Google are the <title> and the <description> tags. The <description> tag will usually be shown on the SERPs to describe what is on that page for the searchers.

Hi,

Nice to hear that. But you don't know how to figure out how the heck has happened. The keyword press release writer has 31,200,000 competitors, but if you check the same keyword with in quotes i.e. "press release writer" you will get 14,800 competitors only.

The fact is the same keywords is having by 14800 person in their title tag of the main web page or sub webpage. You can find if you look your title tag of the page. and you may have some SEO promotions, so that your site got page rank for that millions competition keyword.

I think now you have little bit cleared in the piture.

Thanks