There’s no simple secret that will make you an expert at search engine optimization, as it involves many different factors that must be studied. If you want your site to rank well, and maintain its rank, you have to follow some basic off page (in addition to on page) SEO strategies, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on in this article.
To begin with, when you start applying off page SEO to your site, don’t expect to quickly achieve a high ranking that’s stable, as this seldom happens. You shouldn’t expect to get consistent results right away, and don’t let this discourage you or stop you from continuing with your SEO techniques. What makes this frustrating is that you’ll often see a high ranking very soon, but then your site will suddenly drop. You may get excited to see your site has reached page one of the listings, but then the following week you can’t find it at all.
When you expect this, it’s easier to ignore it when your site jumps around like this and continue working on your SEO for long term results.
A question that is always asked regarding SEO is, is my site indexed? One way the search engines find your site is by reading your site map, so you should always have targeted keywords in anchor text on your site. Your site map performs an important function, giving the search engines an easy way to discover all of your site’s pages. Your site map is a clearly laid out route for the search engines to find directions and to know more about your site. This should be one of your first tasks when it comes to optimizing your site. If you’re wondering how large your site should be for SEO purposes, this is something on which even SEO experts disagree. Some people will tell you that a larger site will tend to rank better, but on the other hand some webmasters manage to rank well with smaller sites as well.
You may be able to rank well with a smaller site, so you could start out this way and see what happens. If you see that your smaller site isn’t giving you the results that you’re looking for, then try bulking it up with more pages and see if that brings in any changes. The more you test, the better.
In order to be successful with on-page SEO, you have to abide by the rules Google lays out and make sure you’re living up to their expectations in the best possible manner. Other search engines like Bing and Yahoo! matter but your focus should be on Google. This is why you shouldn’t pay for traffic or links. This not only brings you low quality traffic, it also raises a red flag with Google and they don’t like sites that get into link buying.
