Key changes to getting your website ranked higher on search engines.

Your page ranking reflects how satisfied users are with your website.  It is how search engines determine how relevant your page is to a keyword, and what position to place you on the result page.

If you want a higher search engine ranking, you should pay attention to which keywords you choose, the ranking of these keywords, and your backlinks.  The new Google +1 feature can also help show search engines that users like your website.  When deciding on keywords, don’t base your decision on the estimated number of clicks, but on how relevant the keyword is to your website.  How often is that keyword mentioned in your ads, your website, or your blog.  This will help make that keywords, and your website more relevant to users.  You can use your Google keyword tool to generate relevant keywords.

Backlinks are another way to help your ranking.  If you are a member of any associations within your industry, it is important to link to them.  Make sure these links are visible, and easily accessed.  This will bring high quality traffic to your website.  Users typically will not visit an associations webpage unless they are looking for a specific service or product.  Consumers who click on your link from an associations page are more likely to convert, because they are already looking for your service or product.  The more time users spend on your page, and conversions you acquire, the better your ranking.

To get your link placed on an associations webpage, you can contact your representative via email or by phone.  Send them your website link, and they can implement it for you.  Then make sure to post your associations link on your page, your blogs, etc.  These are all easy ways to improve your ranking on search engines.

For those of you who have yet to hear about it, Google now offers the +1 button.  What is this new function?  Basically, Google piggy-backed off of the Facebook “like” button, by creating a way for users to share their likes and dislikes with the search world.  The notion is that enough +1s will well help rank more relevant, useful websites higher up on search result pages.

At Google, they believe that this new function will not only increase the number of clicks to your page, but also improve the quality of traffic.  We all know that it’s not necessarily the number of clicks you get to your website, but what those clicks lead to.  You want that click to lead to a purchase, sale, application completion, etc.

How does the +1 function improve traffic quality?  The theory is that consumers base monetary decisions on what other people are doing.  More importantly, users will follow what their friends are doing.  For example, Samantha buys a dress from your website.  She was pleased with the purchase, so she clicks the +1 button.  A few days later Samantha’s friend Amy is looking for a dress for her weekend trip.  She enters the keyword “dress” into the search engine.  A list of dress retailers appears, but she doesn’t know which store will have exactly what she’s looking for.  Then she notices that Samantha bought a dress from you.  Trusting Samantha’s taste, Amy decides to visit your website and buys a dress.  Amy made a purchase from your website, because the +1 function made her aware of a friend’s purchase.  The +1 button gives your website the stamp of approval from other online users.

Amy picked a website out of a list of other dress retailers, because of the +1 function.  She was already looking to make a purchase, so that click led to a sale.  Amy’s click led to a conversion, which means the traffic was of a higher quality.  More and more people will click on a website, not at random, but because their friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc. approve of a website.  People are always more likely to make a purchase when trust has been established, and that is what the Google +1 function provides.

Right now the Google +1 function exists on search engine result pages, but soon it will be available for placement on your website.  This will help Google identify which websites satisfy users most, which will help with determining page ranking.

According to Google’s Webmaster Central, Page Rank isn’t as important as many website owners believe.  Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google, thinks that your time could be better spent in other areas rather than tracking PageRank.  According to Moskwa PageRank distinguished Google as a search engine back in 1998, but there have since been a rate of change increase that makes PageRank less central to website success.  Moskwa credits Google’s nine improvements per week, and the augmenting and refining of ranking systems, for PageRank’s inevitable decline in significance.

Why then, did PageRank become so important to webmasters?  Why does everyone want to track their PR?  Moskwa attributes this obsession to reporting.  Relevance is one of the most important elements in search results, but it is harder to report on relevance.  PageRank is easy to report on, because it comes in numbers you can track.  As easy as PageRank is to track, it does not accurately reflect how your website is performing.  The obsession with PageRank comes from a belief that this number represents website performance.  That a better PageRank statistic means better ranking, better traffic, and more leads.  However, this assumption is wrong.  Moskwa explains how PageRank is actually three steps behind the algorithm that Google actually uses for ranking, “Remember that we only update the PageRank displayed on the Google Toolbar a few times a year…so the PR you see publicly is different from the number our algorithm actually uses for ranking.”

Instead of wasting time tracking your PageRank, you should be tracking your conversion rate, bounce rate, and clickthrough rate.  The goal is to focus on statistics that are updated daily or weekly.  You can track these three elements easily using your Google Analytics, or by looking into the dimensions of your campaign.  What do these elements reflect?

Conversion Rate: A conversion occurs whenever a visitor completes a desired action on your webpage.  You can specify what action represents a conversion based on how your website makes money.  If you require a visitor to fill out information, then when a visitor does so it signifies a conversion.  If you make your money through the purchase of products/items/services, then a conversion will occur when a visitor makes a purchase.  You can track the success of your website by tracking how many conversions your page/campaign/account has produced.

Bounce Rate:  The Bounce Rate tracks the number of unsuccessful visits to your site.  If visitors view your site, and leave without taking any further action it will count as a “bounce”.  Most website owners want visitors to complete some sort of action.  Whether it is to make a call, fill out a form, or make a purchase, you want more from your visitors than just a simple click.  By tracking how many visitors “bounce” from your site, you will be able to tell if what you have going is actually working.

Clickthrough Rate: This is the percentage of people who actually click your link from search engine result pages.  A low CTR means that no matter the ranking of your page on search engines, people just aren’t clicking through your page.  It shows Google, or other search engines, that your website does not reflect the needs of the “searcher” or the public. 

By improving these three elements, you could improve your page ranking and your website results.  It is a much healthier approach, then obsessing about PageRank.

You’re an SEO, and you are considering your link building strategy for the day, then all of a sudden you receive an e-mail from a friend or colleague, with a list of directories they would recommend you use.  You browse through the list and visit a few of the sites, discovering that they are all free directories all with relatively low (I know it is a sin to say it but) PR.  You spend the rest of your day adding your site to all of these directories, and it quite literally takes you hours, at the end of it you are left wondering, “Was that really worth it”?

There are a few reasons why you start to think this, and you begin to ponder about the actual importance that any of those links will have on your site.  So why is it that you feel as though this may not work?  Well there are a number of different ideas for this:

· That the directories that you have submitted to can take up to 2 weeks to respond to your request, and some of the time never get back to you at all, and you just wasted a days worth of link building.

· The directories that you have submitted to although free all have such a small amount of power that your site, even if accepted to the directory will never get crawled.

· Some free directory get no followed.  I admit this very rarely happens but I have seen it before.

· You come to the realization that although you have done about a hundred of these that they are unbelievably “shitty” links that they won’t actually do anything for your site.

However as with every story there is a flip side to an equation.  This may be quite a laborious and manual piece of work, but it does still offer the promise of generating you links. So what are the advantages and do they outweigh the negative points of Free Directory link building?

· First of all once you have a list together, you can rely on that to be your master list, you won’t need to find the directories that do or don’t work or submit quickly you already have it for other clients.

· Next is that, these are still links, let’s not forget that and most of the time they are anchor text, so Chocks away dear boy!

· More importantly in my opinion, is that all of these sites are different domains, and not only that they will be on different IP addresses.  So Links + IP + Domains can’t possibly = bad result!

Basically the hard part is finding the directories that work.  Those that do are definitely worth submitting to.  And for one client or yourself it is a one off, you just need to make a decision about whether or not it is worth your time?

Marcus is Typically a Travel SEO, working with   Caribbean holidays tour operators, he enjoys blogging about experiences and what he learns in day to day life.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily leaseaseo.com

More information on getting an excellent directory submission done with only the best directory sites carefully hand selected..can be found here on our s directory submission service page.