Once you’ve built your website and submitted it to Google and other search engines for indexing, you’ll inevitably be waiting for traffic to dramatically increase on your website. Obviously, this can’t happen if your website is listed on page 25 of Google. This begs the question: how do I get my website listed on the first page of Google’s search results? I hate to sound redundant, but if you’ve read any of the other blog posts on this site, you’ll see that more often than not, there’s no guaranteed way to get what you want—only steps you can take to increase the chances of achieving your goal. This principle, with one exception (listed immediately below), also applies to getting a spot on the first page of Google.
The Easy Way: Pay For It
You do have the option to pay for a spot on the first page, if you want your site to show up as an ad. You can offer to pay a certain amount every time your page is clicked on, and the more you pay, the higher up your site will be ranked. You can do this by going to www.google.com/adwords/ . However, if you’d rather not buy your way in to the first page, there are several other methods.
Inbound Links
An inbound link is a link to your site that is posted on a different site, and having a high number of inbound links—especially when they’re on a major site—will significantly raise your ranking. The best part is that you can accomplish this in many ways other than bribery. You can start by posting the links for other blogs on your own blog, and with any luck, the favor will be returned to you by at least a few of the bloggers. Writing guest blog posts is also a brilliant idea. If you have valuable information for another site, offer to write a guest post with a link to your own blog. You can also write reviews or comments on major sites, and the sooner you do this after they’re posted, the better chance you have of Google taking notice and moving you higher up through their pages. Networking is a great strategy for pretty much anything you do in life, and it won’t fail you here, either. Social media is a fun and easy way to network, so keep up with your social media accounts!
Continuous and Relevant Content
One of the best ways to move your website up in rankings on Google is to continuously post relevant information. Once you start seeing results, the worst thing you could do would be to stop posting. Never, ever do this! Always keep your site growing and changing. Make sure that the content in your website has proper spelling and grammar, and arrange the content in a way that is inviting, interesting, and easy to navigate. Another measure that most people forget about is to remember to keep including your keywords in the content of your site. Basically, find out what words people are typing into the search bar when they find your site. These keywords are important in finding more of your target audience, and repeating them throughout your site will increase the chances of your website moving up in the ranks.
Patience
This whole process of getting your website to the first page takes a surprising amount of time and patience. You can’t expect your rankings to dramatically improve overnight—not that it can’t happen, but it’s extremely unlikely. In addition, Google’s algorithms for their site spiders are constantly changing, and if you’re updating your website regularly like you should be, your website’s ranking should be pretty varied throughout the course of a month or even a week. Remember not to get frustrated if your website is still listed on page 20 of Google, but continue to employ these steps and have patience. From there, wait and watch your website move up through the ranks!