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How to Rank on the First Page of Google With Free Methods

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Since 2008, I have been working to understand SEO and how to rank on the first page of google with free methods. The main reason for this goal is to get traffic to your website.

 

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When I was just starting out, my husband Joe was in Iraq. I was doing everything I could to keep my mind off him being gone and I poured myself into learning everything about online marketing that I could.

 

As I was learning, I saw that SEO was a true path to passive and residual income. I knew that if I could get my websites ranked for “buyer” terms and terms closer to the end of the purchasing cycle, I would be golden.

 

When you are trying to rank and figure out how to rank on the first page of Google with free methods, you have to remember that you cannot fool Google. How do people try to fool Google? By keyword stuffing and writing low-quality content that targets only the search engines.

 

Keyword Stuffing – the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results.

 

Keyword stuffing means repeating the same keyword over and over again hoping it will trick Google to put you at the top of the first page even if your content is not that great.

 

Instead of trying to trick Google with the latest gimmick, the best thing you can do is focus on providing massive value to your readers.

 

The more value you provide to your users, the better and I will explain why.

 

Google wants to provide the best search results to its users. They want to make sure they are the go-to search engine. They do this by putting the best results with the best solution at the top of the page.

 

When people start reading your content through your self-promotion (like posting on LinkedIN, google plus, twitter, etc) Google pays attention to how long each visitor stays on the site. If people are coming to the site and bouncing right off, that signals that your content is low value and Google will not rank you on the first page.

 

How to Rank on the First Page of Google With Free Methods 101

 

As you can see, it is wise to create great content that will cause people to spend more time on your site reading and learning more about the topic.

 

Building Powerful Links to Get onto Google’s First Page

 

If you think you’re going to get on Google’s first page without building any links, you are being very optimistic (or delusional). Unless you are trying to rank a very long tail keyword that hardly anyone knows about, that is just not going to happen.

 

Think of links like votes. Each link gives a little bit of pull for your website and shows google that someone thinks it is important. “Back in the day” every link used to be counted equally but now every link that you get is going to give you a different level of link juice.

 

If that is true, then what kind of links do you want to be building?

 

The most powerful kind of links from authority sites like news website and sites that have a lot of amazing content like WebMD.

 

The goal is to get your website to be an authority site so it can start ranking even when it does not have a lot of links pointing to the post but that is later down the road.

 

When you are building links you can point to your content from different blogs that you might have on sites such as wordpress.com but if you want to create even more powerful links at a faster pace, you can write to people who are linking to your competitors content and see if they would link to yours. You just want to make sure that your content is better than theirs. This technique is referred to as the Skyscraper Technique and was first named by Brian Dean of Backlinko.

 

You simply find the email of the webmaster and send them a note something like this:

 

“Hi (name),

 

I saw your content on (xyz topic) and thought it was great. I see that you link to (post xyz) and I thought you may find my piece of content useful to your readers if you want to link to it, here is the URL: (url).

 

Thanks for your time!

 

You”

 

Yup, it is just that simple. What is the worst thing they can do? Write back and say that you are a horrible person? Threaten to revoke your internet access? lol, Don’t be afraid of rejection. Even if you get 1 out of 10 links that you ask for, that can really help your rankings!

 

Simple Tips to Get Better Response to Your Outreach

 

  • Write “linkable” content.
  • Think about what type of content you share on Facebook.
  • Think about what kind of content you link to on your website.

 

For most of us, it is content that is extremely valuable or sometimes funny. Let’s go with the valuable one though. We share content because we want our friends to get value out of it and usually we share it instead of writing it because it is super long and in depth. If there is a quote or something, we can just write it in our status and give credit to the person that said it. On the other hand, if it is a super long and valuable post then we are going to share it.

 

If you look at this graph from BuzzSumo & OkDork you’ll see what content length you need to focus on.

 

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Photo courtesy of okdork.com

 

 

Think this looks like a lot of work? Well, the truth is that it is work and you are going to have to put some time and effort into it but if you know that you have a great message that can help people, why not put your heart into it and get it out there?

 

Creating long-form content does not have to be hard if you’ve done your research and know your content.

 

Some of the powerful types of long-form content are lists and how-tos. Creating lists is pretty simple since you can have one topic but then put a bunch of things together into one epic blog post.

 

Maybe you make a blog post about the top 100 cookie recipes if you are in the food world or if you are in the world of sports you could put your top 100 picks for players. Whatever it is, if you make a list of 100 and you have at least 100 words of great content, you are going to have a nice blog post going on there.

 

How-tos are great because you will be able to go in-depth on the topic and show people in the ins and outs or dos and don’ts of a topic. This can take quite a bit so your blog post will be pretty long.

 

When you are writing a how-to blog post, you should use photos to explain and go in-depth in a way that is easy to understand. Always keep in mind that most of your readers are not at all knowledgeable on the topic you are writing about.

 

Another thing to think about is that your blog post never has to be “done”. You can continue to add to your content over time and make it even bigger and better. When it comes to things like this, they are always updating so updating your post just makes sense.

 

The things that I did in 2008 and how to rank on the first page of good with free methods back then just don’t work anymore. If you are reading outdated information about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, you are probably doing things all wrong for what works today.

 

Want to learn internet marketing from the ground up? 

 

Read My Wealthy Affiliate Review Now

 

SEO Checklist 2020: What SEO Techniques Are Working?

Have the SEO techniques that you’ve been using for years stopped working for you? SEO can change within a blink of an eye on the whim of someone at Google. You need to learn what SEO techniques are working now and throughout the year 2020.

 

Continue reading this article to learn what’s working in SEO, so your rankings can improve or you can guard against losing your first page rankings.

 

 

 

Using out of date techniques instead of 2020 SEO techniques could leave your website dead in the water. You are writing content and being consistent, but you still see 0 search engine traffic coming to your website. What is going on?

 

What Content Are Search Engines Looking For?

 

If you are working to rank in the search engines and building a business in 2019, you may be trying to figure out how to best write content for the search engines, but this could shoot you in the foot in the long run.

 

Search engines are looking for content their users are going to find valuable. If you are writing content, stuffing it with the same keyword over and over again and providing little to no value, the search engines are going to know it. They get smarter every year.

 

While years back you could research search terms over and over again and see yourself in the rankings, that is not going to work in this competitive and highly intelligent age.

 

When you are building out your website’s content, you need to stop procrastinating and think about how you can give the end-user the information and help they need. Of course, you want to do your keyword research to ensure users are going to be able to find your content that is relevant to their search, but always keeps the end-user in mind as you are writing your content.

 

Is Link Building Important in 2020?

 

I have heard different points of view when it comes to link building and how effective it is when it comes to 2018 SEO techniques.

 

I have to tell you that link building in 2018 for SEO purposes is NOT the same as it was in years past. Before you could go spam a bunch of blogs with cheap comments and search engines would be like “whelp, I guess they are cool… go ahead!”

 

In 2018, SEO techniques and link building are not the same. You want to make sure the sites that are linking to you are good sites and not spam links. You can check through different link checking sites like MOZ or majestic to make sure the sites you are asking to link to you are going to be high quality.

 

While quantity is important, you want to think of quality most of all. One highly relevant and authoritative link could outweigh one hundred easy links that have little relevance and authority.

 

When you work in a professional like digital marketing, it is important to always be up on the latest techniques and strategies to build your online empire.

How to Gain Subscribers on YouTube Fast

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Over 2 billion people use the mighty YouTube.

If you have been building your YouTube channel for any amount of time, you may be wondering how to gain subscribers on YouTube fast. After all, who likes to do anything slow?

Before we get into it, let’s talk about the foundation of your YouTube channel so you never have to worry about going back and rebuilding after you’ve got things moving.

YouTube is always upgrading its platform and its requirements so having a firm foundation that will allow you to build a skyscraper on top without shaking is a must.

But what does a strong foundation look like?

How to Gain Subscribers on YouTube Fast – Value-Driven Content

What do I mean by value-driven content?

Content that people are going to get value from when they consume it. Whether that be from entertainment or education, you need to make sure people are going to find value in your content. If they do not find value in your content, they are not going to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

Another problem that will take place if you slap up any old content on YouTube is that your watch time on each video will show low numbers, you will not get the likes and subscribers you need, and you are not going to rank well in the YouTube search results.

When you have value-driven content that people love to consume, your watch times will be high and a good number of people that see your videos are going to subscribe. Make sure to put thought and effort into your content so people come away from your video with a sense of being better, feeling better or being amused depending on the goal of your video.

Create a Community

Once your videos are getting some traction, you’ve got some idea of how to gain subscribers on YouTube fast, and you need to start building a community around your channel when you are figuring out how to gain subscribers on YouTube fast. Everyone wants to have a tribe of people to fit in with and the ability to come together.

When you create that, your current subscribers are going to be the best PR team you could hope for. This is going to allow you to get promoted from other people outside of yourself and this is when it gets powerful.

Put in Some Serious Sweat Equity

If you want to know how to gain YouTube subscribers fast, the simple answer is sweat equity. You need to get the word out about what you are doing with your channel and fast. The faster you get the word out, the more momentum you are going to have, and this means you are going to pick up more subscribers on YouTube fast.

Some ideas for putting in sweat equity:

  • YouTube video collabs
  • Guest posting
  • Commenting and interacting with other YouTubers
  • Posting on forums
  • Build your social following on other platforms

You could seriously spend full-time hours on the above methods working on how to gain subscribers on YouTube fast and still not do it all so get started right away and this is how to get YouTube subscribers fast. Sure, it is going to be a lot of work, but it is worth it when you start seeing the subscribers coming to your channel.

And if you have time and want to watch this amazing video that will help you get started on YouTube check out none other than PewDiePie who has over 102 million subscribers! He might know a thing or two about growing your YouTube channel.

Now it’s time to get into action. Without taking action, people don’t know how much you know. Even if you’re not a pro at making videos, just start making them.

Get something on your YouTube channel and see what people respond to. You might be surprised at what people want to consume from you, so give it a shot and see what is going to work for your brand.

Do you want to learn more about topics like this? You might be a blogger that wants to avoid common blogging mistakes, or maybe you want to gain more followers on Twitter without being a spammy mc spammer pants.

Whatever it is, I have written a lot of posts that can help you with business, personal development and more, so don’t forget to check out the rest of the blog.

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Organic Search Engine Optimization & The Ever-Shrinking Organic Search Results

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See? When I search for "search engine optimization" you can't even see an organic result "above the fold"

If you use Google regularly, you may have noticed the organic search results are shrinking. What does that mean for organic search engine optimization? Is SEO dead? Should you focus on learning more about paid methods of advertising like ezines, PPC, etc?

Contents

Organic Search Engine Optimization – What Is It?

When I say organic search engine optimization, I am talking about optimizing your web content, so they will show up in the search engines (especially Google) without having to pay for the result to show up. There are many things you can do to make your web content a favorable result for search engines to return but here are a few of the things to keep top of mind when you are writing a post to get organic search engine traffic.

  • Meta Title
  • Meta description
  • In text keywords
  • Meta tags
  • Alt text
  • Image titles

Most of the time, if you are using any type of smart software (like WordPress) to write your posts, your content is going to be easily optimized so the search engines can find your content. Make sure you pick a target keyword and keep that in mind while you are filling out the title, description, keywords, image information, etc.

What Makes Search Engines Favor Sites for Organic Search Engine Optimization?

You may notice a common theme of sites show up in a certain industry you are searching for information on. It seems like the search engines favor these sites, but do they? Yes, they do! What makes search engines favor site for organic search engine optimization? There are a few things, but I will give you a couple of pointers.

  • Quality of content
  • Influence factors
  • Age of site

The three factors above a just a tip of the iceberg but they are very important. Creating quality content is what search engines want to show to their users and if the algorithms say that your content is going to give them the best experience, they are going to show your content at the top of the search results.

If the search engines determine your content is not helpful, they may not only hide your site in the many search results on the web, but they could put your website in the dark abyss of the “Google sandbox” or the equal of the “Google sandbox” on the other search engines.

Encourage Search Engines to Favor Your Website

While you cannot force search engines to show your content, you can encourage search engines to favor your content. The way you do this is to create content that people want to consume, view and promote it so the search engines can see the content is relevant and people want to view it.

Remember that content is king, but you must get out there and promote it. Just having content on the web is not going to get avalanches of viewers to your website. You must prime the pump and get things going on your website before you start seeing love from the search engines.

It’s a Race to the Top of the Search Engines but It’s Getting More Difficult

Even after you’ve done everything you can to get to the top of the search engines and you’ve got your SEO game on point, there seem to be fewer positions available for you to rank in. Advertisements from AdWords are all over Google and it is going to be more difficult for you to get the attention of the search engine users, but free traffic is free traffic, right?

Search engine optimization and digital marketing are always going to keep evolving and changing and you must continue to get better and keep learning. If you have good content, build relationships with other quality sites and provide value to your users, you are going to have less spikes and dips than anyone, so make sure to keep your content high quality.