Google and other search engines have very specific criteria to determine if your website is worthy enough to move up in the search engine rankings. While we will never know their exact algorithm, there is one sure-fire strategy that will improve your ranking.
Inbound Links
Inbound links are simply links pointing from various websites across the Internet back to your website. Anytime someone posts your URL on their website, or when you upload a YouTube video, submit an online press release or write an article for an online directory, you get a link back to your site.
Google looks at these links as “votes.” The more votes you have from other websites, the more relevance Google will give your website. It’s essentially a popularity contest, and the more votes you have, the more likely you are to win. The best part is that you can “vote” for your website an unlimited amount of times by posting comments on relevant blogs, uploading videos, submitting press releases, writing articles, etc.
While having a lot of inbound links directing to your website is important, even more important is having those inbound links come from highly-trafficked websites. The more popular a site is that links to you, the more weight Google gives your site. They assume that if a popular site is linking to you, you too are popular. The more links you have from popular websites, the greater the chance of people finding you on the Internet.
Perhaps even more important than having inbound links from these authority sites is to have those inbound links contain keyword-rich anchor text instead of simply having your website URL linking back.
For example: You write an article for the online article directory: www.ezinearticles.com. They allow you to put a blurb about yourself at the end of your article, as well as a link to your website.
Instead of saying: John Smith is the owner of XYZ Fitness in Springfield Illinois found at www.xyzfitnesswebsite.com
You should put “John Smith owns XYZ Fitness the very popular health club in Springfield Illinois
Notice that both examples would link to your website, but the second one shows the actual keywords instead of the URL. Google and other search engines give a lot more weight to your inbound links by making this simple adjustment.
You don’t have to be an expert webmaster to know how to do this. On any inbound link that you want to have the keyword-rich anchor text link, you simply type in this code instead of typing in your URL.
<a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com” target=”_blank”>Your Text you want them to see</a>
In place of “yourdomain” you put your URL, and in place of “Your Text you want them to see,” place the keywords you want to be ranked for in Google.
See — not difficult right? When someone links back to your website, all you have to do is provide them that exact code with your information filled in, and the magic of the Internet makes it happen.
Curtis Mock is the host of www.FitnessBusinessTelevision.com the TV show for fitness entrepreneurs. He is also the executive director of gymsuccess.com. Curtis can be reached at curtis@clubsolutionsmagazine.com.
That was a really cool tip. Our website doesn’t currently come up when I search for it. So anything I can do to get our rankings up there, I am gonna do!! Thanks for the GREAT ideas!! Keep them coming!
Jason,
Thanks for the comment, but don’t forget that as you go through the Club Solutions Magazine site to all the various articles, when you make a post, instead of typing “Jason Stone” into the NAME box, type “West Bradenton Health Club” or whatever words you want Google to notice you.
The more times you post like this, the better!
Curtis