by Danilo Rizzuti
Are you on the first page of Google? You may think so and hopefully you are but just to be on the safe side, I am going to give you a quick and easy tip to help you verify your status.
Log out.
Make sure that you are logged out of all of Google’s services before you Google yourself. If you use Google Chrome then make sure that you are logged out and if you use gmail make sure that you are signed out of that, too. YouTube, Google Drive, Google Plus (g+), all of them. Ignoring this total infringement on their trademark, we call them Googlies. In a nutshell, log out of your Googlies, or it skews the search on your own keywords.
Why? When you are logged in to Google, it will show you things that are relevant to you and there is nothing more relevant than your name and your business, right? This is the same reason that when you Google “Kroger store” it will give you the list of ones close to you and not one five states away. Google is pervasive – sometimes it’s convenient that way, and other times, it can just get your SEO hopes up.
A few first-page tips:
#1: Use Google Plus
Sharing Blog posts or web page links on Google Plus provides a lot of link juice and is a tremendous first step for getting either on the first page of Google or much closer to the first page. So each time that you release a new blog post or update a page on your website, make sure that a standard part of your release process is to share a link / update on g+.
#2: Submit a Sitemap
Make sure that you have submitted a sitemap of your website to Google and Bing. This alerts Google that there is an update to page content on your website. Why wait on the spyders to figure it out when this will help bolster your ranking faster? If your website was built utilizing WordPress then you can install a sitemap plugin and it will do this for you automatically, once it is all set up. However, it is not too difficult to do it manually either. Go to this link: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and follow the instructions.
#3: Keep it Fresh & Keep it Real
Google cares about you. Well, that you are you and not a bot or autoresponder. Google wants to see more human in the html now more than ever. Google now cares more about relevant content than it does keywords. As a matter of fact, while keywords are crucial so that people know how to find you, keyword “stuffing” (overuse) will get you knocked off the map. It is vital that you provide content for your potential visitors that will matter to them. So keep the content fresh and keep it real.
Do you have any SEO tricks that you would like to share? Please share your experience below. I look forward to hearing from you.
