It’s a new year, and as ever, things are always changing with Google and how they tabulate and position the organic search results. If you’re new to online network marketing, you’re almost lucky, as you can get started out with a clean slate in terms of getting your website positioned well in Google. If you’ve already got a track record online, you’re going to have to take a step back and change some of your thinking.
For both groups, you cannot afford to be afraid of change. Make change a part of your business strategy and spend time continuously implementing change. The leading search engines like Google really work off of a monthly cycle for their updates and scans of content, so you don’t need to make addressing your search strategies a daily chore. Review your results and your strategies, tactics and methodologies about once a month and set aside time to make some changes. It’s probably best to put aside 3 hours a month on review and continuing education on the search engines and how they operate, and to allow about 5 – 15 additional hours per month to actually make any changes or adjustments.

Content is Still King

The core element driving Google and how they rate and position websites are related to content, content and content. Since you’re a small business and simply can’t compete on a number of pages basis with larger companies, you’ll have to find other ways to differentiate yourself in Google’s eyes. Here’s some tips on gaining search engine position. Some of these tactics are only good for short term results, but doing these things as part of your strategy will help Google to see and rate your website much higher than if you just sat there “waiting for something to happen” on its own.

Learn Keyword Targeting:

This is the number one problem facing small Internet marketers. You have to find the exact combination of keywords that fit your website’s themes and products. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to research the search volumes for various keywords you think are good for your website. Only choose keywords that have traffic hitting them! Don’t target the keywords that have huge amounts of traffic, as those will be saturated with websites going after them. You need to find the “sweet spot” for you – keywords that are relevant and targeted, but with medium to medium high search volume. Keep this list of keywords as getting top position is a long term goal, and you need to stay on track. These are the foundation for carving out your own niche in the online world.

Build a Blog:

Rich text content is like flypaper for the search engine spyders. The way blogs are structured with long postings and a hierarchy of themed areas fits perfectly within how Google sniffs out content. Either put a blog within your website or set up a free blog outside the structure and link it back heavily. Use a unique domain if you do this, as the blog will count as an important, relevant back link to your website from day one of its launch.

Use Social Bookmarking:

Relevant, themed back links with traffic hitting them and coming through them is really the best way for you to move your relatively small website up in the results quickly. Sign up for a social bookmarking service like Social Marker, Onlywire or others, and submit EVERY single blog entry you create to the social bookmarking websites. If you make Digg or any of the secondary bookmarking sites, you will get A LOT of traffic hitting your posts. And that traffic will GREATLY help your website appear in the results.

Use the Social Networking Sites:

Create Facebook and Twitter accounts for your business and link them together, so one feeds off the other. That way you only need to ever update one of the accounts. Set up your auto-responder software so that periodically an email goes out to your list telling them to join you on Facebook or Twitter. Every time you create a new blog entry, release it on these 2 devices. Again, you’ll get traffic flowing into the website from relevant back links.

Piggy Back on Others’ Position:

This is complicated but take a moment and think about it. There are a lot of text rich websites that have very strong search position. Some of these websites are free article directories that will carry any themed or relative content submitted to them. Get yourself a program like Automatic Article Submitter. It makes this process easy, efficient and pain free. Take all of your blog entries that are relative to concepts or products (leave out any personal blog entries) and mix them using the software’s spinning software. This lets you submit unique, non-duplicate content with your name and links back to your blog to over 300 article directories online. For the directories that pick up your submissions, you get HEAVY back linking from sites that Google already rates very highly. You see why we call it piggy backing? This can get appropriately written articles with your name on them high up in Google temporarily. Think of the article directories like a trampoline that people bounce on; where they land just happens to be your overall blog and website.

Embrace Change:

Review your website’s position monthly in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting. Here’s something our friends in the SEO consulting business tell us. As you start to move in the results, look closely at who is one page ahead of you. Pick out the websites on that page who look like they do NOT belong there. Examine their website closely and look at their Title tags (the top of the browser window) and their Meta Descriptions (the description under their name in Google results). You’ll probably see the same keywords you are targeting in their Titles and Descriptions. Go back and tweak your website to match, then go into your content, particularly the homepage, and add more instances of the same keywords that you’re targeting to your text on the pages. Make sure you use them in a way that makes sense! And if you’re going to run any pay per click, or Adwords, now’s the time to do it. Make sure your landing pages within your website have the keywords you’re trying to “take” ladled throughout and hot link them to other pages in your website. Our friends in the SEO business call this “guerilla warfare.”
There’s a lot more to know. SEO is a complicated business and a huge consulting industry on its own. Doing the things I mention above can REALLY help you get results in 2010, so that you see some return on your time and resources spent. Running an online network marketing business is all about getting some success early, so you can keep your enthusiasm high and build upon the results.