The Pinnacle

Before I answer that let me tell you a little story…

I have a real estate website that is number 1 on Yahoo in my market and number 4 on Google. I get calls every day at the office from so called “search engine ranking experts” who extoll the virtues of their services. They promise me that I can soon be on the first page of the major search engines and have a top ranking. Uhhhh, did they even look at the search engines BEFORE they called me? NO!

Why didn’t they?

Here’s why - they figure that THEY are the only ones who know how really easy it is to get to the top and they want to sell you that service. In fact, nearly everyone seems to think that getting to the top is all about submission to engines.

Let me let you in on a little secret - it’s not. Search engine submission only hastens the process. Getting to the top is another matter entirely.

Do a search on any search engine and search on “submit my website”. There are thousands and thousands of sites who will gladly take your money to type your URL into a script and press “submit”. You can do that yourself every couple of months for free. The thing is - if you aren’t doing what it really takes to get to number 1, you can submit and submit and submit and it won’t help you a bit - not one iota. Zilcho.

“Really?”, you say. So what does it take to get to Number 1? Like I said in the title of the article - smart people already know the answer.

Let’s look at this another way…

Do you read the newspaper? Why? Is it because you can go to one document and get everything you wanted to know about what happened in the world yesterday? Is it because in one nice little document you have literally tons of “content”? How about getting news online…

Do you have a favorite site you go to? Why? Because it all seems to be there, right?

When I first started looking for an online news site to catch up in the middle of the day, I searched around and looked to see what OTHER’s were recommending. Then, one day someone I was talking to in my office mentioned thier favorite news site. Bingo. Since then, that’s where I check my daily news.

This sounds too simple right? But think about it. If everyone and their dog were recommending YOUR site, both online and offline, do you think you would have any trouble being a popular site? Not hardly. You would already be at the top.

But, since no one is recommending you right now, what can you do? 2 Simple things:

1) Link exchanges with other sites that have similar content and are ranked higher than you and

2) Have a ton of content on your site about your topic.

When other sites have a link to your site, it is just as good as a personal recommendation as far as the search engines are concerned. The more sites that recommend your site, the higher you will go in the search rankings - it’s REALLY that simple. Of course if people get to your site and you have nothing to offer them, they’ll be gone in a click so you have to have good content to keep your visitors onsite.

With good content and lots of recommendations, you do not even need to submit your site to a search engine. The engines will find you! Of course, a little site submission here and there is always good for the visibility of your site.

To put this in a nutshell, do what anyone else does that wants to be popular at whatever they do… Get recommendations!