Higher Google Ranking SEO Tips

You've created your list of targeted niche, low competition keywords and phrases. However, did you remember to also check out the actual listings on the first page for your keyword by typing it into the Google search bar?

Whose already listed weighs highly in or against your favor when it comes to a higher Google ranking. Since most people create a revised search before even moving on to the second page of listings, it's best to make sure you have a chance of getting on the first page before you start using your newly discovered phrases. This is a major key to getting listed on any search engine.

At a glance, here are a few domain and website types to look for...

Academic Websites

Google views pages published by universities as high quality sources of information. Academic by nature and usually peer reviewed by professionals in their own field, articles and other publications from a .edu domain will most likely trump anything you throw at it. A keyword that brings up a first page littered with results from the educational elite will greatly destroy your chances.

Major News Sources

CNN, MSNBC, and other major news publications and networks will most likely be unbumpable due to their journalistic credibility and popularity. If they're already dominating your keyword, best to try a different phrase.

Government Websites

The government also engages in research and distributes informative and useful information across the Web. If your keyword creates a first page with plenty of .gov's to go through, competitors beware.

Market Specific Websites

While you start constructing your Internet empire, you will want to avoid going head on with websites saturated with pages in the same market and covering the same topic as yours. Search engines categorize domains based on content and will give them expert status if they generate enough related pages and receive enough inbound links from other sites of relevance.

Old Domains

Your dad probably knows a bit more than you, and your granddad more than that. The Internet trusts sites that survive the tests of time (as short as that may be so far) and pages that remain true to their content and retain popularity. A fresh page, even optimized with low competition keywords, might not last long against a page covering the same info, but went up 2 years earlier. Seniority counts online too!

Domains That Match Keywords

Domains that use the exact keyword phrase you target as their domain name, like "www.yourkeyword.com," will be difficult to bump. Google will use the domain name to assume that the entire site covers the topic and will automatically give the site prominence for that search term until deeming otherwise.

Inbound Link Champions

Google and Yahoo! provide you with a wonderfully useful operator - "link:". Type in thr URL of your choice into either search engine with "link:" before it, such as "link:www.yourwebsite.com" and either search engine will give you an estimated list of links coming from to the page from other websites across the net. These links serve as one of the many search engine score cards for webpages. If your competition receives more links than your page you can probably bet you will not be able to out rank them with your low competition keywords.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking websites like Digg and StumbleUpon allow Internet users to utilize their given online democratic powers to share, vote, and ignore websites at their whim. Just as inbound links serve to judge the popularity and ranking of a page, so do the marks given by social bookmarking sites and their users. Because these sites share a similar value to reputation as search engines, Google and crew hold pages featured and listed on these websites in higher regard than your average Joe.

High Traffic Domains

Extremely popular websites built around online writing and info sharing also can be difficult to beat. EzineArticles, WordPress, HubPages, and many other blog or article sites live and die by user opinion and popularity. In the twisted world of the Internet, what's popular is what's worth sharing, and what's worth sharing is what's credible.

Getting Your Low Competition Keywords Working

Despite the Competition

So, what can you do when confronted with one or more of the above domain types listed in the top three spots of the first page? If you do not focus on getting in one of these three positions by now, you need to, because after the fourth spot in the search engine listings it becomes a 5% toss up whether someone will even click on your page. If you already optimize your web pages, try to follow a few of these search engine optimization SEO tips...

1. Keep beefing up your website with focused pages containing high quality content.
2. Keep your website topic oriented and stay within your market and niche.
3. Place relevant publications on sites like EzineArticles, HubPages, and Squidoo that link back to your own pages at your website.
4. Get listed on the social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Technocrati.
5. Turn your website into a Blog to make it more content oriented.
6. Increase traffic and awareness by promoting your website on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
7. Build partnerships with other websites within your market, but not in direct competition with you. They might be other businesses or other blogs. Make sure you exchange links with proper anchor text on their site that matches keywords you use on yours.
8. Link to other websites within your market as resources. They might notice you, they might link back, and you help your visitors as well.

Even if you place your low competition keywords correctly in your title and throughout your copy, you still must consider the strength of the website sources of the results already listed on the first page. Any of the above and in combination can hurt your chances, if not keep your page off the top rankings completely.

When all else fails, try other low competition keywords that do not go head to head with the domain and website types listed here.

This is by far not the only factor in SEO, but it's definitely a big one.

Good hunting!

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