Jump Out of Your Skin

Today the age old topic/chestnut “How do I get better ranking for my website?”.

Now there are  thousands of words typed on how to do this especially for competitive keywords  and I am not going to revisit this. I am not a Google Expert but what I cannot understand is that people with low competition keywords (I say under 3-400 searches per month are in this category) get so excited about using complex tools and techniques to rank for them on Google.

Its not that hard baby!!  In fact its straightforward.  Once your domain has some age on it then the task can be done relatively easily. Take all of next week and do the following and you will slowly move up the rankings.  Here is your homework.

Pre-Test Homework
First make sure that you are not planning to fail.  Research your keywords using Google Analytics to make sure for this exercise you are not aiming too high.  For very competitive keywords the activities below will not help as your competition have already been doing it for weeks and months.  Still do it but look at getting from professional SEO help unless you want to be on page 2.  When was the last time you went to Page 2 on Google?

1. Make sure your keywords are in your <TITLE> tag for the page(s) in question.  Not a complete mix of words – just the ones that you want for that page.  If your search terms are  ACME Armour Plating (a damm fine company) then put that in there. Do this for all your pages if possible.  Time Required: 10 minutes per page – job done.
2. Have at least <h1> tag with the keywords in it. Time Required: 5 minutes
3. Write some reasonable and sensible content that has at least 2-3 occurrences of the keyword (avoid spraying the crops with the keyword) so Google can at least see you and try and rank you. Time Required: As  long as you want but 15-20 minutes should make a difference to existing text.
4. Submit your Site to Google Local Business – makes a difference.  Google this term to find the site.  Time Required: 10 minutes
5. General Housekeeping that will not help you rank but is sensible housekeeping is to make sure that you have a sitemap and that it is submitted to Google, ensure that your site is verified at the same time.

Homework done.  See how it does and if it does not at least push you up the rankings then I will start using FrontPage to do my sites!

I am gradually getting social media religion.  I had over 8000 people following me and I was following over 8000 people as well.  Problem is that I only interact with about 100 of these people.  So what’s the point I ask ?  No point I answer! Stop talking to yourself!

You may shout its all about social media and it’s the big S.  Rubbish I now say.  I am going to spend the next 2-3 months reducing my follower list to a group that I actually want to talk, interact and learn from into the following groups.

• People who send interesting Tweets and / or are famous in technology.
• Various News/Technology feeds that I check for information
• People that I chat with interact with at least once a week
• The odd famous person
• People in Ireland – even if I don’t interact with them I might some day
• People who respond to the KDT (aka the Kieran Daly Test see below)

The KDT

To be fair on people I will send them a Tweet saying how are things in XXX which is their location.  If they respond then they can stay.  If they don’t then they are gone. I plan to do this to 5-6 people per day not to clutter my Twitter Timeline.

You may think this is a pile of steamy dung to approach Twitter but I will have a cleaner stream when most of these people are gone as with 8000+ followers even with groups it just screams by and it might as well note be there.