Holding Onto A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking

Holding Onto A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking In Google

top 10 ranking

Holding Onto a Top 10
Search Engine Ranking in Google

Recently I was forwarded an email from an online friend. It was from a customer of his seeking help maintaining her Google top 10 search engine ranking. Sound familar? Here’s an edited snippet…

Sometimes we have been in the top 10
but most of the time when Google
updates they move us OUT entirely.
There doesn't seem to be any logic
to this but I am sure there must
be. We have done all the keyword,
meta name and description tag but
that doesn't seem to help. I’ve
studied the sites that routinely have
a top 10 search engine ranking but
can't find anything that keeps them
up there. I need help because it makes
a big difference to our business when
we can get that top 10 search engine
ranking in Google.

Ouch. Can’t you just feel the pain and confusion? Sure sounds like she is trying to do the right thing. Now if Google would just cooperate life would be sweet.

To protect the innocent, let’s say she’s looking to land a top 10 search engine ranking for the phrase "blue widget". (What's a widget?)

Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Page Analysis

Okay so I did my standard page analysis. It soon became obvious why she was having trouble holding onto that coveted top 10 search engine ranking.

Let’s walk through it step by step laying out a 4 step blueprint as we go.

First, there were 56,000 pages in Google competing for top 10 search engine ranking for "blue widget". The day I checked her site was 57th.

As with most tightly niched keywords like this, none of the competing pages I checked were especially well optimized. Looked to me like a golden opportunity waiting to be had.

Two critical keys to help you rank well are your page title and the anchor or link text of incoming links. You MUST get those right to have any hope of fending off the competition.

Her page title was "Glitter, Blue Widgets, Sparklers, Titanium Widgets, Disc Widgets".

But did you notice? Not even one mention of "blue widget". Ah, Houston we have a problem.

To make matters worse 23 of the top 30 sites had "blue widget" in their title. Suggesting they got the importance of the page title tag. (Here's more title tag info to really drive the point home.)

Not only that but it might be best to focus on both the singular and plural form of the keyword. Because often the plural gets more search action. And if you're going to shoot for top 10 search engine ranking, you might as well go for the best choice, right? Of course only checking wordtracker would tell you for sure.

So without giving it a whole lot of thought, even something as simple as

"Blue Widget :: All About Blue Widgets" Next a check of inbound links found just one from an external site. No help there either.

Yet I did a Google search for "blue widget" and then a search within those results and found 719 pages with "Add URL". Suggesting plenty of potential linking candidates to pick from for an aggressive link getting campaign.

She had the keyword tag covered though. By my count there were 98 keyword phrases stuffed into that tag. Which is at best 95 too many. If I was going for top 10 search engine ranking for "blue widget" and "blue widgets" those would be the only terms I’d use there. It’s completely ignored by Google anyway.

Then I checked out how often "blue widget" appeared within the text, headers etc. You know page content?

Well I found "blue widgets" 8 times in the text. While "blue widget" showed up only twice. And once was way down at the bottom of the page. Remember this is the supposed to be the focus keyword. As such she should be using it early and often. Especially in the first paragraph.

Naturally there are other keyword fine points to consider when striving for top 10 search engine ranking.

Now another thing to help maintain a top 10 search engine ranking instead of just "Products" her sub head should be "Blue Widget Products". Not to mention she needed an H1 or H2 header tag at top of page under the logo with the term "blue widget" in it somewhere.

A spot check of the meta description tag showed a repeat of the title tag. Not a bad idea. But again totally lacking the focus keyword phrase.

How to Hold Onto a Top 10 Search
Engine Ranking Wrap Up

Okay, I only spent about 20 minutes. And for sure there is lots more that can be done. But given the niche and lack of seo sophistication of the competition, just fixing these problems would go a long way to securing a top 10 search engine ranking.

So here’s my quick and dirty top 10 search engine ranking blueprint:

Keyword in the title tag
Keyword in link text and get lots of links
Keyword in content especially the first paragraph
Keyword in headings or H1, H2, or H3 tags.

Do that and in most niches you’re 90% of the way there. Even though page volatility IS a fact of life in Google anymore, that four part blueprint can be the difference between getting a top 10 search engine ranking in Google and holding onto your top 10 search engine ranking.

Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Update: Within five weeks of changing just the title and heading tags this site got and held onto it’s top 10 search engine ranking. Watch out Number 1!