What Google Wants

… Give it to them.

As I have stated before, Google has changed a lot in the past 18 months. In the old days I used to have no trouble getting sites on the first page in Google. And for the most part – using “white hat” techniques. These days – not so easy. We still manage to get sites ranked well, but it is a lot more difficult. The thing is, Google wants to produce the best search results possible to their users. And that is honorable indeed. There is a lot of spammy sites out there trying to game the system.

So bottom line then… what is it Google needs for a site to be considered worthy of the first page?

Content. That is now #1. Metatags, key words and so on is much less important these days. Google doesn’t even consider the “keywords” metatags any more. Sites with fresh content (blogs) added often, every day/week constantly win the top spot.

Inbound links. Aside from content, links is still pretty well the only way search engines know your site is out there. But you can’t just go and buy 1,000 links for a hundred bucks. You need quality links from related sites. Period.

If your blog is noticed, others will link to it. You can spend some time going to related forums and register using your site link. You can post to other blogs. Yes, there’s some work to it.