There is so much information on the internet about SEO that you can’t even figure out which of them is legitimate and effective.

Every so-called SEO expert comes out with different tips and advice to dominate the search engines.

But one thing that’s certain is that Google doesn’t decide whose website or web page to rank. It has a set of standards it looks at before ranking websites and pages.

It’s the same criteria we’re going to exploit in order to win Google – rank high.

When you’re able to do that, you’ll then be in the right position to influence your target audience — drive organic traffic — without violating Google’s rules.

Mind you, I’m not advocating any black hat tricks to undermine Google. If you don’t want your site to be blacklisted, then avoid black hat tricks, okay!

Without further ado, below are the tips and advice to win Google and influence your potential clients.

How to Win Google and Get Found Easily

Read Your Targets Mind

Before you write any web content or build a website, the first and most important thing to do is keyword research. Ideally, your main aim of building a website or publishing an article is to solve a certain problem that your targets are dying to solve, right?

Even if you’re a non-profit organization, you should make it easy for your target audience to find you. So you need to embed keyword phrases in your website in order to make that achievable.

But if you’re blogging as a hobby or just for entertaining yourself, then you shouldn’t worry about keyword research. Go ahead and have fun with your hobby.

Whatever your objective for building a website or publishing articles online, you need to add keyword phrases  in order to make it easy for Google to rank your site appropriately and increase your visibility.

Takeaway: To rank better on search results, embed relevant keyword phrases that your potential customers may use to seek information about your products or services.

Befriend Google

After coming up with relevant keywords that you’re convinced your potential  customers may use to search for your offers, it’s now time to write valuable content that can help them improve their lives or businesses. This is the first and most important thing that should come into your mind when writing content online.

Your main aim is to help solve a certain problem or meet a particular need in every single web page that you write. Even if you publish over 100 blog posts on your website, every single one of them should be tailored to solving various problems.

Don’t try to solve more than one issue in your content. If you focus a lot on keyword phrases, you’ll end up writing irrelevant content and your target audience may not forgive you for that. Think long term when you’re creating your content.

Listen, don’t bombard your content with too much keywords. Doing so will alert Google quickly and your site may end up in the junk box. Fortunately, there is an ethical way to do this without being penalized by Google. Check this post out for more tips about SEO content writing. You’ll love it.

Takeaway: To befriend Google — rank better, create helpful SEO-friendly content for your target audience on a regular basis. And Google will love you for this. Trust me.

Solicit Votes from Various Sources

Another factor that Google considers to determine your ranking position on search result pages (SERPs) is the number of backlinks pointing to your website. The higher your website’s backlinks, the better it’s rankings will be.

For example, if you’re targeting the same keyword phrase with your competitor, and your web page’s backlinks are10, while your competitor’s own are 5, your web page will rank higher than you competitor’s. Why?

Because Google considers a website with lots of legitimate backlinks more important than those with less links. Every single link to your web page is like a vote from different sources.

But be careful, don’t rush out there and implement blackhat link building strategies. It won’t help you. It will only waste your precious time and energy. Also, make sure your backlinks are from different and legitimate sources.

Takeaway: To motivate Google to shower your website with its ranking power, slowly and steadily build backlinks to your website from various sources.

Vary Your Anchor Texts

Texts that are used to build links to a website can also be used to win Google’s love. How? By simply following what Google says about how to use it.

Anchor texts are words that Google uses to identify what a web page is about. They’re clickable texts within a link. When clicked, they take you to a different web page within a website or on another one.

Google uses anchor text variation as one of the standard for ranking websites or pages.

Ideally, your target keyword phrases should be used in this context but not too much. 80% of your anchor texts should be keyword relevant while the rest can be mixed with other phrases or terms.

Takeaway: When building links to your website or page, use relevant keyword phrases as your anchor texts – 80% of your keyword phrases and the rest should be a mixture of texts.

After following the above tips and tricks, it’s now time to leverage your rankings to influence your target audience — drive organic traffic. Are you ready?

Take Advantage of Your Rankings and Influence Your Target Audience

Now that you’ve won Google — ranking better — by following the above tips, it’s now time to take advantage of your position to influence your target audience. How?

Arouse the Interest of Your Target Readers

When your website or web page finally makes it to the top of search results, that’s where you possess the power to induce your targets into compliance. If you use this power intelligently, you may keep your competitors out of business.

When you perform a search on Google, the first URL links that appears on the result page are ten, right? Now, which of these ten URLs links would you be inclined to click based on your search term?

I guess it’s the one with a magnetic headline that hooks your interest. Why? Because the headline is compelling and resonates with your needs. That’s the first power you can use to influence your target audience – magnetic and persuasive headlines.

Resonate with their Needs

When Google finally gives you the chance to exploit its platform – SERPs —  to your advantage, the sky is the limit to what you can achieve with it.

There is this little spot where you’ve the second greatest power of influence besides the headline. That’s the meta tag description spot. That little but powerful “billboard” can make your ranking on the top spot of SERPs worthwhile or valueless.

Meta description is simply a few sentences that explain what your ranked web page is about. It informs potential readers about what is contained in your page. But your aim is not to just explain what you’ve written in your content but to compel them to click through to your website.

Why on earth would you waste this kind of opportunity given to you by Google? Take the time to write compelling and persuasive meta descriptions for your web pages. Even if your web page ranks lower on the SERPs, but has compelling description than the top ranked pages, may gain more click-throughs.

Take a look at the screen shots below to get a glimpse of what I’m talking about:

Of all the few listed search result in the screenshot, the second one has a compelling headline that can hook a searcher for the search term “basic fitness exercises.” And look at the way the owner of the site made the meta description so compelling and persuasive.

Go to Google right now and search for “basic fitness exercises.” And tell me which of the listed titles you would click. I guess it will be the second one. Take a look at another example below:

Look at the search term used in the screenshot. Now, carefully study the marked meta description and see how persuasive it is. Doing the same thing on your website and pages may increase your click-throughs tremendously. Trust me.

For your information, I own that fitness blog in the  screenshots and this tactics work like magic.

Give Your Readers a Reason to Come Back

Imagine how tedious it is for you drive traffic to your web page from search results in the first place. Wouldn’t it be wise to do all you can to retain the organic traffic?

This is where most bloggers make mistakes. And it’s where quality content become vital. Don’t write generic content that plague the Internet today. Stand out from the crowd by making your content informative and helpful. And your readers won’t have excuses not to visit your site again.

Write your content from different angles that few people think of. That way, you’ll not only get organic traffic from Google but will retain that traffic for a long-term.

The quality and relevance of your content will determine whether your target group will come back or not. But if your content help them solve their pressing problems, trust me, no one, not even Google will stop them from coming back for more. And that’s when you can command them to do what you want.

Command Them

It’s one thing to create unique content and it’s a whole different task to influence your readers to take action after consuming your content.

What exactly do you want people to do after absorbing your content? Is it to leave a comment, click a link to a sales page, fill a form or subscribe for your newsletters? Take the time to figure out what exactly you’d like your readers to do after consuming your content, and ask them take action. To increase response, make the action easy to follow.

Due to short attention span, exploit the little time that your readers have by asking them to sign up to your newsletters, purchase your product, click your affiliate link, fill a form, or leave comments.

Finally, if you follow the above tips, you’ll have nothing to worry about ranking better on search engine results. Even when Google comes out with another ugly update plan.

Takeaway……..

There is no magic trick in ranking a website on Google and other search engines. Simply follow the SEO basics – seo content, link building, and anchor text variations.

The basic things about SEO seem to work always than any so-called complex tactics that will only make Google penalize your website and leave you broke.

Your Turn………….

What timeless SEO tips have you followed till date, and that have worked for you all the time? Share your experience in the comment box below.