I often get into discussions about how a website can rank better on the search engines.  First off - I’d like to point out that websites don’t rank… Web pages rank. It just so happens that the more authoritative a website is, the easier it is for that site’s individual pages to rank well on the search engines.  However, you don’t have to be Yahoo, Realtor.com, or some National franchise to get your individual blog post to rank well on the search engines for the right phrase.  The key is to write quality content that will get links pointing at it.

If you write a phenomenal blog post, you MAY find that you get decent rankings, but it’s not because someone at Google  actually read your post and gave it a good grade…  It’s because other bloggers out there read it, and linked to it — or you somehow got links pointing back at that post, and when you did rank, readers visited, poked around your site, and maybe even left some comments for you!

However, it’s not always possible to write earth-shattering posts that get noticed without a little help.

Here are a few tips:

On page optimization:

Pick a keyphrase.  Make sure a keyphrase you want to rank for is included in your title, as well as in the body of your message. Don’t be spammy about it. Once in the title, and once or twice per 300 to 500 words is fine.  (It also can’t hurt to occasionally use a strong tag around your keyphrase too.)  Don’t get me wrong… You should still focus on QUALITY content — it’s just that tweaking title tags, and optimizing keyword density isn’t going to get you NEARLY as far as getting more links will get you. In fact, I wrote a post just yesterday about how to write quality content for your real estate blog.

Off page optimization:

Focus less on your own content, and more on getting awareness out about your content.  Believe it or not, the majority of why you rank well on the search engines only has about 10% to do with your site itself.  The other 90% of weight in determining your rank on the search engines has everything to do with who is linking to you, and how fresh your content is.  (And since comments keep blog posts fresh, getting comments on your blog is an extremely important off-site optimization tactic.)

Start networking on Twitter & Facebook. Whenever you write a post that you think would be interesting to the people in those social networks, send a status update (Facebook) and/or a Tweet (Twitter) with a link to your blog post.  Visitors will come, and some will even comment.

Start commenting on other people’s blogs. Don’t leave lame statements like “great post”, or “I couldn’t agree more” without saying anything else.  ADD VALUE to their conversation, and visitors will be compelled to visit your site.  In addition, by commenting elsewhere you’re scattering a trail of breadcrumbs all over the web leading back to your site.

Write guest-posts on other sites. I don’t care how prolific a blogger is, sometimes they just don’t have the energy to keep it up and getting some help is almost always well received.  Offer to write content for other people’s sites.  The only condition is that you get a link (that is not “nofollowed”) back to your site.  9 times out of 10, the blogger or website owner will gladly take you up on it.  I’ve received one-way links from very authoritative sites simply by picking up the phone and saying “I like your site & what you have to say. I’d love to contribute content to help you out.”

Every time you write a post that you’d like to rank for, rather than passively waiting to see if you’ll climb from #20 on Google, try this:

1. immediately comment on other people’s blogs who share similar interests (tread lightly when commenting on competitors’ sites.) You’re bound to get visitors to your site (and some will comment - which boosts your credibility.)
2. Announce your post on Twitter, Facebook or any other social networks you’re on.
3. Try to write a guest post on someone else’s site, and link back to that specific post using the keyphrase that you want to rank for as your link.  (This is called “deep linking” and is EXTREMELY effective.)
   • If you are intimidated at the idea of contacting someone to write a guest post, set up a free account at squidoo.com or hubpages.com and write content there.) The point is to be proactive about getting links pointing back at the specific post you want to rank better.

There are dozens of other easy strategies you can use to boost traffic to your website, but I promised Matt Fagioli & Brad Nix that I’d save those for my presentation called “10 things you can do to boost search engine rankings without ever touching your website” at ReTechSouth.com on Friday, March 20, 2009.