Search Engine Optimization – How to Outrank the Top Ten I

Here are the steps for evaluating your competition and what you need to do to out rank them in google:

1) Type in your keyword, in “quotes”, your google search window.

2) Perform the following steps of analysis on each of the top ten results for your keyword.

a) Check the number of inbound links using this command in the yahoo search engine:

links: www.thedomainname.com

If the web site domain name has dashes with in it, like this: the-domain-name.com, use:

links: www.the-domain-name.com

The reason you are going to use the yahoo search engine for this step is that for competitive reasons google does not show all the inbound links in their searches. Although this will not be exactly what google will take into account, it is a close approximation, and as long as you optimize your web site with the same parameter in mind, you will get comparable results.

b) Check the anchor text on the inbound links for each web site. There are two ways to do this: click through to each of the web sites which are linking to the domain name you just checked, and you can see the text anchor link itself, or you can use a backlink checking tool.

I have compiled a list here of a few backlink checkers:

http://www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php

http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/

http://www.seologist.com/tools/anchor_text_analyzer/

To find more, just google ‘backlink checker’ and you should come up with a list of a few more.

c) Check the pagerank of each of the web sites that are on that top ten results page. I like to use:

http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Once again, by searching for “pagerank checker” in google or yahoo, you should be able to come up with a list of a few more that you can use.

Now that you have these three crucial pieces of information about each site, you can assemble a pretty good picture of what your linking structure should look like to break into the top ten, and also to dominate it.

Many times the results of this research will not be clear cut, and it may appear that one or more sites is wrongly ranked – and that may be the case.

In addition, you can also take steps to determine the on-page optimization and beat it.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘