The front page of Google, the top 10 sites showing (sometimes out of Millions) on Google search results page, is perhaps the most valuable bit of online “real estate”. Below are the basic elements required for getting your chosen keyword term to rank in the top 10.  An easy to rank term with few competing sites (usually few searches too but not always) may require very little effort. The more competitive the term, the more work will be required on all levels.

These are all considered “white hat” and long term practices not likely to get the famous “Google slap” as will so many flavor-of-the-month “black hat”, spammy techniques. Taking time for good keyword research is key to know what terms are getting searched and not overly competitive. Having the keyword in your domain name does not hurt, but is not necessary. If you can, save the file name to include the keyword. On most blog sites like Word Press, that means changing the “permlalink” to include the post title, which will have the keyword.

Step 1 – Write Quality, Themed Content

Quality content is keyword focused, not only on primary keyword but themed or related keywords as well. Use software tool such as webcontentstudio.com to help write good themed content. A 500-700 word article is ideal, with primary keyword in title, meta tags, body copy and related keywords throughout. An occurrence of a related keyword every 5-10 words seems to be most effective. Can outsource this to trained writers (we got em for $100 per article)

Step 2 – Pinging and Social Bookmarking

Most blog software like Word Press will automatically ping your post when you publish but if not use pingomatic.com.  Immediately, also use socialmarker.com or similar (or outsourcers) to bookmark your article using the top social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Propeller and others. This should take you 15-20 minutes using the socialmarker tool, or you can outsource it. There is some controversy over whether these links are “followed” and counted by Google, but I have seen first hand my rankings improve with this step alone. Just do it!

Step 3 – Article Marketing

Can simply post copies of exact same article to the scores of article directory sites,  including the mammoth ezinearticles.com, with a link to your page in the resource box.  The incoming links will be valuable but if exactly same content, both pages will not be ranked. Better yet, have the article rewritten to be unique (change by at least 50%) while preserving the themed content in step 1. For just $70 per article, Kaizen Marketing will do a high quality rewrite of your content and submit (via outsourers) to 100 article directory sites for good backlinks AND possibly multiple rankings – front page results for more than one site.

Step 4 – Other Authority Backlinks

In addition to article sites, you should get as many high authority Web 2.0 sites to link to you as possible, including sites like Youtube, Facebook, WordPress, PRlog, eHow, Blogspot and others where you can create and save content, including links. Also, many forum type sites allow user profile pages with links that are followed by Google. Do this yourself or outsource to someone well trained in these methods (Kaizen Marketing of course!) For just $100, we will build 30 high quality links to your specific keyword focused page. For the current top web properties to get links FROM, download the free rank decoding engine. While the sites are not the highest authority, I have seen improvements using this handy link network service: Textlinks.com – the free trial gives you 25 links you can keep.

A front page google ranking is not hard for some terms just using a well optimized page, with quality themed content. For most worth having, you will also need to include a link building campaign, using the keyword in your anchor text links. Kaizen Marketing can help you get there. Contact us for a free site evaluation and specific suggestions to increase your success, and get more targeted traffic to your web site.

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Working with the writers at Bizlightenment, we provided keyword reports showing the best keywords for their featured company profile and a related keywords report to weave into the article (using our secret weapon revealing the best themed words  – see article on LSI)

Even without complicated link building and social bookmarking efforts, these optimized pages were ranking on the front page of Google within hours of being posted. As these are moderately popular keywords, traffic jumped up to the site from these words. This process works! With some additional link building efforts, these pages could be nudged into the very top positions for these terms.

Want such results for your web site? Contact Kaizen Marketing today for a free site eval and estimate to get your pages on the most valuable piece of commercial real estate today: the front page of the search engine results.

And take a look at our new all inclusive SEO service package.

Google and other search engines have been required to constantly improve their algorithms to provide relevant content to searches. No longer is it enough to have a certain percentage of a keyword phrase in your copy, or a certain number of inbound links in anchor text (all still important). Now, the Search Engines are looking to make sure there are plenty of related words in the copy to increase the quality of the search results.

LSI considers words that are not necessarily literally semantically related but that are used in the same context and is more like humans categorize and classify information. LSI knows to connect “Apple” both with “Oranges” and also with “Computer” as it is used in context in common speech.

LSI and The Fractal Connection

The 20th century Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot used mathematical equations to produce images called fractals which map the probabilities of word occurrences in English. Interestingly, the way we use language and classify documents can be described by mathematical equations similar to those that describe other chaotic systems. Therefore the seemingly mathematical and abstract principles and concepts underlying LSI are surprisingly similar to how humans use words and organize documents.

Because of this, web content that performs well under LSI analysis is likely to be more thoughtfully written, higher quality content and not something a robotic word machine could crank out. What this means to our search engine optimization (SEO) efforts is that every word on the page and not just our chosen keyword is important. In fact, this very document is being written with this in mind, weaving in words we know are seen by Google as related so that this article will stand up well to semantic analysis (one of those related phrases).

Kaizen Marketing’s tagline is “the art and science of continual improvement” and fits in well with this discussion, as using LSI is both art and science working toward the continual improvement of our web page rankings. Used correctly, it can propel a simple web article or blog post into the top 10 Google results in a matter of hours, and I have done that many times recently. This very article is currently ranking at #4 for “latent semantic indexing seo” and #9 for “latent semantic indexing LSI”, within 24 hours using only this method and just a bit of social bookmarking.

How to improve SEO using LSI

By placing additional weight on related words in content, LSI has a net effect of lowering the value of pages which only match the specific term and do not back it up with related terms. In fact, some pages may have their rank lowered by being “over-optimized” for one particular phrase.

So, mix up your anchor text and keywords used. For example, if I were working on SEO terms, I would also use various anchor text combinations so that the linkage appears more natural.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is good for the web searcher because they get more relevant, compelling content. It’s good for the search engines because it increases the quality of the content in their databases. And its good for your business because it ensures you’ll have content that drives more traffic to your site for more conversions and sales.

LSI Secret Weapon – NEW!

Kaizen Marketing uses a powerful software tool that combs through the top 10 Google results for any keyword phrase and produces a report showing the most common  2, 3 and 4 word phrases that are showing up on these top ranking pages. A new article or post written based on these phases can reach top rankings in a matter of hours. Allow us to help you achieve these results for your targeted phrase. We have made it very affordable for small businesses. And besides, you leaving money on the table by NOT getting your web page onto this valuable piece of commercial real estate. Contact us for a free eval of your site.

Where do I learn more? See technical doc here:
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), by Clara Yu, et al., National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, January 1, 2002.