Being On Page One of Google is WORTHLESS If You Don't Do This

If you want to be on the first page of Google's search results, that's great! But if you fail to follow the simple steps I outline below your high search engine ranking will mean nothing.

I'm about to show you how you can ensure that being on page one for your keyword actually means something and then I'll update you on my journey to the top of Google's search engine rankings.

By the end of this article you'll be able to draw tons of valuable traffic from Google.

How to Avoid a Worthless Page One Ranking

How can being on the first page of Google's search engine results for a certain keyword be worthless? I mean it is the great Google, isn't it? And everyone wants to be on the first page, don't they? Well, yeah... and yes... but you cannot forget one simple thing if you want this ranking to mean something.

You need to do keyword research!!! But why? Well, first of all, if you want to make money from the site you're promoting then you need to target the right type of people. And if you're going to really target a certain keyword then you need to be sure that it's one that a buyer would use. You don't want researchers or people looking for something to read, you want action takers! You want someone looking for a specific product by typing in a long tail keyword. You don't want someone researching for homework or someone looking for pictures.

So use tools like MSN's Online Commercial Intent tool (when it's actually online) or just really think about the keyword you want to target. Let's say you want to target people that are interested in purchasing a home gym... so you'd target the keyword "home gym" right? NO! That's way too general. You want to target things like cheap home gyms, discount home gyms, where to buy home gyms, best rated home gyms and so on. Those are keywords someone uses when they are ready to buy something.

OK, so you've got your buyer keyword that you're going to target... you're all set, right? Nope! Now you need to make sure that people actually search with that keyword every single month. So hop on over to the Google Keyword tool and find out. If you are ranking on the first page of Google and are getting next to no traffic, then there's a big chance that no one searches with that keyword.

Now, you're ready... right? Not quite. Now you need to write a catchy title and description. You need to really make people want to click your link, otherwise you will get no traffic. Another thing you want to work on is getting in the top 5 results on the first page to really ensure that you get a steady stream of traffic. When you follow these simple steps you can be sure that your page one ranking on Google is actually something to brag about.

Now let's take a look at the experiment I outlined in my article titled "My Journey to the Top Search Engine Ranking on Google". I was curious what it would take to land in that number one spot on Google, so I took a stab at it.

And things aren't really looking that well... Yesterday I was on page 2 of Yahoo and Bing and now I'm not even in the top 10 of either. So either they didn't like what I did yesterday or they have their own little sandboxing that they do to be sure that new sites are worthy of page 1 and 2. But I was curious where I was at on Google and found my article all the way on page 45... that is one heck of a handicap!

It appears that Google has grown a hate for HubPages that is stronger than I had imagined. I can be on page 2 on two search engines one day... but then I find that I'm that far down on Google? Yeah, something is up! I mean I'm on page 24 on Bing and Yahoo (it actually looks like they are the same search engine now), but yet I'm almost twice as deep on the results on Google? I'm not sure why I got knocked down 22 pages on the other two in a day, but I think I'll creep back up with time. But I do know that I may bring this experiment to a close soon. Time might be a bigger factor than getting backlinks and perhaps the handicap on HubPages is too hard to overcome in such a short amount of time. Maybe the new sub-domains will help, who knows.

But I still got three backlinks to my article today. I got one from Gather, where you have to submit your link as linked text in a post. But you can turn off related posts so that your link gets more attention. I got a link from eBaum's World... yeah, pretty weird and possibly dumb but I figured why not. I'm really running out of legit looking social bookmarking sites anyway. And then I got a link from sphinn, which I'm not even sure submitted correctly. They handpick which links go up anyway, so it might not amount to anything.

And now it's time for the broken record! I've made no AdSense money through that article but it did get a whopping 2 impressions. And when I checked stats on HubPages, which operate on a rolling 24 hour period, it only got a single hit from HubPages itself. So the interest has died down a bit, but that's kind of typical for the weekend.

No real change in what sites are bringing the article traffic (HubPages) and the keywords that are bringing it traffic (the exact URL), so it's just a waiting game at this point.

But if you can fight past the HubPages handicap (or just try the keyword methods above on a different domain) then they will definitely get you consistent traffic that actually matters. So be sure that you do keyword research before you attempt to land on page one of Google. Now you can brag about your results when you get there ;).