How do you get to the top on a google search without paying extra for ads?

One Comment

1. Common Sense says:

   May 15, 2009 at 11:43 am

   It's all about content and search engine optimization. No one pays to be at the top of the organic search engine results, at least they shouldn't be paying – that would be unethical . Now, the results you see along the top and at the right side of the page are "sponsored" results, in other words, ads. Those are paid for by bidding on keywords. The higher you bid on your chosen keyword(s), the higher your placement can be in the sponsored results.
   But back to the regular search results, which are sometimes called "organic" search results. Informational sites like Wikipedia are near the top because the search engine spiders crawl the web for the sites with the most relevant content to your search query. Sites that sell items relating to your search term will also many times be found around the top. Because when you're searching the net, it's for one of two reasons… you either want information about something or you want to buy something… and sometimes both. The sites that turn up in the top few results should be informative and useful. Sometimes it happens that a few sites near the top are sites with one or two articles regarding the search topic and then many ads along the sides. These sites are usually just "money-makers"… in other words, they're not really there to help you, there's no one really "behind" them that you can email with questions, etc. People who are experts in SEO put these sites together in such a way that the search engine spiders "notice" them more due to their strategically-placed keywords and content. Thus, they end up in the top few search results, people click them, and then can't help but click on a few of the ads at the site and bingo, the site owner makes money from people clicking the ads. People who own these types of sites usually own hundreds, if not thousands of them, so even though they may only receive a few cents every time someone clicks the ads, all those cents add up thousands of dollars. Those ads are PPC (pay-per-click) ads where the person who owns the site gets paid for someone clicking an ad and the person who is running the ad is paying for their ad to be clicked on. On Google, these ads fall under the Google AdWords and Google AdSense programs. At Yahoo, the programs are called Yahoo YPN and Yahoo Sponsored Search. These ad programs are VERY effective and very successful, whether people use for advertising their own website or whether they are using them to make a few extra dollars by letting other people's ads run on their website. However, some people take advantage of them by operating the "junk" sites like I was speaking of above. The sites with a generic article or two, and then just a ton of ads everywhere. I know you didn't ask about these, but mentioning them lends toward answering the main question you did ask.
   You asked how… how do you get your site at the top of search results? The answer to this is what every website owner is after…. the Holy Grail of internet commerce if you will. No in the top got there overnight… and while they didn't pay the search engine to be in the top, they probably paid someone. Most site owners hire people to do extensive and ongoing search engine optimization to help make sure that their site gets to and stays at or towards the top of the results. I say ongoing because this is necessary. Google claims to have a complex algorithm that their spiders follow for obtaining search engine results, and this algorithm changes often. Just because you're at the top today doesn't mean you will be tomorrow. Someone has to keep researching and studying what it will take to keep you there. If you can afford to hire an SEO expert, then research or get a referral to find a good one, and go for it. If you can't, then it may be something you delve into yourself. SEO can be done on your own, though it is neither easy nor fun. It takes a lot of research and a lot of work, and again, it's everchanging. I suppose people who do it for a living do it find enjoyable somehow. I have no desire to tackle it myself and prefer to take the easier way out – which is by using the PPC ads I mentioned earlier. I use Google AdWords, but I'm not knocking Yahoo. I just haven't used their service as of yet. Your success with PPC advertising depends upon three things… your advertising budget (how much you can afford to bid on your keywords), knowing which keywords you need to bid on, and which you need to bid the most on, and last, but definitely not least, the content, appearance, and user-friendliness of your site. You can have all the traffic/visitors in the world to your site, but if your site is terrible, they won't stay long and they definitely won't be doing whatever it is that you want them to do (buy something, sign up for something, whatever). Alternatively, you could have the greatest site in the world, but if no one knows about it, then who cares? You've got to have both – lots of traffic and a great site.
   It's pretty easy to get started with Google AdWords and can use it with any budget… literally. You only bid what you want to and you only pay for the clicks that people make. There is also a helpful tutorial that walks your through the basics when you're a beginner. There is also a ton, I mean really, an endless amount of information out there regarding how to not only get started with AdWords, but how to really run a successful campaign with it. Good luck if you decide to go that route.