I’m surprised at the number of ‘urban myths’ circulating about how to get your website to rank in Google.

These are stories, personal theories if you like that have an air of believability about them and often a believer who promotes them so passionately that you can’t possibly disagree.
These non-facts evolve into urban myths that you disbelieve at your own populous peril.

A Urban Myth I hear regularly from attendees to my business presentations on Internet Marketing is “The more traffic that flows through your site, the better it will rank on Google.” 

Folks are absolutely convinced this is a fact, and there is some apparent creditability because those sites with lots of visitors do normally rank well in Google, so it’s hard to argue with the logic!

But unlike the question about which came first the chicken or the egg; the website traffic is due to the good ranking and not the other way around!

How do you improve your website’s ranking?
Google does not make the detail of how to rank in their search results public, although they do provide some broad information in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Google and indeed all of the search engines tend to keep the details of their ranking algorithms highly classified, simply because if individuals (particularly unscrupulous individuals!) knew how to ensure their site(s) would always out-rank their competitors.

Indeed the history of internet marketing is chequered with these scenarios; where unscrupulous strategies emerged to unfairly influence ranking which then lead to search engines refining their algorithms to negate that influence.

Examples of these include the Google Sandbox Effect and arguably Google’s recent demonization of paid links.
Given that there is not an authorities record of what works and what doesn’t this does tend to encourage urban myths.

I find Search Engine Ranking Factors- now in its second iteration – a fabulous reference because it is a corroboration of options from a panel of expert internet marketers.

Information is sectioned to allow you to drill into various related aspects; read and compare the participant’s opinions and consider how you should approach the problem at hand.

So the next time someone tells you how to gain ranking in Google confirm it in Search Engine Ranking Factors before you get seduced by another urban myth!

After introducing folks to the concept of Google PageRank and the value of inbound links, the challenge seems to be to persuade them to act.

If you are in doubt about the real value of links to your business, then read my article Link for Sales from August 07.

Anyway, the article Creating a Link Building System by Sage Lewis published in Search Engine Watch provides an excellent list of actions/strategies to get your inbound links started and is well worth a read. 

Cheers
Peter