Google Hacks, 2nd Edition

26 Steps to 15K a Day

Hot and cold running content is what draws visitors in to your web site.

Too often, getting visitors from search engines is boiled down to a succession of tweaks that may or may not work. But as I show in this hack, solid content thoughtfully put together can make more of an impact than a decade’s worth of fiddling with META tags and building the perfect title page.

Following these 26 steps from A to Z will ensure a successful site, bringing in plenty of visitors from Google.

A. Prep Work

Prepare work and begin building content. Long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a 100-page site. That’s 100 pages of “real content,” not including link, resource, about, and copyright pages—necessary but not content-rich pages.

Can’t think of 100 pages’ worth of content? Consider articles about your business or industry, Q&A pages, or back issues of an online newsletter.

B. Choose a Brandable Domain Name

Choose a domain name that’s easily brandable. You want Google.com and not Mykeyword.com.

Keyword domains are out; branding and name recognition are in. Big time in. Keywords in a domain name have never meant less to search engines. Learn the lesson of Goto.com becoming Overture.com and understand why they changed it. It’s one of the most powerful gut check calls I’ve ever seen on the Internet. It took resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding. (That’s a whole ‘nother article, but learn the lesson as it applies to ...