I know how to get to the top of Google!

And what's more I'm prepared to share it with you.

No don't send money, plaudits or accolades I'm more than happy to share my knowledge with fellow businesses who struggle with the smoke and mirrors of conventional SEO (that's search engine optimisation) for the uninformed readers.

Perhaps more surprisingly, I should confess at this point that I am by no means a SEO expert. I have no in-depth knowledge or experience, I'm merely drawing on our own journey, that has involved dragging our own website www.collabor8online.co.uk, from the obscurity of page 3, 4 or 5 on Google search to the heady heights of page 1 (actually, and we are astonishingly proud to say this, for certain phrases number one in the list, that is if you include "uk" in your search term) - I know that's cheating but we're still proud of it!

Yes, over the last two years I've paid, met with, talked through, analysed, researched and paid again many experts in the arenas of PPC (pay per click) and SEO. The scenario is usually the same, there is a meeting, then usually a payment, then some results, possibly some fixes, usually another payment, then some more results, then another payment, then everything breaks so needs fixing, which as you can imagine implies another payment (I hope you get the picture).

The thing I’ve learnt is that knowing a little about the process is extremely valuable and knowing a little about the process is actually quite easy to achieve. I feel much more comfortable employing experts now to help me (rather than do for me) my SEO marketing and that's a crucial difference, being hands-on really is relevant.

So, here it is, the answer, the secret, the mystery unveiled–here's how you get to the top of Google.

You get the BBC to write a really positive article about you or your company, saying how good you are at what you do. It's also important that they link to your site using your key phrases. So in our case we need a link from the phrase "Online project management" to our website rather than just including our website name. Easy?

Well you've got it–NO it's not easy and that just about sums up the scenario! You need to get highly respected websites to write unique content around your chosen activities and include links around your key phrases to your own site. The reason behind this is that when higher ranking (from Google's perspective) websites link to your site you will in turn increase your ranking (around the phrases that they link to you with).

In other words, there is no shortcut, no easy way, no quick fix. You just need to build a web presence so that Google, (by gleaning information from yours and other sites) believes that you are a respected authority on the subject is covered by your key phrases.

You (well most of us) do need assistance, both in the technical areas and in the areas of actually doing the work because, producing content of the right type that you can distribute to the relevant sites does take time, effort, involvement and therefore costs in its own way. But if you're having some direct input yourself at least you can control how much of your own time and money you spend and have a good feeling of which areas of effort produce the best results and which are less effective.

Sorry if this answer is in the one you're looking or hoping for, but as I said this is not an expert view simply the views of a business owner who has trodden this path, and paid for the privilege!

www.collabor8online.co.uk
020 3369 6491