How to Move From the 2nd Page of Google to the 1st Page

In my last post, I talked about how to use SEO Digger to find keywords where you rank on the 2nd page of Google. Today, we’ll look at simple steps to move those 2nd page URLs to the 1st page of Google.

I find that people learn better with practical examples, so I decided to help one of my favorite business blogs, Strategic Profits Blog. Also, I hope to get a link from them 🙂

Using SEO Digger, I found a 2nd page URL. As you can see in the screenshot below, the keyword is “online business coaching” and the URL is www.strategicprofits.com.

Strategic Profits SERPs

(For more specific steps on how to find URLs on the 2nd page of popular keywords, check out my previous post, Find Great Keywords With SEO Digger.)

So, what can Strategic Profits to move their site to the first page? Here are some tips.

Change the Title Tag and the Meta Description Tag

The first thing I check is the title tag. In a survey of 37 SEO experts, the title tag was voted as the most important search engine ranking factor. Therefore, the whole keyword phrase should be in title tag.

The current title tag for www.strategicprofits.com is

Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs

If they changed it to be

Online Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs

they would have a better chance of ranking in the first page.

While I’m working on the title tag, I check the meta description tag and make sure the keyword is in there too. The meta description tag doesn’t help too much with rankings. However, it increases clickthroughs because the keyword is bolded on the description on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Look again at the Strategic Profits result on the SERPs. See how “business coaching” is in bold text.

Strategic Profits meta description tag

Strategic Profits can increase their clickthroughs by simply changing the description to

Find out how you can work less, make more money and have more time off with Rich Schefren’s online business coaching.

I just added the word “online” to complete the keyword phrase.

Insert the Keyword in the Body Text

I looked through the text of www.strategicprofits.com. I didn’t find the keyword “online business coaching”. They should insert that keyword 2-3 times in the body text.

Build Links with Appropriate Anchor Text

You can do this in two ways: link to the URL from your site (internal links) and get links from other domains (external links).

Internal links are easier to build but external links carry much more weight in Google’s algorithm.

Strategic Profits should use “online business coaching” as their anchor text. However, there seems to be a penalty for overusing the same exact anchor text. To avoid this penalty, they should also use keyword variations like these

internet business coaching
excellent online business coaching
excellent internet business coaching
online business coach
internet business coach
business online coach
business online coach
try online business coaching

Strategic Profits should link internally to www.strategicprofits.com with the above anchor texts. Probably the best place to do this is on their blog.

There are a lot of things you can do to build external links. To keep this post from getting too long, I’ll just give two easy-to-follow tactics.

First, I like to get links from the following sites because they’re free. All you have to do is submit a quality article.

squidoo.com
hubpages.com
ezinearticles.com

Second, I like to buy links.

Finally, build links in the content area of a site rather than sitewide links (like the ones on the sidebar and footer). Google likes content-based links more than sitewide ones.

Conclusion

It often doesn’t take much effort to move a URL on the 2nd page of Google to the 1st page. Follow the above tips and you’ll be on your way to a top 10 ranking. Good luck and feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions.

8 thoughts on “How to Move From the 2nd Page of Google to the 1st Page

  1. Very interesting article and full of useful tips.

    But do people search for online business coaching?

    It is not a phrase that I have thought about trying to optimise my Business Coaching Blog at http://businesscoaching.typepad.com around although I do see various of my competitors listed.

    You have inspired me into action so it will be interesting to see how I perform?

  2. @Chris: Nice tip. The sidebar is a great place to highlight internal pages that you want to rank better.

    @Ryan: Thanks!

    @Ahmed: Good point

    @Neil: I checked on the homepage and one of the images has the phrase “internet business coaching” so I figured “online business coaching” was a good phrase for them to target. Good point about using their blog to target the term. Thanks.

    @los angeles: Glad you like SEO Digger. It’s a pretty useful tool.

    @franck: Thanks. I try to keep SEO simple. Most bloggers aren’t interested in being SEO experts. They just want easy-to-implement tips that will help them get better rankings.

  3. It’s my first time on this blog, and I like the SIMPLICITY. Well done. Too many people want to make us think that SEO is a complicated thing.

    I get top rankings on Google for any keywords… And I don’t have a clue about what is a 301 redirect… Why should I care? I rank anyway…

    Come on Rich… It’s some simple steps. Just outsource this.

    Franck Silvestre
    The Body Guard Marketer
    Search Engine Marketing Guide

  4. Thanks for that link to SEO Digger. That is a great resource.

    But what about keyword research, it could be that it would be more useful to have other keywords in the title. Although adding “online” I’m sure would definitely help.

    A good paid resource for paid research on your competitors is Spyfu. They are $35/month, but you get to see both paid and natural detail.

    David Jaeger
    Los Angeles Internet Marketing

  5. Are you sure they want to rank for “online business coaching” if they are not actually using that phrase anywhere on their site? Is it one of their SEO goals?

    If it is, I would advise them to make more of a deal of it on their blog and optimise for it. At the moment they have the All in One SEO plug-in installed on their blog but they seem to have it set on automatic. They would be better manually entering keywords and descriptions for individual pages and the blog home page.

  6. Solid, actionable steps. A nice practical article. Will be sure to use these tips on my own sites;-)

  7. I have found that sidebar links to your own deep posts can also help a great deal. One of the reasons I recommend “popular articles” lists

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