Forum Moderators: open
Could anyone give me any advice regarding staying on the first page of the search engines. I've succesfully managed to do just that for a handfull of keywords but find that these tend to drop with time. Don't get me wrong I know it's not just a matter of the doing the work and then leaving it to chance.
I would merely like to know if there are some things I could add or implement to help with making my pages stick.
Thanx
If you build a 5 page site, hit page 1 of the SE's then never update it, then you will drop down the ranks again. If however, you can expand on this and develop more links to the site over time then it should give you more chance of staying up.
Probably one of the best ways to do this is writing PR / news stories, or even pulling in an XML from a feed you own. PR / news is good because you can continually add new pages to your site (allowing you to add new pages to your Google sitemap). It also allows you to post the story to other news site and blogs that, if you have included links to your site in the story, will link back to you.
Hope this is some sort of help.
One of the things that is spoken about a lot is simply expanding your site. If the site constantly looks fresh then spiders will continually have reasons to come back.
webboy1 - This doesn't make much sense to me. What difference does it make if the spiders come back? Your site doesn't necessarily increase in rankings just because it's been spidered.
Adding new content is a good strategy if it's good enough to attract both visitors and links.
You need have both content worth linking to and people to see that content in the first place for the linking to happen.
There are different kinds of content models for different kinds of sites. On some sites with regular visitors, frequent additions of content may be necessary to keep your visitors coming back.
On other sites that are visited less frequently, new content may provide more inbound link opportunities, but you will have to promote that content (or promote your site) in order to attract the linkers.
Additional content also helps broaden your possible search targets and, if varied enough, makes your site more resistant to algo changes.
Apologies ... I was simply trying to give a general overview to help. You are correct, just because a spider crawls your site doesn't mean a change in rank ... but if your site is never spider to feed any updated information back to those who control the spider then your ranking won't change either.
From experience, I've found that the more often a spider crawls the site, the more often the site is cached in the engines - meaning any changes I make are recognised quicker, rather than me making a change and waiting a week or so.
You do however go on to explain pretty much what I meant about expanding the site - new page, new content etc. So I'm not sure what part was confusing.
Again though, it wasn't intended to be to indepth. It was simply intended to help, and not knowing DannyTrix level of knowledge about SE's, I didn't want to go into to much initial detail.
Apologies if it caused any confusion Dannytrix
but if your site is never spider to feed any updated information back... then your ranking won't change either.
I agree with everything Robert said. Now I'd like to add more. ;)
Spidering
The spidering is a function of inbound links. The more links you have the more spidering you will receive. Spiders primarily reach your site from other sites that are linking to you. This is the primary way spiders discover a site (though not the sole manner). The more sites are linking to you the more spiders are going to reach you.
Staying at the top of SERPs
Generally the top of the SERPs are pretty stable, so if you find yourself bouncing in and out it may be that your area is very competitive or else you may need to identify a weakness in your site and shore that up.
What I think are typical reasons why top positions are lost
Often when the SERPs change it is an indication that the criteria for ranking sites have changed. The weighting on certain factors have changed. If the change one month favors your site, then you rank well. If the change favors factors that your site is weak on then your site will drop. Authoritative sites that consistently hang on to the top SERP positions are typically sites that have little to no weak areas.
A Formula for Ranking Well
Contrary to popular thought, there is no one ranking formula, no single way to ring all the bells and consistently hit the top regardless of niche. Nevertheless, if your site contains a broad array of quality signals then you're going to be able to maintain your top position by virtue of fitting into whatever criteria the search engines are favoring that month.
Typical weakspots that can dampen your ranking:
Anybody else want to add to this list?
I think I'd add the following to your list, and I'd note too that problems in several of these areas can be corrected by more and better inbound linking...
