#1 Google Search Ranking Tips

Reader Grant Lofthouse sent in an excellent Google/SEO question the other week, and I passed it on to our resident expert, Rick Porter, from www.RickPorter.org.

Rick starts off with a practical specific answer to the question, but his final paragraphs on the mindset of running an online website business might be even more important for you to read…great stuff again Rick, thank you. – Craig

Question: “Once you do hit the top of google. How many posts and backlinks should you do a week to keep the site there?”

Rick Porter’s Answer: Well, there’s no magic formula on how many links and how many articles you’ll need because every single niche is going to be different.

To be on the safe side I would continue at the same pace that got you to the top. Do that for a while and if you maintain your #1 position you can start backing it down to fewer posts and links.

However, ALWAYS watch Google page 1 to see if there is anyone new is popping up out of nowhere – it might be someone like me that discovered a profitable niche and is gunning for that all-important #1 spot.

Don’t let them take it if you are counting on that income!

But the specific number of posts and links you need to send will depend on the competition for the keyword AND on your competitor’s response to you achieving top spot.

First off, how hard was it to take the top spot?

If you got there without much work, then it probably won’t take a lot of work for someone to knock you off the top either.

You also need to think about how much work are you willing to do to keep it and is that amount of work worth it?

If you just took someone’s #1 spot away and they were making good money in top spot, then they’ll probably be out to get that top spot back.

Bottom line: If you have a profitable #1 spot you want to be PRO-active NOT RE-active.

If your former #1 competitor starts building 25 new backlinks per day to take it away from you, then you better be building 30-35 links a day to retain your spot.

Unfortunately, since it’s impossible to accurately gauge what they are doing you’ll need to base your decision of how much you are willing to do.

I’ve had a lot of #1 search positions that wound up not making me any money at all.

And so although I hate losing, I had to force myself not to keep putting time into maintaining a ranking for something that was not profitable.

On the flipside I have a couple of sites and niches that make me $3000 to $4000 per month and I do whatever it takes to maintain my #1 rankings.

Now when I look at each website as it’s own profit center ,I look at a few variables –

1) How much money is it making?

2) How much could I realistically grow the revenue by tackling more keywords and improving conversions?

3) How much time and money am I willing to invest to maintain and/or grow this and is that time/money going to produce enough profit to warrant the work?

Part of this paradigm shift started occurring to me at Craig’s recent Mastermind meeting where I learned that I need to focus more on my 5% tasks that make me all of my money and outsource the 95% of the other tasks to others.

I realized that it’s the same with my websites where a small number of sites produced the majority of my income.

I didn’t understand why I didn’t see this before, because even back in my days in technology sales I got 80% of my business from 20% of my clients.

(Funny how these same numbers follow you around in business but you forget).

When you start making money online it feels kind of surreal.

All of the sudden you have cash coming in from different things and if you don’t take a step back and analyze how you started making that money, you can lose sight on how easy it is to multiply what you have already accomplished.

I continue to build new niche sites but I’m also now spending more time on my real money making sites and seeing how I can build them to even higher levels of income.

I look at my websites sort of like a stock portfolio now – I have some fantastic producers, and I have some real duds.

This is why I will continue to keep adding more websites because some of them just take off, while others fizzle out.

It’s ok to keep taking a lot of shots, but when you miss just figure out what went wrong and what you could have done differently – learn from everything you do.

If you just made a bad niche/keyword decision – remember, every niche is going to have a certain market cap on what you can possibly make even if you are holding #1 rankings on the keywords.

And you need to decide if that is enough income to support yourself, or will you need a few more niches?

But never forget these two sets of numbers:

1) The 80-20 rule: That 80% of your results will come from 20% of your business.

And

2) The 5% Rule: Do everything you can to design your workday so that you focus on the crucial 5% of tasks that make you the money – and that only you can do – and outsource or eliminate the remaining 95%.

Those two sets of numbers are what will allow you to get ahead.

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Thanks again Rick.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the “secrets” of Facebook, Farmville, IKEA, and GroupOn.

Thanks for your questions,

Craig Ballantyne

“Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.” Go Giver Law #2, from the book “The Go Giver”. A very good read.