By Daniel D Dwase

Hold on to your hat. I'm getting ready to reveal to you some search engine secrets that expensive SEO companies aren't going to tell you about search engine ranking.

In fact, they'll probably hunt me down and make me one of the "disappeared" for letting this one escape.

Just think about it, with all the hype about keywords and key phrases floating around on the Internet, don't you think if it were that simple, everyone would be able to get a #1 ranking.

If keywords alone could get you the ranking you wanted, what would you need a SEO professional for anyway?

Keywords is only one piece of the big puzzle of how Google determines relevancy, it doesn't necessary translate to ranking. Relevancy is simply how much related information Google thinks your site has when someone types in keywords that match your site.

Ranking is determined by a combination of things that include your site's popularity via linking, how many visitors you average, as well as its relevancy and other unknown variables Google will never reveal to the public.

I encourage you to visit Google's Webmaster's tools. There you'll find many helpful articles that will give you tips on how to increase your site's probability of achieving a higher ranking.

This first search engine secret I'm revealing to you is really just common sense, but it's probably the most overlooked because it requires the most work: Google loves lots of content - abundant amounts of content.

In fact, if your site has lots of focused, niche topic content, it will get Google's attention faster than any other strategy.

Chances are if you've chosen a niche and you make continuous efforts to compose lots of valuable informational articles, and post them intermittently throughout the week, you'll have a better chance of increasing your ranking that way than by any other method.

If you're site is new, continue to consistently post new content. Not only will you see your rank improve, you'll notice an increase in Google search traffic.

Now, hold again, while I reveal another great search engine secret: when you notice that Google has sent you some traffic, you can use your stats (such as Google Analytics) to determine which search terms brought you the traffic.

You may notice that you've received traffic from keywords you hadn't considered or exactly written about, but are related to your site.

For example, a site that focused on keywords related to web hosting received Google search traffic from the keywords "email quota". While the two don't immediately seem related, the site actually did have some information on how to set up an email account for a particular web host service provider.

Someone was looking for information on how to increase email account quota for the same web host.

They may have been disappointed to discover that the site didn't contain the exact information they were looking for, but there's no reason why future visitors can't benefit from a newly created article on the same topic.

So take cues from the search terms that Google uses to send traffic to your site - if they are related to your content, use them as a cue and produce some content on those topics that Google thinks are related to your site and give your readers what they want.

The more useful content you have on your site, the better. Visitors will have more reasons to hang around your site and Google will have more reasons to send more traffic to your site.

Remember this last search engine secret: it takes time.

A continuous flow of content produced over several months will gradually increase your rank. There's just no substitute for what time can do.

Google likes older sites with loads of content because it's a sign of stability. Google has been around for a while now and they've seen sites come and go.

Sites with minimal content are usually sites that will eventually get abandoned. So show Google that you're in for the long haul and create some useful content.

It may not be the search engine secret you wanted to hear, but it works.

Return from Search Engine Secret to Top Search Engines Home Page

Return from Search Engine Secret to Targeted Traffic Home Page