Since it’s a subject that comes up a lot these days, I thought I would put in my own peice about what it takes to get your website to the top of Google. There’s a lot of mixed information about, and what you really need to have is a plan. So here it is:

Top of Google

1. Write quality content.

This is always priority number one. You have to write content that is helpful to your visitors, and that is different than all the other stuff out there. It isn’t enough to repeat what everyone before you has said, you need to make it unique, add your own spin, give it your own personality. Help your readers to connect with you. This doesn’t mean that your content has to be ground breaking (although that certainly helps). You just have to find your voice and learn to pour your personality into your writing. People like to connect with other people. Readers who are riveted to what you say, will happily link to you without being asked. And they will keep coming back, which means you get more traffic, that’s what you want isn’t it? There is a reason why this step is number one.

2. Get the ball rolling with some links

Use things like article marketing, guest posting, commenting, etc to build links. Link building is still a vital part of SEO, especially when you are starting out, before you have built a lot of site authority. As a rule of thumb, the harder it is to get a link, the more worthwhile that link is. Don’t think you need thousands of links. Sometimes, one high quality link is worth a hundred low quality ones.

3. Keep building, add content regularly

This will keep your loyal readers coming back, and will encourage more linking. It will also keep Google coming back and give it more content to index. Google loves fresh content. Plus, having a big site gives you more authority. If you have pages ranking well, it will be much easier to get new pages to rank well with them. Once you have a really large, authoritative site with lots of links coming in, it is not unheard of to be able to publish new pages and have them almost instantly ascend to the top of the SERP’s for their particular target phrases. Building the foundations really pays off in the end.

4. Don’t do anything daft

The three steps above really do make the platform on which your success will be built. But if you did knock it off course, you wouldn’t be the first. Once you have acheived search engine greatness, don’t do anything daft like keyword spamming, linking to questionable sites or anything else that Google might not like. It takes a long time to get established in Google, but no time at all to get dropped if they catch you doing something they don’t like… Stick to the basics, keep it “white hat”, put in the work at success will find you.

This post was written by Mark Johnson, founder of The Business Nomad. Where he writes about blogging, making money online and strategic internet marketing.