Being listed in Google can be a great thing for your business. With just a little work, you can start gaining traction under key terms and have people find you that you would have never connected with in any other way.

Yet just because you are listed in Google doesn’t mean you will stay in Google. Google has their own internal “rules” that they use to rank different sites and pages. Those algorithms change all the time. Google is constantly trying to improve the way it provides search results. And just because something works this week doesn’t mean it will work the next.

While marketers have tried a variety of things over the years, there are a few rules that remain true year after year. There are ways to keep your site up in the top rankings an ensure it will stay there no matter how the algorithms change.

Create Quality Content

The easy answer is to create quality content. Quality content means you work at creating content your visitors will love when they come over to read it. You shouldn’t copy content from other sources. You shouldn’t create link farms. You shouldn’t use spamming tools. And you shouldn’t create pages exclusively for Google. Instead, write content and present it as if you are creating a page in a magazine. Would your visitors read what you have to say – or would they abandon it as quick as possible? [Read more…]