If you have a website that you’ve just started and you’re struggling with battling your way up the search engine rankings, I’m going to share probably the single most important tip that will lead to significant page rank improvement for your site.

I have a secret that I’m going to share with you today that you can use to throw everything else you’ve heard about SEO optimizing out the window. It all sounds pretty convoluted and a lot of work anyway, doesn’t it.

While keyword optimizing, keyword analysis, page layout and visitor analysis all certainly plays an important part in boosting your traffic - there is one thing that any website owner can do right now that will result in nearly immediate page rank improvement, and definitely a dramatic improvement over the long term.

Don’t Stay Buried in Search Results

Here’s what happens to most website owners. They have a website that makes up a part of a particular market. Maybe you’ve found a niche and maybe you haven’t - but regardless, you’re going to have to deal with the competition. There’s always going to be competition for the top spot in search results.

Most website owners make a list of the hottest keywords within that market place. For example, if you have a computer site - you may focus on hard drives, operating systems and cool applications. That’s great - except there are thousands upon thousands of major websites focusing on the same keywords. If you focus on those high-competition keywords from the beginning - you will always end up at the bottom of the search results, no one will ever discover your website and bookmark it or make note of it (aka - no new incoming links), and you’ll never see any page rank improvement.

I call this being “buried alive.”  You’re doing your best to crawl your way up with high-quality content, but you’re just getting trampled on and shoved right back down to the bottom. Improving your search results position certainly takes some work - but not so much that you never experience any improvement.

The 4-Step Approach to Page Rank Improvement

Instead of wasting your efforts competing on topics that you don’t have a chance to place high on, it’s much more effective to dig into the marketplace and determine unique, key topics that a lot of people are talking about and few websites cover. In the computer industry, some examples might be a particular program bug that no one can find a solution for.

Sometimes it may be a difficult problem to solve - but many times it isn’t, and if you’re the first to blog about a topic that no one else is blogging or writing about, you will find yourself listed first (yes, I said first) in the search engine listings.

What happens next is a waterfall effect. Since you’ve just landed on the first page for a highly-searched for, low-competition topic, suddenly you’ll experience much more exposure than you could ever manage on the other, more generic terms you were trying to compete with.

1. The high number of people searching for that unique topic discover your website and bookmark it. Your direct traffic increases.
2. The high number of other bloggers that also discover the high interest in this topic discover your site at the top of the Google results, and reference your site in their own posts about it (increasing your much-needed incoming link count).
3. Your increased incoming link count, in combination with your high listing for a topic a lot of people are searching for, increases your page rank in Google’s overall algorithm.

Essentially - you are using very obscure, small topics that not the “big boys” haven’t covered yet, as stepping stones to establish your credibility, value, and importance in the eyes of the search engine. Eventually, after working very hard at covering those low-competition niche topics and successfully ranking first in the search engine for those, you will discover that you are able to get listed higher when you do branch out and cover some of those more competitive topics.

The moral of the story is this: When you’re starting out, don’t attempt to tackle those huge, highly popular stories that every single website is covering. Research the communities in the topic area you write about, identify those popular niche topics, and then cover them better than anyone else.

In time, you will be able to compete with the big boys - you just have to get to that point by taking one baby-step at a time.

*****

Ryan is a technology writer and investigative blogger. He has been working as an online writer for numerous clients for over 5 years, and now consults webmasters and blog owners about effective SEO optimization. Ryan has 53 post(s) at Free Writing Center