Let’s face it — if you’re not in the first 3 positions on the first page of Google for your targeted keyword phrase, you’re out in the cold. Search engine experts have estimated that the first 3 links in the search results get 85% of the clicks. The remaining links have to fight over the scraps of the last 15% . . .

So what makes the difference in ranking? How does your page get top billing? There are dozens of factors that affect this and to try and cover it all would be WAY beyond the scope of this article.

But if you’re trying to rank for a local keyword phrase (like “wichita plumbing supply”), just applying the fundamentals can go a long way towards getting you to the top. The two biggest factors are on-page optimization and off-site references (“backlinks”). Let’s take a look at these . . .
1. On-page optimization

Note that I’m talking about PAGE optimization. Any given page on your site can actually rank higher for a specific keyword phrase than your home page. This makes sense, because a home page is more general in nature.

For instance, if your site is “wichitaplumbingsupply.com”, and you have an article on your site with a title of “Should I use copper or PVC pipe”, that page will most likely rank higher than your home page for the search phrase “copper or PVC”.

Make sure the targeted keyword phrase is:

in the title of the page
in a H1 heading
in the body of the page (in the first and last paragraphs at a minimum)
in the URL (e.g. “wichitaplumbingsupply.com/copper-or-pvc”
in the meta keywords and description fields

If your article has images, use your keyword phrase in the “alt” property of at least one of them.

But don’t get too carried away and “keyword stuff” your article . . . if it looks like you’re trying too hard, Google will penalize you.

2. Backlinks

With on-page optimization you are telling the search engines what YOU think the page is about. But they want to know what OTHER sites think your page is about. They also want to know if other sites think your page is any good. They use links to your page (from outside sites) as an indicator of your page’s topic and value.

Now, not all backlinks are the same. Links to your site from a blog comment don’t have near the value as a link in the body of a page on a top-ranked authority site. For instance, a link in a news story on cnn.com is going to carry a lot more weight than in a comment or profile at blogger.com

Google also looks at the words that are used when linking to your page — this is called the “anchor text”. These words should be related to your keyword search phrase. SOME links should have the exact search phrase in them, but not ALL links — this would be seen as “unnatural”.

And that’s key — Google wants things to look natural. If you have zero links to your page one day and 5000 the next day, they’re going to know there are some kind of shenanigans going on. Likewise, if all the incoming links to your page have the same anchor text, that’s indicative of a calculated campaign to get ranked for that keyword phrase.

So mix things up. Get links from all different kinds of sites (directories, blogs, video sites, review sites, article sites, and so on) and change up the anchor text. Don’t get too many at once (250 or less/month is a rule of thumb I’ve heard bandied about) — just go slow and steady. If you’re focusing on getting links from quality sites, it doesn’t really take that many to get ranked for a local search phrase.