How do I get traffic to my site? Part 2

No one knows exactly how many sites there are on the whole of the internet but there are millions! And thousands more are being added every day! Let's say, you run a bakery. You bake for diabetics. A search on Google showed the following results:

Search for	Google results
bakery	24,500,000
diabetic bakery	84,000
diabeticbakery	1,500,00
"diabetic bakery"	1,360
diabetic-bakery biscuits	1,110
diabetic bakery biscuits cheesecake toffee	708

The chances of your brand new website featuring anywhere in the list for the keyword "bakery" are infinitesimally small - that means you have NO CHANCE of your site featuring anywhere near the top in a search.

OK, great. So how do you get your site to show on Google?

• Firstly, don't try to compete with a keyword "bakery" - as one in 24.5 million, you don't stand a chance.
• Think "phrases" instead of "words". Look at the table above; as you add more words to the search, you get less results. If your page(s) contain the words "diabetic bakery biscuits cheesecake toffee" in a sentence like this for example:
  
  "Our diabetic bakery specializes in biscuits, cheesecake, toffee and breads"
• Use similar wording in your TITLE as well as DESCRIPTION tags
   
• Remember, a search engine cannot read pictures on your site. Even if they are very descriptive. Your text must say it all. Search engines index text.
• Your page rank is critical. The site that ranks #1 on Google for "bakery" has a very high page rank and that's why it is #1. Page rank is a VAST subject and it is not possible to cover it in any detail in a few paragraphs. If you want to know more about Page Rank, here are some handy links:
  
  
  
  
  
  So how much page rank is good and how much is bad?
  Basically, the higher your page rank is, the more the search engines will favor the text on your site when people search them for those words. (It's actually a lot more than just that but for the purposes of this example, it's close enough). Obviously, you should have as high a page rank on your site as possible with 10 being the highest you get. Generally, anything above a 3 or a 4 is considered good. A page rank above 6 is very good and 7 or 8 is exceptional.
  It is important to understand that page rank is NOT linear but logarithmic. (Actually only Google knows the real formula as it is a closely guarded secret). It works something like this:

  Page Rank	Actual ranking
  0 Unranked	No one has ever heard of you. All sites begin here
  1	very low
  2	very low
  3	low in top 100,000,000
  4	moderate in top 10,000,000
  5	In the top 1,000,000
  6	In the top 100,000
  7	In the top 10,000
  8	In the top 1,000
  9	In the top 100
  10	One of the top 10 sites period!

  From the above, you can see that there is a vast difference between page rank 3 and 4 or between 4 and 5. As your site moves up in rank, so the competition becomes more fierce. For example, if you have a page rank of 6 you may be one of the top 100,000 sites. To get to a rank of 7, you need to be one of the top 10,000 sites. To have a page rank of 8 would mean you are one of the top 1,000 sites (in the whole world remember) - a huge difference.