Only Care About Your Google Rank
You have to be on the first page of results. If you rank in Google (60%
of total searches) you will rank in other search engines too. And nobody clicks
beyond the first page... for example the first result alone gets 25% of the
clicks. So beyond page 1 is nonexistent for anyone looking for traffic.
Speaking as simplistically as possible, Google only cares about the text on
your page and the links to your website. If you get these 2 things right then
you can rank high. Here's how it works. After a user types something into
search, Google looks for webpages that have:
- Similar words in links that point to the page
- Similar words on the page
And it will show the one with the most overall popularity first. Overall popularity has many factors, but if you have the text and the links, then you're off to a great advantage.
So the first question to ask yourself is this: what will users (who don't know
me) search on Google to find me? Then use that phrase and related ones on your
site and in quality links to your site.
For example, many more users search for “New York photographer” than they do for “Zach’s Photography” so I want to optimize my links and the words on my page for the one that more people search for! Google looks for web pages with the same words so the first technique most photographers use is to add common search phrases to your webpages. You probably already know the hotspots that Google looks for these words including the page title, URLs, and alternate text in images. Make sure you get variations of the search phrase in these locations to help tell Google that your webpage is exactly what the user is searching for.