Achieving a top ranking in Google and other search engines requires more than adding meta tags, and making a clean design with the right keyword density. You can have a technically perfect, WC3-compliant page that goes nowhere in the search engines. Obviously, the search engines reward good technical design, but they care as much or more about the human factor: how popular is your page. If your page is in demand, then it will be ranked highly.

Measures of your page’s popularity

By now, you know that search engines reward pages that have many links to them. The quality and relevance of those links matters, too. A CNN.com link is worth a lot more than a link from a housewife’s garden blog to a most websites, but if your page is a blog about gardening, links from garden-related pages still matter.

The search engines measure popularity by evaluating the quality and popularity of the source of the link and its match to the content on your page.

Offline sources that translate to online links

It is easy to dismiss the print media and mass media in general, with their declining market shares, but remember, the Roman Empire remained a force to reckon with for hundreds of years after it fell, too. Journalists looking for a story can be your ally. It only takes a mention in a national magazine, a large newspaper or a tv story to bring overnight success and cause your search rank to skyrocket. Remember, almost all print and mass media now have companion websites where they post articles and video, usually with links to references.

• Newspapers: local and national.  Examples: Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Atlanta Journal Constitution
• Magazines: focused on your topic or niche. Examples: Better Homes and Gardens, Money, Newsweek, Hobby Magazines, Reader’s Digest
• Radio:  local or national, syndicated talk shows, hobby or subject shows. Examples: NPR, Neal Boortz, Walter Reeves, The Home Fix—it Show
• Television: TV is the Mecca of instant online success.  One mention of your domain on a major tv program is worth 2000 hours of work. Examples: CNN, Fox News
• Viral marketing: Always have business cards with your website’s url and a very brief description of it to hand out when opportunities present themselves. Talk to everyone you meet about the website… without being a pest!
• Public speaking: Offering to be a presenter at an event related to your website’s topic may get mentioned in an online story, providing more publicity and morelinksback.

Know your Audience

Before you can target the right offline media, you need to understand who your target visitor is.  If the visitors to you page will be (typically, but not exclusively) people looking for financial advice, then the goal is to have the mass media (magazines, newspapers, radio and tv) that are popular with investors mention your page and put links to it; such as Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, etc.. For housewives and families, look to the Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living. Etc

Here’s an example: PickYourOwn.org’s audience tends to be families; about 70% women. There are recipes, such as a page about how to make applesauce, www.pickyourown.org/applesauce.htm. That page is currently number 1 in Google for a search on the word “applesauce”.

Seek out Journalists

Most journalists are constantly under the gun to produce new stories, new content.  Help them, and they help you! When you read a story, hear one on the radio or see something on tv that is related to your website,

• Write or call the journalist (their email is usually published with the story) and offer your help. 
• Suggest a follow up story or a related topic.
• Provide links to your pages that can help them. 
• Create a media resource page (see http://www.pickyourown.org/mediaresources.htm and an example)