The obvious way to increase search engine traffic is to rank higher in Google. But how? A lot of search engine optimization (SEO) “experts” will try to make you think that they have some top-secret techniques or knowledge. But you should be leery of many of these people because they could lead you down the wrong path.

The truth is that there are no secrets and no one outside of Google employees know the true inner workings of how Google ranks websites. But there are a few things that you can do that have been proven to work time and time again. The key to improving your ranking is consistent hard work and creating value for Internet searchers.

Here are some strategies that will help improve your Google rankings:

Create quality content

If you don’t have a blog on your website, get one now. (Check out our service for an easy WordPress setup.) Blogging can generate quality traffic to your website. But the key is to create content with real value. Find out what kind of questions your target audience might have and provide quality answers. When you come up with a list of questions, Google them. See how other websites answer these questions and DO IT BETTER on your blog. Your goal is to provide the best answer. If others find your answer helpful, they will link to your blog to share with others.

Create content consistently

This is the hardest part. For quite some time, no one will read what you write. After a few months, you might see few results and you’ll get frustrated and give up. DON’T! Keep churning out high quality content. It might take a while, but it WILL pay off.

Use keywords in the natural flow of your writing

I hesitated at even mentioning this because some might try to add their keywords too much. The key is to use your keywords in the natural flow. Don’t use them in every sentence and don’t use your keywords in a way that seems out-of-place or awkward. Some believe that something called keyword density has some value. But that is debatable. My suggestion is to write naturally and just try to pepper in your keywords here and there.

In order to find out what keywords you should be using, first think about your target audience and your product. What keywords would you use in Google to find your content? Use the Google Keyword Tool to find out what keywords people actually use. Gather a list of keywords that you will use when composing content.

Include keywords in page title, meta description, and h1-h6

If you don’t know HTML, using WordPress and the All-In-One SEO plugin can do much of this for you. As is the case with your page content, you don’t want to stuff keywords in these tags continually, but using them where it makes sense is a sound strategy. The meta keyword tag, on the other hand, is a waste of time. Google has officially announced that keywords in this tag are not used in their ranking algorithm.

Get links to your website from other high-quality websites

Stay away from link directories, link exchanges, and other similar areas. These are often simply a waste of time. Instead, you should spend your time finding higher quality links without any fishiness involved.

You could agree to guest blog on another website to get a backlink. Or how about contacting your university alumni association and see if they will post a “where are they now” type post on their website? Make sure to give them the link to your website to include in the post. I’m sure there are other creative ways that you could think of that will get quality links to your website.

It’s a good idea to include your keywords in the anchor text of these links if at all possible. Such as, if I wanted someone to link to The Website Creator, I might send them this code:

<a href=”http://www.thewebsitecreator.com”>website creator</a>

If I was trying to rank in Google for the keywords “website creator”, it would make sense to use that as the anchor link. But if this isn’t possible, a link without your keywords will still help.

But if your content and/or service is of high quality and unique, people will do the link generation for you. Your number one goal should be creating high quality content. If it is good and provides real value, people will find it and share with others.

Give it time

The age of the domain seems to be one of the factors Google considers when ranking websites. With time, your Google ranking will improve. And with all of this high quality content that you are producing, you will eventually have increased traffic.

Remember: Don’t quit. Keep going. It’s difficult, but it will pay off in the end.