I am shouting from the rooftops because I am on the 1st page of Google for my keyword “how to make money on the internet”.  Whoohoo! It’s a very competitive keyword phrase too.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I was doing some keyword research the other day and my blog appeared on the 1st page of Google.  OK, so I was at the bottom of the page but it’s still page 1. What’s more it was out of over 7 million results!  I am really chuffed.

I am ranked too!

That prompted me to checked my Google Page Rank which I haven’t done for a while and I found that I have a Google Page Rank of 1.  When I last checked soon after I changed my theme, not so long ago, it was not ranked at all.

If you don’t know about Page Rank 10 is the best rank you can get. So, 1 is the lowest but it’s something to get ranked. The page rank applies only to a page as the name suggests and not the site as a whole.

Search engines use a formula to determine a page rank known as an algorithm. Each search engine has its own but generally it is thought to consist of the quality of your content, the number and quality of backlinks to your site, your social media presence, how many Google +1 clicks you get, how long people stay on your site and more.

So, how did I get on the 1st page of Google?

Good question. The answer is I don’t really know but I have a few thoughts.

KeywordLuv

I suspect that it is something to do with the KeywordLuv plugin I am using. The keywords ” making money on the internet” are the ones that I have used the most when I commented on other blogs using the plugin.

If you want to know more about the KeywordLuv  and the CommentLuv plugins you can read about them here: Generating Blog Traffic with the 100 Blog Challenge

Backlinks

I have 380 backlinks to my blog when I checked it on
http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php  although some are nofollow. They are not from any high page rank blogs either but they count for something.

I hadn’t realised that I had that many. A lot of them were from the 100 Blog challenge that I did last year.

Google + and Google + 1

Google has confirmed that the number of +1 clicks influences the position of a website in the search results. I have recently added a Google +1 button to this blog so perhaps some readers have clicked it.

I have just discovered that there is a way of tracking this by using an advanced method in Google Analytics. I just have to add another small piece of code to track the +1 clicks I get.

By the way if you like this post please click on the +1 button at the top or bottom of this post and help me climb further up the search results page. 🙂

You have to have a Google plus account to put the +1 button on your site and I did hear that Google favours sites that have a Google Plus account. I did create one but I have to admit that I have not used it yet. I do a bit of social media networking on Facebook but that’s all. Maybe it has helped.

On Page SEO

I use the All In One SEO plugin which is one of most recommended seo plugin for WordPress. This plugin helps you optimize your blog for search engines.

Since starting Marc Milburn’s coaching course though I have been writing  for people and not search engines. Before that I did try to get my main keywords into my blog title and body text.

Conclusion

I will probably never know exactly how I got onto the first page of Google for the keywords “how to make money on the internet” but no doubt a lot of factors contributed to it.

It has spurred me on to keep on doing what I have been doing and more.  I must be doing something right don’t you think?   I will be looking at the best ways to improve my ranking and the search result. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Is your blog ranked? What do you think got you ranked? Please leave your comment to share with my readers.