Once you’ve created Social Media accounts for your website, you can now start to bring in the currency that will help you get to the first page of Google; Links. As explained in the last article, Social Media success doesn’t result in an improved ranking on Google’s search engine. But having an active online presence can encourage people to create a link to your website.

Links

Google views a link as an indicator that your website has good content. Google is searching websites constantly using bots and although AI is making great leaps, you can’t expect the bots to distinguish between a great article and a poor one. At least not just yet.

So Google sensibly relies on humans to do part of their work for them. This is why they place such value on links; another human has pointed to your site saying “look at this!”

So how do you get people to create a link your website?

Content

Having great content is the first part of the equation in getting someone to create a link to your article. So how can you go about creating an article that might be considered as “great” content? That is a little outside the scope of this series but can be summed up in one word – practice!

Don’t expect your first article to set the world on fire and receive dozens of links from the world’s top authorities in your field. Write a first post then re-read it. Maybe ask a friend to check it and then post it. Fortunately blog writing isn’t like writing for a book where once it is off to the printing press it is fixed forever. The great thing with blog posts are that you can continue to go back and correct, improve or refine.

Now that you have written your first article, plan your second one. If you aren’t familiar or comfortable with writing, don’t worry, it will get easier. Again, like with most things, it is down to practice.

Exposure

Having great content is only half of the story. You also need a strategy to ensure that your post is seen, otherwise your effort will not be rewarded with those all-important links.

Once you are happy with your post, publish it and Tweet it or put it on Facebook. A good post will get liked and hopefully shared further online. This should create more clicks to your article and hopefully a few people will like it enough to create a link to your site.

Ranking

After a week or so, Google is likely to have spotted the link and recorded it. This will then be factored into your website ranking. The more links you have to your website, the more Google assesses your site to be of value. So keep writing new articles and sharing them.

Over time you will have built up a series of articles and these can be continuously re-tweeted with the aim of increasing your audience. This is where things can start to take off. Don’t be discouraged by the inevitable slow start that you will have. More posts increase your potential to gain more followers. More articles increase your potential for more links. More links will result in a higher ranking. The higher you climb, the more traffic your site gets. The more traffic, the more potential for links.

Regular blog writing with a good Social Media strategy can create a positive feedback loop that will see your audience and ranking grow in parallel.

Pacing

Google also takes into account how frequently a site is updated. If there is a stream of regular posts being created, Google assess that the site is active and current. This is an important factor to Google. Their aim is to serve the most relevant pages for the terms entered and will look at a site that is regularly updated more favourably than one that hasn’t been updated since 2011.

So if you have three great articles ready to go, don’t post them all on the same day (unless that is the breakneck pace that you will maintain). Posting all three on the same day and then not adding anything new for three months is not a good strategy for getting Google to assess your site as active. It would be better to pace them at one a month if you have no further content on the horizon. This way Google notes that the site is updated on average once a month and will look upon your site more favourably than one updated once a quarter.

If the thought of writing lots of blogs is too daunting, look at spreading the load. Guest Blogging is another tool that can also help get your site to Page 1 on Google. This is not without risk though and if not implemented carefully could actually have a negative impact. This will be explored more in the next article in this series.

Peter Horgan is the founder of Jeppstones.

You call follow Peter on Twitter: @PeterJeppstones