First off, content is king. Basically, your site has to look like it knows what it's talking about, well actually it has to prove that it knows what it's talking about. The more valuable content you have on your site the more valuable your site will inherently become. Google likes big sites with a lot of rich content. Content is your first step, but it should be a never ending process in maintaining your site. After your core pages, (Home – About Us – Contact Us, etc.) you should implement someway to consistently update content. One of the more common methods to have a constant stream of content is a blog. With a blog, you write and author little articles based on whatever you see fit and post them for others to read and perhaps comment on. Another method to generate content is a forum. With a forum, the content is generated by random individuals, but can be generally guided by you. A blog is more manageable, but could possibly be harder to consistently add new content. A forum could be the life blood of your site, but it is a hard fire to start and it could turn out to be a full time job just to manage. Go have fun with that.
The next thing that is highly influential in getting a good ranking in search engines is the number of external links that link back to your site. This culmination of outside links to your site is another way of validating your site as a valuable resource. In essence that is the principle behind getting good ranks. Become a valuable resource. A relatively easy way to generate backlinks to your site, is to participate in forums that pertain to the subject of your business. Usually when you create a profile on a forum, you will have a signature that tags each comment you make. You can put a link to your website in the signature, so every time you comment on a topic you generate a link back to your site.
Who said this would be easy? How do you generate content for your website? Who has the time to generate content? Well, there are ways, and all of them take sacrifice. Sadly there are no short cuts. That's what makes the Search Engine Optimization world so shady sometimes. Because people try to sell snake oil and get rich quick schemes promising they can get your site into the top ranks guaranteed. There are no guarantees in getting your site a high page rank. You either have to type the content yourself or hire someone else to do it for you. And remember you want the addition of content to be an ongoing process.
If you're going to do it yourself, you can generate ideas for content by first brainstorming. Think of everything that has to do with your business. Let your mind go wild and write down everything, even the most absurd ideas. These crazy, sometimes funny ideas help loosen up your imagination.
Ask yourself what you know about your topic, your business. What trivia and facts do you know? What other websites deal with the topic of your business? Are there government websites that could pertain to your business? You can copy and paste excerpts from government sites because it's not copyrighted. You can write reviews of articles based on your business topic.
Build a list of all these ideas from your brainstorm. There you go. Write something, anything about one of those ideas on your list. That's the hard part – writing something, writing anything. Try this – don't worry about it. Just write a sentence or two about any given topic. Just a sentence or two. No more than that. I'm talking specifically about the blogging method. Everyday or week, just write a little something something about one of your topics you wrote down. Over time you will build a nice archive of good content.
What do people come to the internet for? Entertainment. Education and Information. Commerce. Love.
What does your business offer? Is it a dog toy company? Do reviews of dog articles. Write about dogs having fun. Link to government dog laws. Write a blog about you and your dog. I'm assuming you have a dog.
~Josh