Ranking in the Top Ten of search engine results is like being voted Prom Queen or King in high school. No seriously it is. Think about it…. Well let me think for you for a second.

How does one become Prom Queen or King?

To achieve this position (which I personally think is overrated in real life) one strategy is to be popular among your classmates. I think we would all agree on this. It is a popularity contest. You must make friends with the Jocks ( the guys named Chaz or Ted), the nerds ( the ones that care more about their WOW raid on Friday nights *cough* me..), the outcasts ( students that people other people do not understand that wear black all the time) and the common folk ( all the other students that do not fit my lame stereotypes).

How does this relate to being in the ranked in the top ten?

To achieve this position (which I personally think is rock star status) one strategy is to be popular among other websites. I think we would all agree that obtaining inbound links help with obtaining good search engine placement. In essence it is a popularity contest among websites. You must obtain inbound links from the Jocks (Dmoz , Yahoo Directory, and wikipedia) the nerds ( the niche sites that pertain to your website topic), the outcast ( obtaining links in a method that would be considers black hat), and the common folk ( social bookmarking websites like Digg and delicious. If you can appeal to the common folk with your content people will like you and link you.)

Being voted Prom queen or king (which I laugh at) or being placed in the Top Ten for a certain competitive key word could be someone’s biggest achievement. To continue your success you must continue gaining positive relationships in real life and continuously gain positive inbound links because you never know when a witter smarter persuasive person might come in a gain the power of popularity.

I hope you all enjoyed my lame analogy, but this what I tell people when they ask about ranking high in SERP. It’s simple and gets the point across.