If you thought that all you have to do is set up some meta tags and hide some keywords in background colors that match the text colors of said keywords, you would have had a chance of getting to page one of Excite or Infoseek. BUT only in the early days when there were only 30,000 total websites on earth!

Google has more computer science PhDs than Stanford and MIT Universities FROM STANFORD AND MIT AND CAL AND HARVARD. They are smarter than your hired “SEO or SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT.”

So to get through this gate, you have to be smarter than the gatekeeper.

Being smarter than Google PhDs is not as hard as you’d think. For one, Google uses an algorithm. This is a one-size-fits-all formulaic strategy to keep only deserving sites in page one status. What this method leaves are narrow but totally useful and wholesome windows of opportunity.

This is how you climb through a window.

1. Google Favors Their Own Web Properties in Any Search.
Opportunity: If you want to curry Google’s favor, focus on promoting a url hosted on Google’s servers. WordPress, Posterous, and Tumblr aren’t them.

2. Youtube is Still Projectile Bleeding Green Benjamins.
Opportunity: Have you noticed that recently, no matter what you search for, there’s always some Youtube video associated with it at the bottom of the page? Google has to drive traffic to Youtube to make that $1.65 billion investment pay back. Help Google help You. The most slickly greased upwardly mobile google stable urls start with “youtube.com/watch?v=” So if you’re going to spearhead any url for Google love, do a Youtube url. From there, a big smile can redirect all viewers to any other website you desire.

3. Your Competitors are Stupid
Opportunity: (AS AN EXAMPLE – APPLIES TO EVERY SEARCH CAMPAIGN) Adriel Hampton just hit me on a thought about getting to Google’s page 1 under Gov 2.0. He is right on the money. In the Google backend screen grab (I tried to avoid stringing those two words into one sentance) below, you notice something peculiar. “Gov 2″ has 300% more search demand around the world but Marketing and SEO EXPERTS are all competing for the term “government 2.0.” In fact, 300% more people are fighting for that 1/3 size pie. This means that if you focused on getting to page one under the term “government 2.0,” your uphill battle would be 900% tougher (partially because even if you got to the top of the mountain, you’d only get 33% of the traffic you’d get from the “gov 2″ mountian).

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4. The Top Dogs Are Fangier Than You Think.
Opportunity: None.

If based on #3, you thought you found a golden path into Googirvana, although you’re right, it’s of no value because those pearly gates are guarded by fanged St. Peters: 1) O’Reilly Media 2) Wikipedia 3) The REAL United States Government 4) Techcrunch 5) Microsoft etc…

UNLESS you think smarter than Google’s Phd’s and the fanged St. Peters.

5. You Have a Devout Passionate Niche Base.
Opportunity: 100% Guaranteed to be on page one of Google. I know this from personal experience. It took me 8 months to topple Wikipedia, Sprint, and Verizonwireless to get to page one number one under the term “wireless internet.” This is how I did it.

A. Estabilish base strongholds. Before you compete against 177,000,000 websites,

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completely dominate your foundation basecamps that are at much lower altitudes.

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But make sure that the base strongholds are build on the epicenters of passionate evangelists like the above search for “gov 2.0 tweetups.” Notice that you only have 66.100 competing websites for the top spot?

If you’re not buzzing with excitement right now, you’re missing the whole point. Dominating a base camp is not the point. It’s what your basecamp can do that is game changingly exciting. If you become the Prime Minister of all Gov 2.0 Tweetups, you’ll be able to provide a value proposition, an offer they can’t refuse, so that every single passionate Gov 2.0 evangelist will link back to your blog. You will rapidly defang Sts. Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Now, our work is cut out for us.

Adriel, how many unique websites and bloggers can you curry to link to one Youtube video? This will give us an inventory of our firepower. Here’s the first shot: Gov 2.0

UPDATE: Phase One Complete. Adriel in Page One of Google under “Gov 2.0 Meetup” Via this video listing entitled “Gov 2.0 Conferences Meetups…”

NEXT: SEO is a S.C.A.M.

So why would you want a big-shot to follow you on Twitter?

Simple. I choose to follow people not based on their bio or their profile background picture or even their neat-o twitter name. People tend to follow everybody that the bigshot follows.

This is how you get them to follow you: http://twitter.com/journik/statuses/6510984765

Then to turn up the heat, blog about their business. They will definately follow you – leading to countless others who will automatically follow suit and follow the leader: @howardlindzon (a twitter investor) followed me after I wrote: http://semiprivate.posterous.com/

Now you know how I went from 400 followers to 9,000 in 3 months.

Most of you won’t know about Google Page Rank. It’s not what you think it is. Google has a 0-10 rating scale that basically assigns your site a “credibility value.” Get used to seeing this by downloading the Google ToolBar.

In order for your outbound links to be worth anything, you’ve got to have a high Google page rank. Links are crucial for getting your website on page one of Google. Links from a high page rank site are far more valuable at leap frogging over your search competitors than links from low page rank sites.

So how do you build a high page rank site?

1. Make lots of unique pages.
2. Make all the pages relate in topic.
3. Make others link to you.

How? Simple.

A. Refuse to answer email. Force everyone to use your forum. They build your content for you and you save time by not repeating yourself.
B. Start a unique forum for each topic.
C. Offer “exclusive give aways,” like mp3s or whitepapers if they link to you… SEE:

http://gunguik.posterous.com
http://sirjames.posterous.com
http://jouz.posterous.com

BONUS: D: Link to the sites that link to you from a unique url. It builds their credibility and all the golden honey goodness just trickles down. If you have any questions, contact me @journik

NEXT: How to Get On Google’s Page One, 3 Trade Secrets