3 Easy Fixes To Rise Above Your Competition on Google
————- Free Training by Leopard Web —————-
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that people are searching for your services on the internet using search engines. This survey shows 85% of people use the internet, 5 years on we can only guess that figure is higher!
67% of those people use google as their preferred search engine.
Google uses a complex algorithm to decide the order in which a website will appear on their list. This order is known as the Search engine Ranking Position (SERP) – The most succesful companies online set up their web presence in order to fulfill the requirements that google and the search engines are looking for when they rate the importance of each site.
This is known as Search Engine Optimising or SEO
Their aim is to put the most relevant, authoritative and popular websites at the top of the list determined by what you type in the search box.
Only 8.5% of people go beyond the first page of the search results
This image shows 91.5% of people will not take the time to go beyond the first page when searching for a company. Why would they? The first page gives them up to 17 different listings for each search on page one. Are you on that page when your potential customers are searching for you
And the higher up the first page, the higher the number of visits to your website you will get.
The difference between position 1 and 2 is nearly double the amount of clicks through to that website listing!
So what is the solution?
If your business is not being listed high up on that first page you are missing out on hundreds of new customers a year.
So when someone is searching for a local business like yours, why are all your competitors above you and getting all the traffic?
There are reported to be 200 different ranking factors that google uses to decide the position of your website.
However, we know from experience and testing, in local searches there are 3 main factors that when done correctly will raise your business website up the SERP’s and into all the money spots on that first page.
They are :-
- Citations (Business Listings)
- Content (Amount of quality text)
- Backlinks ( Other websites linking back to yours)
- All of these can be dealt with straight away, you can do them yourself in-house and most local businesses are not doing these things in great quantities. So any business stepping up on these SEO processes, whether using an agency to do the work or finding the time to do it themselves, will rise up to the top spots on page one.
Citations
Social media profiles, business directory listings and even the pages of your own website will contain your NAP. For an extensive list of sites of where you can get your business NAP to appear go to whitespark.ca. Most of these sites will offer a free listing. The only thing stopping you getting onto possibly hundreds of business listings is the time it takes to source them, fill in the online form and confirming the email registration
A citation is anywhere on the internet where your Name, Address and phone number (NAP) is listed on a webpage.
The main benefit of multiple high quality citations is increasing your chances of appearing in the top 3 of the Local MAP pack…..
….which equals massive exposure on page 1
Content
When you search for something online you are looking for information. The more quality information the better. It has been proved that google likes webpages with large volumes of content (information)
The more quality information you have the more “authoritative” your website is perceived to be.
Think Wikipedia.
Pretty much everything you search for there will be a Wikipedia result on page 1. An average Wikipedia page has thousands of words of factual relevant content on the subject you were looking for.
So if it works for Wikipedia it can work for your local business website as well.
Become an authority in your marketplace, your home page should contain at least 1,200 words of high quality information based on the subject of your business.
If you haven’t done already set up a blog and add fresh articles as often as you can. Link these blog pages to your homepage and build the volume of valuable information your website provides.
Having a high volume of words, phrases and text on your website means you increase your chances of ranking well for “long tail” search phrases people are putting into the search box. As well as your more popular keywords!
Backlinks
Links from other websites back to yours are by far the most influential ranking factor there is bar none. Out of the 3 quick fixes to rise above your competition backlinks are the most important.
Think of a backlink being like a vote. Google positions websites based on information and popularity so the more website links you have, in googles eyes the more votes of popularity you have.
However, not all votes are equal.
So it is not just quantity of votes, it is the quality that really counts.
A website that is listed on page 14 that never gets any traffic, has no relevance to your business, linking back to your site would be weak vote.
A website that has massive amounts of authority, is well ranked on google and has hundreds or thousands of people visiting its pages everyday. Think BBC.co.uk or CNN.com, a link form one of these sites would be a hugely influentuial vote in your favour and would power you up the SERPs!
Where and how do you get backlinks?
There are hundreds of ways of getting backlinks here are a few of the most effective
So there we have the “3 Easy Fixes To Rise Above Your Competition on Google.”
See you on Page 1!!
If you would like a FREE online STRATEGY session please call us on 0800 852 7944
