Getting great organic (non-paid) search engine rankings is not as simple as flicking a switch, so don’t trust anybody who tells you they can get your company brilliant results overnight. Like most things of great value, real effort and expertise is required.
On the other hand, you won’t have to wait an eternity to see great results either. It is not unusual for Wide Open clients to see a 600% increase in traffic (yes, that much!) in the first two months, as well as a substantial increase in online enquiries.
When new clients tell us they want to get on page one of Google, we shout “game on!” Here are three areas we focus on.
Keywords
The most important question is not whether your company can get to the top of Google, but whether it can get there using the right keywords. If you sell furniture and somebody arrives at your website after searching for blueberry waffles, it is unlikely to result in a rewarding interaction.
In order words, you don’t want to rank high in search results for things completely unrelated to your business. You want them to arrive for enquiries related to the products or services you provide.
That’s where keyword strategies come in. First, you need to know what the most valuable keywords are for your business. Good keyword research and analysis is vital. It doesn’t hurt to analyse your competitors, too.
Second, you need to know how to use them. Keywords should be placed in prominent areas of your website, including page title tags and page headings.
Link generation
There are two kinds of links: those on your website that link to another website, and those from another website that link to you. The latter, called “backlinks,” are important for your search results. They tell engines such as Google that other places view your content as valuable.
Try to reach out to other websites so that they link to you. Perhaps use a blog post to link to them, in the hope they might link back. Maybe you can offer to write a guest post for their website, which can include a link to your own.
Remember that old chestnut: it’s about quality, not quantity. Don’t do things like spam the comments section of websites and insert links to yours. Google are likely to penalise you for that.
Integrated social media solutions
In terms of marketing buzzwords, “social media” sounds much sexier than “search engine optimisation.” We hear a lot about the effectiveness of social media advertising. Does that mean social has left search for dead?
Absolutely not. In fact, the two areas can be more connected than you might think. Social media content sends search engines what they call “social signals” which can influence the way they rank your website.
There are other benefits to having integrated social media and search campaigns. Your social media accounts can be quickly found when customers search your business name, for example, which increases your online presence and grows your digital shopfront.
To find out more about Wide Open’s search and social solutions, visit our Sydney Search and Social website.
