A staggering 70% of people only ever look at the first page of search results when they Google something. So, if your business is showing up on the second or third page, it makes it very difficult to compete.
You can either spend big on paid Google advertising, or you can implement a few sneaky little strategies to help drive your business up towards the top of Google’s organic (free) search engine results page (SERP).
In a few swift moves, you can boost your chances of securing the highly coveted ‘page one’ position on Google’s SERP. Here’s how:
1. Sign up for Google My Business – it’s free!!
People searching in your geographic area for a company with your products or expertise are presented with a list of local businesses which fit their search criteria. This is the list your business needs to be on. Being on ‘the list’ means your business has been validated by Google. Google carries clout. A lot of clout. So, if Google is highlighting your business as a potential fit to a search enquiry, it carries some serious weight. And why would you say no to free advertising?
2. Add structured data to your website to make your business eligible for Google’s rich results
Rich snippets / rich results are another piece of prime advertising space at the top or side of the SERP (you know those glossy pictures or graphs with little snippets about a company or product). Again, it’s free advertising if you are clever enough to put the right code in behind the scenes. If you are slightly tech savvy, you can do this yourself, otherwise outsource to an SEO copywriter (I happen to know an excellent one!).
3. Apply Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to your website
SEO can make a material difference to moving your business up the SERP. There are a number of components that all need to come together to land you on Google’s radar – think keywords, internal links, backlinks, user experience, site security, site speed, image alts, title tags and meta descriptions to name a few. Google bots (odd little creatures scuttling around the backend of websites) regularly crawl websites to gather intel which feeds into search results. The information on your website needs to be as easy and accessible as possible for these bots, and talk their language. If you don’t speak bot language (99.9% of people don’t), it would be wise to engage an SEO expert, or use one of the free SEO plugins available such as Yoast. These plugins do all the hard SEO work for you.
Once you’ve ticked these boxes, put your feet up and watch as your business edges its way up the ranks. It will take time and continued effort for SEO to have an impact, but the potential upside is enormous. As how do you sell anything if no one knows about you?
Kylie Gill