How to Turn Your Business into the #1 Search on Google

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Every website wants to attain the richest prize on the Internet: the #1 ranking on Google. Even second prize, getting onto the first page of Google search results, will suffice for most. 

The reason: barely anyone actually scrolls past that initial page. Statistics suggest only one out of four people will journey beyond the first page of search results. As a result, your website needs to find a place among the top results on Google or it will struggle to attract new organic visitors. 

Yet when everyone has the same goal, achieving that feat is rather difficult – to say the least. Although with careful planning, and helpful advice as found below, it’s not impossible. Below are a few pointers for pushing your website to the #1 spot on Google:

Receive expert advice 

The fight for first place is hard. Even if you’re in a super specialized niche, it is still a struggle to topple the competition in those all-important Google rankings. 

With this in mind, never be afraid to reach out for expert advice. If you get a growth consultant on-board, this can help to save a lot of time and effort. Additionally, they have the knowledge to build your brand and place it on the right path towards Google glory. 

Optimize your website 

Your website needs to be fully optimized to stand a chance of ranking high during search results. What does this entail? Well there are many different SEO points to take into consideration, including: 

  • Using the right keywords.
  • The website is user-friendly and responsive. 
  • The site is fast to load.
  • It is optimized for mobile. 
  • Use of internal links. 
  • Meta descriptions and title tags for pages/posts. 
  • Images have a relevant title and alternative text.

Ultimately, this is a lot of hard work – particularly if you have no prior SEO experience. This is where a specialist can come into play. For instance, Digital Silk is a professional digital marketing and website development company who can wipe out the work and frustration of going it alone. Not to mention that their expertise will deliver an optimized site beyond your own capabilities.

Select the right keywords 

Keywords are so important that, even though they were mentioned previously, they need their own dedicated section. The reason for this is simple: these are the words people will be typing into Google to find your website. 

Due to the competition for general terms, it’s advised to go with long-tail keywords. These are essentially words which include the main keyword, yet incorporate other relevant words. For example, “online marketing” can be turned into “online marketing strategies for beginners”. The latter will have less search regularity out of the two, of course, but there’s less competition – and more chance of hitting top spot on Google as a result.

Post regular, high-quality blog posts 

Quality blog content is integral for hitting top spot. Not only does it increase the scope for targeting more keywords, but you can also increase internal link usage and enhance your authority as an industry expert. 

As for how to upgrade posts to that “high-quality” level, ensure they are stuffed with informative and useful information targeted towards your audience. Also use videos, pictures, lists, subheadings, and anything else that breaks the content up and enhances readability.

3 Tips for Enhancing Your Local SEO Efforts

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Whether you own a small business or one with multiple locations, local SEO can provide a massive assist in boosting sales.

For those not quite sure what local SEO entails, simply think about your standard search engine optimization tactics. Yet instead of targeting a general topic, it is more specific to your local area. Take an automobile repair shop located in Chicago as an example. Rather than aiming for the general term of “automobile repair shop”, local SEO will go with “automobile repair shop in Chicago”. 

Although local SEO reduces your overall reach, it increases the possibility of your business being found by people that matter: local customers. Did you know that, out of all Google searches in the world, 46% of them are from consumers searching for information about local businesses?

Due to this, your company needs a strong plan in place for local SEO. To help you along the way, consider the following three tips for enhancing your local SEO efforts:

1. Find the right local SEO keywords

First of all, you should identify the local SEO keywords which will bring maximum visibility for your company. Thankfully, this is a simple task. While you can do this with Google Keyword Planner, you also have the option of taking a closer look at your competition and see what keywords they are targeting.

When deciding on local SEO keywords, here are a few other pointers:

  • Don’t forget to do variations on keywords. For instance, “Dallas electricians”, “electricians in Dallas”, “Dallas’s best electricians”. 
  • Google, in most cases, will already know where a potential customer is located. As a result, they will search for “electricians near me” rather than specifying their local area. Keep in mind to also use “…near me” keyword variations. 
  • Long tail search terms are easy to ignore, but they can produce high conversion rates. If you rank first for, say, “Dallas electricians who install solar panels”, this will generate a concentrated customer base.

2. Optimize landing pages

Linking to the aforementioned point about keywords, you should create landing pages that are optimized for a specific topic. This could be for a location, service, feature, or ad campaign. 

When you utilize local landing page optimization, you have a greater chance of targeted customers visiting your website. You can truly highlight a certain topic and improve its local search authority in the process.

Once you have the customer on the landing page, you need to sell them on your business. To do this, you can: 

  • Provide a clear, informative description of what you are offering.
  • Use customer reviews as social proof. 
  • Utilize visual content such as videos and images.

3. Google My Business

This point is short and sweet: sign-up and get your business listed on Google My Business. 

If your business is verified on Google My Business, the rewards can be lucrative. If someone does a local search on Google, for example, your company might end up with a coveted place on their sidebar space. Although even having your location, opening times, reviews, etc. just a quick search away will help customers find the information they desire in a convenient manner.

How to Improve Your Website’s SEO Strategy

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Search Engine Optimization is one of the best strategies you can invest in for your website. It isn’t just about making your website attractive in the eyes of Google’s algorithms. Nowadays Google has made updates that reflect user experience. What this means is that, in most cases, providing a great experience for your visitors will translate in a higher ranking on Google.

Keep Up To Date with the Latest SEO Changes

For example, a few key updates that benefit both search engines and users is site speed, site stability, and site security. Without these three pillars, your users will get frustrated, and search engine algorithms will mark you down for it.

The other fact you need to keep in mind is that even professionals in the industry don’t actually know 100% what these search algorithms look for. Google keeps this information under lock and key. Their algorithms also update regularly, which keeps the SEO industry on its toes.

You need to stay up to date with SEO changes at all times, and generally speaking aim to always provide an exceptional experience to your users. The latest changes, for example, reflect the growing use of mobile searches and mobile internet use.

Improve the Structure of Your Website

One area that we know search engines look at is the website’s structure and integrity. From a user point of view, this makes sense. Users are not likely to use a website if it takes long to load, and they won’t check out if they have reason to doubt your site’s security. In order to improve the overall structure of your website, you are going to need to invest in a great host like Onyx.io, which offers a triple-redundant 100% NVMe SSD platform for your website. This keeps it stable, fast, and secure.

What to Fix on Your Website

Once you have switched hosts, you will want to go through and clean up your website. Old SEO strategies, in particular, can actually hold you back more than you think, even if that effort at keyword stuffing is on a page that no longer links up to your website. Unless it is unpublished or deleted, Google’s bots can still find it.

 

  • Delete or Unpublish Unnecessary Pages

 

Go through and delete or unpublish all pages that are not necessary. You would need to otherwise optimize them all.

 

  • Fix Broken Links

 

Go through all your links and ensure that they work. If they don’t, either remove them or replace them.

 

  • Update Old Information

 

Rather than making a new post, guide, or page, update it. Updated content is more valuable to you than posting again.

How to Improve SEO From There

There are a few more ways that you can improve your SEO. To help you get started follow these steps:

  1. Commit to Keyword Research
  2. Optimize Your Site’s Content
  3. Keep a Valued Blog
  4. Optimize Site for Mobile
  5. Optimize Site for Voice Search

The most important thing you need to remember about SEO is that it keeps changing, and therefore you need to continuously update and improve your site.