5 ways to avoid ending up in the Google Search abyss

All business owners dream of their company’s web page ranking as the top result on Google. Over the last 20 years, Google has become the world’s portal for information, the one place everyone goes to find whatever it is they are looking for. If what they are looking for is the service or product you provide, then having one of those top rankings is the difference between those new customers finding you or not. 

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the practice of boosting your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs for short). The goal of driving up this ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your site from the SERPs. 

If your webpage receives this ‘organic traffic’, where customers find you themselves, this saves you from having to go to them. Therefore SEO not only brings in direct business but saves you advertising costs. 

The drop-off in clicks as search engine rankings fall is dramatic. People always scan the top results but can disregard those lower down. Very few consumers venture to the second page of Google. 

The good news is that there are lots of steps you can take to improve your organic search and get your web pages ranking higher. Here we’ve gathered some top tips to help you avoid going unnoticed on the second page. 

Our 5 top tips 

CHECK YOUR WEBSITE IS WORKING WELL

Before you begin the work of optimising your website for SEO and building links between pages, it is worth checking that your company website is up to standard.  

There is a whole area of technical SEO which experts can advise on, but in the first instance, you want to make sure your website puts forward your company in the best possible way, that it’s clear to navigate, mobile-friendly and secure. 

Some technical standards are Google ranking factors, and also, if you have any minor restructuring to do for your website, it would be best to do so before you start link building. 

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Keywords are core of  SEO. Keywords are what link potential customers with your content. The search terms that customers put into search engines need to relate to the keywords that you use in your company site.

You need to think carefully about what your customer’s search intent is. What are they searching for, and what kind of content do they prefer? Then you need to consider who you are competing against to rank for these terms. 

The biggest, most well-known companies tend to dominate the most popular search terms. However, by searching and adjusting specific search terms that similar-sized companies are already ranking for, you can identify search queries for which you have a good chance of ranking, and create keywords accordingly. 

A good SEO expert will be able to weigh up the many factors affecting search and advise upon the keywords that should perform the best for your individual business.

OPTIMISING YOUR CONTENT

Once you have profiled your customers and your competition and identified your keywords, you need to make sure you are using them. 

 You want to make sure that you are incorporating your keywords into the text of web pages and blogs. Google ranks web pages rather than entire websites, which means that individual web pages should be geared towards keywords. 

This does not mean forcing as many of your keywords as you possibly can in any given chunk of text. This is known as ‘keyword-stuffing’. Google is wise to it, and it is hugely off-putting to people viewing your website. 

Ultimately you need to ask yourself if your content is geared towards your customer’s search intent. This is the most important part of optimisation. You can have the best website in the world, but if it’s not geared towards your customer’s needs, it won’t deliver the results your business wants. 

LINK BUILDING

Keywords are the core to SERPs, and links are paramount to this.  

 The way that Google works is that it ‘crawls’ web pages to grab content from pages and uses the links on them to find more pages. 

The more high-quality pages that link to yours, the more authority your webpage has in the eyes of Google. For instance, it would be ideal for SEO if a webpage from a well-regarded news source links to one of your company’s web pages. Pages with a greater number of backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings. 

Taking steps to build up high-quality backlinks will boost your chances of ranking on the first page of Google. As discussed, Google ranks pages, not websites. This is important because it means your own pages count! 

You can increase your page’s authority by adding relevant internal links from page to page within your company website, as well as taking advantage of the chance to link your company website on business blogs, LinkedIn and even any online conferences you attend.  

An SEO expert can estimate how many backlinks and internal links you will need to rank on the first page in search results and also advise how to build those links up. 

REVIEWING AND REASSESSING

You can do all the work of improving your website and building up keywords and backlinks, but to keep seeing improvements in search results, you have to keep fine-tuning your work. 

Maintaining your customer profiles and understanding how to target customers and intuit their search intent is absolutely key.   

You should track your keywords, your number of backlinks and internal links and your search performance, and adjust your approach according to their performance.  

As with all successful digital marketing strategies, successful SEO is data-driven. As your search ranking improves, you should track your client conversions and other useful metrics. SEO comes with a wide array of benefits, all of which you should track so that you can keep an eye on your ROI.

Benefits of ranking on the first page of Google

If you want to have any kind of online presence, then SEO is critical. Some of the direct benefits you should expect to see as a result of search engine optimisation include the following: 

• Improving your business’s visibility
• Generating more leads
• Increasing engagement
• Earning trust
• Increasing industry authority
• Building up an audience

How we can help

SEO is the key component of anything online when it comes to visibility, trust and brand authority. 

If you need any further guidance or would just like to chat with one of our SEO specialists, get in touch. As SEO and digital marketing experts, we can help you understand search engine optimisation a little better and get you on your way to ranking more prominently on Google. 

If you are interested in working with our team to drive your digital projects forward, contact us to learn more.