Ah, the coveted first page of Google. Business owners and marketers have been chasing it for years like the golden
stag, but Google continues to play a careful game of keep-away. The organization is constantly making updates to their algorithm that pulls the rug out from under those who would willingly manipulate content and strategies in order to get on top.
So the question is – how do you get to the top of page 1 without trying to get there?
Dealing with a Complex Algorithm
The first thing you have to understand is that there’s no single thing you can do to launch your site, landing page, sales page, blog post or video to the front page of the search results. The algorithm is a complex little beast that takes in a search query from a user, runs it against hundreds of millions of other pages, and then serves up the most relevant (in order of relevancy) in just a few split seconds.
During that short time, the algorithm uses hundreds of factors to establish relevancy for your content and where it ranks. So essentially, there’s no one thing you can do to ensure your site gets to the top of the search results. However, there are certain strategies and tactics you can use that inadvertently improve your position.
Know What Your Audience Wants
It takes a great deal of research to know exactly what your customers want. Unfortunately, many business owners just assume they already know. Take the time to do some research and you’ll uncover a variety of topics that are pain-points for your customers or areas of concern and curiosity.
Use those topics to determine what search terms they’re using to find solutions. Once you know what your audience wants you can move on to the next phase.
Focus on Providing a Better Experience
A lot of businesses still have a website that resembles a static brochure. Couple that with virtually no social presence and it’s a wonder they even have customers at all. With the research done you can start thinking about how to improve the content on your site as well as your blog and other marketing efforts.
Develop content to provide a solution, information and education – essentially a better experience. When you share on this level you’ll have a lot more content to establish relevancy for your keywords, to boost credibility, and inspire sharing.
Distribute content off site and you’re even able to develop manual editorial links back to your site for an added SEO benefit.
Share As Much Content As You Can
Don’t be content putting up a blog post each month or maybe one or two articles. You have an entire audience that is actively searching for your products, services and solution. They can’t find you because you’re not sharing. The more content you share, the more likely they are to find you.
With an internal link strategy among your blog posts, articles and even media releases you can help to improve the relevancy for a wide variety of long-tail keywords and customer search phrases.
Make Your Content Shareable
With one of the more recent updates to the algorithm, Google began including social signals as a ranking factor. This means that retweets, likes, ratings, +1’s and other social signals actually contribute to the rank of your content and your site. The more people share your work, the more popular Google believes you to be.
Notice we didn’t mention anything about buying links for rank? While links are still one ranking factor, it’s the content in your marketing strategy that will have the greatest long-term effect on your search rank as well as your value position with your audience.
If you want to get on page 1 of Google, you need to focus on your content first.
Want to get a jump start on your competitors and launch a powerful digital marketing strategy? Give us a call today and Tulsa Internet Marketing or submit a contact request, we can help you choose the best path for superior visibility and market domination on the web.
