Over 75% of users never look beyond the first page of search results.
Getting your website to page 1 on Google has never been more important.
With the first five search results accounting for over 67% of clicks, getting to the top of page 1 should be every businesses top priority.
Of course, understanding Google’s indexing algorithms isn’t necessarily straightforward. Furthermore, you are competing with millions of other websites who also want to secure the top spots. Fortunately, help is at hand.
At ClickSlice we know what it takes to get your business to page 1 of Google. If you want your rankings to soar, take a look at these top tips for SEO success…
The first thing you need to determine is what keyword (search phrase) you want to be on page 1 for. Your site doesn’t need to rank highly for every search a user makes.
Instead, you want to rank highly for keywords with high buyer intent, AKA the keywords that are most likely to generate your business money.
Let’s imagine you run a plumbing business based in London… targeting a keyword like “How do I unblock a sink” is probably not the best strategy as people who search for this are typically interested in learning how to unblock a sink themselves, meaning they will not require your services.
You’re much better off targeting a keyword with a high buyer intent behind it such as “Sink unblocking London”.
People who search for “Sink unblocking London” are interested in finding someone who can unblock their sink. Which as a plumber would be a service you offer, making it a perfect keyword to target.
Pro tip: If you run a SAB (Service Area business) you can rinse and repeat this method for all the locations you target.
Now you’ve got your keywords finalised, it’s time to look at who you’re competing against.
Just as it’d be tough to start a successful supermarket store across the road from Tesco, it’s difficult to rank on the first page of Google when the competition is fierce.
So the next step is to understand the competitive landscape—starting with who you’re up against.
To do that, search for your keyword and look at the first page of results.
If all you see is massive well-known brands and you’re a small start-up that nobody has ever heard of, then getting to the first page is going to be quite tough.. At least in the short to medium time frame.
For example, look at the search results for “car insurance.”
Every result is from a huge brand—Admiral, MoneySavingExpert, GoCompare etc.
This is a clear sign that those who are looking for car insurance typically want it from a well known, established brand. Ranking on page 1 against these guys would be tall order even for the smartest SEO.
Make sure you take note of the websites you see on page 1 for the keywords you want to target, if over 50% of them are big well-known brands, then have a rethink and niche down some more.
Once you find the keywords you are happy with you to need to optimise your actual page to include these keywords on them, however, just don’t just stuff them anywhere, you want to include them in the key placeholders.
Find out where we place keywords by downloading our EXACT 5 step process we use at ClickSlice when optimising websites to get them on page 1.
Once users are on your site, it’s your job to keep them there. Whilst getting your keywords included in the key place holders are critical, users won’t stick around for subpar content. That’s why you need strategic content optimisation and management to ensure you get on page 1 on Google.
When you fill your webpages with innovative and original content, you’re giving users a reason to stay on your site and increasing the amount of time they spend on each page. This is a massive ranking factor and something Google measures.
If people are coming onto your website and only spending 2 seconds on your page then its a signal to Google that your content isn’t great, as a result, Google will give your website lower rankings, resulting in no organic traffic.
You want to make sure your content read wells, is engaging and gives people a reason to read on.
Also, pay close attention so what you are writing on your website and ensure it answers exactly what the person searches for.
For example, you would have found this article by searching for “How to get on page 1 on google” or something along those lines, as a result, this whole article is focused on giving you information about how you can get onto page 1. If we were to start talking about Youtube ads or something irrelevant then you would lose interest.
Your customers are no different, focus on providing high quality and relevant content
Pro Tip – Everything you publish on and off your site is ‘content’. From your homepage and blog to your social media posts and meta descriptions; everything you publish online should be part of your content optimisation strategy.
What happens behind the scenes of your website is just as important as what users can see. Backlinks are simply a mention of your website on an external website, backlinks are seen as a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google.
However, you don’t want just any old backlink for your site, you want high-quality backlinks that are relevant.
Securing backlinks from high-authority domains is one of the most effective ways to boost your rankings. Of course, obtaining these backlinks isn’t easy. Domain authority is based on a score from 1-100; the higher your score, the better your domain authority.
When high authority domains are linking to your webpages, it boosts the reputation and authority of your site.
One way to obtain backlinks to your website is to reach out to authoritative websites in your niche and ask if you can submit a guest post on their website.
A guest post is simply where you write an article as a “Guest” and it gets posted on an external website.
The article you write for the site would contain a link in it which links back to your website.
It’s a little time intensive and explains why over 55% of webpages don’t have any backlinks at all.
However, it’s 100% worth the effort. In fact, It’s exactly the method we used to rank ClickSlice on page 1 on google for “local SEO services London”.
Lastly, to rank highly, your site needs to be SEO-friendly and deliver a great user experience (UX). This means fixing broken links, optimising the structure and increasing loading speeds. In addition, you’ll need to ensure your site meets Google’s mobile-first indexing requirements. (Hint – responsive web design is an easy and effective way to achieve this).
By making your site intuitive and logical, you’re on the right track. A slick design can certainly enhance a website, but its functionality needs to come first. Think of your site’s structure as its foundations – without a solid grounding, everything else falls apart.
Make it easy for users to navigate your site, even if they’re first-time visitors.
By maintaining an intuitive, user-friendly and fully functional website, you have the building blocks you need to get on page 1 on Google.
Getting to page 1 on Google can transform your business. With increased brand awareness, higher conversion rates and increased sales, higher rankings quickly equate to better commercial performance.
But getting to page 1 on Google isn’t your only aim. Staying on page 1 on Google is just as important for long-term business success.
With over 200 Google algorithms to contend with, maintaining placement on page 1 isn’t easy. In fact, it requires consistent optimisation across an ever-increasing list of parameters.
In addition, you’ll need to predict how Google’s ranking and indexing algorithms will change over time. As new tech comes to the forefront, for example, you need to know how it will change user behaviour and algorithms in order to optimise your content and maintain your rankings.
While these 5 tips give you the basics of things you need to consider to improve your website rankings, we’ve also put together the EXACT 5 step process we use at ClickSlice to optimise websites to get them on page 1.
Grab a FREE copy of it today and start getting your website moving in the right direction.
Great content is at the heart of any successful business. Whether you’re aiming to increase your rankings, grow your enterprise or generate sales; you rely on content to make it happen. Created to inform, persuade, engage and sell; the right content turns your target market into loyal customers.
It’s no surprise, then, that great content is central to effective SEO too. If you want your website to rank highly, it’s essential to create content that Google loves. Whether you’re launching a new business or running an existing enterprise, a tailored content marketing strategy is critical to your success. By using Google’s algorithms as a guide, you can create content that engages your target market and helps you to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs).
With the potential to optimise your conversion rate and increase brand awareness, engaging content can transform your business. Want to learn more? Take a look at these top 5 tips and create content that will lift your rankings today…
The days of ‘keyword stuffing’ are long gone but your content should still be content rich. Of course, your keywords should appear naturally in any content you publish. Furthermore, the presence of keywords or key terms shouldn’t devalue the content.
Instead of trying to stuff keywords into a blog post, for example, evaluate why the keywords are relevant to users and create content accordingly. To ensure your content creation is keyword focused, it’s essential to undertake detailed keyword research first. Once you know what key terms you want to rank for, you will be able to take a more strategic approach to content creation.
Everything your business publishes is content; from social media posts and website images to online articles and offline adverts. Blog posts are a fantastic way to add fresh, new content to your site and engage with your target audience. However, they aren’t the only type of content you should be publishing on a regular basis.
A comprehensive content marketing strategy involves using different mediums. When you’re devising your content strategy, aim to create content in as many forms as possible, including:
Remember – Content can be shared across different platforms. Maximise its impact via multi-channel promotion. In addition to this, you can use the basis of one piece of content to create another. A video script can easily form the basis of a blog post, for example, while How-To guides can be collated into a company eBook.
Google likes websites that are regularly updated, so you’ll want to create content that’s fresh and original. However, it’s also important to publish evergreen and cornerstone content. This is content that stands the test of time and remains relevant over months or even years.
Evergreen content should be as timeless as possible. When used correctly, evergreen content will continue to attract traffic to your site, so choose topics that are always going to be relevant to your business and your target market.
In contrast, your time-sensitive content should feature promotions, events and news. These can cause significant spikes in website traffic, but they won’t necessarily generate on-going interest. Christmas-themed posts will increase traffic from October to December, for example, but will garner little interest throughout the rest of the year.
When you create content strategies that combine evergreen and time-sensitive content, you’re satisfying Google and giving users a reason to keep coming back to your site. Establishing both your expertise and your innovation, evergreen and time-sensitive content gives you a two-pronged approach to maximise success.
If you want to reap the benefits of an inspired digital marketing campaign, you’ll need to ensure your content is properly optimised. Google will rank your webpages highly if they feature great content, but it needs to know it’s there.
By optimising your content, you tell Google exactly what your webpages are about, as well as what and who they are relevant too. To do this, you’ll need to use tags, such as <title>, <h2> and <h3>. Meta descriptions, title pages and favicons are also small but essential optimisation techniques.
To really boost your rankings, take a look at your page and content layouts too. As well as increasing your webpage rankings, the layout of your content could help you to ensure it’s promoted by Google in the form of featured snippets. Lists, bullet points and how-to guides are popular types of content for featured snippets, so be sure to include these on your website.
If you want to improve your SEO rankings, you need a winning link building campaign.
Link building is a form of off-page SEO that helps to improve the credibility of your website. Getting links to your site placed on other reputable sites establishes your authenticity and boosts your rankings.
While the premise behind link building sounds simple enough, a successful campaign can be tricky to execute. If you want to get on the first page of Google, take a look at this step by step guide and start building your link building strategy today…
When you create content, focusing on your target audience is, perhaps, the most important element. Whilst there are numerous algorithms you need to bear in mind, Google’s overriding objective is to satisfy its users. To do this, it wants to offer search results that are relevant, accurate and informative.
As Google places increasing importance on search intent, you can get to page 1 of the results by publishing original, engaging and insightful content. Although you’ll need to upload or modify your content regularly to meet Google’s requirements, don’t simply post content because you feel you have to.
Instead, focus on producing high quality content that will be valued by your target market. No matter what type of content you’re publishing, it needs to engage the user, persuade, inform, entertain and, ultimately, convert them.
Creating a content strategy and producing top quality content takes time. From the initial research to writing, filming or collating, you need to spend a significant amount of time creating content that works for your brand. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone.
At ClickSlice, we specialise in getting your website to page 1 on Google. To achieve this, we undertake comprehensive keyword research, create bespoke content for your business and publish it in all the right places. To find out how we’ll transform your business, contact ClickSlice now on 020 3287 3638.
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