What is it worth to your business to be on page one of Google? And do you think that getting to number one is impossible to achieve?
If you have a website – actually, even if you haven’t – you will no doubt be bombarded like the rest of us with spam emails declaring “We can get you to page 1 in Google – guaranteed! Or more amazingly “We can get you to NUMBER ONE in Google – guarenteed!” Of course, because it is spam we tend to dismiss it as being some hyped up sales spiel to guarantee you not very much.
The thing is, that many of these businesses will get you to number one but by using a smidgen of your fee that you pay them to pay Google to put you at number 1 in the paid listings. Is this what you really really want? Bear in mind that as soon as you stop paying Google you will not drop like a stone in the search results but disappear altogether.
Another trick that they will use is to get your web page coming up on page one but using such an obscure phrase to be virtually useless. It is all very well getting to page one using the quirky name you have for your business but there is no value in it at all. That is unless you have a massive following already and your quirky name is talked about on every street corner in the city of your niche market. If this is the case then I would expect your site to come up number one every time.
The question that you need to ask yourself – what does it mean to you being on page one of Google for a valuable search phrase.
By this I mean a phrase that is going to be typed in by someone who is specifically looking for your services. If you can get the visitors to your site and your site is good enough for them to get in touch with you, how much will that increase your turnover and your profits?
If you can quote The Full Monty and say “A lot… a very lot” then perhaps you should look at your budgets for paying a search engine optimisation specialist to get you to page one. Consider this – you can spend hours and hours, may be days, months, years building up relationships with people and get the business you need – eventually but how much does that cost you in time and money taking you away from doing what you do best? How much would it boost your sales and your income if you were able to get a leg up with the exposure your business gets?
Things to consider when aiming high in search engine results including Google – will being on page one bring you any more visitors?
There is of course more to this than just being found. Our pages have to be engaging enough to seduce your visitors that you were worthy of being on page one in the first place. Your products have to not only be the number one item on the list of any potential customer but you have to show them that what you have is actually exactly what they want and need. Engaging your customer, capturing their hearts, imagination and their trust in just a few seconds means that you not only have to make sure that you get high up in the results but can make use of the visitors that come your way too. In short you have to get your message across and make it easy for your customer to understand how to ‘buy in’ to your product.
Heard the phrase that content is king? This is especially true when targeting page one of search results.
It is all very well getting good results with the search engines be warned that what you have on your site has to be informative as well as easy to use. The search engines love content but so do people. Clever SEO copywriting will provide your visitors with relevant helpful fact filled information that will enable them to find what they need. The words have to be written in such a way as to appeal to both human and robot visitors. It is no good having something which sorts the mechanics of getting found – you have to talk to your customers as real people too.
Warning – PLEASE use a skilled SEO expert with a proven track record i.e. getting good results for many years
BUT – please please please be aware of the cowboys who use black hat sneaky techniques and NOT work WITH the search engines to get you good results. Being dumped in sandboxes where you can’t get out is an absolute no no but you will end up in there if you break the rules. The sandbox is the naughty corner and if you are in there – it is very hard to get out. Once there your site will disappear from all results including the quirky ones.
Our main fashion site is a static html website which looks relatively simple and straight forward. Some of the content desperately needs updating and many people underestimate its credibility because of the way that it looks. However, the luxury hand crafted silk clothes – which although at the top of the market – get found by people wanting something special to wear.
We do not have any fancy graphics, no twirling twiddling gizmos and no geeky stuff that looks impressive. But for our small company this website is immensely successful. It gets from 10,000 to 15,000 hits per day which amounts to an average of 3 – 500,000 hits per month. This translates to around 30,000 unique visits and is found by around 7-11,000 search phrases each month. And this has been happening for the last 8-10 years and is not only still working but getting better the more that we add to the site. Our product is high end luxury and has paid for itself time and again bringing us beneficial, profitable, new and interesting contacts every day.
So ….. What is it worth to you to get found by the search engines using valuable relevant search phrases? How much business can you realistically generate from coming up high in the search results?