Long-time customers and followers of my marketing know that I have always advocated that “if you do all of your other marketing right, the search engines will take care of themselves.” Still, there is something very alluring about SEO (search enginge optimization) and getting listed on page one of Google. This seems to be the Holy Grail of internet marketing. In the recent survey I conducted, it continued to be the most requested item that people wanted to know about. SEO is much like dieting – most people just want to take a magic pill to lose weight, but for it to be really effective, you have to put in the work.
SEO is much like dieting - most people just want to take a magic pill to lose weight, but for it to be really effective, you have to put in the work. Click To Tweet
How can you get to the coveted number one spot on Google?
Start by Taking Our Free SEO Audit
The dream of every business owner is to get their website listed on page one of Google. In order to do this, you must understand a few things about website traffic. The first is that almost 52 percent of all traffic to a website comes from bots – electronic spiders that are crawling your site either for the purpose of indexing your pages or trying to hack into the site. Clearly, security and optimizing your page for the bots to understand your site (and thus list you on page one for a specific term) are critical. The second thing to understand is that Google doesn’t just index your website, but it indexes individual pages within your website (that is why the bots are crawling your site). Your goal should be to get every single page of your site indexed by Google!
Your goal should be to get every single page of your site indexed by Google! Click To TweetOnly 48% of the traffic to your site is actual human traffic. Human traffic comes from a number of sources, not just search engines, including:
- Referrals
- Social media
- Email marketing and
- Direct Traffic
Each of these is important, both for the traffic it creates as well as for your SEO score. When a business is requesting SEO, what they are really asking is, “How can I get more quality traffic to my website?” There are really 3 ways to accomplish this:
1. Drive the traffic to your website yourself.
Driving traffic to your website is best accomplished by having a free offer that you promote through:
Your website
- Your blog
- Social media posts
- Social media profiles (ie, LinkedIn)
- Groups (Facebook / LinkedIn)
- Ads
- Email signature block
- Networking events / elevator pitch
- Collaborative / reciprocal offers with others
- Influencer marketing!
2. Pay Google to list your site on page 1. This is known as paid search.
The good thing about paid search is that you can get your site listed on that coveted page one slot if you are willing to pay enough. The average CPC on the Display Network is under $1. The most expensive keywords in AdWords and Bing Ads cost $50 or more per click. Using paid search also provides the advantage that you may very well show up on numerous other websites as well. WebStores specializes in retargeting ads that allows you to have your ads follow someone around the internet. Learn more about digital advertising here.
3. Organic Search, commonly known as SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
There are two sides to SEO: on-site and off-site factors. I provide a comprehensive list of these in my book, Amazon’s Dirty Little Secrets.” (http://amzn.to/2xfe56d) Most SEO companies focus on the on-site factors, things like title tags and images. The reason they focus on these things is that they are tangible and easy to identify. And while these are important, it turns out that off-site factors, including relevant links from sites like YouTube are much more critical to your success.
Start by taking our free online audit of your website. This will point out areas that can be improved upon. This tool is totally free and you can take these recommendations to your webmaster or make the changes yourself. Of course, we’d love to help and we know some specific things that will get you to that coveted first page. WebStoresLtd offers monthly packages for selected keywords to help you maintain your presence on the search results page.
Based on the results of your audit, you will most likely want to focus on the following items to improve your search ranking results:
- Google My business Listing
- Google Reviews
- YouTube Videos with Backlinks
I indicated at the beginning of this article that if you do all of your other marketing right, the search engines will take care of themselves. And that is true: writing great content and link building are part of the strategy, not just the on-site SEO factors. You must also track and measure your results, so you can determine what is working and what isn’t. Google analytics should be installed on your site, and you should be monitoring the results at least weekly.
If you do all of your other marketing right, the search engines will take care of themselves Click To TweetAre you ready to do the work to get every page of your website listed on page one of Google? There are two ways to do this: organic search and paid ads. Done correctly, both can get you on page one. But the question is often one of econmics. Which provides a greater ROI?
SEO is expensive because it requires a considerable invest in time. The costs however are usually cheaper than paying for adwords, and research has shown that people are 8.5 times more likely to click on organic listings than paid ads. You might not rank #1 overnight, but SEO is more affordable and the longterm benefits have been proven. Now let WebStores Ltd. prove it to you.
Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/