Getting on Google is the Holy Grail for your website – and the higher your site appears in Google’s natural search listings, the better your prospects are of attracting traffic. To get on Google - and we're talking near the top spots, which are the only ones that matter - can be nigh on impossible in many cases, but there are clever tactics you can employ which will increase your website’s prospects of appearing higher up the result listings – possibly even at the top!
Google deals in relevance
You cannot pay money to Google to appear near the top of their ‘natural’ search results listings. The only currency traded for Google’s natural search listings globally is relevance, so if your website contains relevant text content, then it stands a much better chance of ranking higher in search engine listings than a similar website with poorly conceived content.
But what do we mean by ‘relevant text content’? We’re talking about content that has a strong bearing on the subject nature of your website and that contains a good range of keywords and phrases that draw influence from the specific terms that users type into search engines when they’re searching for the goods, services or information that you offer on your site. So if you sell sofas, then including lots of good content that contains that word and similar keywords and phrases will help give you an advantage. Make space on your website for text content – don’t just list products and pictures, because search engines won’t be able to tell what your site is all about.
Get on Google – the hard way
This is the route the vast majority of online businesses go down, and it’s not just a hard method – it’s also very restrictive, generating very little traffic in the wider scheme of things, even if you do manage to rank high. This hard way to get on Google involves targeting your industry’s main keywords and phrases – the ones that all the websites in your market use. Problem is, there’s only 10 results per page on Google, and the usefulness of ranking high deteriorates significantly with each page further back you appear.
So going back to the sofas example, you need to ask yourself what the likelihood will be of getting in the first 10 results on Google for the term ‘sofas’ or ‘armchairs’ is, bearing in mind the competition in that sector. Google it now and see. You’ll notice that it’s all the big players in your industry - and there’s a reason for that. It’s because when deciding on how to rank its results listings for these main industry words and associated popular phrases, Google doesn’t just pay attention to content and content alone – it also looks at the age and authority of a website, taking into account how well established it is and other factors such as how many other websites are linking to it. So to get on Google for these big words and phrases is going to take investment and time – lots of both.
Get on Google – the clever way
So now to the much more practical and achievable way to get on Google. Again, the answer lies in content – but this time we’re talking clever content. Now, this method does take some research, and there are tools and services out there such as LoTaS that can help determine with much greater accuracy which content will work best, but the principle remains the same regardless of the means employed by which to achieve it. The principle is: long-tail keywords and phrases.
Using long-tail keywords and phrases in your content vastly improves your prospects of getting on Google, especially if the phrases you use draw heavy influence from the actual phrases that users type into Google when searching. So going back to the sofas once again, it’s going to be much more beneficial to include some longer phrases that contain several keywords in your website content than it is to just focus on your main industry buzzwords. So something like ‘cheap leather corner sofas’ is going to not only generate good, highly targeted traffic on its own, it’s also a much less-used phrase, meaning in turn that you have a much greater chance of getting on Google for it – and probably on the first pages. Including a range of similar phrases to these throughout your website’s content, as well as occasionally including your industry’s main keywords and phrases, will help you catch a whole dimension of less-targeted, or even completely un-targeted, highly specific traffic. The long-tail offers the best chance for many online businesses to get on Google.
Get on Google with the Web Marketing Group’s LTaS service
Our revolutionary new LTaS service offers a highly sophisticated technique for targeting top quality traffic through clever long-tail phrases. The unique LTaS algorithm lets us see up-front the value and achievability of any given number of relevant long-tail phrases, enabling us to propose the long-tail SEO strategy that’s most likely to generate real, tangible results for your business.
Interested? Join our 500+ other clients by requesting your completely FREE no obligation SEO website analysis here.
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