Free Google Rankings?

The search engines’ proprietary systems crawl billions of web pages to determines which pages will rank for each keyword within the top 10 organic search listings. These listings are the results on the search page that are not advertisements and to which approximately 40% to 60% of the clicks from the search results go.

With Americans conducting more than 12.6 Billion searches in October according to Comscore, search engines are on track to give away almost 100 Billion clicks for free per year. As you would expect, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become the must-do activity for online marketing success as businesses compete to get as many free clicks as possible from Google and other search engines.

Are the clicks really free?
While the search engines do not charge for clicks on organic listings, the links are anything but ‘free’. There is a hyper-competitive world of SEO services intended to help businesses compete for those clicks. Over the past few years, SEO has gone from cottage industry to big business. And you can be sure that many of the websites ranking in the top 10 for your targeted keywords have invested marketing budget into SEO.

How to Compete
The answer is simple. Whether you do-it-yourself or hire an expert, the best way to compete is to follow this simple formula:

Content + Links = Traffic

Of course, the devil is in the details of the type, frequency and other factors driving the content and the links…

Content Optimization
People use search engines to ‘query’ the web; inherent in that query is a question that must be answered. The search engine’s job is to find the most authoritative answer to that query. Your job is to position your content to answer these questions. Here is a simple formula to follow for your content:

Popular Topic + Succinct Answers = Good Content

Link Acquisition
The search engine’s goal is to publish the authoritative sites on topics at the top of the listings. Links are how a search engine determines if your website is authoritative or not. The theory goes that if your business is about widgets and a lof of sites about widgets link into your site, then the search engine will know that your site is popular and authoritative about widgets.

Not all links are the same so the priority should be links from websites relevant to your business and authoritative on the topic. A site about race cars is not relevant to a company selling lawnmowers and as a result, a link from them would not be useful. On the other hand, links from professional gardeners to a company selling lawnmowers would be very relevant. With that in mind, here is a great list of 101 things you can do to build links for your site.

If you would like additional information on this topic or a free needs assessment, please contact a Thrivepoint Advisor.

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