Run Your Website as You Would a Traditional Business for Amazing SEO Results
It is amazing to think what was once as an accepted practice for getting rankings and was considered White Hat SEO, is now considered Black Hat. For an explanation of White Hat and Black Hat SEO, I will be writing some further information on this shortly.
So How Does Using Good Business Strategy Go Hand in Hand with Search Rankings?
You are far more likely to get rankings in search engines if you run a good business. And this is exactly what Google wants. It wants to deliver quality content to its clients, because Google wants its customers (those who are using their search engine to find things) to get the best possible results that they want. Google doesn’t want to serve-up rubbish sites to its customers – because then they would not use their search engine.
Now, think about what a well-run business does. It promotes itself through special interest groups, the business will support local charities, it spends money on advertising, it builds relationships with both suppliers and customers, it gives away free samples and trial offers.
If you translate these fundamental business strategies to online business, you will be amazed at the rankings that you get – naturally.
Firstly, Let’s Approach Your Business Focus
Intially, try not to focus on rankings in search engines. Maintain your focus on why you want your site to rank. Is it to get more leads and convert them to sales offline by way of phone call or meeting? This may be suited to real estate agents or mortgage brokers. Or do you have an e-Commerce site that sells products such as books or t-shirts. Then the focus will be on getting visitors to your site to show them your wares.
Here’s a Great Tip: Do online what you should be doing in normal business, and your rankings and traffic will soar!
Your focus should be on building relationships with customers and suppliers, promoting your website to communities, support charities and offer free trials or samples – Just like offline, bricks and mortar businesses. You just have to do it Online.
So How to I do Online, what Traditional Businesses do to Build Their Businesses Offline ?
Build Your Online Credibility
For most, I would suggest that just like offline businesses, you will need to build your brand and your reputation in the market place. This is especially important in the online world. Things really haven’t changed from 20 years ago, people want to know who they are dealing with and want to feel like they are making the right decision.
Essentially, building online credibility means forming relationships with others. It just so happens that a great way to do this is by connecting with your audience online through social networks. Connecting directly is important these days. I also recommend having a face to your business. Kind of like what Sir Richard Branson is to Virgin.
Google Plus: Upon sign up, you establish your personal profile then create a separate Google Plus page for your business. It’s awesome and really easy and fun to do.
Linked In: Is about your personal profile – however recently they have allowed the creation of business pages.
Facebook: Allows you to sign up for a personal profile and create a Fan Page for your business. I love this feature.
If you haven’t got your profile on these networks, do it now. it is THAT important – not to mention that it is an amazingly cheap and fun way to connect with countless potential clients.
So this is an example of building your reputation as a traditional business owner would, but you are doing it on the internet. Just by following this easy process you are also taking a great step in getting search engine rankings.
Aligning Yourself With Other Authorities
Now it is not just through social media that you can boost your credibility. You can also become an author of an authority site in your industry. This is a highly powerful way to promote yourself (as an offline business would do in a print magazine). Let’s say that you run a landscaping business. You can write articles on highly respected gardening magazine websites.
Now here is the tricky part. By adding a link in that article to your Google Author page, it will skyrocket your credibility as an author in not readers’ minds but also in Google’s opinion of you as an author.
Here is an example of how you can end your article that you are publishing in an authority site:
Promotions, Giveaways and Free trials
A lot of businesses have give aways and free trials in an effort for you to use their products. You can do this on the internet as well. Let’s say you write a report for businesses in your niche or industry. You can offer this for free to your visitors or subscribers. Then you can tell them to share it with their friends. This is a very viral way to get visitors and build your online reputation at the same time.
You should however, make sure that the content contained inside the report is valuable, otherwise people will tend not to share it.
Positive Online Feedback
To be continued. Google takes other people’s reputations into account who are giving you feedback too. By this I mean that Google looks to the credibility of other authors that are giving you online ratings. This means that you should aim to get as many Google Plus likes and Facebook likes as possible. Your online reputation is weighted heavily of others’ ratings of you. This is important. You should therefore guard your online reputation as much as you possibly can. This is so much of an important factor that some larger companies employ social media monitors to monitor the internet feedback and respond directly in that social media to show that they are proactive in taking customer service seriously. This pays big dividends for the larger companies and if you have the right software you can easily do the same. This is more of online reputation management. I will show you some tricks on reputation management in another article and go in depth of how you can easily monitor what others are saying about you and your business online.
Should You Worry About Getting Top Spot Anyway?
Myths of Gaining First Page Rankings
Let’s face it – it is awesome to get top rankings for your desired search term, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your search marketing efforts because it takes time to get to the top spot by building your online reputation.
So many people believe that if they get top spot in the rankings that their whole business will transform into a booming enterprise. There could be nothing further from the truth. If you are in top spot, and others take a look at position number 2 and 3 and those businesses have amazing ratings, have positive feedback from clients, have a fast loading website that is easy to operate, it goes without saying that they are the ones that are likely to get that customer’s business.
The fact is that it is so easy to research people online now – and that is exactly what consumers are doing. In this day and age consumers are more savvy in researching before they purchase.
This goes hand in hand with getting rankings. If you have a great website that contains valuable information that people actually WANT to read, then you are in a far better position to get rankings. Also if you have positive feedback, then you will be more likely