How do I show up at the top of Google? That’s a common question that marketers face. You’ve likely had key stakeholders within your organization ask you what you’re doing to climb the rankings. While there are some important SEO basics to cover first, here are some impactful tactics to implement within your marketing strategy if you’re looking to increase your online visibility.
1. Stay Relevant With Keyword Research
Understanding common questions your prospects and customers ask is important. That will help you make sure you’re providing value and staying relevant. However, it is also important to know HOW they’re asking these questions. This is what will allow you to rank well on search engine result pages.
Start By Tracking Your Top Keywords
It’s helpful to get a good baseline of what you’re currently ranking well for. Luckily, there’s a free tool for this! By setting up your website on Google Search Console, you’ll be able to easily pull a report that lists important metrics like query, position (rank), impressions, and clicks.
Put Your Keywords To The Test
Outside of the keywords you now know you’re ranking well for, what else do you think should be included? Expand your list to include other important questions and phrases that your target audience would be likely to search for. Once your list is complete, put them to the test with Moz’s keyword report. Here, you’ll be able to view how competitive each term is and additional keyword suggestions.
Insider tip- it can be more strategic to go after variations of important search terms with a bit less search volume as they will be less challenging to rank for.
Incorporate Your Targeted Keywords
Through this keyword research, you may now have a new list of terms you want to target and a better idea of priority order. Now is the time to comb through your website to ensure you are addressing each topic in a way that is useful and accessible to your audience. It’s important to avoid “stuffing” your pages with these new search terms as that is not useful for your audience and will actually be penalized by Google.
2. Become A Thought Leader
It feels like there is an endless list of reasons why thought leadership is great for online visibility. You can publish this type of content directly on your website as industry news, blog articles, or online resources.
Keyword Rich Content
To start, creating resources and sharing them via your website is an ideal way to incorporate all of those wonderful keywords you worked so hard to gather up in a nice list. Google will love the authentic use of these search terms and recognize that you are also providing fresh, valuable content. That’s a big win, as Google wants to make sure they always show the very best results.
What’s better than fresh, relevant, and valuable?
Sharable Content
Another great thing about producing your own thought leadership based content is how sharable it is. These articles and resources are the perfect candidate for you to share via social media, in email campaigns, or even hand over to your sales team as a warm follow-up topic. When you create timely and relevant value, it’s also very likely your audience will start to share your content for you!
Encouraging Ongoing Engagement
Typically, a prospect doesn’t decide to work with you after just one interaction. Keeping your website up-to-date with new resources prevents your content from being static or stale. This will encourage your audience to keep returning to your website, throughout their buyer’s journey. These additional touch points will keep your brand top-of-mind and provide your sales team with the advantage they need to increase the probability of a sale.
3. Create A Backlink Strategy
A big factor that Google and other search engines consider when deciding what results to show is authority. While having a well-established website with fresh content that incorporates relevant keywords is extremely important, there is another way to increase your website’s “authority.”
What Is A Backlink
A link from another website that points back to your website is considered a backlink. This sends a signal to Google that says “Oh, there must be some really good content over here because another website has told their visitors to go there!” The more authority that website has, the more value that backlink has.
How To Earn More Backlinks
Our team has created a separate list of 9 ways you can earn more backlinks for your website. An important note would be to seek out legitimate sources for these links rather than paying for links to appear on random websites (again, Google knows the difference between valuable links and spam).
4. Invest In Paid Reach
While going the organic route is a great way to increase your rankings over time, it will take TIME. A more immediate tactic to increase your exposure across search result pages would be to pay your way to the top. The most popular platform for this would be Google Ads. Within the Google Ads platform, you can load in the keywords you want to rank for (and those you don’t) for each group of ads. When your ad does appear, you end up only paying Google when that impression results in a click to your website. Here is a course through Google on how to use their Ads platform.
Other Pay-Per-Click Ads For Increased Visibility
There are several other types of ads you can run through Google that are great for online visibility even though they are not focused on showing you at the top of search result pages. I would recommend also taking Google’s courses on Display Ads and Video Ads. These are amazing for brand exposure and typically require a smaller budget that Search Ads.
Next Steps
As you start to formulate your strategy based on these tips and other initiatives, check out our Digital Hierarchy of Needs Marketing Guide. This will help you coordinate your digital marketing efforts in an efficient and effective manner! Of course, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team with any specific questions.
