Your customers and prospects are using Google to help them make decisions. They use it to make decisions about music, about fashion, to get up to speed on issues they’re passionate about, to solve their problems, and to make decisions about products and services that they want and need. This applies whether they’re looking for a personal injury lawyer, an accountant, a plastic surgeon, a place to book a dinner reservation on Saturday night or where to book their next vacation. If you can get indexed in Google for the right search terms related to your field and your target demographic, you can profit from it.
There are several ways you can get listed on the front page of Google for search terms that your potential customers could be using, including:
- Sponsored advertisements
- Organic links to your website
- Links to articles authored by your company or someone else
- Links to social marketing websites
- News and blog listings
- Videos and images
- Google Places (10-pack listing)
Different types of listings can have various impacts on your website’s visibility online as well as the cost of marketing to your target audience.
Sponsored Listings: Sponsored ads happen when you bid on a keyword or phrase related to your niche. People who search for that phrase are presented with a number of results and your ad will exist somewhere on that page. When your ad is clicked on, you’ll have a visitor sent to a page you direct them to. You’ll pay a fee for obtaining the attention of that visitor.
Organic SEO Results: Organic search engine optimized results happen when Google deems a page to be relevant to a search term. Your home page or deep links within your website could be indexed as one of the most relevant results based on a keyword phrase because of linking and other factors. Organic results are ideal because:
a) They’re trusted the most by web surfers.
b) They cost the least. In essence, the traffic is free—once you’ve invested time, resources, and / or money to achieve the top organic listing places.
Articles & Microblogging or Social Bookmark: Articles or press releases written by you or by someone else about you could also be listed on the front page as well as links to discussions about your product or service on a social media site, such as Twitter, for instance. If someone “tweets” about you, this could be deemed relevant and important enough to be listed on the front page of search engines.
Google News and Blog Search: Your links can be indexed in various sub search engines of Google’s, such as Google News and Google Blog Search. These results continually refresh based on current listings.
Videos: Videos posted on YouTube or other video sites can turn up on search engine results pages.
Images: Name the images on your website strategically and they could end up in search engine results, linking back to your website.
Google 10 Pack: If your site is properly optimized, it will be listed as a local business listing for people who query relevant search terms in a specific geographical area. This can be advantageous because not only will your site be listed as organic and relevant but the result also shows your phone number and links directly to your site so that people can easily contact you.
Get Found on Google
Getting found on the world’s largest search engine will lead to your getting found on many of the smaller search engines as well. It’s not enough to get listed, though. You need to be listed for specific terms and phrases to increase your chances of appealing to people who are ready to buy. You also need to approach your online marketing initiatives strategically, so that you can carefully manage your brand and reputation as well as capture leads from the traffic you obtain.
Envoca provides design, development, maintenance, SEO, and e-commerce solutions for clients in various lines of business. We’ve helped different types of companies, such as: lawyers, doctors, small businesses, and larger corporations increase their online presence and maximize their website traffic. Contact us for a request for proposal or feel free to browse our portfolio.
Hi Deborah, thanks for the article! When it comes to Local Search, I always recommend my clients visit GetListed.org to claim their local listings on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Best of the Web, and newly added Yelp. It’s easy to do and is free. And of course for those interested in learning more about SEO I recommend SEOmoz’”The Beginners Guide to SEO” which is free at http://seomz.me/seogd -Tom
Back linking can become a helpful aspect as well as facilitate in off site online marketing. Have you ever noticed back links result in a negative affect to Google rankings? And do you know if there is a technique to know when PPC is better than building links? I personally manage several websites and as a matter of fact own a backlink building company. Still, I at times find it useful to use pay per click over building links.