Google

What’s the Secret to Rank at the Top in Google Search Results?

May 15, 2020 by K-Kom

Whether you are a startup or an established enterprise, improving the visibility of your business on the web is imperative to succeed. Most buyers these days prefer to start their research online before they intend to go to a retail location to make a purchase, and this isn’t limited to retailers, many buyers in the industrial sector start their prospecting through search engines!

According to a survey, 89 percent of people search online before making a purchase, even if they are buying from a local business. That means if an entrepreneur wants to attract valuable traffic and lead it to the relevant resources on the website, he or she needs to secure the top ranking on Google search results.

But it is vital to understand that there is no magic to conquer the rankings. The only secret that can help you soar high in Google searches is to employ effective strategies.

If you don’t know how to do it, we have you covered here.

The Secret to Rank at the Top of Google Search Results

Put Together Your SEO Strategy

The very first step to take is to put together the right and relevant SEO strategy. It is worth mentioning that companies fail with their marketing before even getting off the ground because they focus on the keywords that are either too broad, irrelevant, do not get sufficient traffic, or are very competitive.

Remember that a focused keyword list is always broad, but it is essential to narrow it down through extensive research. You may be surprised by what you find, sometimes people find your business using terms you haven’t considered.

You can narrow the relevance and competition of broad keywords to incorporate specific services and local elements. For instance, instead of using “marketing,” you can go for “inbound marketing” or “digital marketing.”

Make an Ongoing Web Content Strategy

“Do not let your website get stale” was the key message Google put out when it updated the Panda algorithm in 2011. That means the search engine rewards the websites that continually improve their content, grow the number of resources on web pages, and improve relevancy.

Therefore, you must build your website better over time to improve its search engine rankings. You can keep the website fresh by adding informative content, tools, and resources to help your visitors navigate and stay longer on your website.

Optimize for Focus Keywords

Keep in mind that each page of your site needs to incorporate some critical optimization components. Each page should stick to one main term or topic, this helps Google understand the content of each page without getting confused about the purpose of the page. So make sure your web pages contain and address the following elements with focus keywords.

70 characters page title
Alt Text
H1 and H2 title text
Meta description of at least 155 characters
Content keywords at least once with included variations as necessary

Bottom Line

All in all, from building a solid strategy and implementing it effectively to keeping up with the Google algorithm to make a significant adjustment, you need to do a lot to rock the ranking game. In the end, make sure that you stick to the best SEO practices once your website has ranked high to maintain your ranking.

Search Engines are Changing + New Google App

January 30, 2018 by K-Kom

Search engines are changing. SEO is not dead; it’s evolving with search. Google pushes updates out almost daily, and as the most advanced AI continues to learn and improve, the task of search engine optimization becomes more difficult. A few years ago, everyone could call themselves SEO experts, but those days are gone and with the changes comes the need to be better at marketing as a whole, which is not necessarily bad.

Search engines are forcing business owners and marketers to understand their target audiences at a deeper level than ever before, to answer tough questions that people want answered. If you can do that, your business will profit.

Thinking about the brand as a whole helps create a message that speaks to people in a more focused, and perhaps more human way.

What does it mean to think about brand as a whole?

What type of message and values do you want to be known for? Make this as clear as possible and find the best ways for your work to demonstrate this in a consistent way.

Consider the buyer’s journey:

Awareness: a prospect looks for a product or service based on their needs/wants. What kinds of questions are they asking themselves, and can you provide the answers?
Consideration: they do some research and discover your brand and competitors, considering all the possible choices. Do you stand out in significant and positive ways in the marketplace?
Decision: they determine which choice best suits their needs and make the purchase. Did they choose you, and if not, what are your competitors doing better?
Customer Loyalty: depending on your business, this could be the most important part. Have the resources and preparedness to offer your customers support, answer questions, and do whatever it takes to ensure their experience is superior to any of the others they could get in the market?

On that note, search engines are looking for positive signals about your brand from other people. This includes testimonials, comments, questions being answered, your content being shared by other businesses or individuals, etc.

On another note, because search engines like to see positive signals about your business, it’s fair to say they do not like to see negative signals. This can include a variety of things, but one which has not been proven yet, is negative brand mentions on the web. There have been instances where businesses had something negative happen that resulted in bad press, and coincidentally their rankings were affected negatively shortly thereafter. So if you’re getting bad reviews, take the time to follow up with those people and take care of their issues or misunderstandings (even better if this can be done online for others to see).

GOOGLE UPDATE: an app called Bulletin is in the works, for the purpose of publishing hyper-local news and community-focused content where it can be easily found, including on Google search results. This could be beneficial for uncovering events and stories that miss local press coverage. Learn more here

3 Big Corporate Blogging Mistakes

January 23, 2018 by K-Kom

Corporate blogging used to be far simpler than it was a few years ago. Posting a few tips or advice related to your niche was generally enough to increase traffic to your product or service website. Now it’s a lot more competitive.

To produce quality content, it’s often best to have a real understanding of the industry you’re writing about. Having that inside look is important for creating a unique edge and standing above the crowd of casual writers.

Corporate Blogging What Not to Do

Ignore SEO & Updates

Google is constantly making subtle and not-so-subtle changes to what they deem worthy of first page results vs what belongs somewhere in the ether. One mistake some businesses make when writing a blog, is wasting all that great content on another website, its own website, or a subdomain.

If that content isn’t on the main business website under its own link, it won’t get the same ranking credit as if were. Google will not associate the blog with your business as well or as easily if it’s not directly on your main website.

YES mybusiness.com/blog NO blog.mybusiness.com | randomwebsiteforblog.com

No Content / Keyword Strategy

As discussed in the previous corporate blogging post, having a keyword strategy is vital, not only for choosing pertinent topics to write about, but for knowing exactly what phrases people are searching online to include in the blog (and they may surprise you).

Letting Old Content Expire

Some old content, such as news related articles, will expire and that will be it. There are some that will remain relevant however, such as how-to articles and informational topics. Edit these once in awhile with industry changes, new key phrases, and any new details.

Failure to Promote

If you’re producing quality, share-worthy content, no one will find it for months unless you promote it.

Social Media – free and paid

Use social media to your advantage. Build communities on the major channels and post your content regularly. This is free, but there are also fantastic paid options.

Paid social ads are great for any business to utilize for consistent branding, increased sales, and sharing your products/services with new audiences with very specific targeting tools.

Email

Collecting website visitor’s email addresses is a popular strategy for building a list of relevant potential leads.

Do a guest blog once in awhile. This isn’t as popular as it once was, but there is still an opportunity to get in front of a large audience, or at least more people, if you build relationships with the right influencers.

Writing Irrelevant or Uninteresting Posts

People are not just going to automatically start reading the blog you spend hours and hours slaving over just because. This needs to be relevant to what they’re looking for, or at the very least, interesting.

Google also looks at how long your content is. BUT don’t write a bunch of filler. Make it long, make it valuable and make it accurate. Based on a study done with content ranking on Google, if you’re going to write something considered long-form, push for the 2,000 word barrier. Give your readers a really valuable article, and you’ll be much more likely to gain backlinks, which is a big factor in search ranking as well.

Remember one thing: content is a long term strategy – don’t give up too soon. Build your audience in the first year, by year two you should have a steady stream of traffic, and then by year three you should be generating business and quality leads.

If you’d like a professional marketing agency to save you time by handling your corporate blog, contact K-Kom and see what we can offer your business.

SEO Content Strategy Tips to Massively Increase Website Visits

December 19, 2017 by K-Kom

Content strategy makes up a large portion of your SEO needs. The top three ranking factors as of today are reviews, links, and fresh, quality content. It might be tempting to throw together a few articles and share them on social media, but anyone (including your competitors) can do that just as easily. So planning out a strategic approach is not only important, it will set you apart from the crowd and place you as an expert in your chosen field.

A strategic content plan should start with:

Prioritizing topics and themes that will be easiest to rank for.
How best to link to other pages of your website within each blog article.
Using these topics as an opportunity to link to non-competing but respected individuals or companies and form relationships with these people.
Regular upkeep and maintenance of existing website content so it stays relevant.

Easy Keyword Ranking

First thing’s first – what topics do you want your blog or news section to cover? Write down as many ideas as you can to start. Then we will use some tools to determine where the best place to start is.

Using the Keyword Planner in Google AdWords, you can type in your first topic, and a list of related keywords will be generated. You’re looking for keywords or phrases that have a high search volume, will provide value to your audience, and have a low difficulty or competition rating. There is also a tool on SEMRush called “Keyword Difficulty” that can be used in the same way to find these “sweet spot” keywords.

You can also type them into Google yourself and see what businesses are ranking on page one. If you see nationally known brands, you’re going to have a tougher time than with keywords that have small or lesser-known companies on page one.

Internal Linking

As you write, it’s important to link to relevant pages within your website that talk about your products or services. The point of content is to eventually lead to more sales right? You don’t want to come across as pushy or salesy, but when it’s appropriate and makes sense, linking to those conversion pages is a must.

Content Layering

Another helpful strategy is to mix it up between very specific, niche topics and more broad topics that pertain to a larger audience while still being relevant. Other businesses will be able to link to your articles more easily if they’re not so niche, and this could set you up to expand your services down the road.

Is Your Topic Linkable?

Google sees websites as more trustworthy and as an authority when other websites link to them. So, putting content onto your website that people will like enough to share is something to always keep in mind.

Does your topic receive a good number of searches per month?
Do the top results have a lot of other sites linking to them? (if not, you probably won’t get much action either)
If they do, what kinds of sites are linking to them? Would those link to yours?

Another thing you can do is look at the top ranking articles, find one you know you can improve on with better formatting, photos, or new research, then contact the people who have already linked to similar content and see if they would be willing to link to yours.

Maintenance on Existing Content

Keeping your existing content updated and relevant can add major value to your website. Even going back and creating a video based on the same content can attract more people and links to your business.

To see this strategy in more detail, visit SearchEngineLand.com.

How To Avoid Local SEO Problems Part 2: Your Website

October 31, 2017 by K-Kom

Let’s pick up where we left off in our last blog post How to Avoid Local SEO Problems Part 1: Business Plan and Location. Now we’ll move on to the big kahuna: the all-important website.

Whether you have one already, just started one recently, or are thinking about it now, here are some things to either fix or completely avoid, so you know you’re doing everything you can to ensure a good rank on search engines and that the right people will find you when they need you and your products or services!

Picking Your URL

This is an important step in your digital success. Pick the wrong thing, and it can limit your future unborn business ideas, or cause people to type it wrong and get lost or worse, find a competitor.

Just like with your business name, you wouldn’t want to choose a URL that limits you to either your local area, or one specific service. Now you can get creative and buy these types of URLs and forward them to your main site, but of course this will cost you a little bit for each one you want.

As well, “.com” is still the most recognized type of domain, so be careful if you choose something else like .us or .random. Choose the .com if at all possible. You can however buy the others as a safeguard, to ensure competitors don’t buy them and forward them to their own websites!

Multiple Websites

Some businesses with a few locations opt for having a separate website for each location. At first glance, this might seem like a good strategy for ranking in each local area. However, there are some downsides to this to consider:

Marketing budget spread too thin instead of focused on building one brand
Not enough content on each site and/or duplicate content (same or similar text on each site)
Confusion for Google rankings if the same name, address, or phone number appear on more than one website

Content Strategy

People are looking for local experts for whatever they’re looking to buy. They want to buy from the best source they can. So show off your expertise on your website. Share the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the last 10 or 20 years that would be relevant and helpful for your visitors. At the very minimum fill out a Home, About, Contact, Testimonials, and then a page for each main service or product you sell.

Website Contact Info

Do not leave potential customers without your contact info (or how to order products) within easy reach no matter where they are on your website. This means putting this info in the header or footer so it is automatically on every page. Make sure phone numbers are click-to-call enabled for mobile devices, and include a map and driving directions on your contact page if you have a storefront.

Calls to Action (CTAs)

Any main page on your website without a call to action, means people will not have anything to do after they’re done browsing. People want to know what to do next, and without direction, they will leave. Tell them outright to fill out a form, call you, go to your event, buy your product, etc.

Avoid these problems and put systems in place that remind you of the best way to do things, to ensure your local business is ranking on Google where you want it to be.

3 Key Elements of Local Small Business SEO

October 24, 2017 by K-Kom

The web and search engines are constantly evolving. Google has been working on making “search” a personalized experience for each individual person, so based on search history you and I see the results most relevant to us.

Small Business SEO Elements

Keyword Analysis + Quality Content

One of the most important factors today with ranking well on search engines is quality content mixed with the best keywords (or keyphrases).

First, there are tools out there (such as AdWords Keyword Planner) that not only share with you a list of words related to what your product or service is about, they also show the average number of times per month those words are typed into Google by someone, and how competitive it is to get onto the first page of Google for that search phrase.

Once you pick the keywords you want for each page of your website, then you must create good content/descriptions of each thing that you do, and include those words in the most natural-sounding way possible. Theoretically, this shouldn’t be a problem if you picked words that are relevant to your business. Also, you don’t want to put everything on just one page, because search engines won’t know which phrase to rank you for.

Google My Business

If you haven’t already done this, claim your business listing at google.com/business (it’s free). No matter if you have a physical storefront or not, enter the address you do your business from. There’s a box for service providers to select so your address will not be shown if you don’t accept customers at a physical business location. Then to verify you are who you say you are, Google will mail a postcard with a code to that address. Enter this code into the listing once you receive it in the mail.

Once this is all done and ready to go, complete your profile with your logo and photos of your location or service, as well as important info like:

Phone number
Website
Business hours
Menu (for restaurants/bars)
List your services

Encourage clients to leave reviews here too.

There’s a newer feature that allows people to ask questions, which you can then answer. Currently, to know if someone has submitted a question, you must have the Google My Business app installed on your phone and be logged into the account that manages the listing. This may change in the future, perhaps sending an email notification or something like that.

Avoid answering questions with just a “yes” or “no”. Not only can people go back and edit their questions, making your answer completely irrelevant, or even bad for your business, giving a detailed answer looks better on your part as an expert in your field.
- For example: If someone asked if a restaurant has vegan options, and the business owner replies “yes”, the person can edit the question to say
When a question is upvoted, it will appear in order of the number of upvotes, seen as an important question.

Other Important Steps

There are some other things that directly affect your local SEO ranking such as relevant directory listings, on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and link building. Check out our blogs on how to do local SEO the easy way to learn more about these important strategies!

When your business is ready for a long-term boost to your bottom line, contact K-Kom, a local business SEO expert, serving local businesses from Menomonee Falls and Milwaukee WI, all the way to California.

“OK Google: local search engine optimization experts near me!”

How To Do Local SEO The Easy Way: Part 1

October 3, 2017 by K-Kom

If you know a little about SEO already, you know the rules change constantly thanks to Google and the people trying to cheat the system. When it comes to local SEO, especially for a small business that can only serve the local area, it’s imperative that you show up on the top few search results to keep your business alive and growing. And because the know-how of these online tactics is becoming more and more well understood, your local competition online is already or will become very steep, so it’s better to be ahead of the crowd if you can, or at least start fighting the good fight now before it becomes impossible.

Here are 3 easy steps to get your local SEO strategy moving in the right direction.

Make your title tags and meta descriptions relevant

These two things, what shows up on Google for people to see, still matter a great deal – not only for ranking purposes, but for selling those prospective clients to click on your website and not your competitor.

Every letter counts in search results

Google has increased the size of the description and title, so these can usually fit 50-60 characters and 160-200 characters respectfully. While it may not seem important, make sure these aren’t getting cut off with the beloved “…” at the ends. It looks and sounds far better if you can fit a complete thought out there.

To get a preview of what these are going to look like in search results, you can use tools like Yoast’s SEO Plugin in WordPress and see exactly how your business is being presented to the world, and edit it right there to be the best length.

Good content for search results

Include the name of your city and/or service area.
Focus in on one great keyword or phrase, and put that as close to the front of the title as you can.

Claim your Google My Business

This step is so incredibly important to local SEO that if you haven’t already done it, do it yesterday… or now. Not only will people see a map of your location, but a link to your website, reviews, a description of what your business is, phone number, etc.

To do this, go to google.com/business. Go through the process they instruct you on, and you’ll come to a verification step which usually results in either a phone call to your business phone number or a mailed postcard to your business address, with a code. Type this code into the verification area, and you’ll be all set to appear on search results in a nice informative box.

Online Directories

While Google doesn’t give as much credit to tons of these like they used to, they still look at a few key big ones like the BBB, Yelp, YP, social media, other review sites, blogs, local newspapers, and local directories that you’ll have to research.

Google also pulls and compares data from places called data aggregators. There are a few big players out there, like Acxiom, Superpages, Infogroup, and Localeze. Factual seems to be pulling ahead of the crowd and you can update your business’s data there yourself so you can be confident that everything is accurate.

Pro tip: make sure your Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) all show up exactly the same, punctuation and all, for every listing you claim and publish.

If you’re ready to boost your local SEO strategy to the next level, please contact our local SEO experts at K-Kom Marketing today. We’ll be glad to give some more insight into how to beat your local competition.

We work mainly to create SEO strategies for local Milwaukee companies and others around Wisconsin, and work with small to medium-sized businesses across the United States, boosting their local search engine rankings wherever they’re located!

“OK Google: SEO services near me!”