If you want to market your business effectively, it is not enough for you to merely show what your business can do for consumers. It is also a must to make your business stand out from your competitors and encourage potential customers to choose your brand over theirs. There are various methods to make your business distinguished, and one of the best methods is to improve your site’s rankings in search engine results pages, especially on Google.

It is important that you understand Google’s layout for its search results for you to be able to appear above your competitors. Whenever a user looks something up on Google, there are three different types of results that are displayed – the paid, the organic, and the local results. The ones you see at the topmost and bottommost part of the page are the paid search results. Meanwhile, the ones that are displayed in between the paid results are organic results, and the ones that you see between the top paid results and the organic results are the local search results.  By making use of all these three channels, you can get the best chance at appearing above your competitors on Google.

Ranking on Google’s search results is most beneficial when you appear on the first page. This is because most users don’t really look past the first page when checking their search results. Moreover, 61.5% of the clicks are captured by the page’s top three organic results. Hence, if your site is ranked fourth and your competitors belong in the top three, they will garner around 3-25% more clicks than you will. To appear above your competitors, you have a couple of options.

Firstly, you can improve your website’s SEO. But it is not enough to do it just once. You need to be consistent in adding new and valuable content that is search engine optimized. This is the reason why many businesses have their own blogs. You must also update your homepage and product pages when necessary, and try to get more substantial backlinks to your website. This involves a lot of work which is why many business owners choose to have a marketing agency handle their SEO for them.

You don’t just want to rank high in general. You need to target specific search phrases in which you want to rank above your competitor. To outrank competitors on the right pages, you need to use specific keywords and research about the keywords for the specific audience that you are targeting. It also helps to check which terms users use to find your site by using website analytics or Google Keyword Planner. You should also know that although Google search results are important, they are not everything.

That’s why many businesses also use PPC advertising to appear above their competitors instantly. While this is effective, you have to pay every time someone clicks on your advert. This can quickly add up for small businesses. It may be a suitable option in the short term, but SEO should be your long term strategy and investment.

For more information on how to rank above your competitors in search engines, speak to a member of our team today.

If you’ve ever struggled with SEO, the thought of hiring an SEO expert has probably frequently entered your mind. If you’re still on the fence when it comes to deciding whether or not you should hire someone to do SEO, then don’t worry. We’re here to help you. Below are the most important things to consider:

Time

Know your time’s worth. Are you better off doing something you’re far better at, rather than wasting time struggling to get your website to rank? You should invest your time and energy doing something you’re actually good at and that will be more profitable for your business. This will not only get the most out of your time and abilities, but it will also actually help the company more. Giving SEO tasks to an expert will mean that you can rank quicker. The quicker you rank, the more business you can bring in. If you can put your time to better use, hire an SEO expert.

Money

If you lack the skills or time to do SEO yourself, hiring someone is going to cost you money. This is another factor to consider. At this point, you have to include the risks of not paying for the service. One is messing up your website’s SEO. This could prevent Google from classifying your website. As a result, the site won’t show up in search engines. Another one is doing something by accident that you end up paying for a penalty. This will not only harm your site, but it will also take money from your business. When your website doesn’t rank well, you limit the number of customers that you can reach. While it may seem like a good idea to save money by doing the services and tasks yourself, it is equally important to weigh in on the eventual benefits of hiring someone good with the job. So even if you can’t afford to hire someone, there is an argument to not trying to do it yourself either. If you have the money to invest, however, do it. By investing in SEO now, you can reap the rewards months down the line.

Capabilities

At the end of the day, the thing you have to consider the most is your capability. Do you have the skills fit for the job? Can you fully make the most of your abilities to deliver effectively? To reiterate what has been mentioned above, are you better off doing something you’re better at? If you answer “No” to all of the questions, then it’s definitely time to hire someone. Leaving it any longer puts your business at risk.

For help getting your SEO sorted, speak to one of our experts today. We can handle everything on your behalf so you can focus on what you do best.

Search rankings can be a little challenging and unpredictable. One day your site might be ranking high, allowing it to receive a lot of visitors. And then, just when you think you’ve got Google all figured out, your rankings may drop. Or perhaps, Google has never ranked your website at all. Maybe you have already done every technique you know to optimize your site, but it is still not ranking for the keywords that you have targeted or it’s not ranking for any keyword at all.

If this is the case for you, then you are probably itching to know why your site is not ranking in Google’s search results pages. Here are a couple of possible reasons why you are experiencing ranking difficulties:

1. Your site has only been up for a short time

If your site is only a month old, then you can’t expect it to rank in search engines yet. In fact, you may have to wait for a few months before it gets ranked for certain keywords. It can take around 2-3 weeks for your site to be indexed by Google. Only then can it start ranking. If you want to know if your site has already been indexed, you can type “site:yoursite.com” in Google. If no results are displayed, then this means that your site’s not yet indexed.

2. Your targeted keywords are high-volume and short tailed. 

A couple of years ago, the technique of targeting short, high-volume keywords would have been effective. However, nowadays, it won’t really work anymore since it is far too competitive. Instead of using short keywords, why not target long-tail keyword phrases instead? They drive more focused traffic and it will be easier to rank high on these long keyword phrases which are less competitive

3. Your content isn’t valuable.

One of the reasons why your site may not be ranking in Google is poor content. Publishing content just for the sake of publishing content is not really going to get you far. It is important that your posts are high quality. The better the quality, the higher the likelihood of you earning backlinks. Low-quality content or “thin” content has no real benefit to your website, and may even harm it if it gets penalized.

4. Your on-page SEO is not optimized.

There are a few tips to maximize your on-page SEO. For instance, you should use static and keyword rich URLs. Your title tags, heading, and alt tags must also be optimized, and the keywords must be naturally spread throughout your content, along with other related phrases and keywords. It is also ideal to create content that covers a broader topic. This technique will allow your site to rank higher for each keyword, provide more value to your visitors, and consequently attract more inbound links.

If you’re still struggling to rank, we can help. We’re experts at getting websites to rank organically in Google and Bing and we can help you to achieve top rankings in your industry. Contact us today for more information.

When it comes to SEO or Search Engine Optimization, there are loads of different tactics you can use to get to the top of Google. Some of these tactics are looked on favorably by Google. Others are banned completely. Using banned SEO methods to rank is more commonly known as “black hat SEO.” For those who are not yet too familiar with SEO, black hat SEO techniques refer to the unethical methods of SEO that enable higher ranking. The results can be incredibly good. But they are often short-lived. That’s because Google forbids the use of certain techniques and will penalize any website it catches implementing them. Where as white hat SEO (the kind approved of by Google) focuses on improving the experience of the user to improve rankings, the aim of blackhat SEO is solely to rank highly. These tactics to not focus on enriching the experience of the audience. People who want results fast tend to resort to black hat SEO. However, using black hat SEO is very risky. Aside from receiving penalties from Google, the website may also get banned from search engines completely…

Here are the top blackhat SEO techniques that you should avoid:

1.    Cloaking

In this technique, the content that is shown to search engine bots is different from that shown to the users. One way that people do this technique is through the use of descriptions, titles, and keywords that are completely different from what the real content is talking about. Once a search engine has determined that a website is cloaking, there is a big possibility that the site will be banned.

2.    Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing refers to the technique wherein a web page is loaded with keywords so that the search engine will see the page as something relevant to a particular search.  A somewhat irrelevant technique even included webmasters from writing keywords in the same font color as the background of the website so that users never saw the keywords. The search engines still picked them up, however. Search engines have got a lot better at detecting keyword stuffing and will give your page a low-quality score if they detect it. This technique can harm the ranking of your site as well as lead to poor user experience.

3.    Article spinning

Content is king when it comes to SEO. But only relevant and useful content is. Unfortunately, many website owners use article spinning software to churn out hundreds of very similar pages of content in a bid to rank highly. It doesn’t matter how article spinning is done – it always lowers the original article’s quality. 

4.    Doorway Pages

These are simple HTML pages that are customized to only show for particular search engines. They are not actual pages that a user can find by browsing a website, however. They only appear to search engines in an effort to add hyper relevance to keywords. The smarter search engine bots get, the more these pages are getting ignored or banned.

5.    Link Farms

Link farms are made of different websites that connect with each other through hyperlinks. The purpose of this is to increase their rankings. Your site won’t really get traffic from these links, but the search engine will be tricked into thinking that a lot of other sites link to your site. Theoretically, this gives your website more respect in the eyes of search engines. Although not link farms are being actively targeted and banned by Google and Bing.

While the above black hat SEO techniques may help improve your site’s ranking for a day or two, there’s a huge possibility of being penalized once a search engine finds out that these methods are being used. It’s best to avoid these practices because their potential benefits are not worth the risk at all. If you want to ethically improve your rankings, we’re here to help. Call today to book a free consultation.