Below are 4 tips taken from my Amazon Kindle Book ’20 Ways to Win More Traffic and Increase Conversions’
Google Business/Google Local Search
Your Google Business listing has the potential to drive traffic and referrals if your company serves local customers and has a physical address. This isn’t just for restaurants and pubs, just about every business can benefit from this free tool.
Google Business listings are now often showing ABOVE organic listings in some instances meaning your business can get to the top of page 1 of Google organic search results with considerably less effort compared to doing so by traditional search engine optimisation means.
How does your business get into this position?
Firstly, if you haven’t already done so visit www.google.co.uk/business and claim your business listing. To confirm that you are actually who you say you are Google will send a postcard with a verification pin number to your business address; when you receive this it’s time to login to your Google Business account and enter the code.
What Next?
There’s a number of factors that will dictate if you’re shown on the local search results and in what position. What can you do to increase your chances of success:
- Include your opening hours and all points of contact e.g. website link, email address and contact number.
- Include any attributes that your business listing has e.g. disabled parking, wheelchair accessible entrance, public toilet etc.
- Choose which sector you are in and list what services you offer.
- Business summary. This is currently a maximum of 750 characters, fill this with as much information as possible so potential customers can get a feel for your business.
- The Google Business platform now allows users to post updates which last for a period of 7 days. I have managed to gain considerable exposure by taking advantage of these posts.
- Include as many high quality photographs as possible for each of the relevant areas. Google will like to see imagery broken down into sections such as interior pictures, outside shots, products, members of staff, corporate identity and more.
- Get reviews. Don’t go touting for reviews or be tempted to ask your friends or family to write some reviews. Provide a great service and when customers tell you how happy they are, ask them to leave a review on your Google Business listing.
This may sounds like a lot but the vast majority can be done in one sitting which may only take around an hour. When you think that this one hour of work may bring in hundreds to thousands of visitors to your website over a year it is well worth taking an hour out of your schedule to do this.
Like anything the more effort you put in, the higher the rewards are likely to be. Consistently post updates on your business listing and add relevant imagery for maximum results.
Making website tweaks from Google Search Console/Google Webmaster Tools Research
Google Search Console (used to be known as Google Webmaster Tools, which is what many people still refer to it as) can be a very powerful tool when using this trick.
If you don’t have it installed on your site already then it’s very quick and simple, particularly if you’re running on WordPress. Take a minute to watch a step by step YouTube video. In my experience the quickest way has been to install the Tracking Code Manager plugin on WordPress and then entering the snippet of code provided by Google Search Console when registering your site.
There are many, many features in Google Search Console but we’re going to focus on just one to gain some quick wins and maximise results. When the code is placed on your site and it’s had a few weeks to collect some data it’s time to see what your website is ranking for.
How do I do this?
- Login to Google Search Console.
- On the left hand side of the page click ‘Search Traffic’
- Then click ‘Search Analytics’
- Above the graph, ensure both ‘clicks’ and ‘impressions’ are ticked to show two graphs.
What’s the difference between a click and an impression?
A click as it suggests is someone who has actually clicked on your website on Google organic search results and subsequently visited your website.
An impression is when someone has conducted a Google search and your site has been displayed out of the possible search results.
The amount of impressions your website receives will be a great deal higher than the number of clicks due to there being so many options for search engine users. This next part is where it comes to working smart; when scrolling through the ‘Search Anaytics’ in Google Search Console you’re going to see all the weird and wonderful search terms your website has been found for.
What we’re going to do here is a very quick win that a lot of people don’t take advantage of. Look for search results which are getting a good number of impressions but little or no clicks (a good number of impressions will depend on how popular your website is now, it could range from a few dozen up to tens of thousands but look for your most popular impressions that has minimal clicks). What does this tell you? It tells you that whatever this search term is, has potential to get traffic, you’re just not quite there yet for some reason. Here’s how to fix it:
- Go to Google and enter the search term EXACTLY as it shows in Search Analytics.
- Find where your website is; if it’s getting a lot of impressions it’s likely to be near the bottom of page 1 or possible page 2.
- Click the link to your website when it appears. Whatever this webpage is, this is the one that is ranking and needs further optimisation to start getting clicks and not just impressions.
How Can I Move This Page Up The Google Rankings?
There are a number of simple strategies which can allow you to do this, they include:
- Add or alter your pages header tags to include the search term you want to rank for.
- This page is clearly doing something well, but it needs an extra boost, so write some additional useful content.
- Add or alter the meta description and page title of this webpage to ensure that the exact search term is included in both.
- Login to Google Analytics and check the ‘bounce rate’ of the page; a high bounce rate (60%+) can be a ranking factor; if the bounce rate is high, make the page more engaging. This can be done by adding a video, breaking up chunks of text with nice imagery or header tags.
Consistently login to Google Search Console to look for these search analytics opportunities and track how successful your alterations have been by seeing if the search term has started to receive more clicks. The moves won’t happen overnight but if you implement this strategy almost without doubt your site will start to win more traffic in a long term, sustainable way.
Using Google ‘Searches Related To…’ in the footer section of Google Searches
It’s time to thank Google for another one of their user-friendly features. When entering a Google search, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see a number of suggestions with the title ‘Suggestions related to (insert what you originally searched for)’.
This is absolute dynamite knowledge!
How Does This Help Me?
These suggested searches are high frequency search terms, by employing this strategy you could significantly increase search engine traffic to your website with very little effort. I’ll take a real-life example. Let’s say you ranked top to middle of page 1 for the long tail search term ‘Men’s watch engraving’ some of the searches related to this are (at time of writing):
- Personalised wrist watch
- Watch engraving near me
- Personalised watches for him
- Personalised engraved men’s watches
To have success with one long tail keyword will most likely be due to a blog article or strong service page. If you’re not sure, run the Google search and click your listing in the search engine results, the page you land on is the one that is seen as most relevant/performing best for that search.
Now what?
You can now make simple additions to this page. I’ve found the following to work very well:
- Place a header tag that states exactly what one of the suggested searches said e.g. ‘Personalised Wrist Watch’
- Write around 150-250 words of content underneath this header tag that is useful and interesting.
- Repeat this process for other related search terms. Don’t go crazy and add ten new header tags all containing the related search terms. Pick a few that you would like to rank for and are confident you can create interesting or useful content.
- Keep an eye on search ranking for these terms by either using a keyword tracking tool such as Moz or by using the free method of running the Google searches manually.
- Ranking can be achieved a lot faster for these additional keywords, I’ve seen results in as little as two weeks. If there’s been no progress within a month, go in and add more content, or create an infographic, video, checklist or whatever is relevant for the chosen search term.
How to Quickly Gain Page 1 Google Ranking by Going After Long Tail Keywords
Gaining page 1 Google ranking for a competitive search term can be difficult as well as requiring a significant amount of time and investment. By comparison gaining ranking for a ‘long tail keyword’ can be considerably quicker and easier.
What Are Long Tail Keywords?
A keyword can be something such as “men’s watch” a long tail keyword is this initial keyword phrase and something more specific which makes it ‘long tail’ e.g. “Men’ watch engraving ideas”. I can choose this as an example with confidence as I’ve gained top of page 1 Google organic ranking for this particular long tail keyword.
How Do You Find Long Tail Keywords Which People Are Searching For?
There are a number of paid for options but Google provide a very useful and free option. Go to www.google.co.uk and enter your chosen keyword (without clicking search or pressing enter). Google will then bring up a list of possible search options designed to save users time so they can just click from the options. Taking it a step further I then follow this process; when on the search bar in Google start typing:
“Men’s watch a”
See what comes up, there may be nothing suitable for your business or nothing that you wish to rank for. In that case start going through the alphabet until you see something that is right for you e.g.
“Men’s watch b”
“Men’s watch c”
Men’s watch d” and so on.
Complete the long tail keyword Google search and look at the quality of the results that come up. If the search results are dominated by top performing websites such as Amazon then it’s unlikely you’ll get quick results; this isn’t to say it’s a waste of time/effort but there may be quicker and easier keyword phrases to rank for.
You’ve Chosen The Long Tail Keyword(s) You Want – How Do You Make Them Rank?
It’s simple. Create better, more interesting content than what is already in position #1. I have achieved page 1 rankings for my clients using this strategy prior to gaining any backlinks (although having some good backlinks does help!).
If the content in position 1 is good, and it usually is then you may need to be creative with how you outperform it. If their content is 1,500 words in length, making content that is 1,800 words in length may not cut it unless there is something very interesting or worthwhile in your content that explains the subject matter better. So what can you add to your content to make your page better and more relevant to achieve #1 ranking?
- Video – embed a YouTube/Vimeo video. It can either be you explaining what the written content is, adding more information or just explaining who you are and what makes you an authority on the subject.
- Infographic – As mentioned in another point in this book, infographics are very hot right now in the word of SEO and digital marketing. People have short attention spans, if you can summarise 1000 words of content in an eye catching image then users will tend to enjoy this.
- Interviews – this can sit alongside your content and either be written or in video format. Interviewing someone who can provide further insight into the topic can keep visitors on the page longer and help to see your page as more relevant than what is currently in positions 1.
It Seems Quite Easy, Is It Worth The Effort?
Of course everyone would like to be position 1 of page 1 for the most competitive search terms in their industry. For whatever reason if this is not currently feasible then gaining long tail keyword ranking can have significant results. If your business or website was able to create content for one long tail keyword phrase a week, it could see your website have page 1 Google ranking for 40-50 search terms in a year.
Long tail keywords will of course have fewer searches than shorter keywords but I would always rather have 60-70% of a smaller percentage of traffic rather than 0-5% of traffic from a more competitive search term.
Lastly, by conducting long tail keyword work it can also have a really positive impact on starting to gain ranking for the shorter, more competitive keywords, so it’s time to get to work!
If you are interested in turning this traffic into customers, read this next!