Have you ever Googled your name or the name of your business and wondered how you could own more real estate on the first page?
Most businesses have their company website appear on the first page of results when searching for their name, but there are 9 other slots on the first page that are often not owned by the business. This means there is an incredible opportunity to capture more traffic to your site and more leads for your business. Here are 6 opportunities that can be leveraged to dominate the Google search results for your business.
Optimize Your Website
The first and most important opportunity is to make sure that your businesses’ website is optimized correctly for your business name. There is more to SEO than just your URL. Generally, an established business will rank well for its’ business name without any optimizations, but in a competitive industry or with a new website this is not always the case. Therefore, you should always make sure that your SEO data such as the Title tag, H1 tag and meta-descriptions include your business name.
Optimizing your SEO data will also allow you to control what searchers are actually seeing in Google when they come across your business. Use this opportunity to make a great first impression! Be succinct, professional and relevant.
Local SEO
Google loves Local SEO sites such as Google Places and Yelp. I am sure you see these sites all the time when you are searching. Google sees these sites as very authoritative and relevant to users, so they often rank them well. Businesses have the power to manage these listings. Take the opportunity to claim them and optimize them by providing accurate information for your company as well as pictures and even coupons if they are applicable to your industry.
If these listings are not optimize then there is a good chance that Google will simply show generally Local SEO results that prompt a user to search for a business in your area. However, if your specific business page is optimized it is very likely to appear in results and to rank well!Social Media Profiles
As you know, social media is all the rage and this is true in SEO as well. Google is placing more and more emphasis on social media sites, which means that they rank very well! If your company is actively engaged in one or a variety of social media platforms take advantage of optimizing your profile with your company’s information. Include the full name, services offered and URL in all social media profiles. Also, you should customize the profile URL, so that it includes your company name. This will ensure that Google knows to associate these pages with your business, which will result in top rankings.
Local News Outlets
Most towns have hyper-local newspapers or blogs that provide information on your town. These sites love all types of information and news, so if you have a press release or even just want to provide an opinion piece these resources can be pitched to the local outlets and will likely be published in some format online. This is great from a PR perspective, by placing your company in front of a local audience, but it is also very beneficial for search because these local resources generally rank VERY well. So, the content about your company will likely to rank at the top of search results when users search for your business name.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is another authoritative site that Google often ranks very well. Wikipedia is also open-source, which means that any user can provide information to be included on the site. Does your company have a Wikipedia page? If not, go ahead and create one. In the Wikipedia page you can provide basic information on the history of your company and what services you provide, then you can link out to your website to bring that traffic back to your site.
Business Blog
Does your company have a blog or do you sponsor a blog? Search engines love blogs and so should you! A blog is a great way to generate relevant traffic for your site. Blogs are also useful in dominating search results. Make sure that your blog is SEO optimized and you are likely to see your top blog content rank very well for your business name.
Conclusion
By taking advantage of a wide-range of online resources your company can dominate search results. Most companies will own one search result on the first page with their primary URL, but by leveraging all of your online assets you could easily control the large majority of the first page or even all of it!
If you would like a SEO consultation or help with your company’s web visibility please contact us today.
Author: Adam Wagner
