9 Valuable Lessons From Ranking 100’s Of Cool Websites
Since 1999 I've worked on hundreds of websites
building them so they can get Authority so they can get customers coming through and so they grow
on Google and some businesses have got frustrated as traffic hasn't come through as easy as they
expected and yet for others immediately with a few changes and tweaks we've seen great results
in the next few minutes I'm going to share the nine things that I've learned along the way
as I've built my business from the ground up along with some great free tools that you can
use today on your business to help you grow in Google too and by using these tools you'll
get the traffic that your business deserves not every business is equal often business owners
don't understand that what works in one type of business or category doesn't work in another
Niche or category for your business and that's an obvious factor of life because if you go to Google
ads and if you were to do a cost per click on a particular category you'll know for example that
24-hour emergency plumbers will pay a lot more per click click than say window cleaner so the fact
is is every business has different demands has a different return on investment and therefore the
competition can vary dramatically so it could be that if you've got an unusual business there's
no competition and you may find it flourishes quite quickly whereas if the competition's high
obviously it can be more of a challenge SEO is more than Google business now most of you have
probably already got your business on Google Maps or Google business profile but it's worth
bearing in mind that it's not just all about the information you present there Google already
has a portfolio about your business it knows how you appear in citations and indexes it knows how
social media views you it knows a little bit about your branding and it certainly knows a fair bit
about your website if you have one so it's worth bearing in mind that all those factors externally
affect the internal value of your Google business profile so sometimes you'll need to establish
Authority in areas that you haven't gone into but for maybe do a site audit as well on your
business website and there's some great tools I use semrush is ideal for this as it will
give you all those types of information and a lot of it is free as well be a person behind
the business how difficult it is to relate to a business if you can't see the person behind it
one of the biggest complaints is the fact that when you try and get hold of your bank you try
and get a hold of a business itself all you're getting is automated telephone calls and you're
getting no response at all on a one-to-one basis and businesses don't work that well that way with
customers any longer so how can you do that well you can use your social media profiles to make
contact with your customers you can use videos where you talk to your customers maybe some
tutorials so that you show that you understand the pains and difficulties that they're going
through and how your business can then resolve that for them and in effect you're building the
power of a personal brand and by doing so people will know that they can contact you and get
results so how do you keep all that consistent if you've got lots of social profiles well I use
Circle boom which has been a great way of making sure that when I've got information that I want
out there then I can do it through all forms of social media with literally one click of a button
keep consistent I promise you being consistent makes such a difference to Google Google wants to
know that when it then starts sending customers to your business that your business is still
around responding and actually of value to your customers it's hard to be consistent and keep your
business updated and keep on top of all the things that running a business requires so how can you
do that well I've mentioned on previous videos about posting consistently maybe just logging on
to your business each day or each week and seeing what things Google's requiring But ultimately
to keep your Google business profile and to keep your business profile up to date in general like
running a tool like local Viking is a great way to do that there you can schedule posts to go out at
certain times and you can manage all your projects all in one place but of course another one you
could use is Surfer local as well so try one of those two Surfer locals one I currently use local
Viking also can be just as useful the nice thing with this though is you can monitor the progress
so if you want particular keywords to be used and to find out where you appear in the map
pack then these are great ways of monitoring to see whether the efforts you're putting in are
having a positive effect over a period of time understand your competition so do you really know
your competition do you know what categories they currently use do you know how often they post
do you know how often they get reviews coming in do you know what the average rating is do you
know what attributes your competitors are using all these are questions that are hard to find
out unless you monitor them using a free tool that's where GMB crash has been really useful
so use this again just to get an idea of what the competition's doing and how I'm performing
against them for the various categories and in addition you can use GMB everywhere and it does
it in a similar way but does it from within Google Maps itself as an add-on so again using these the
combination of these two can be really powerful for the tools that we mentioned in today's video
then make sure you click on the links Down Below in the description and they'll take you through to
those relevant talk and you can use them straight away and then start to see the benefits for
yourself there are no guarantees boy the amount of times that SEO gurus make promises and guarantees
that you can be number one or they can get you to number one by the end of the day the fact is is no
one can guarantee anything because unless you're head of the Department of the Google algorithm
how could you possibly know what's going to happen tomorrow either so my recommendation in effect
would always be to put that time and effort not into getting gurus to do it but in learning how to
do it for yourself and no one knows the business better than you the person running it or the
manager so that's why this channel tries to keep you up to date so that you can then be informed
on how you can then optimize your own business and then that's going to be far more greater value
and give you a much more long-term benefit to your business that's why if you're finding value then
it'd be great to subscribe and of course tick the alert button and that will then make sure you
don't miss the next update on helping you grow your business next one is help your customers and
the thing is you can't help your customers unless you know what your customers want so how much
feedback does your customers give you do you have a feedback form and you then respond to it are
they able to email you and ask questions and also what types of questions are people in your field
asking well there's a great tool that's called ask the public that asks about answer the public you
can ask the public they won't know actually they will know they'll know what they want to know
so answer the public and there you'll find out exactly the questions that people are asking and
you'll then know what to respond to you'll know what articles to write that's going to help your
customers and if you help your customers they'll come back again and who they're going to turn to
when they want your services or they want services like yours well the person who is most helpful
so being helpful is a very powerful technique uh marketing technique in effect but it's one that's
always going to get better results because people like to be helped and like someone that's helpful
build branding Authority that's what is branding Authority we just think if someone was to
look for your business what would come up on the results if they looked under images on
Google what images would they see the fact is is you have a brand your logo your color scheme
your website your business profile Google knows how you're viewed by the public Google knows what
tweets are said about you it knows about Facebook the fact is is you do have a brand everyone
has a brand but what type of authority is it growing because once you have a brand Authority
Google will definitely give you more ranking and bright local is a great way to find out a bit
more about how you can grow your Authority the more consistent you're found on citations and
throughout the web the easier it becomes then for Google to know that there's a consistency
there that it can rely on and therefore it will then give it Greater Authority in the search
engine so build your citations bright local is a great way to do that the Need for Speed if your
website's slow if it doesn't load fast then Google is actually going to rank it down why because
Google knows that if people don't get a response very very quickly whether on a mobile whether on
a laptop or on a tablet whatever whatever device they're using if it doesn't get a response quite
quickly people then will go and turn away and that gives negative signals to Google so Google at the
moment is giving extra rank to business websites that load fast but how can you do that if you've
got a WordPress website for example it will tend to learn a little bit slower than the average
website maybe Wix Squarespace or a little bit better because they've had recent updates well the
latest WordPress has had a great update 6.03 has been a good update regarding speed but there's
also something you can do that will speed it up with no coding requirement whatsoever and that's
Nitro pack which I use it's got the ability to basically speed up and cache your website for you
so that it serves up a lot quicker to the search engines and to visitors and you can test your site
to see how well it does in the link down below as well as a bonus most people haven't realized
there's a new way that Google's working its business profile at the moment so you remember
Google my business we're now called Google business profile things keep changing so how can
you make sure that you've got the very latest thinking with the algorithm on Google business
profile well you won't want to miss this video it's going to be the next stage to getting your
business to get extra traffic and growth on Google