Is there a way of rising through Google’s organic ranks quickly?
Introduction
It’s a question that agencies up and down the land will get asked on a regular basis, that is, is it possible to get onto the first page of Google’s organic results quickly?
Sometimes, when a business is just starting up, they might have written a rather ambitious business plan, which may have speculated on how many sales can be made through the website. However, often businesses don’t anticipate how long the organic SEO process will take, neither do a lot of businesses understand Google’s Sandbox period.
However here is the thing, a lot of businesses think that seo is a piece of cake, and to get onto the first page of Google in organic results is a quick process, when in matter of fact, its often not.
So, is all well and good a business owner thinking that they can achieve something within a set amount of time, and the sales will start rolling in, but you have to also be realistic, that’s to if you’re up against competitors which have spent millions on their online advertising, you do have to sit down and ponder can you really go up against these companies?
For example, you should ask these sort of questions:
– How strong is your direct competitors SEO
– Realistically how long have they been working on their SEO
– Has the business the marketing budget to go up against their competitors
So, it all boils down to this, the strength of the competition
Here’s the thing, and this a point that a lot of businesses need to appreciate, with seo how fast you can see results is all down to this how strong your competitors. If there seo is super-weak, well you can push forwards, and get your website on the first page without much bother.
If the keywords are competitive, for example, “plumbers in (name of city”- then there’s likely to be hundreds of plumbers in a city, so you’ve to put it frankly, often got a lot of work to do.
Picture your competitors as a row of sumo wrestlers that are in front of you, and you have to wrestle each one out of the way to get the endpoint, well that’s exactly what good seo agencies must do, they must beat the standard of each business above them on Google, until your business has risen to a satisfactory position.
So, for example, a plumber is not ranked 3rd on Google by chance, its got there because that plumbers website is deemed the most relevant and has the 3rd strongest “ranking factors”.
These ranking factors, which Googlebot reads, then are sent to “Google’s algorithm” which are what are used to work out how strong that particular companies seo is, so if your ranked say 3rd, well, you have most likely often taken over hundreds of other businesses to get there.
So, it’s not just a matter of investing a little bit into SEO, and thinking that’s enough to get you onto the first page, because often it’s not. Instead, a detailed evaluation needs to take place, to work out how strong your competitors seo is.
How Google’s algorithm works
So, in order to give you a bit of insight into how Google’s algorithm works- you have to appreciate that all company websites are constantly being re-evaluated to decide on where they should rank on a regular basis, through a process called “crawling and indexing” by Googlebot and Google’s algorithm.
This is to see where businesses should be ranked, so for example, a business on Monday might be number one, but by Friday, Google’s algorithm might have decided that two other businesses have stronger seo, so that business is moved to 3rd.
So, the point that we are trying to make is this, businesses regularly reshuffle where they are ranked.
What are ranking factors?
Google ranks a business based on how strong the businesses ranking factors are, and there are well over 200 the needs to be calculated.
So, in a nutshell, the businesses that are most relevant to a query, and have the strongest ranking factors are the companies that are ranked on first page.
Remember that quality is the name of the game
Quality is always the name of the game with SEO, so don’t invest in substandard work. If an agency is offering super low prices, be inquisitive as to why, as if seo work is done properly it needs a lot of time, by experienced staff, which don’t come cheap, so be wary of businesses that offer low prices.
With that said, you can still have businesses that charge an arm and a leg, that still don’t cut the mustard, so pick an agency on price, instead you need a business that offers quality.
Don’t expect results overnight, it can take many months to see results depending on the level of your competition
If you’re going to the contact in your SEO agency every day for an update, then this is a waste of time, that’s because often you have to to wait many months to see results, that’s if you pick the right business.
The point you’re trying to make is you can’t expect to start to seeing results overnight
Don’t rush, it will not work
Don’t rush the SEO work neither, some businesses that are just starting out for example in business, go like a bull at a gate and start adding a lot of SEO all at once , this approach doesn’t work, you need to focus on sustained marketing strategy, then implements quality work. Don’t ever substitute quantity for quality, as this most definitely will not work.
So, whether its building quality, do-follow backlinks, writing a 30,000 word piece of ever green content marketing, or simply writing a meta description, make sure all of the work is white hat.
The work must be absolutely focused on quality
It’s well worth overemphasising this point once again, it’s not so much about quantity of work, it’s all about the quality of the work that you implement. So, before you do any SEO work at all, make sure you understand Google’s WebMaster Guidelines, and everything about implementing white hat seo.
Also you must be realistic
This is the most important thing business owners must realise, that is you must be realistic about what you can achieve with a limited marketing budget.
It might be David and Goliath situation, between your business, and a conglomerate that your business is in direct competition with, that’s to say, they may have invested millions, and you only have a few hundred spend each month, so again you have got to be realistic about what you can achieve in that situation and not think an SEO agency can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Good SEO agencies, like ours, will say no, that’s not possible on that marketing budget.
Backlinks can take a long time to build
Backlinks are widely considered as one of the most important SEO ranking factors.
However, again it all boils down to the “quality” of the links, so to build quality links (you should only ever build quality) well this takes a huge amount of time.
Evergreen content marketing can take a long time to create
Writing quality evergreen content marketing, which has a low “bounce rate”, which is useful and which follows “Google’s WebMaster rules”, well, can be very time intensive, and again could take many months to see results.
The on-site SEO must also be to a very good standard
All of the on-site SEO, from writing the meta titles, right through to writing the anchor text within a blog post must be to a very good “white hat” standard.
With organic SEO you have to take a long-term marketing strategy
Here’s another top-tip, we would say that if you can only afford the SEO budget for say a few months, then you have to seriously consider whether you should invest at all, that’s because it takes such a long time to see results from SEO normally, you might run out of marketing budget.
How our team can help
We have worked with many businesses here in Bristol, ranging from international businesses, to businesses that operate in the professional business sectors, we would be eager to talk to you about how we can improve your businesses organic SEO.