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Why Do You Want to be on Page One of Google?

By Patrick Healy June 13, 2012

search barLast week I was lucky enough to attend Blog World and New Media Expo. As the name (or former name) alludes, there is a strong and almost exclusive focus on content. Just about every session I sat in had some mention of SEO. The timing of the conference couldn’t have been better since I’ve gotten a number of questions recently about folks I know wanting to be on page one of Google.com. Everyone seems to want to be on page one for some great phrase like “real estate”, “New York City Restaurant” or “small business solutions”. For many, it’s a dream. For almost all, an impossibility – particularly with the introduction of the Panda update. Still there are folks that pay hundreds, sometimes THOUSANDS, of dollars a month to have a firm do their best to get their site up on that page as high as possible. To all of you, I ask this question:

Why do you want to be on page one of Google?

Buy Organic

Dollars FunnelIt may sound like a silly question but stop and think about it for a second? Why? Really? Is it for the perceived traffic benefits that you think you will get or is it prestige? If it’s ego then I advise you to keep on striving to be number one. Pay the money and feel good about it. This is clearly something you have put a lot of thought into. Just curious, how many leads did you get with those efforts? How many converted? How many closed? I’m betting not enough to justify what you are spending. In your case, this accomplishment is akin to a Fabergé egg – you just want it.

Buy Keywords

MoneyIf you want people to find your business and be part of their short list of choices then you have to do some more thinking. Consider the amount of money you are spending to do that and consider what it would cost you to just buy the Google AdWords? The result is the same and you don’t have to kill yourself with keyword analysis and development tricks to make your site as appealing to Google as possible. You can create a very specific AdWords campaign and target very specific searches. Theoretically, you could target “chocolate cake” and “Upper West Side Real Estate” with the same site. To be honest, this would probably have lousy bounce rates but you could do it. Something to keep in mind with this strategy is that buying Google keywords will only work for Google and not for other search engines.

Create Organic

Writing good contentLastly, you could employ a custom content strategy infused with backlinks, social search optimization, and cross site content promotion. This is clearly more labor intensive but you are not pulling money out of your pocket per se and you own that content. It lives on your site and can continue to pay dividends as well as give you great link fodder for wherever you write.  You may find you really like to create this content and that in itself is part of the value it  brings to you. This is the strategy for people that tend to frequent the New Media Expo. It’s no wonder since they tend to be startups and personal bloggers that don’t have the budget to do either of the first two strategies but that’s not the only reason. A few other reasons are:

  • Writing gives you a chance to showcase your brains and those of your firm – credibly
  • Writing gives you an excuse to share research you’ve done so that others can benefit from your experience. This makes you valuable.
  • Writing chronically makes you a better writer. This seems elementary but being a good writer comes in handy in lots of other places in business.
  • Rarely is someone invited to speak at a conference to share their personal keyword purchasing method

What does this mean to your business?

If you are like many businesses, most of your leads aren’t coming off the web. If they are, bravo – but you are in a small minority. When was the last time someone called your office and told you they found you via search? I’m not trying to dissuade you from using an SEO or AdWord strategy. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. If it’s working for your business use it. Heck, double down if you can measure the ROI. If you are going to pursue an SEO strategy I recommend you do it by creating killer content that makes people think and encourages them want to share it. Just keep in mind that there are lots of other ways to make sure people know about your business and the value you can bring them. The most powerful is free – word of mouth. You get that by doing right by enough people that have voices and are willing to use them. A great way to generate word of mouth is through people talking about your writing. It gets you a third party endorsement and gives those fans something to talk about. After all, we ALL need content right? Without it we are just a bunch of people sitting around looking at one another.

 

-PH

 

NOTE: I want to personally thank Erik Deckers for giving me a reality check last week in his session on writing secrets at Blog World. He reaffirmed my faith in that I am doing right by my readers and myself. I am going to be writing more frequently in an effort to create better content. This post is dedicated to him.


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Posted Under:  Blog | Marketing Tags:  advertising | AdWords | blogging | BlogWorld | google | keywords | marketing | SEO | valuation

Comments

  1. Thomas Speck says

    June 13, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    Great post, it’s certainly valuable for businesses to step back and ask the tricky questions – why, what am I going to get out of it and how am I going to measure it and what tactic am I going to use. 

    For me the answers very much depend on the type of business it is. I work with a number of trade businesses like plumbers, electricians, kitchen installers, roofers etc. I recently spoke with a roofer whose web developer was trying to convince them to start blogging every day to improve visibility in organic search. This annoyed me – the firm’s competitive advantage is in roofing, not writing on the internet. They’re now using ReachLocal’s search engine advertising service with great results. It advertises on Bing, Yahoo and Google by default, and also records the phone calls generated so the roofing company can run back through and get great transparency of ROI. Last time they checked they had a 15:1 return (revenue to cost of advertising). 

    Conversely for a law firm I know they produce a huge quantity of well researched and well written blog posts on many different legal matters. They do this because they already have the skill sets in-house, and often they are doing the research anyway for a case they are working on. Their organic search traffic has almost doubled every year for the past three years, so they are following the “create organic” strategy very well, and profiting from it. 

    • Patrick Healy says

      June 13, 2012 at 5:19 pm

      I agree Thomas. Writing has to be appropriate for your business. And it has nothing to do with the space you are in. I know bar owners and landscapers that blog regularly because they love it. And they hit a unique area of the market. They generate business off of that – but they don’t bank on it. As time goes by they may adjust their strategies but they are writing for themselves so it’s not like they are going to be mad if it doesn’t happen.

  2. Monserrate says

    June 12, 2016 at 5:44 am

    Hi! Quick question that’s completely off topic.
    Do yyou know how to make your site mobile friendly? My weblog
    looks weiird when viewing from myy iphone. I’m trying to find a theme or plugin tha might bee able tto fix this problem.
    If you have any recommendations, please share.
    Thank you!

    • Patrick Healy says

      August 9, 2016 at 7:20 pm

      Your site looks fine from a mobile standpoint. I would recommend deleting the “Hello World” post since it’s just there to get you going on WordPress. I would also consider getting your own domain. Edublogs is fine and has good authority but you don’t own it. At some point you may want to get away from that subdomain and you will have helped them build up their domain and you will have nothing to show for it. Hope this helps.

      -PH

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