Getting to the first page of the search engine is a big deal for any business. For example, if someone goes to Google and types in ‘Cleaning Services Chicago,’ the companies on the first page get most of the business. With that being said, every business should consider SEO at some point because if you achieve first-page ranking, your business will benefit.
When should you do SEO?
Doing SEO yourself is very time-consuming, and hiring someone to do SEO can be very expensive. To answer the question, you should consider doing SEO if you have time or your business is already doing well and is ready for another revenue stream.
If you’re a start-up and commit to SEO as your primary marketing channel, know that this will become a full-time job. When you’re just starting, you’ll need a marketing source anyways, and since all of them take time to perfect, SEO can be your first choice.
How long does it take to achieve first page results?
SEO is not easy, especially when you’re trying to rank for competitive terms. When ranking for something simple such as your business name, typically, you’ll see results fast and without much effort. That’s because no one is ranking for your business name. In most cases, because they don’t even know such a business name exists. Such rankings can be achieved fast. Just create some social media pages, link them to your website, stay active on those social media accounts, and Google or Bing will rank your name within a few days or weeks. Keep in mind if your business name is something competitive, it will become again hard to rank for that name.
What is a competitive name? ‘Apple’ would be a competitive name. Imagine if the company ‘Apple’ didn’t exist today and you’ve used their name for your business. In general, the term ‘Apple’ is competitive, and when you search for it on Google, many different things come up. To get ranked, you will have to beat out all the other pages ranking for that word, which would be extremely hard. This is another reason why original names are best.
How would I rank any page on the search engines?
To understand SEO, you have to understand business. Think about what any company does to become successful. They think of the user and how to make their lives extraordinary. If they can accomplish that, they themselves are loved by the user and become successful. Search engines such as Google are no different. They want to give the best search results to their users because if they don’t, the users won’t search on Google, and it will provide another search engine the opportunity to become popular.
With that being said, the most crucial part that Google looks at when ranking your page is what is on it. If a user lands on your page and leaves instantly, that doesn’t look good in Google’s eyes. On the other hand, if the users land on the page, spend minutes going through the page, visits different pages, and even enters a credit card, that to Google is a winning page.
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Another critical component of ranking a page is the number of visitors you get to your page. Think about it this way, if your page gets shared on social media or other bloggers link to your page, you’ll have the potential to gain traffic to your page, giving it a chance to boost rankings. Spamming links no longer work. Some could argue that it can even hurt you. Think about it this way; if you spam links to your page, it won’t bring any traffic, or it might bring people who will bounce the moment they land on your page. The exact oppositive of what the search engine is looking for.
What does that mean? That means that the content on the page is the most important. It’s better to focus on the content than getting a bunch of weak links to your page. This means that if you’re thinking of buying links or spamming forums to get links as your strategy, you’re just going to waste your time and unless those links you’re getting will produce good traffic that will browse your page content for a long time, re-think your strategy.
Let me give you an example of a good strategy
If I were to rank my Chicago cleaning page, here is what I would do:
I would look at the traffic to see the most popular terms people are searching for on Google. In Chicago, the biggest term is ‘Cleaning Services Chicago’. I would then optimize the page to be SEO-ready (we will cover this later on), and then I would figure out how to get the best traffic from the most relevant sources. To do that, I would create a Yelp profile that is specifically tailored to the Chicago page that I am trying to rank.
I would spend the next 12 months trying and rank my Yelp profile to the first page of the Yelp search engine to grab all the traffic. To do that, you’d most likely have to provide excellent service, gather a lot of 5-star reviews, and maintain a solid 5-star reputation. Once you’ve done that, Yelp will most likely reward your profile and list it on the first page. Why? Because you’re their best user, and remember, they want to give their users the best businesses and keep their trust.
When that happens, Yelp users will move from Yelp to your Chicago page. The nice part about that is that those users are motivated to buy, and they will spend a long time on the page, and your website, with the end result most likely being a booking. Exactly what Google wants and again will reward you for it over time. In the meantime, you’re growing a Yelp profile which will become another revenue stream for your business.
Once that strategy is done, you can work on a following profile to bring in a lot of traffic for your business. You can offer a complimentary cleaning for a review on a local magazine site that will drive much relevant traffic or things along those lines. These strategies, when done correctly, should get you a lot of natural traffic, boosting SEO rankings over time.
On-page optimization
This is the last major part of ranking high on the search engines. You’ll want to make sure that the page is relevant to what it is that you’re trying to rank for. Typically you’ll search the term on Google yourself and see what is on there. You can click on the top 3 results and study what’s on those pages. Google rewarded those pages for a reason, and mimicking what’s on those pages should be part of your strategy. Take what they have and make it better. For example, if you’re ranking for ‘Cleaning Services Chicago,’ and you realize no one has a calculator offering price, consider including one. Why? Because the user wants to book, and pricing is the main factor. If you include a calculator on the page, the user will play around with it, trying to get a quote, increasing their time on that page.
Remember, it’s not about stuffing the page with keywords. It’s about increasing time spent on the page, showing Google why your page deserves to be up there.
How to optimize your page inside BookingKoala
Optimizing your page or blog post inside BookingKoala is very easy. If you’re adding a page, you will go inside your website builder. From there, you can add all the content necessary to make your page competitive. Finally, if you need to create a page title or meta descriptions, you can visit the ‘page settings’ and customize each page to fit your needs:
Then this pop-up will show up where changes can be made:
After you’ve made the changes, don’t forget to click “Save & Publish’ for the changes to go live. When making changes such as these, it may take Google a few days or weeks to re-crawl the page and update it in their search engines. To make the changes go faster, you’ll have to force the page to be crawled by Google or other search engines. To force the re-crawl, each search engine has developed its own set of tools that you’ll have to find. Once you find it, you’ll submit the page with their system, and they will re-crawl the page.
To make changes to a blog post inside BookingKoala, you’ll visit the marketing section of your store:
From there, you can optimize your blog post and edit any necessary changes such as page titles and meta descriptions:
Again, it will take some time for the search engine to update the listing. Be patient and work on bringing in relevant traffic to your site in the meantime. Don’t waste any time, and always remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Your rankings won’t appear overnight, no matter the budget.
Filip Boksa
CEO and Co-founder at BookingKoala, home to thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide. Grew his first business King of Maids, to over 5 million by 22 with $6,000 and no outside funding. Today focuses on helping businesses through BookingKoala.
