10 Things Every Business Should Know About GOOGLE How Google thinks, and what you can do to become #1 on their ranks
A publication of
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THE INS AND OUTS OF GOOGLE Based on an Adam Singer presentation Written by Abe Ross
Adam Singer
Adam is the founder and main operator of AJSinger Studios, a web design and SEO agency based in Savannah, Georgia. In the last year AJ Singer Studios reported their best clients got an average of 6000 web visitors every month, and their best facebook campaign recieved 3000 real likes. Adam specializes in Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Inbound marketing, Social media marketing, and many other useful services! To learn more about Adam, and services he offers, go here!
Abe Ross
Abe is an intern at AJ Singer Studios, specializing in article writing, blog publishing, and ebook authoring. In addition to work at AJ Singer Studios, Abe is a film student at SCAD (‘16), and owns the promotional company Savannah Party Starters. For any questions about this ebook or it’s contents, feel free to email Abe at ort00to@gmail.com or Adam at info@ajsingertudios.com
FOLLOW ADAM ON TWITTER @AJ613 AJ Singer Studios
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CONTENTS KEYWORDS: UNDERSTANDING THE FUNDAMENTALS ANUM HUSSAIN, HUBSPOT
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MASTERING ON-PAGE SEO /12 GREG SHUEY, SEO.COM
UNDERSTANDING OFF-PAGE SEO REBECCA CHURT, HUBSPOT
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THE RIGHT WAY TO BUILD LINKS /26 STEPHANIE CHANG, DISTILLED
HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCES SEO
DHARMESH SHAH, HUBSPOT
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HOW TO INCREASE CLICKS IN SERP /53 RAND FISHKIN, SEOMOZ
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“
The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of google search results -Anon.
”
In 2012, Google reported an average of 1.8 trillion searches total for the year. The following year, the average grew to 2.16 trillion. Steadily increasing, Google has grown into one of the worlds most used artificial resources.1 It’s difficult to imagine what a successful behemoth of a company thinks or wants from it’s content creators1, which is where Google partnership comes in. Through Google partnership, agencies and professionals can discover the motivations of Google through research, as well as techniques to work within the spectrum of demand from their perspective. There is no quick tricks to long term success through Google! This guide will help understand what to consider when thinking how to get success legitemately.
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Statistic found from Statistic Brain [http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/]
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CHAPTER 1
SEARCH AND SEARCH PLACEMENT
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Don’t Take Search Lightly
As we usher into an age with less patience, it’s important to take into consideration that many searchers aren’t willing to spend as much time to find an answer to one of their searches. While this has some negative attributes, there are benefits to this shift in visitor patience; If you play to the game, and get within the first few search results of an inquiry, or even the first page, your clientel will be immensly more impressive.
On any given search1 75% of all clicks are on the first page 38% take place on the first three results 18% of clicks go to the first link alone
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Statistics found from imforza [http://www.imforza.com/blog/8-seo-stats-that-are-hard-to-ignore/]
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General search statistics In May of 20131, an experiment was run with a focus on three different links placed at the top of a sample search engine result page. The three sites were monitored for a month, and the results came accordingly; The 1st link: 33% of all clicks The 2nd link: 17% of all clicks The 3rd link: 11% of all clicks
The recorded drop in percentage is enourmous from each link to the next! This illustrates just how important it is to be #1!
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Study from Chitika [http://chitika.com/google-positioning-value]
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CHAPTER 2
KNOWING WHAT GOOGLE WANTS
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What is Google’s Main Priority?
A huge step in cooperating with Google is understanding the company’s biggest priority. The searcher. Google’s main motivation in everything is to make the searcher happy. If the searcher is happy, Google is certainly happy. What constitutes as a satisfactory search result??
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Relevant results
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Authoritative results
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Local results (when applicable)
(We’ll talk more about these in a bit)
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Can you make searchers happy? It’s very common to be apporached as a business owner, by someone offering to make you #1 on Google. These offers are tepting, but before indulging, you have to ask yourself a few questions; “Does this multi-billion dollar company want me on top? Do they
think I deserve to be there?” “If I don’t deserve to be on the top, how will this person bring me there?”
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Put yourself in their shoes Say you were in need of a new hat, and decided to go online looking for one. When you make a search based on hats, you want to see links related to websites about hats. You don’t want to see links to shirts, or pornography, or something else unrelated. This is the basic idea of relevancy. So if we continue with our example, when you search for hats, when the result page shows up, your first instinct will be to go to a page which is popular among searchers, as it adds credibility. This is the basic idea of authority. Finally, when you search for hats, the most helpful results would be businesses near you, so you can more easily obtain a new hat. This is the basic idea of Local For more info on Google’s interest in serving the searcher and how the search works, watch this video by Matt Cutts, on AJ Singer Studios for more information. Watch Video Here AJ Singer Studios
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CHAPTER 3
RELEVANCE: BE THE SEARCH
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Be the search Make yourself applicable There’s so much info available on search engines, so sometimes becomes hard to keep a clear line of contact between a search and the content provider who makes creates the most applicable info. This is where the mindset of “be the search” comes in handy. When your target audience might look up “when does the superbowl start this weekend?” instead of just having a page explaining “4:00pm”, you want to have a page re-stating “when does the superbowl start this weekend?” and then saying the accurate time, or linking to another site which has the accurate information. Relevance is well...Relevant!
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CHAPTER 4
AUTHORITY: NOT JUST FOR COPS
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Links, Links, Links Authority relates to the way the rest of the web looks at your website -more specifically in relation to your links. When you write a blog post which says something like “for a great resource on cooking, click here” you would be contributing to the web authority of that site, vouching for it. [Larger websites such as ESPN.com have thousands of websites which link to them, lending them a great deal of online authority.] In the initial stages of forming, Google began using this link concept, measuring authority through popularity of link sharing. Google would say it’s most likely the website everyone else is linking to which is most authoritative on the subject, and push it to the top of their search results. Links are very important. Who gets to be on the top has a lot to do with what other websites are linking to.
Tip: A productive way of building authority could be finding another business in a related field to your own, and agreeing to send eachother traffic as long as the other has something relevant the other can’t produce.
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authority through social media Just as links help in the traditional way, when your content is shared through facebook, this also affects the authority your website has in Google’s eyes.
This isn’t just limited to Facebook! Shares through Google+, twitter, and other social media still counts!
The benefit to authority through social media is being able to effectively piggyback on the authority of the social media website it’s shared on. Since social media is booming nowadays, this has more opportunity to be seen by others and cause the word to spread.
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Reviews & Blog Posts Google has said that if your website is well reviewed, it doesn’t have a direct one to one relationship with your rank, but it’s definitely a good thing to have in regards to clientel. Assuming you get to the top of the search result page, reviews are often posted under the meta description of local companies.
Finally, blog posts will help immensley with rank, simply by consistently adding to the growing pool of applicable and relevant information you provide on your site. The more relevant you are, the more that will contribute to your web presence!
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CHAPTER 5
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
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Locality Part of searching for a purchase or service, is often looking for one easily nearby. It’s only efficient to find something you have more physical access to! The funny thing is, it would seem very simple to express your location on Google, but in fact, business addresses and locational info can often be convoluted online!
? This can happen from a number of things; Moving your office without updating, opening a new branch but not designating one as the home address, etc. When this happens, there are five sites to go to, in order to make sure the addresses are clear and visible AJ Singer Studios
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Make Your Location Stick! When your location’s clarity comes in to question, there are five sites that can help:
Neustar Localeze Acxiom Factual Moz These websites are dedicated to gathering information about your sites and feeding them to the rest of the internet and search engines. Several of them also have communities which are more than helpful when it comes to getting more acquainted with the process!
It’s very important to keep updated on your location’s listed address(es), because even the most minute difference in one can dilute the entire pool of accurate information.
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Golden Rule About Location The ultimate golden rule when it comes to your location is always always always try to maintain the same address and same nomenclature. Correctly following this rule is the key to local recognition; consistency. Tip: Schema.org is a very useful tool for local marketing. Schema effectively came to be by Yahoo, Bing, and Google coming together to decide a universal code for search engines.
Moz - The Braintrust Moz is a great resource when it comes to researching locality. If you want to see how populated the web in your local area is, simply go to moz.com/local and put in your address. This definitely helps you come to a better understanding of your ranking in the community. AJ Singer Studios
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CHAPTER 6
GOOGLE IS GROWING
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A.I. Googles ambition is eventually to become something we’ve all dreamed of in sci fi movies and books. Artificial intelligence. It’s got a decent way to go, but so far it’s done pretty well on it’s way!
They grow up so fast! Not long ago, Google used to be much simpler! When someone made a search for football on Google, they’d instantly get ten links to websites that have to do with football. Now there are 25 different categories of results on a Google search. To see an extensive list of these categories and a visual aide connecting them, click here
If you search for football today on Google, you’ll see games nearby, videos or songs related to football, images of footballs, the definition of the sport, etc. There’s something called the “Infograph”, where Google will try to answer questions for you. It can even figure out any celebrity’s “Bacon Number”!
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CHAPTER 7
GOOGLE WANTS TO MAKE MONEY
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Show Me The Money! In 2012, Google made 12 billion dollars in ad revenue in the state of Georgia alone.1 They’re a massive player. So this means, even if you absolutely can’t make it to the top of Google’s searches with SEO techniques, Google will sell you advertising space above the first result, or to the side. There are actually five different places you can advertise on a result page! This isn’t a bad way of getting business! It mainly depends wether your business can afford the investment!
competitor
competitor
competitor
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Figure given by the SBDC of Georgia
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CHAPTER 8
ADWORDS
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Two Ways To Work It Adwords is an intimidating program at first, but once understood becomes an immeasurably useful tool! There are two ways to pay for Google adwords advertising;
1 PPC (Pay Per Click)
With this method, the business owner offers to pay Google a
certain amount every time someone clicks on a term related to their product in their area (example: hats, in Savannah)
PPM (Pay Per Mille) 2 With this method, the business owner offers to pay Google a certain amount every thousand times their advertisement is made visible in a search.
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Google’s Colliseum what often happens when it comes to advertising on Google, if there is a competitor who also wishes to advertise, Google will auction off the place to try and get a good deal Here’s the tricky part: Google won’t necessarily always pick the highest bidder.
As stated in chapter 2, Google’s main priority is to make the searcher happy. Therefore, Google will always choose the advertisement they think will be successful. Even if you are willing to pay double, Google won’t publish an ad they don’t have faith in. That way they’ll get more money in the long run from organic demand.
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CHAPTER 9
SEARCH MARKETING PERIODIC TABLE
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Science! This is about as Geeky as it gets. The periodic table of SEO is immensley helpful in making your website more functional and efficient! Download the SEO Periodic Table HERE!
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CHAPTER 10
SEARCH IS PERSONAL
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Google Wants To Be Your Friend Google wants to understand what you want If you make a search for movies, Google would first know you were logged into Gmail, so they know who it is searching, and they know where you’re searching from, and would show you movies available locally.
This can be both beneficial and hindering. This is very useful for the consumer to find localized results, but can make it harder to see how you rank, when Google knows your vested interest.
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Objective views Since your Gmail is personalized, there’s no way to see your search results objectively through your own account. If you Google yourself a thousand times a day, your site may be #1 on your search, but be #7 on your clients search! Realize that google knows who you are and wants to please you!
Moz.com has a tool that will show you a non-personalized google view Check out Moz’s tools HERE
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CONCLUSION AND ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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Google has quickly become one of the greatest resources to use in marketing. Through the careful following of this guide, your business will be leagues ahead of the next with SEO information that will make your site extremely visible on Google. If you have any questions or concerns about this ebook, feel free to contact us at info@ajsingerstudios.com
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