Google is the supreme force for anyone wanting to increase organic traffic. It searches the internet to find the web pages that are most helpful and pertinent to its readers on almost any subject. We depend on Google’s results rather than merely trusting them.
Considering Google’s immense influence and power, getting your small business to appear on the first page of search results may seem impossible. However, it is thanks to Google’s immense power that it is now more feasible than ever for small and local businesses to appear higher in search results—and for free!
how to obtain a free listing on page one of Google? I’m going to go through numerous specific steps you can take to use two free tactics, website optimization and listing optimization, to get your company to the top of the first page of search results. I’ll discuss the significance of Google’s first page before moving on to the strategies, which include:
- Including keywords in strategic locations on your website
- Making content for people, not Google
- placing emphasis on the place
- Updating and maintaining your Google listing on a regular basis
- and a lot more
Why Listing on the First Page is Important?
With Knowledge Panels, answer boxes, expanded related questions, local results, and more, Google’s search results are becoming more comprehensive. Working for a top position is definitely worth the effort, especially in light of the fact that traffic and click-through rates both sharply decline as one moves farther down the search results. There are various methods to stand out.
Getting on the first page means a significantly higher click-through rate
It’s a known fact that the first page of Google captures the majority of traffic, but did you know that there are significant differences in click-through rates for the top vs bottom results? One study shows the following click-through rates by Google position:
- First result: 36.4% clickthrough rate
- Second result: 12.5% clickthrough rate
- Third result: 9.5% clickthrough rate
CTR continues to decline, down to 2.2% for the 10th result (there are usually 10 organic results max per page, even less now with local results, ads, answer boxes, and other new features. If you’re not at the top of Google search results, you are missing out on a lot of clicks.
Get immediate exposure
Top results for Google searches now also populate “Position Zero” answer boxes, otherwise known as featured snippets.
Earning a top spot on Google could lead to getting featured in a featured snippet, granting your business immediate exposure and increasing your credibility.
Top position traffic share
Another study found that the top result on Google captures 33% of search traffic. The closer to the top you can get your website to appear on Google, the better your search presence and brand authority.
How to Get on The First Page of Google
Search engine optimization is the process of adjusting your website to better-fit search engine ranking variables (SEO). You should optimize each page of your website separately rather than your entire site all at once for search engines. Here’s how to go about it:
- Select your keywords
Choose the search queries that you want Google to respond to with the pages of your website first. These are referred to as keywords, which can be either single words or phrases.
So that the pages on your website aren’t in direct competition with one another, each page should focus on a separate set of keywords.
The best keywords for your company are ones that your potential clients are using to find the goods and services they require online.
- Use keywords in Title & Meta Description
When Google crawls the web, it ranks the millions of pages that are already there and stores them in an index. When a user conducts a search, Google can then swiftly produce pertinent results by searching via its better-organized index (rather than the whole web).
Your website’s pages and blog posts each have a meta title. This title not only displays as the title of that page’s listing in search results but also appears at the top of your page in the form of a header (depending upon your CMS settings).
In Google’s search results, the brief sentence that appears below the title is known as the meta description.
- Provide User-Friendly Content
The secret to ranking on the first page of Google is to offer informative, dependable, helpful, and easy-to-read material that will keep your target audience on your site and returning for more. Additionally, it is free and simple to converse with others on the knowledge you already possess. Just keep in mind that your page must offer the information—not just the keywords—that visitors are seeking when they enter that search into Google if you want to be on the first page of Google for a specific keyword search.
- Emphasize location
Targeting location-based inquiries is another free technique to get your website pages on Google’s first page. Make sure your website prominently displays your city and/or region on the contact page, as well as perhaps in blog entries and services pages. By doing this, Google will recognize the search terms “your industry” and “your city” and provide your company as a “near me” search result.
Local SEO is not only free but also crucial since even if a user doesn’t search with a specific area, Google will still provide geographically relevant results based on their IP address (even during a pandemic).
- Improve for mobile
A website that is not responsive won’t appear at the top of a Google search. Nowadays, consumers use their phones and tablets more often than their laptops and PCs, and most local searches are made on mobile devices. Google thus prefers webpages that are compatible with mobile devices. In actuality, mobile-first indexing is currently used to index all websites.
The best websites are responsive because they can work on any size screen while adjusting to it. If you don’t have a responsive website, you may still make changes to your site to provide mobile users with the best possible experience.
- Focus on User Experience
For a website, being mobile-friendly is insufficient. Additionally, it ought to be attractive and easy to use. Google will notice this and rank you better if your website has easy-to-use navigation, calls to action that are obvious, and solutions to the questions that visitors have right away. The more popular your website becomes and the more probable it is that it will appear on the top page, the better your ranking will be.