Get high on Google

Dave Lush learned a startling thing this summer: one way to boost your business is to attract online searchers seeking a service you don’t even offer.

Lush, the Toronto-based president and CEO of Speedy Auto Service’s parent company, discovered this after hiring RankHigher.ca to boost the miserable Google rankings for Speedy’s website. RankHigher.ca, a Burlington, Ont.-based search engine optimization (SEO) firm, began by researching which keywords potential Speedy customers use in online searches. When Scott Wilson, the SEO company’s president, suggested which search terms Speedy should target to win on Google, Lush was taken aback that the list included “muffler repair”—even though Speedy replaces rather than repairs mufflers. But then Lush saw the potential to turn people searching for “muffler repair” into customers.

His realization reflects a common­sensical truth: prospects will find your website only if it uses the same terminology they do. (See “Use the customer’s lingo…” at right.) But when RankHigher.ca recommends SEO tactics such as this one, they’re grounded in more than just common sense, which can be wrong. They’re based on the controlled experiments Wilson’s firm has run over the past three years testing hundreds of propositions about what will land a site a top Google ranking for a given search term. And they’re also based on steadily deepening experience of what works from RankHigher.ca’s almost 50 regular SEO clients.

Wilson’s firm used a long list of SEO tactics to boost Speedy’s ranking for 11 search terms, including the most important two—“auto shop” and “auto repair shop”—as well as “muffler repair.” The tactics he’ll disclose included building more links with sites run by “friendlies,” such as suppliers and distributors Speedy does business with; adding relevant content to a home page that used to feature just “English” and “Français” buttons; and improving the linking structure among pages on the site.

“We went from nowhere to No. 1” as a result, says Lush. Speedy’s site scored a hat trick in many markets, ranking first or second for the most vital keywords in organic searches, Google Places and Google Adwords. “We were ecstatic,” says Lush. “Our base of new customers has increased this year, and [the SEO project] has been a big part of it.”

Twice previously in PROFIT, Wilson has shared SEO tactics his firm has proven to be effective. Here, he shares seven more.

Use the customer’s lingo, not yours: Wilson says it’s highly probable your prospects use at least some search terms you don’t use internally. He points to a discount brokerage’s site that ranked poorly on Google; it was built around the keywords “discount brokerage.” A free service from Google Adwords revealed that just 18,000 people per month search for this term, versus 550,000 for “online trading,” a phrase absent from the brokerage’s site. To discover the terms your potential clients use, brainstorm possibilities in-house and phone clients to ask how they’d search for what you sell. Then, click on “Get keyword ideas” at Google.com/Adwords and enter a term or phrase. You’ll see dozens of variations, with the latest monthly search totals for each one.

Once you’ve identified commonly employed keywords, pick the most widely used ones relevant to what you sell. “Look for ones with commercial intent,” advises Wilson. “If someone searches for ‘asbestos,’ who knows what they’re after? But if they search for ‘asbestos removal,’ there’s commercial intent behind that.” Start with the lowest-hanging fruit, creating a landing page with rich content about the most popular keyword; then, the second-most popular; and so on.

Don’t throw away Google’s trust: The search engine ranks pages more highly if it trusts them to deliver content relevant to users’ searches. It trusts a given page more as the page ages, provided it has links with other sites that Google’s sophisticated algorithms suggest have relevant related content. Yet companies routinely flush away this trust when altering a page’s URL. “Even if you just change the suffix from ‘.html’ to ‘.php,’ that becomes a new page, which has no age, no links and no trust,” says Wilson. “It’s so sad, because being trusted by Google is the first secret of search. And once a page has lost its trust, it has to start over.” It’s easy to avoid this by having your web designer set up a “301 redirect” for each renamed page.

Load up on “below the fold” content: Google generally trusts home pages more than others, says Wilson, partly because these tend to have the most links. That poses what seems to be a dilemma: how do you maximize your home-page advantage by featuring buckets of relevant content without alienating visitors by overloading your site’s front door? The trick is to run only the first few lines of each article on your home page, with a “Read More” button and the rest of the article on another page, like in a newspaper. Google indexes the entire text as if it were on the home page. Wilson says CRM software-maker Salesforce.com has mastered this tactic with a home page that’s clean and appealing yet offers a wealth of content about customer relationship management.

Put yourself on the map: Customers for a wide array of goods and services prefer to buy from a company with a nearby location, says Wilson, who cites Google’s estimate that 20% of all searches include a location. For any category in which Google figures searchers are likely to care about where a seller is, it first uses the searcher’s URL to determine her location. Then, it displays a Google Places map on the top right of the first page of search results showing the closest businesses matching her keywords—even if she omits a location. This is huge free exposure. Yet more than 90% of the 50 million businesses Google has identified worldwide haven’t claimed their listing at Google.ca/places. “If you don’t do that now, you’re crazy,” says Wilson.

Exploit the power of Places: Few firms understand what works on Google Places, says Wilson. He suggests three proven tactics. First, buy a small Yellow Pages display ad, because Google bought the Yellow Pages listings as the basis for Places and trusts them to confirm that you run a real business. But you’ll rank well only if you format your firm’s contact information identically in Places and the Yellow Pages. Second, try to use all five categories available for listing your offerings. Wilson has a client in Burlington who, he says, topped that city’s Places rankings in part by listing “teeth whitening” and “cosmetic dentistry,” whereas other Burlington dentists listed only “dentist.” Third, ask six to 12 non-competing nearby businesses to add a page to their sites recommending your firm, in return for reciprocating. Google sees such “local citations” as confirmation that a company has a good local reputation.

Fire with both barrels: Until October, Google had separate algorithms for Places and organic searches, so your ranking on one had no bearing on the other. But—in what Wilson says is the most important change ever for Places—Google now combines the ranking points from both so each type of search affects the other. He cites his dental client, who had been No. 1 in Places but only in the middle of the first page for organic searches. When Google changed its algorithms, she shot into first place in organic rankings, overtaking other local dentists who weren’t visible on Places. “For any company where geography matters,” says Wilson, “it’s now essential to optimize your ranking on both.”