Sneaking the google top slot
Discussion
I have a new product launch in June which (hopefuly) will have some media coverage.
Sadly one of my competitors has such a dominant position that all the google roads point to them. As soon as you input the type of product the first two pages are all about them.
Any way I could make sure we are the top hit, or at least on the first page for just the month after launch until we get up the rankings ourselves?
I thought about Google Ad words??
Sadly one of my competitors has such a dominant position that all the google roads point to them. As soon as you input the type of product the first two pages are all about them.
Any way I could make sure we are the top hit, or at least on the first page for just the month after launch until we get up the rankings ourselves?
I thought about Google Ad words??
If you can't win a game, change the game or make your own.
What I mean specifically is do not market your product under the same niche, make your own niche and angle.
For example if you run a recruitment company. You are fighting a losing battle from the start.
However, lets say your angle is to cut through the buzzwords, and you call your product 'RecruitmentGook'. Like gobbledegook and recruitment.
You can run some press releases explaining about RecruitmentGook, make a Youtube video, people blogging about you etc, and a mini site at RecruitmentGook.co.uk
I picked RecruitmentGook as when someone searches on Google about it at the moment there is zilch, so in a few weeks time, not only are you guaranteed to be number one, *all of the rest of the Google results will be about you and your product too*.
What I mean specifically is do not market your product under the same niche, make your own niche and angle.
For example if you run a recruitment company. You are fighting a losing battle from the start.
However, lets say your angle is to cut through the buzzwords, and you call your product 'RecruitmentGook'. Like gobbledegook and recruitment.
You can run some press releases explaining about RecruitmentGook, make a Youtube video, people blogging about you etc, and a mini site at RecruitmentGook.co.uk
I picked RecruitmentGook as when someone searches on Google about it at the moment there is zilch, so in a few weeks time, not only are you guaranteed to be number one, *all of the rest of the Google results will be about you and your product too*.
A good mix of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation is what's needed. There's not really an effective way of "cheating" Google, particularly as the algorithm get smarter. You need to get your site well optimised but, apart from that, the general rule of thumb is produce good content which will appeal to your target audience, and you'll start to rise up the rankings.
Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
Marcellus said:
I heard a story (could be an urban) that if you have a solid back ground and then have your key words in the same colour as your background then they are picked up by the search engines with no apparent reason as visitors to the site can't see the text...
Not a great idea.There are far more sophisticated ways of 'hiding' text but in any case you run the risk of the search engines de-indexing your site.
Not worth it in the long run.
Stuart said:
A good mix of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation is what's needed. There's not really an effective way of "cheating" Google, particularly as the algorithm get smarter. You need to get your site well optimised but, apart from that, the general rule of thumb is produce good content which will appeal to your target audience, and you'll start to rise up the rankings.
Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
Most users go straight for the ads anyway. Don't go spending vast amounts of money on seo imo.Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
gumshoe said:
Stuart said:
A good mix of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation is what's needed. There's not really an effective way of "cheating" Google, particularly as the algorithm get smarter. You need to get your site well optimised but, apart from that, the general rule of thumb is produce good content which will appeal to your target audience, and you'll start to rise up the rankings.
Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
Most users go straight for the ads anyway. Don't go spending vast amounts of money on seo imo.Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
PistonHeads does particularly well against natural search because of all the content in here, but we've still never spent a penny on SEM.
You should understand what the search terms are that are driving traffic to your competitor's site (you can do this using Google trends) and then make sure that your site is optimised against these words - make sure that the content is written in way which includes these keywords (but don't overdo it) and ensure that your header tags contain the right words and phrases to appeal to search queries. Whoever built your site should be able to help with this. If your website has a lot of pages, make sure that your URLs are SEO friendly (so your site reads "www.mysite.co.uk/advicefor_people_buying_widgets_like_this" rather than "www.mysite.co.uk/3430893kkl")
gumshoe said:
Stuart said:
A good mix of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation is what's needed. There's not really an effective way of "cheating" Google, particularly as the algorithm get smarter. You need to get your site well optimised but, apart from that, the general rule of thumb is produce good content which will appeal to your target audience, and you'll start to rise up the rankings.
Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
Most users go straight for the ads anyway. Don't go spending vast amounts of money on seo imo.Until you do, start bidding against all the key search terms that you might expect your potential customers to use in Google.
It called Ad Blindness - it affects both AdSense and Adwords, users just ignore them -
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019561.html
Adwords is a good strategy for quick wins, but not good for your budget in the mid to long term; a search strategy should start with SEO & Adwords together, slowly reducing the budget on ads from 100% to 0 from month 6 to 18 by which time the SEO activity will have overtaken the adwords traffic significantly.
There's some good (and not so good) advice on this thread. My 2 pennies...
A website at the top of the natural rankings will get significantly more traffic than any in the sponsored listings. PPC should not be ignored though as visitors that come through an ad are often more likely to make an enquiry/purchase. PPC is also useful as it lets you know exactly how many searches there are for each keyword, so you'll know where to concentrate effort on your site, content and links.
The main downside to SEO is time. In-bound links are one of the most important factors in the positioning of a website, but it can take months for them to start pushing a site to the first page. I recently got a client from page 20 to the top half of page 1 for a selection of competitive retail keywords but it took almost 6 months, and cost him almost £1K a month in my time.
There are tricks that can be employed to speed up results but many of these are now frowned upon by Google and will often attract a penalty (such as the text and background being the same colour) which means that if Google spots these 'black hat' tricks then your website will always rank lower than it would have without them.
My advice is try PPC and SEO if you can afford the cost and time involved. Social Media marketing is also a good way of generating a bit of buzz, some direct traffic, and even some in-bound links, for relatively little cost, but this too can be incredibly time consuming.
If you want to PM me the keywords and the competitor then I will have a quick look at it to see if there's any specific info I can give.
A website at the top of the natural rankings will get significantly more traffic than any in the sponsored listings. PPC should not be ignored though as visitors that come through an ad are often more likely to make an enquiry/purchase. PPC is also useful as it lets you know exactly how many searches there are for each keyword, so you'll know where to concentrate effort on your site, content and links.
The main downside to SEO is time. In-bound links are one of the most important factors in the positioning of a website, but it can take months for them to start pushing a site to the first page. I recently got a client from page 20 to the top half of page 1 for a selection of competitive retail keywords but it took almost 6 months, and cost him almost £1K a month in my time.
There are tricks that can be employed to speed up results but many of these are now frowned upon by Google and will often attract a penalty (such as the text and background being the same colour) which means that if Google spots these 'black hat' tricks then your website will always rank lower than it would have without them.
My advice is try PPC and SEO if you can afford the cost and time involved. Social Media marketing is also a good way of generating a bit of buzz, some direct traffic, and even some in-bound links, for relatively little cost, but this too can be incredibly time consuming.
If you want to PM me the keywords and the competitor then I will have a quick look at it to see if there's any specific info I can give.
Remember that Google has a search engine and an advertising component to it - do not confuse the two. Attempting to try and use any oddball techniques to get the search engine component to list you higher than you otherwise would is asking for trouble. Pay for advertising if that's what you want, and make a good, usable, friendly (for users and search engine bots) and useful site and it should happen naturally, and you'll never run the risk of being thrown out of the results entirely.
Whilst having a website built along with SEO, I have found it can be a minefield.. There are loads of web builders out there saying they CAN do SEO but a lot of it is just smoke and mirror techniques (such as black text on black background) and Google find this very quickly and the site gets dropped quickly.
It really is a case of meeting a few web techies and finding one that is Google Webmaster linked and has a proven track record. Being able to get on with them is a bonus but, as mentioned, good SEO is costly as it takes hours to ensure key words, phrases etc are Google friendly...
Also dont forget there are other search engines out there, although not the size of Google, but equally important. The site that is being built for me had already sat high in yahoo searches but a fair bit lower on Google.
Good luck..
It really is a case of meeting a few web techies and finding one that is Google Webmaster linked and has a proven track record. Being able to get on with them is a bonus but, as mentioned, good SEO is costly as it takes hours to ensure key words, phrases etc are Google friendly...
Also dont forget there are other search engines out there, although not the size of Google, but equally important. The site that is being built for me had already sat high in yahoo searches but a fair bit lower on Google.
Good luck..
JustinP1 said:
If you can't win a game, change the game or make your own.
What I mean specifically is do not market your product under the same niche, make your own niche and angle.
For example if you run a recruitment company. You are fighting a losing battle from the start.
However, lets say your angle is to cut through the buzzwords, and you call your product 'RecruitmentGook'. Like gobbledegook and recruitment.
You can run some press releases explaining about RecruitmentGook, make a Youtube video, people blogging about you etc, and a mini site at RecruitmentGook.co.uk
I picked RecruitmentGook as when someone searches on Google about it at the moment there is zilch, so in a few weeks time, not only are you guaranteed to be number one, *all of the rest of the Google results will be about you and your product too*.
Not quite true - this PH thread is the only result What I mean specifically is do not market your product under the same niche, make your own niche and angle.
For example if you run a recruitment company. You are fighting a losing battle from the start.
However, lets say your angle is to cut through the buzzwords, and you call your product 'RecruitmentGook'. Like gobbledegook and recruitment.
You can run some press releases explaining about RecruitmentGook, make a Youtube video, people blogging about you etc, and a mini site at RecruitmentGook.co.uk
I picked RecruitmentGook as when someone searches on Google about it at the moment there is zilch, so in a few weeks time, not only are you guaranteed to be number one, *all of the rest of the Google results will be about you and your product too*.
Take a close look around:
http://selfpromotion.com/index.t
It's a very useful site and because of that I'm always at the top or close to it in the ranking game.
http://selfpromotion.com/index.t
It's a very useful site and because of that I'm always at the top or close to it in the ranking game.
Boosted LS1 said:
Take a close look around:
http://selfpromotion.com/index.t
It's a very useful site and because of that I'm always at the top or close to it in the ranking game.
Looks great, I amy even give that a spin without the marketing guy.http://selfpromotion.com/index.t
It's a very useful site and because of that I'm always at the top or close to it in the ranking game.
^ That's what I did. I set up my own key words and also key phrases which are probably more important. I think there's something hidden in my pages done by the person who created them and that probably helps me as well. Also, he (selfpromotion) submits the pages on a regular basis to the main search engines and all for a token fee of a few $'sss. I usually send $50 a year and it's well worth it imo. He's a good guy who puts a lot of effort into his site.
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