How to maintain your presence on Google SERPs
Everyone wants their business to show up often and among the first few SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). It’s common knowledge people tend to open at most the first two or three pages when trying to Google something. Rather than going further, people just change their search keywords. The question arises then – what is the best way to maintain your presence on Google SERPs? In this article, Digital Dot explores this goal.
Know what to look out for
You might think that the only important thing about search engine results is to get to the top five positions on the first page. However, there is still the matter of maintaining your presence on Google SERPs properly, that isn’t the only thing you need to pay attention to. SERPs are pretty holistic in nature, especially if someone looks up your business in particular. Your reviews, info, and even any videos tied to your business or website will pop up. This means that you can leave a very bad impression from the start if you are careless. Now, you can either hire one of the top digital marketing agencies in New York to help you out or you can try and make sure that every aspect of your business is managed as well as possible on your own.
Paying for quick results
One of the easiest ways to not just maintain your presence on Google SERPs but also increase the recognition of your business and brand quickly is to invest in ads. There are two venues available for you here: Google Search Ads and Local Service Ads. Both are featured by Google itself and are therefore perfectly reliable.
The difference is simple: Google Search Ads are more aggressive and are pay-per-click. This means that you need to set a budget beforehand, and your ad will be featured prominently until the budget is consumed. Note that it is best to work with a PPC agency NYC because your ad needs to pass certain standards and you need to bid on getting featured. Local Service Ads are not paid per click but per lead generated instead. They’re also offered up only when relevant keywords are searched by users within your ‘local’ area.
Optimize your site
In order to maintain your presence on Google SERPs, another important aspect to consider is web optimization. There are two important aspects of this: loading speed and device compatibility. Google values both aspects highly and any drop in their quality will immediately be reflected in your drop on Google SERPs.
Your loading speed can drop because of problems with your host service provider, bad coding, too many photos or videos added to any one page, badly made website themes, and more. You can only test it every step of the way and try to maintain it at a reasonable speed. Site optimization is even more important. Especially with how much emphasis Google has started to pay on mobile devices. If your site can’t be loaded on them or works badly, its ranking will plummet. That is why increasing your page loading speed plays such a key role.
Build up your backlink catalogue
Backlinks are another important aspect of a site that Google pays tons of attention to. With a good backlink catalogue, your site will rank much higher in Google SERPs. Naturally, this means that the opposite is also true. If you provide links to subpar sites just so you can get linked on them in turn, your SEO, and therefore your SERP ranking, will drop. In order to maintain your presence on Google SERPs, you need to form a good working relationship with sites with similar audiences to your own and build a backlink network together.
Know how best to use keywords
Picking your keywords is a bit more complex than just picking what you want to be ranked highly in, or just using them to churn out content. Your keywords need to be a good match for your business. For example, if you run a moving company website with a blog attached, then keywords such as ‘local New York movers’ or ‘moving in New York’ are helpful.
On the other hand, if you write a blog post about painting your home and use keywords such as ‘New York painters’, then the blog post is useless for you. At the same time, the keywords might actually hurt your SEO because they have bad relevance. If you are not sure how to approach keywords, it might be best to work with a professional SEO company in NYC.
Get your SEO in order
Following the previous paragraph, SEO is crucial if you want to maintain your presence on Google SERPs. You want to constantly work towards improving search engine optimization because that is the only way for Google to rank your website highly. At the same time, know that SEO is a very complex topic, which covers every aspect of your site. From how it runs, to its content, to even the quality of your coding. Everything needs to be high quality.
Maintain your presence on Google SERPs by getting citations
If you want to quickly improve your Google SERPs presence and maintain it, citations are an amazing resource. Obviously, every business should have its own Google My Business page. This lets you get on Google Maps as well as local business search results. At the same time, sites such as Tripadvisor or similar are absolutely amazing for your SERPs if you get onto them and get good scores and reviews.
Get more reviews
Speaking of reviews, in order to maintain your presence on Google SERPs, they will be essential! Good reviews have a ton of impact on your SEO and search results relevance. Which, of course, allows you to rank higher in SERPs. It even allows you to increase your outreach. Since it will make your business more relevant and therefore organically recommended to more people by Google.
It’s a full-time job to maintain SERP rankings
Knowing how to maintain your presence on Google SERPs right now is just the start. The metrics set by Google as well as its algorithms change with time. If you want your website and business to stay relevant, you need to stay on top of such changes and always work to improve.