Ranked #1 in Google

[JamesGG]

First up, by no means do I claim to be an expert on this sort of thing. And with no disrespect intended to any of the actual experts on this forum; we seem to have found that the whole thing is actually pretty simple.

Doing some quick searches this morning, we found that my business, House of Wealth, currently ranks as per below. I'm sure that there are other terms that we rank well on, but this is what we found within a few minutes today:


Google (Australia):
#1, 2, 3 AND 4 for term 'house of wealth'
#1 for 'accounting for property investors'
#1 for 'simple share trading calculator'
#1 for 'lower income investor'
#4 for 'how to make money out of property investment'
#4 for 'travel expenses for investment properties'
#4 for 'discount to SVR'
#5 for 'accounting for share traders'
#5 for 'trading vs investing'
#8 for 'negatively geared positive cashflow'
#10 for 'how to deal with early retirement'


Google (world):
#1, 2, 3 AND 4 for term 'house of wealth'
#1 for 'simple share trading calculator'
#1 for 'lower income investor'
#2 for 'accounting for property investors'
#4 for 'travel expenses for investment properties'
#13 for 'accounting for share traders'
#13 for 'how to make money out of property investment'


I don't say this to brag, or look for new business here. Most people on this forum aren't our target base anyway. So, to share how we've managed to get these sorts of results; all that we've done, so far as I'm aware, is this:

• "House of Wealth Accounting Solutions - Accounting for Property Investors and Share Traders" is the title of our main home page
• We keep a blog that is updated three times a week with new and unique content
• Each page, and each blog, will usually link to at least one or two other internal pages or blog posts
• Both this forum, and the Somersoft forum (both extremely well-ranked), link to our blog with every post that I make.

And beyond that? I wouldn't have a clue. But, this is working well for us. We don't get a *lot* of enquiry from Google, but as a new-ish business, it all adds up.

[HWT]

I got us to an indirect #1 in Google (a directory listing us is #1, but without a plural the google business link to us is #1) for the only search string that matters for us after a lot of pain last week, mostly because so many directories had the out of date details for our business. Some don't ever reply to emails so once you are in them with wrong details, you're stuck that way. Google's listing for us is still utterly wrong but at least now we have a correct one as well as the incorrect one the wrong one ends up way down the list. I wish you could delete or at least update incorrect Google business listings.

So 5 minutes after hitting #1 in Google we get a referral for some work from a distant outsourcing company who doesn't service our area

Helps that our business names starts with a H and the new competitor that popped up very recently starts with a W. We are always above them in directory listings.

Now I have another site that ranks poorly I need to get higher ...

[Brendan]

Hey James,

Looks good.. Your site is a good example of how good, unique content that is updated often always wins.. its the life blood of search engines and what SEO guys try to emulate.

Not trying to put a damper on your results.. but there is a reason only a few of those visitors are potential new leads..

It's all well and good to be #1 for keywords you might search for.. but are you number #1 for what your potential customers search for, i.e; are you #1 for the services you offer?

This is a very useful tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

It basically tells you on average how many times a keyword term gets searched both locally and globally in search engines..

At a quick glance of the terms your rank for

"house of wealth" - no local searches
"accounting for property investors" - no searches
"simple share trading calculator" - no searches

So while you may get some traffic from those searches.. it is only likely to be a trickle..

You would be better off using that tool to find out terms that are relevant to your market and have a high number of searches, then ensure you use those keywords within your articles.

Another key tip.. is to try and use keywords that have a high search volume.. and low competition volume..

You can check how many competing sites there are by searching those keywords in google and on the right it will say xx,xxx results.. that is the amount of competing sites..

So, High search volume + low competition volume = traffic.

A very very basic SEO lesson.. but those fundamentals will help you get high quality targeted traffic.

[JamesGG]

"house of wealth" - no local searches
"accounting for property investors" - no searches
"simple share trading calculator" - no searches

Hey Brendan, thanks for the tips. Like I mentioned above, I'm certainly no expert at these things and yes, traffic from google isn't anything great.

Funny thing is, though, that the reason we had a look to see which terms we ranked well for, was because we have the google analytics installed. That tells us how people have found our site, and all three of the above that you listed there were amongst them several times within the last week.

Anyway, I'm not too worried about google-directed traffic; it was just a nice feeling (and a good promotion opportunity on facebook!) to see that we're ranked #1 for 'accounting for property investors' and hoped to get this type of discussion moving - I'm sure that others here can make better use of that tool than we might.

Google, for the record, is also not the way that I even *want* to be getting much of our business. We have other main focuses for our business which work much better for us and our business model. So far, so good!

[one]

The Google adwords tool that Brendan refers to is great, I use it whenever I'm creating a new site or a new page for an existing site. I'm certainly no SEO expert, but what I try and do is use the adwords tool to find the most popular search phrases for whatever subject I'm covering, then I use those phrases and/or terms in the page URL, the page title and also the headings within the page. Then I throw a link to the page using my chosen phrase/term onto some of my existing sites that already rank well to ensure Google picks them up quickly.

It's pretty basic stuff, but it seems to work pretty well for me.

I also concur with Brendan's comments about the popularity of certain phrases. Some of my sites rank number 1 for phrases that I would think are quite common, but when I use the adwords tool they come up with little or no search volume. So it's great to be number 1, but they have to be phrases that people actually search for.