Business owners (understandably) are usually keen to know where their business ranks on Google compared to their competitors. Improving Google ranking for keyphrases related to your business means more exposure for your products and services from people searching for them on Google. But how can this be achieved?
One of RWD’s additional services is our Digital Marketing add-on. Clients who sign up to this get the benefit of our expertise to help them achieve their goal of ranking higher for relevant keyphrases. So for those who might be interested, we thought we’d lay out in detail precisely what this service entails and the advantages that accrue from signing up to it.
Website Design Features
We build a website from the keywords up. Before anything else, we research what words and phrases people are typing into search engines to access products and services in your industry and then we incorporate those relevant words entirely naturally into the fabric of your website.
(We stress ‘entirely naturally’ to distinguish our effective light touch from the defunct practice of ‘keyword stuffing’ whereby developers would claim they could fool search engine algorithms by repeated - and often ungrammatical - use of keywords within the text of a page.)
Relevant keywords in the title, URL, back end meta tags, and image descriptions, all help indicate to Google that the page matches the search term and makes it more likely to be displayed higher up. Due diligence from RWD in this department gives our clients a headstart on the rankings.
Google Business Profile
We list our client’s websites in a few online directories, but the most important of these is the Google Business Profile. This is the box to the right of the search results that displays company information when someone searches for your business name. It is essential that this is set up correctly (and ideally, updated with regular postings). If your business is verified by Google through the Business Profile, then it may start to appear as a recommended local business on map listings within the search results.
Regular Blogging
If you never update your website, Google will recognise this and prioritise other websites that are active and updated. The simplest way to avoid this fate is by updating your website with regular posts to the blog. We recommend a minimum of one per month and this is the core service that we supply as part of our Digital Marketing add-on.
We’ve already stressed the importance of keywords in getting your website pages to rank higher on Google search listings. Done properly, blogging is a unique opportunity to match so-called long-tailed keyphrases and pick up traffic searching for quite specific terms. Let’s lay this out with an example.
Say you have a fencing company that has pages devoted to products such as “wooden fences”, “iron railings”, “picket fencing” etc. You and your local competitors will jostle around for the top organic positions available for these terms. But you can steal a march on them by also ranking for search terms such as:
- “What to do if your fence is blown down?”
- “Hardwood vs softwood fencing”
- “Replacement for damaged fence”
- “What is featheredge fencing?”
All topics that could be covered in a short blog and may be searched for by people in the market for a new fence.
Articles for the blog also make great content to share on your social media profiles to generate conversation and potentially conversions from your followers there.
Case Studies
This is a narrow class of articles that can be sprinkled among the wider variety of posts on the blog or pulled out and given its own dedicated section of the website. A great place to showcase the quality of your company’s work. But also a good way of matching location based searches such as (to stick with our previous example) “fencers Attleborough” or “closeboard fencing near me”.
Our copywriters can quickly draft up case studies from a few bullet pointed notes or just the specification sheets that your teams work from. We will rely on you to supply images of the work that you do. For many industries, a simple before and after is often the most effective accompaniment to a case study article and our designers can give these a beautiful framing in your brand colours.
Again, these have the potential to make great sharable content for your social media profiles.
Review Responses
Responding to reviews can be an emotional experience. You invest so much time and energy in your business that you may feel genuine elation when that is recognised and depression when someone posts something negative.
There’s a skill in crafting a response to a negative review: knowing when and how to apologise for genuine oversight and error, knowing how to politely maintain the moral high ground, whilst calmly stating an alternative view of the events described. And knowing when and how to raise a complaint with a reviewing platform for a misleading or malicious review. RWD possesses these skills and is happy to deploy them on your behalf. We’ll also say ‘thank you’ to the vast majority of reviewers who loved their experience with your organisation.
Prompt review responses are all part of making sure your company has a consistent digital presence and another reminder to your potential customers (and the Google algorithm) that your business is a going concern.
Social Media
We believe that a company should only have social media accounts that are active. If you glance at a company’s Facebook page and see that their last post was a Happy Christmas message posted in December 2022, you might assume that they are no longer in business.
Our best advice to organisations is to choose a channel or two to focus on (this might be LinkedIn for B2B sales, X (Twitter) if you make regular company announcements, or Instagram if you like sharing visually appealing content).
When we post a blog or a case study, we will share it on the social media accounts you are active on - ensuring they remain active even if you have a busy spell and don’t have time to post on them yourself.
Traffic travelling from engaging social media posts back to your website is another signal to Google that you are active and may even contain potential new customers who have been exposed to your business through that channel.
RWD Clients
We have clients that have been using our Digital Marketing add-on for over a decade. These clients have built up a library of blog articles that bring a steady traffic of people who have started their search by entering a long tailed keyphrase into Google and who will hopefully be finishing it by contacting the business.
Other clients have taken up the service more recently and are finding productive ways to work on their own business while RWD gets on with ensuring that their online presence is relevant, consistent and updated regularly.
Tim Kinnaird, Founder of Macarons & More said:
“RWD are brilliant. They rebuilt our website and helped us move from small time/selling a bit online to No.1 on Google with our online sales now our primary source of income. They are responsive, clever and get things done on time.”
Read more of our five star reviews on Google.
Does our Digital Marketing add-on sound like a good fit for your business? You can contact RWD by calling our office on 01603 632552 or emailing info@rwd.group to request an initial meeting.
