The best place to hide a dead body is Page 2 of Google Search Results.

Statistics reveal that while searching about a company, 42% choose the one listed on Google Page 1, only 21% go for the Page 2 entries.

 

What does this suggest?
It suggests that the first always gets preference, even on Google. But there’s no black magic to capture it, but there is SEO to make this happen. Every business just needs to stay consistently awesome every single time it reaches the audience. So let’s see, what are the SEO hacks to freeze this idea…

1. CONTENT IS KING

In the web-driven era today, content is the key to success for every business. Content adds value to consumers by educating them about the product/service. Instead of disturbing the surfers with direct sales advertisements, compelling, informative as well as interesting content gives consumers an opportunity to authentically engage with the brand. This’ll help turn prospects into buyers and buyers into long-term fans.
If the content is genuinely good & engaging, users will pause to understand the brand & its message, even appreciate with likes/comments/shares. Else, they’ll just scroll down.
High-quality & unplagiarised content always stands out from the crowd. It positively impacts your SEO & helps earn a glowing backlink profile. So you win at Content Marketing only when your audience says, “This was written specifically for me !”

 

2. REGULAR BRANDING

Millennial consumers are highly fascinated by brands that share their beliefs, and in turn, thus remain loyal to them. So it goes without failing to say that “BUSINESSES THAT ARE WELL-BRANDED, STAND OUT.”
Customer research is, therefore, a critical aspect to boost Branding. When Dhoni says to use “GO DADDY”, India goes mad to go to “GO DADDY”! That’s the magic of building an emotional rapport with the customers. Building this brand identity only helped Toyota to battle some genuine quality product issues back in 2009 & retain its loyal customers. Moreover, one-way purchasers usually prefer leaning towards the brands they know & trust.
Thus, branding brings a host of benefits :
• Creates customer loyalty
• Boosts credibility
• Boosts employees’ morale & job satisfaction, helping them take pride in what they do• Fetches top talent, like the cream section of employees, to work for you
• Attracts investors
• Helps encounter temporary crisis/failures

John Stewart, the previous CEO of Quaker says “If the business splits up and I give you the land, bricks, and cement, and take the goodwill and trademarks, I’d still stand better than you.”

 

3. DEVELOP THE BEST UX/UI DESIGN

UX Design means User Experience Design, UI Design means User Interface Design. Both these designs together help market a product.

User experience can be defined as the understanding of user needs to help and create products and services that provide value and meaningful experience to the user journey. Today consumers demand everything to be accessible instantly, whether match tickets, hotel bookings, food orders or shopping, etc. Thus for businesses that prefer to play smart in revenue generation, UX is the key to their success & survival. Because, experiences will happen anyway, decide whether you’ll design for them or not!

 

Digital marketers are generally keen just on conversions, and this can sometimes result in a potentially negative UX. For every business, a website is the strongest marketing asset, so creating a good UX for it is the best way to make it an effective foolproof marketing tool. The success of your business is dependent on positive user experience, so if your users don’t enjoy engaging with you online, they probably won’t convert. Thus, Marketing without UX is like throwing darts in the dark.

4. MOBILE-FIRST INDEXING

With the rapidly hiking smartphone users, the way we access information or buy products has significantly changed. Though desktop remains the official preference, mobiles inarguably are the hub of all online activities. Thus Google is building a bold new future for the mobile content & mobile-first index is the latest development in its these efforts to make the web more mobile-friendly for catering to its users.
Mobile-first indexing simply means that Google rewards the mobile version of content/websites for indexing & ranking. AMP & App Streaming are some of the features rolled out by Google for the same. Though there is no such official declaration behind-the-scenes story reveals that there is no guarantee that Google will crawl / index the desktop version, once it has seen the mobile version. Thus, technically this can be craftily put as, “THE INTERNET ISN’T DEAD, IT’S MOBILE !”

5. DEVELOPING RESPONSIVE WEBSITE

Throughout 2014, 4G subscriptions skyrocketed from 2.7 million to 23.6 million. By 2016, mobile web usage had overtaken desktop for the first time, which clearly shows how many people browse on smartphones and tablets instead of a laptop or desktop computer. So RWD (Responsive Web Design) is the need of the hour. RWD aims to design web pages in such a way that they are accessible at speed on a variety of devices & in all screen sizes, especially, mobiles.

In 2018, Google announced its decision to migrate sites that best followed mobile-first indexing. A responsive website hasn’t only impacted the way businesses build their online visibility but also is a key factor in ranking higher at Google. When it comes to online buying and selling, mobile apps completely steal the show, by making the brands available at customers’ fingertips.

 

In today’s Digital Era, therefore, overcoming the constraints of a mobile screen, such as limited screen size, short browsing sessions, one-window-at-a-time-view, etc. can’t be overlooked. In fact, apart from this, your website needs to be Search-engine-friendly. For example, Flash, which was often used in websites for animations, is no longer recommended from an SEO standpoint as it does not run on mobiles and takes too long to load.
Remember, there are three responses to web design: yes, no & wow. Wow is the one to aim for.

6. USING VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION

Voice Search is the latest & most popular revolution in Digital Marketing. According to PWC Reports, 71% of searches in the near future will be voice searches rather than typing-driven ones. What’s more alarming is that earlier this feature was available only in English, but with frequent technological updations, like the Hummingbird in 2013, Google Voice Search itself offers 60 languages!
This for sure is going to adversely impact the differences in SERP results of typed & voiced queries. This clearly means that if your competitors provide Voice Search Optimized Websites, they have an edge to beat you by having better chances of engaging your potential customers and converting them.
The most threatening aspect of Voice Search is that people using it’ll get only one top result, termed as “Position Zero”. A ranking no.1 battle will now shift to battle for Position Zero in the near future, as by 2020, half of the searches be voiced. This definitely will turn a nightmare for every business because, with the rewarding of Voice Optimized Websites, by 2020, your potential customers won’t see you even if you’re 4th in the SERP!

7. IMPLEMENTING SSL SECURITY TO IMPROVE AUTHORITY

SSL stands for “Secure Socket Layer”. It’s a globally accepted industry standard for web security technology. SSL establishes an encrypted link between the web server & the browser. This secure link ensures the privacy & integrity of the data between the two. Owing to encryption, even if the data gets hacked, it won’t be meaningful at all. Even if the websites don’t handle any sensitive data, SSL certification ensures secured credit card information/ transactions, etc., helping customers build faith in the transparency of your website.

8. BLOGGING & ADDING VIDEO CONTENT

Video and marketing go together like peanut butter and jelly. From traditional television commercials in the 1960s to today’s YouTube, Snapchat, Vimeo, and even Facebook Live, the video is one of the most preferred contents for practical & demonstrative understanding. It’s the best tool to educate your audience about your business in an engaging & interesting manner. Retention of video content is 95%, compared to only 10% in textual content. Your website is 53% more likely to appear on Google Page 1 if it flaunts a video.

 

Amidst the popularly of videos, blogs their own irreplaceable place. Regular blogging not only boosts SEO, but it also serves as a medium of conveying the brand’s image & identity to the audience & building a rapport with them. This is what Ziglar says, “If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

9. EXPLORING SOCIAL MEDIA & LINK BUILDING

Link building is a strategy that links different web pages &generates hyperlinks from different websites & links to your own site. It not also helps search engines crawl between the pages on your website, but also in navigating between different e-pages.
In the largest industry survey on how SEO professionals do link building in 2019, the results showed that most specialists use social media for link building.
Thus, social media is one of the biggest platforms in Digital Marketing to viral any content& generate links. Owing to the craze social media holds today in all age groups & businesses, developing high-quality & shareable content is the master key to unlock SEO.

 

10. FOCUS ON USER EXPERIENCE

In every marketing strategy, the user is the one who needs to be at the core of every focus. Prioritizing user experience alone can help businesses understand their needs, their shortcomings, their preferences, etc. With the ceaseless flow of options in the Digital World today, it doesn’t suffice to customers that are merely satisfied. The grey side of the story is that an unhappy customer obviously switch, but unfortunately, a satisfied customer may also switch, on the grounds that he won’t lose much.

This is therefore what Steve Jobs suggests: “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need, well before they realize it themselves.”