A lot of times businesses tend to over do it and make things more complicated, but ranking a business on Google really only takes three simple steps. Trust, Consistency, and Power are the three ingredients to brewing a success story on Google.

 

Trust

 

Gaining trust with Google is a combination of several factors.  The more trust a site has the more likely it will be ranked much higher than other restoration sites.  There are simple things you can do to build trust for your domain.

 

1. Content  

 

What To Do:  Have unique content on each page.  Put around 400 words on every page of solid content.    

 

Don’t Over Do It:  Don’t add 500 Pages of blog posts about water flooding a home or think adding a written novel about hazardous mold on your home page is going to get your site Ranked #1.  This is just extra work that won’t have the affect you desire.  And DO NOT copy and paste from other sites onto yours.  

 

2. Business Listings – Also Known As Citations  

 

What To Do:  Make sure your business is listed in every directory you can find.  There are helpful programs out there that are trustworthy to use and pay for.  Yext and Moz Local are two effective ways to ensure that your business is listed everywhere.

 

Don’t Over Do It:  You always want to avoid duplicate listings.  Therefore, don’t hire two SEO companies that are both trying to make listings.  Also, don’t hire companies that will create the listings and then they put their phone number on the listings.  These companies do this to lock you in a contract and when you cancel it will harm your SEO once that number is changed/disappears. 

 

3. A User Friendly Website

 

What To Do:  Ensure your keywords are set up correctly, including your META Tags.  Have a site that loads quickly and never goes down.  Make sure your site is responsive on all mobile devices.  

 

Everyone wants to rank high on Google, right? Well, there are some clear-cut ways to make that happen, and some equally clear no-nos in the process.

 

The first rule is don't over do it. Do not overuse your key words. In that, I mean make sure you don’t fill your title tags with all your services such as this:  “Water Damage Missoula Water Removal Water Emergency” etc. – using words over and over again will actually harm things because it looks spammy.  

 

Also, don’t host with a site that is $1 a month! Most likely the site will take forever to load and will be down a lot, thus hurting your trust with Google.

 

Sixty percent of searches are done on peoples’ phones, so having a responsive site is imperative. Google also had an update last year that was called “Mobilegeddon,” which requires one to have a mobile friendly site in order to rank on Google.

 

Does your site pass Google's test? Click here to find out.  

 

So what should your site have?

 

Consistency

 

One important thing is showing Google the same business information in all the directories, which should match your Google Business Listing. It looks really bad to Google if you have multiple addresses and phone numbers that don’t match up. This confuses Google and will harm your SEO. Just always remember to keep it simple and keep it honest.

 

Power       

 

Every domain has some sort of authority. This power is composed from a variety of things and is built up over time.  It’s important to remember that ranking on Google takes time, patience, and trust.  

 

So just like your credit score increases with age and consistency, so does your Google ranking. Here is what Google considers:

 

1. Age:  If your domain has some years behind it Google will trust it more, especially when you begin building links to it. Think of your grandfather and the stories he may tell you; you automatically know that grandpa isn’t lying, right? 

 

2. Trust & Consistency:  What I went over in the above categories is also needed to gain power.

 

3. Building Links:  When another website with high authority links to your site, it’s giving your site “juice” to gain more power. When backlinks are being built, and everything is going great with the trust and consistency, then you’ll see a very positive increase in ranking. These links need to come from sites that are industry-related, because Google is now looking at your site and where the links are coming from. For instance, you don’t want a gambling site linking to a water damage site because it doesn’t make sense that those two categories would be related. 

 

A lot of times what I see are people losing patience and people expecting too much or wanting more. To be perfectly honest, it does take time to rank well, and yes, there are always a few that hit the jackpot and rank right away.  

 

Expect around four to six months to rank in your area and sometimes it could be more depending on the competiveness of the market. Don’t expect to rank in the top three for ten different cities; it’s not going to happen. If you rank high for two to five cities with one site, you’re pretty lucky in my opinion, and this is for high-end keywords like “Water Damage Colorado Springs.”  

 

A lot of companies will tell you they can rank your site in the top three for as many cities as you want, but what they’re not telling you is the keywords they are ranking you for is something no one types in. If you want to rank in a variety of cities you basically have to prove to Google that you’re a franchise with various commercial locations, which they will check on.

 

So, just remember TCP: Trust, Consistency & Power!