How We Ranked A Brand New Contractor On Page #1 Of Google In Just 7 Months (In A Competitive Market)
This case study isn’t for all contractors and service providers.
If you’re already #1 on Google for all of your keywords (“your service” + “your city”) then this case study isn’t going to help you much.
However, if you’re not ranking at the top of Google then this case study can help you start climbing the ranks of Google to get that phone ringing with people looking for your services.
You can use these same strategies to gain a massive increase in ranking on your website within the next 60 days. That means going from:
- Not ranking at all to hitting page #5
- Page #5 to page #3-4
- Page #3-4 to page #2
- Page #2 to page #1
We reliably use these strategies to land our websites & our client’s websites on page #1 of Google again and again. Even in highly competitive areas.
So how do we do it?
We use the Trust Method.
Simply put: the best way to rank well on Google is by getting Google to trust your website.
Think about it from Google’s perspective…
Google makes money when people use their platform. So they’re incentivized to give their users the best, most relevant search results possible. If Google does this, their users will keep coming back to their platform and they’ll keep making money.
If Google trusts that your website is a good, relevant website, then they’re going to show it to their users.
So how do you get Google to trust your website? This is where the trust method comes in.
Here is how we took to get this brand new business to the top of page 1 for their main service in just 7 months.
Step 1: Website Optimization
In order to rank on Google, you need to make it painfull clear to Google what your site is about.
Good communication is key to building trust in any relationship, and it’s not different with Google.
There are three key things that Google looks at to determine what your website (and the various pages on your website) are about. Those things are:
- Title
- Description
- Main Heading (H1)
If you want to check what these things are for any given page of your website, you can do so by pulling a report at seoscan.org.
What most people do is just use their company name in these three fields, such as Joe’s Plumbing. By doing that, they’re telling Google that your website is about Joe’s Plumbing.
Here’s the problem…
Nobody is searching for Joe’s Plumbing.
Instead, people are searching for “plumber in phoenix az” or “phoenix plumber” or “plumbing company phoenix” etc.
Those are the searches you need to be showing up for, and so those are exactly the kinds of things you need to include in your website title, description, and heading.
Here’s what this report looks like for this client on seoscan.org:
Step 2: Citations
If we’re going to get Google to trust your business’ website, then Google needs to see your business doing normal, trustworthy things.
That includes having profiles on major social media websites and business directories. These are what we call citations.
This includes websites you’re probably familiar with like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, BBB, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, and Angi.
But it also includes websites you probably aren’t familiar with like BuildZoom, LocalStar, TrustedPros, BizCitation, and ChooseLocalBusiness.
Truth be told, there are hundreds of these websites that you can list your business on, and you want to list you business on as many of them as you can.
When you create these profiles, you’ll need to make sure you fill them out with all of the same information. That means your business name, address, phone number, hours, website, email, etc.
When I say the same information, I mean the exact same.
Don’t have your business listed as Joe’s Plumbing on one site and Joe’s Plumbing, LLC on another site. This is only going to confuse Google.
By having your business listed on all these different sites with the exact same information, Google will see that consistency and deem your site as more trustworthy.
Step 3: Press Release
After citations done, it’s time to launch a press release.
These press releases aren’t going to be seen by many people (if any), but you know who is going to see them?
Google.
When you create a press release and get it published on 300+ news websites across the web it creates massive trrust with Google for two key reasons.
First, these press releases aren’t published on any old websites.These are published on news sites that Google already trusts.
That means that trust that Google has in those sites is then passed on to your site.
Secondly, not only do these press releases contain your business’ name, email, and phone number consistent with all of the citations you just built, but they also include a link to your website.
Links are strong trust signals to Google. If Google sees that your website has a lot of links, unless the links look like spam, Google is going to take that as a sign of trust and authority and reward you with higher rankings.
And that brings us to the last step.
Step 4: Link Building
Like I just mentioned above, links are strong trust signals to Google, so it’s in your best interest to build a lot of them.
With that being said, you need to be careful, because with great power comes great responsibility. Let me explain.
If you want Google to trust your website, the links you build need to look natural.
If Google thinks that the links you have pointing to your site don’t look natural, Google is going to penalize your site.
So how do you make sure your links look natural?
First of all, you need to understand what anchor text is. Anchor text is simply the text that links to your site.
Most natural links on the web are naked links and branded links. Here are a couple examples:
Naked link: www.joesplumbing.com
Branded link: Joe’s Plumbing
You’ll also commonly see links with anchor text that’s simple website or click here, but most links are branded or naked, therefore, you need to make sure when you’re building link that most of the links you build use these most common types.
Lastly, you’ll want to build links that have your keywords as anchor text. For example, arizona plumbing company. These links are going to signal to Google that your website is about arizona plumbing company and your rank for that keyword will increase as a result.
Remember: you don’t want Google to think you’re trying to game the system. If Google is going to trust your site, it needs to look natural.
Here is a good ratio of anchor text to follow with your links.
If you keep building links to your site, you’ll see your rankings increase.
Now you try
These are the basic steps we followed to get this brand new business onto page #1 in just 7 months.
Once you use this Google strategy, even if you’re not ranking at all, within 60 days you’ll go from not being on Google’s radar at all up to page #5, even in competitve markets.
And if you’re already on page #2, in 60 days you can expect to see your site finally showing up on the coveted page #1.