As a business owner focused on direct sales, it can be challenging to see the value or a reason why you should invest resources into your Google ranking and organic traffic. We’ve spent the last couple of years focusing on our own Google rankings, as well as helping others navigate their own issues, so we decided to share what we learned. Why Google specifically? They still hold around a 90% dominance on the search engine market. Most of these practices will also be carried over to other places like Bing, YouTube, and TikTok.
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic is just the people who visit your website that aren’t coming from paid advertising or cold outreach. Blogs, social media posts, and backlinks will make up the majority of your organic traffic.
If you’re only focused on cold calling and direct outreach, you’re limited by the fact that you can only reach out to a certain number of people daily. With the right content being served on Google and other search engines, you can reach a larger group of people with similar issues.
Does it matter what I built my website on?
There are plenty of great site-building tools with SEO integrations to help rank on Google. Anyone who says things like “Wix is bad for SEO,” probably hasn’t used a Wix site in the last 10 years. If you plan on making minor edits and maintaining the website yourself to keep your budget down, a builder like Wix is probably the best option unless you have some knowledge of JavaScript or HTML.
No matter what the site is built on, optimizing your pages and structuring them properly is the most important thing. Include H1, H2, and H3 headings. These break your content down into sections that make it easy for Google to understand where to place it. Keep your file sizes small. WebP and SVG are preferred over PNG images. Any videos should also be either small files, like webm, or embedded from other sites like YouTube.
Use your blogs to build authority and credibility in your industry
Someone probably told you your website needs a blog. You may have even made one, added a few posts, and never updated it again. Or maybe your blog is just a list of events you’re attending or awards your company has won. That’s good for people who already know your company to reinforce your expertise, but it won’t do much to drive organic traffic to your website.
You need to show Google that you are an authority in your industry, especially if there is a lot of competition. The easiest topics to start with are the problems your customers already come to you for. This way, you can include real data or examples to build credibility. One post isn’t going to make much of a difference either, you need new content regularly. You also need to monitor your analytics through free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics or paid tools like SEMRush.
Focus on quality content over filler
Google uses the EEAT method to review content (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
Stuffing your blogs with keywords and filler to reach 2000 words may help your ranking, but Google is known to push those types of pages to the back of search results or remove them altogether. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are great if you get stuck on a topic or a sentence, but their output still requires some human editing and experience to make the content worth it for a reader. A visitor isn’t going to stick around long on a page that doesn’t really answer the question they had, and Google pays attention to stick time on a page. If people regularly leave your site after a few seconds, it signals to Google that it’s not what that audience is looking for.
Explainer videos are one of our clients' most popular tools to keep visitors on their site. When someone clicks in, they’ll first see a 1-minute overview of the brand or product.
Boost your credibility with backlinks and mentions in other articles
Backlinking is when other websites link back to your pages. This could be an article that quotes something from one of your blogs, a listing site that shows other similar service providers, or a brand partner.
If you have YouTube or a business page on LinkedIn, those are easy backlinks to get immediately.
Review your analytics to make sure the right audience is seeing your content
As we mentioned, Google Search Console is a great free tool. It allows you to connect your domain and see what keywords your website is ranking for over time. You’ll also see average position and clicks. The setup process doesn’t take very long—we can even help you with that!
Google My Business is key to local SEO
Your Google My Business listing is your business profile on google search. If someone looks for a service provider or product in their area, your business profile should show up on that list. If you already have a Google My Business listing, when did you last update it? You can add photos, make announcements, list your services, and collect reviews.
The more reviews you have, the more credible you are to Google and anyone who comes across your listing.
Showing up in Google’s AI overviews
We’ve all seen at least one of the wildly incorrect answers Google’s AI overview has given someone. While it’s still not perfect, there are going to be a chunk of people searching that probably won’t go beyond it for their answer, so it’s important to become a source for the overview.
Check if there’s already an overview for the topic you’re talking about. See if there are any knowledge gaps you can fill in, or support with better information.
Use Schema markup to help Google understand your content
Schema markup is a type of structured data that helps search engines understand the content of your page in a more detailed and organized way. It uses the Schema.org vocabulary, which is a set of standard terms and types that search engines like Google, Bing, and others recognize.
Your markup will typically include the section headings, direct links to any of the content on the page like videos and photos. You’ll also want to include a breadcrumb list. All of these things help Google add rich content to your page in the search, like adding a table of contents to the result.
Need help ranking on Google?
At Purely Imagined, we spealize in SEO optimized blogs and content creation that helps businesses rank on Google. Our team reviews your website and content to see what drives engagement and sales. We also create explainer videos, software demos, and 3D product renders. If you’re ready to do some paid advertising we can also help with Google display ads. Set up a 15 minute intro call with our team to learn more!