The end of the year is fast approaching. Hopefully, you have already started planning your marketing strategy for 2020 and Google is a significant component. If you haven’t, I suggest getting started so that you can begin the year strong. There are three key elements to winning on Google in 2020.
- Convince Google that you’re the authority in your market by consistently publishing high quality content on the niche(s) you want to dominate.
- Make acquiring positive Google reviews a priority. This increases your credibility and the likelihood that a prospect will ultimately convert.
- Don’t rely solely on Google Ads. Diversify your strategy by incorporating SEO. Many of your competitors rely on paid search, which leaves the window wide open for you to dominate organic search.
Convince Google That You’re the Authority in Your Market
By this, I mean convince Google that you are the authority within your niche or market. How do you accomplish this? By producing high quality content that your clientele will engage with on your website. By producing that high quality content, not only are you feeding the Google monster with content to index (Google loves fresh, quality content), but you’re also providing your clientele with content that they engage with, which increases your website’s engagement metrics and, in return, increases your rankings. Google likes to see those engagement metrics go up as they crawl and re-crawl your site throughout the year. And because we’re focusing on a specific niche or theme, we are telling Google that we are the authority in that niche or particular topic. When it comes to that particular content, you are the subject matter expert.
Make Acquiring Positive Google Reviews a Priority
Generating positive reviews helps tell the world that you are credible and trustworthy. Think about how many times you’ve researched a business that you might want to work with only to come across their Google My Business page and see that they have a few reviews here and there and are averaging a 2 or 3 star rating. This might cause you to think, “You know what, I’ll pass. I don’t want to take a chance on doing business with these people and not have a good experience. I don’t have time for that, and I don’t want to waste money.” So you move on to the company that has five star reviews, and lots of them. Well, your customers are doing the same exact thing. So, make sure you’re soliciting reviews from your happy customers and accumulating those super valuable 5-star ratings on your Google My Business page.
Don’t Rely Solely on Google Ads
I still see tons of companies rely primarily on Google Ads, and they don’t really put any emphasis on organic search. This blows my mind because there’s so much opportunity there, but this is to your benefit. If your competitors are focused primarily on pay-per-click advertising then that’s good for you because that opens up the window for you to jump in and dominate organic search. You don’t have to compete with them because they aren’t even thinking about organic search. Take advantage of this opportunity to become the authority in your market and box out your competitors on organic search.
If you want to win on Google in 2020, embracing organic search and reviews is vital.
