I get asked this question a lot. The short answer: do the right thing. The long answer: that can take some time to study and learn, and then it’s not gonna matter anyways because the rules will change on you.

How do I get on page one of Google?

I tried to do keywords & ads but it was an expensive waste of money

–yep, we’ve all been there at some point. There’s a reason that you now get more than $600 in free ad credits to use on the big G. It’s to get you hooked. And, you DO see results!

But then it’s like a mirage because as soon as you stop paying, it doesn’t last. It’s like a giant shell game. Goog’s is trying to stay ahead of the scammers and the scammers are working their little bots uber hard to scam the system and we are caught in the middle.

And it seems like the only way to step outside of the game is to pay for ads. Such a frustrating scenario. But I’m here to tell you that if you’re consistent, keep swinging for the fences, you can make it happen without paying for those ads.

3 Steps to Help Your Business Rank on Google

Do you know what your customer wants to know?

In order to be found on Google, it’s important to answer questions that your ideal customer would have. And if you’ve blindly tried to throw money at ads on Google or Facebook, without knowing what questions your clients are looking for the answers to, you’ll find it’s easy to spend a lot of money and get limited, if any results. So, how can you figure out what answers your clients are looking for? Well, here are some free tools you can check out:

• Google keyword planner — this tool allows you to enter a subject or topic, using a couple of words your clients might search for in your niche. Then, it spits out a spreadsheet table of ‘related keywords’ and terms which people are using, already searching, that are related to your search term.
• Answer The Public–there is a free version. You have to give up your email, and it’s limited in how many searches per day you can do, but, if you’re thoughtful about your keywords in your niche, you can get a lot out of this tool for free! Once you’ve entered your terms and country you want to know about, it spits out the questions that people are already search for the answers to on the internet. Diagrams, lists, charts and images can all be individually downloaded for free.

Once you have “The Questions” in hand, you can go about creating a content plan that answers those questions for your audience.

These are two tools that are free that can set you on the path to reaching the right audience without having to pay for ads.

Content & connected strategy to get it out there

We talked about a couple of tools to find out what your audience is seeking knowledge about, the specific questions they’re asking. Now, what do we do with that information?

We need to evaluate, compare and prioritize the questions and create a plan to get it out there. Your plan might involve social media channels such as TikTok and YouTube, but if you plan it correctly, you can repurpose your content easily to other places, starting with your own website. (There are several reasons why you should be putting your content on your own website first, but that’s for another day!)

• Prioritize and answer the high CTR (click through rate) & ‘easy’ competition keywords–using Google’s keyword tool, you can organize the information it gave you into the projected highest click through rate or CTR. You can evaluate to see which are the “low competition” keywords–which means not many people are searching for that term necessarily, but also there are not many answers out there for that term either. The easiest keywords and search terms to capture audience from are these low competition terms and those which have a high CTR (meaning it’s very popular and lots of people are looking for the answer to that question or term.)

Content: Create video because everything can be broken off from there
Video is the very best content you can create to help out your SEO. It is pushed farther and wider on the internet these days. One of our partners in U3 has direct evidence of this and if you want to reach out to her, even has a Live Video Template to help you plan your “talk” and keep yourself on track.

Once your video is created, you can extract the transcript  (record your talks on a meeting tool which uses AI to create a transcript automatically and save yourself some work!) and turn it into a blog post, turn it into quotable quotes, related to your identified target keywords, and post them on social media, etc.

You can splice, trim & cut your video into clips for use in other places. The choices are endless. And, everything you publish creates more ranking signals. The more popular your content, the more ‘authority in the subject’ that the search engines see you as having. Therefore–over time, better ranking. Most importantly this results in ORGANIC growth on search engines (because you didn’t pay for it.)

Strategy: Be consistent-minimum weekly

If you’re not sending out the signals, the search engines think you are no longer relevant. Guess what happens when things become irrelevant? They don’t get shown on the search engines.

Ideally, you’re posting about 1200+ words per week of content. Minimum! The more, the better, obviously. But also, don’t be a slave to the search engines.

Just be a good, natural human who is out there trying to help your audience. Authentic, real connections with customers and audiences provide more ranking weight.

Have fun!

I mean it! The only content you create should be stuff you LOVE talking about, stuff that excites you and stuff that you want to teach others about. Your people will find you!

Conclusion: there’s lot’s more to getting onto page one of Google search results, but this is a few simple steps you can take that will head you in the right direction. Google wants to help people find the answers to the questions they have. If you know your customer questions, you can create content that Goog’s will serve up as answers to the people who are searching. My best hint: write for the people you love talking to, not for the search engine. Let your personality shine through and let your tribe find you.

Learn more about my Unconv3ntional SEO thoughts and find out why I’m trying to convince people to take their time and do it right instead of paying for ads.