Chartered Surveyors: Quick tips for top ranks on Google

 

In a competitive property market, where more commercial agents are competing for fewer instructions, getting a higher position on Google has never been more important. In the past month, we have seen studies reporting that anything from 70% to as much as 85% of potential clients will see you first on the Internet.

Never before has it been so important to achieve a high ranking on Google for the services that you provide to your market. We all know that the best way to get ahead of those competing Chartered surveyors is to have an ongoing SEO programme. So with that in mind, here are a few quick tips:

Know Your Enemy

If you searched on Google for a commercial agent in your area, do you know who appears on page one? If not, get on and do it. Then study those competitor sites achieving such good rankings. What keywords are they optimising for and how are they doing that?

Look at the quality of their content and the frequency that they update that content – this will be the benchmark that you have to meet and surpass.

Finally it is important to look at what they are doing off-site to attain those high positions.

A Work In Progress

You should never consider your website finished. If you want to keep attracting more visitors and stay one step ahead of the competition your site needs to evolve and develop. Most importantly, you should be constantly looking to add new, quality content.

Flat And Not Deep

Aim for a flat structure to your website. Any one page of the website should be no more than three clicks away from the homepage. Flat structures not only make navigation easier for your audience, but also easier for the search engine bots to get about your website.

Write For People…

…not for Google. Ultimately you are trying to create content that informs and engages with people. Content that imparts your wide knowledge of commercial property and establishes you as an authority within your target market. If you can do that on a consistent level, then search engines will love you for it.

The more engaging the content on your website the longer visitors will dwell on those pages. In turn search engines will judge this as the sign of a popular website delivering value, that deserves a higher ranking.

Don’t Duplicate

Search engines hate duplication. If you have duplicate content on multiple pages of your website, you could be penalised for it. That also goes for content that is similar. Look through your website and identify pages that have very little content. Pages like this will usually result in very brief dwell time on the page, if Google spots this they could downgrade your rankings.

Don’t Rip Off Other Writers

Your website content needs to be original. Never copy content from another website, you run the risk of those pages that feature copied content being at best downgraded, at worst removed entirely from search results.

 

Philip Burrows, Marketing Consultant