Over the past few years, I have met with so many Entrepreneurs and one of the most frequent requests was “we want to be first on Google.”
If you arrived at this article you probably typed one of these keywords:
- how to become first on google
- how to be among the first google results
- be on the first page of google
- appear among the first results of google
- how to be visible on google
I have been involved in SEO consulting for several years, and it is a topic that fascinated and captivated me early on. Maybe it’s because I love math.
Well yes, today when we talk about SEO we talk about semantics, generative artificial intelligence…. but the basis of everything is always mathematics and statistics.
Recently, the term SEO has taken on a new meaning from Search Engine Optimization to Search Experience Optimization.
Google constantly reiterates that the fundamental element behind indexing is the value of the content published.
For this reason, in recent months, the search engine has been on a hunt for AI-generated content. Entire websites have been removed from search engine results.
Being first on Google: watch out for the shenanigans
If you are a business owner and are deciding to redo your website or implement your SEO Strategy, I recommend you read this paragraph.
Ranking first on Google is not just about making great content and intercepting searches made by users.
It means, first of all, winning over our competitors from an SEO perspective.
If I asked you now: name five of your competitors, what would you do?
Would you list the names of companies or businesses you know.
Realities that over the years have “taken customers away from you.”
Companies that sell the same product or service as you.
Companies that, every day, advertise on Google, print media, social media.
Here your SEO competitors can be something else entirely.
For example, you may find that, for certain keywords, your biggest competitor is a blogger. He doesn’t sell your products but lives on advertising.
First position on Google: of what?
I think it is essential to dispel some myths, because too often I read advertisements declaring “guaranteed first place on Google!”
- First of what? Of the whole site, of a page, or of a product?
- For how many keywords: 1, 10…. 100?
- For how long: 1 day, 1 month or forever?
I think there is no site in the world that ranks first on Google for all its pages and for all its keywords. Some times, Google’s own pages explaining Google are on the second and third pages.
Basically, we can say that we can appear first on Google for some content on our website.
I will explain myself better and try to do so with some examples.
Appear first on Google
Suppose your company is in the business of manufacturing and selling office furniture.
To make our lives easier, let’s say your catalog consists of 500 products.
During one of our meetings we saw how it is impossible to rank on search engines for all products.
Therefore, we decided to push the sale of the 50 products that have the highest marginality.
These 50 products are part of 2 macro families:
- Office desks
- Meeting tables
Well now let’s see what activities we need to do to rank 1 product on Google. You got it right-not all 50 products. Just 1.
We chose to place the meeting table.
If we perform a search using the query “meeting table,” Google alerts us that about 5,780,000 results are available 😅.
Skipping the sponsored ads we find this screen.
Now we need to figure out how to position our product on Google.
Let’s try to see if and how many competitors we have for keywords inherent to “meeting table.”
To perform this check, you can use the free “Keyword Planning Tool” found on Google ADS.
Below is a search starting with our reference query.
Google ADS allows us to display so much information.
The most important ones are:
- Average monthly searches: indicates on average how many times the query was used by users
- Quarterly (and if desired annual) change: indicates the change over time. This is an extremely important piece of information because it indicates the trend of search on is either up, or down.
- Competition: perhaps one of the most important parameters. It indicates whether that key is used by our SEO competitors in their content. As you can see all queries have high competition.
All this information is extremely useful in determining whether to invest on the query or not.
If you want to run a paid campaign with Google ADS the last two columns allow you to figure out how much a “click” made by a user on your sponsored content might cost.
Now I do not want to dwell on the strategy to be used to choose the keyword.
The goal of this article is not to explain how to set up SEO strategy, but to understand that ranking can be done for specific keywords.
What keyword to use to get first on Google?
Suppose we chose “boardroom table.”
At this point we are going to customize the text of our product focusing on the main keyword “boardroom table,” also we will try to include some secondary keywords.
I emphasize “we will search” because a text cannot be filled with Keywords because we risk incurring what is called keyword stuffing.
If you want, you can also use image SEO TAGs to add text and keywords to your product.
If you want to learn more about this topic by reading Image SEO: our 8-point checklist.
Well… we did a great job and little by little our content ranks on Google until it reaches the 1st page.
Overjoyed with the result we perform a search using the query “office meeting tables” but our product is not there 🥲because it was placed for the other keyword.
I hope I have succeeded in explaining why “being first on Google” is a meaningless phrase unless it refers to specific keywords.
If you need inspiration you can also try asking ChatGPT for help by asking them to make you a table of keywords to use in making your product descriptions.
Being first on Google: conclusions
“Being first on Google” is often the main goal of many companies who wish to increase their online visibility and, consequently, their traffic and conversions.
However, as you have seen, this statement is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Ranking on Google depends on a number of factors, including content quality, keyword competition, and website optimization strategy.
One of the keys to achieving success on Google is keyword research and analysis.
It’s not just about being first on Google in general, but being first for keywords relevant to your business.
This means understanding the search behavior of your target audience and creating content that responds to their questions and needs.
In addition, it is important to constantly monitor the performance of your website and make any necessary optimizations.
This includes analyzing data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console to understand which pages and keywords are generating traffic and conversions, as well as technical optimization of the website to ensure a good user experience and easy indexing by search engines.
Finally, it is essential to maintain an ethical and sustainable approach to SEO. This means avoiding unfair practices such as keyword stuffing or link buying, which could damage your website’s reputation in the eyes of Google and users.
In conclusion, being first on Google is an achievable goal, but it requires commitment, strategy and constant monitoring.
Focusing on keywords relevant to your business, creating quality content, and constantly optimizing your website are key steps to achieving and maintaining a prominent position on search engines.
Being first on Google: insights
If you would like to explore these issues further, you can also read these articles
