Is Page One of Google Possible for Your Small Business?

Page one of Google is the place every business wants to be seen. But there’s limited space, competition is fierce, and money doesn’t grow on trees. In my business, as a copywriting service which provides small companies with search friendly content, I’m often asked how to get on page one of Google and my response is always the same: it’s not about being at the top of the organic search results, it’s about traffic to your site and conversions.

That’s what online copywriting is, a resource to help your site get traffic, to become a trusted source over time, and increase conversion rates. People don’t see the forest through the trees when it comes to search engine optimization, they just believe if they get their business on page one of Google, it will reap inestimable rewards.

That might be. But what’s being overlooked is how unlikely that is to happen. It’s not only because of bigger fish in the pond of your industry, but sea changes that occur within the search giant--you can't predict when the search engines will change the rules of the game.

Page One of Google, the Carrot on a Stick

If you look at my Google+ profile, you’ll see I write a lot about search optimization and its relation to content. And there’s a good reason why I spend so much time on the subject. If you look at what the search engines are doing, they are moving on a steady course to all but eliminate anonymity on the web.

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever. --Google Webmaster Tools

Why, you might ask? What good would pulling back the curtain serve? And how would the search engines benefit from doing so?

The answer is credibility. The more credibility and trustworthiness a search engine gains, the better for its advertising business. By putting a name and face to every piece of content on the internet (or at least the pages included in the indexes), it personalizes that content. To put it another way, people will trust a source which has demostrable experience and knowledge about a subject rather than an anonymous one.

And that’s changing SEO in a big way. Sure, you’ll see for some time to come spam emails from companies that claim they can show you how to get on page one of Google fast, or do it for you, but the old adage if its sounds too good to be true, it probably is ought to give you pause.

What you shouldn't be doing is putting time and effort to try to get on page one of Google, but to increase traffic to your site. And you can do that simply by regularly publishing informative, quality content.