In 2003, our CEO Ali Husayni was introduced to SEO. Page 1 Solutions hired him as a project manager and trained him for several months. At the time, Google SEO was a mystery and Page 1 didn't have the knowledge to rank clients on the first page. Ali saw an opportunity to learn how Google algorithm works.
He founded Top Organic Leads (then known as Sinai Marketing) in 2004 with the focus on Google search engine optimization.
Since there was no knowldge of Google at the time and Google didn't provide any insights as how its algorithm worked, he started by trial and error. Within a few years, he learned black-hat techniques to rank websites on the first page of Google within a couple of weeks. And then BOOM! Google penalized our site and our clients for SEO malpractice. The issue was building back links for the sites.
Several months into depression, he decided to return and only focus on white-hat Google SEO.
The process was painful and slow, but had longevity. Since then, our clients never lost positions on Google through hundreds of updates Google makes yearly.
Today, competing on top of Google search results (including its AI, Gemeni) is not an easy task. It requires expertise in multiple fields. On this page, we'll dive into what Top Organic Leads does to rank its clients on top of Google and keeping them there.
Note 1: Here is a Google SEO case-study showing what our efforts has done for one of our auto glass clients.
Note: some tactics and techniques we use are our properitory trademark secrets and we will not discuss them here.
Google Business Profile
In the past few years, we have focused on lead generation for local businesses. Therefore, an important element of our efforts is focused on clients GBP's.
We discuss how to optimize GBP in detail on the linked page.
To recap, you need to have an active GBP with more five-star reviews than your competition. This is the easy part of Google SEO and its effect is tremendous. Please note that the GBP page must be properly optimized and its reviews must be legit.
Website
This is where the real work begins. Every small business has a website however, Google ranks these sites based on over 100 different criteria.
Here is a break-down of the important elements you should have in mind if you are serious about competing on Google:
Content
Your site's content must be educational, comprehensive, fresh and engaging. At Top Organic Leads, most of our efforts is focused on developing content that ranks well on Google. Through out the years, we've hired professional writers who research your field of business as well as your competition and write effective copy. These copies include images and sometimes videos for better user-enagement.
Nowdays, using AI has made it easy for companies to generate tremendous amound of content cost-effectively. Although, Google says it doesn't care whether content is human-written or AI-generated, our tests comparing the two indicate otherwise. In other words, professional human-written content ranks better than AI-generated ones.
So, if you're not hiring us to take care of your site's lead generation, make sure you invest in hiring professional writers to write great content for you.
The rule-of-thumb is that you need a minimum 2,000 words per page of your site (excluding the homepage).
Design
Google is now monitoring the conversion rate of each website including internal pages. Also, low-converting sites rank lower than high-converting sites on Google search results. Why? Because Google wants a great User Experience (UX) for its customers (searchers). Sites that have lower conversion rate don't provide what the user is looking for - or at least that's how they perceive it.
Focusing on a site design that has a clear understanding of UX is crucial. This is before making your site look beautiful.
Once you understand what needs to go on your site and where, then your User Interface (UI) designer starts the actual design. The design should be "flat". Removing any unenecessary elements including shades, borders, etc. and instead using "white-spaces" to seperate elements.
Don't forget the human connection on every page of your site. People are attracted to people. If you're not personally connecting to your audience, the chances they contact you goes down.
Studies show that adding human connection including customer testimonials, people behind products, etc. increases conversion rate by 40%-80%.
Development
After your site's design is complete, it's time to build it (code it). The easy ways are always the worst. Templated sites or wide-used CMS' (such as Word Press) make the job much easier, however, they lack performance and security. Read our page comparing Word Press and Next.JS sites.
A custom code of your site gives Google the impression that you care about performance and clean code. We put a lot of efforts into building sites that load very fast and give the user a great experience.
Optimization
Website optimization could mean a lot of different things. What we mean here is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Understanding the right keywords and placing them in the right place helps your site to be found on Google and AI's.
Read more on how to effectively optimize your website.
Monitoring and A/B Testing
Once everything is setup properly, you'll start getting leads. However, checking the performance of your site and updating it on a regular basis is crucial in winning this game.
A/B testing provides solid information as to what is working and what is not working on your sites.
Read the following page to learn more about how Google has evolved over time.
We also have a page on Google SEO trends that we update it once a year.
