How to Build an Online Business

Chapter 18How to get on page one of Google

Aside from North Korea’s nuclear missile deployment, the Myanmar crisis and the sinking of the Kiribati islands, getting found online is one of the greatest challenges of our time — a first-world problem perhaps, but for businesses trying to make a go of it, a very real problem. And it’s the first problem they need to address if they are to hold their own in the online world.

Where’s the best place to hide a dead body?

On page two of Google.

So you’ve got your website up and running. Great! There’s only one problem. No-one can find it. Your site, that is, and all that lovely content you spent months crafting lies there languishing, unseen and unread. It’s like you’re standing in the middle of the freeway, waving your hands but there’s no cars driving by. ‘Where’s all my traffic?!’ you cry.

There are two main ways you can be found on search engines:

1. organically (your site shows up on page one without you paying to be there)
2. on Google’s paid advertising platform, which is AdWords.

Matt Barrie, founder of Freelancer, knows a thing or two about websites and this is his tip for getting online traffic:

On a normal day, two billion people spend most of the time punching little words into Google and getting blue links spat back at them. So, if you can figure out a way to use Google effectively through either search engine optimisation or search engine marketing then that can be effective for some businesses.

Getting listed higher on Google ...