Number One on Google: What's Really Important

There's a lot of talk about being #1 on Google.  It's important, because most searchers home in on the first site in a list of search results, and very few searchers go beyond the first page of results.

The problem is this: you can be #1 on Google for a search phrase that no one uses.  That's useless (which is why you should be skeptical of people offering to "make you #1 on Google").

You should be #1 on Google for the name of your winery (and the commonly used alternatives).  For example, if your winery is named Acme Winery, you should aim to be #1 for Acme wines as well as Acme Winery.

Of course, that only covers people who are searching for your winery by name, which is just a fraction of the searches that could be leading people to your winery.  You also want to be highly ranked for the searches that potential customers are making (more about this soon).

Incidentally, you should type the name of your winery into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  It will show you the various ways in which people search for your winery, and which are the most frequently used.

Comments

[rick]

People also need to remember that #2 through #n DO bring in traffic. it's not #1 or bust. And that they should have realistic expectations, meaning 1) only one result can be #1. Several people might want it, but one will win and 2) some keywords are insanely competitive ("cabernet") while others will provide more targeted traffic AND are easier to rank for ("Anderson Valley Cabernet")

[Arthur, winesooth.com]

The way to get good google results without paying a cent is to have relevant content and make sure the major engines' bots have your site map to crawl through.

[rick]

Arthur,

To the degree that creating the content is free, yep. And even if you pay for it by hiring a copywriter it provides ongoing benefits. Definitely something one should do. But that doesn't mean you should avoid PPC marketing. Take my example above, "anderson valley cabernet" - there's only ONE paid search result for it. Now, if I sell Cabernet from Anderson Valley, have a winery that produces it, etc. I could easily get top of page exposure for probably 10 cents a click. Write an ad (ideally with 2 versions of the copy so you can test) point it at the relevant page on your site (NOT the home page!) and see if it helps. $10 buys you 100 visitors... that's not bad and if you sell wine from the site and sell a couple of bottles out of those 100 visits....