How To Get Your Website To The Top of Google (Without Expensive Consultants)

In this blog post, I’m going to tell you a hack that will help you get your website to the top of Google’s search results WITHOUT hiring an expensive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm.

Most blog posts would answer the question “How to Get Your Website to the Top of Google” with an overwhelming list of steps where you need years of training and experience to actually succeed.

But if you subscribe to my Startup Secrets newsletter (which you should!) you’ll know that I am all about growing your business faster with less stress. 

What matters today is that I help you get more potential customers to your website for FREE versus relying on paid advertising, or an expensive consultant to do the work.

I’m sure this is what you want, and I want this for you too. 

Ready to dive in? Of course you are!

Let’s start with some questions:

• Have you built a business but are struggling to get people to know about it?
• Wish that you could have more customers appear out of thin air?

Many early-stage businesses are founded on incredible ideas, but end up folding because the founders mistakenly think “if I build it, they will come”.

I’ve worked with hundreds of founders from all over the world and have seen this type of thinking time-and-time again.

But it’s not your fault. You’re just new to the game of customer acquisition. And it’s why you’ve got me!

There are no illusions here either, attracting customers IS hard. 

And yes, at some point you will likely hire a professional to take over this part of your business.

But right now, you just need some free practical guidance on simple things that you can do to get your website to the top of Google.

Because the higher you are on Google’s search results page, the more people will click. And the more people that click, the more customers you’ll have!

It’s really that simple.

Which brings me to the meat of this post:

How To Get Your Website To The Top of Google:

If you want to get your website to the top of Google, then increasing the number of direct visits to your website (using my flywheel system) is the best place to start. It’s important that these are direct visits, NOT organic visits. (If you don't know the difference between direct and organic traffic don't worry - I've explained it all below).

Follow These Steps to Rank Higher on Google:

Step 1: Understand how Google Works to Rank Websites

Before we get into building your simple growth flywheel, you need to know a little about how Google works:

Google’s exact ranking algorithm is a trade secret, but companies that specialize in SEO (Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a getting you to the top of Google) have spent decades reverse engineering which factors really matter.

The key thing here is not memorizing or attempting to work on all factors (there are 17 in total!) but identifying which factor will give us the biggest bang for our buck so we can rank higher.

The answer, as you may have guessed, is: direct traffic.

In other words, when many users go to your website directly, it signals to Google that your domain is valuable and is an authority in a subject.

And more authority = a higher ranking.

What is “direct traffic”?

Without getting too technical, direct traffic is visits to your website that do not come from another website.

• When someone types your URL directly into Google - that’s direct traffic.
• When someone has bookmarked your website and revisits - that’s direct traffic 
• When a visitor comes from an email you sent -  that’s also direct traffic.

SEMRush (a leader in SEO) recently determined that even after adding five new ranking factors to their reporting metrics in 2023, direct website traffic had the most influence on a website’s Google ranking.

Pretty cool finding.

Direct traffic increases your website’s authority. Ergo, the more direct traffic you have, the higher the likelihood that Google will place you first in their search results.

Make sense? Great. Now let’s build your Google Ranking Growth Flywheel.

Step 2: Build your Google Ranking Growth Flywheel

We already know that increasing your direct traffic numbers is the #1 thing that has the most influence on increasing your Google ranking AND that visits to your website that come from an email are counted as ‘direct traffic’ .

We are now going to use this knowledge to build your growth flywheel.

The exact steps you should use:

1. Write a blog post that is valuable to your target audience (like the post I wrote last week about getting venture funding) 👇
   
   
    
2. Put the first few paragraphs of the blog post into your email newsletter  (just like I did last week!)👇
   
   
   
   
3. Add a “read more” button in the email so people click through to read the rest of the post (resulting in direct traffic!) 👇
   
   
   
   
4. Repeat every week

And that's it! Seriously! 

What makes this powerful:

This isn’t just a technique, it’s a flywheel where the results compound over time. The blog post is the catalyst, but as you'll see from the image below, it propels a system of growth designed to get you more and more visitors to your website.

The Flywheel in action:

I know that this works, because I've used this technique myself!

My Results:

Last week I used this system and saw some pretty impressive early results:

• A whopping 70% of my community opened my email (which told me that my topic was valuable!)
• 13% clicked on “read more” (WAY higher than the industry average of 2.3% for email clicks)
• My direct traffic numbers shot up by over 50%
• And the average engagement time on my blog post was 3 minutes and 15 seconds (which is another factor that helps my Google ranking too!)

So far, things are looking AMAZING. And while it’s too soon for this to directly affect my Google ranking, I will be using this technique each week to fuel my growth.

Is this something you would try? 

I'd love for you to experience more brand recognition, word of mouth, and authority/dominance in your niche. All of which is possible when you improve your ranking on Google.

So carve out some time on your calendar and send me your first blog post when you write it.

I’ll be sure to click and help you grow!

Your friend,

Christine “Wishing you the sweet feeling of ranking #1” Outram

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