Here are 5 steps that we have used throughout the years.

The most important decision. For which phrases do you want your website to show up on the first page of Google? This is the most important decision because it determines the difficulty in getting on the first page and the quality of your leads.

In the industry, this is called “keyword research.”Doing good keyword research is as important as setting a good foundation for your house.

Pick words that your customer would search when looking for your service. To make getting on the first page easier, you’ll want to find a sweet spot between high volume keywords and less competitive keywords.

Get pretty for Google.

When Google analyzes your website, you want them to say, “Wow, what an attractive and organized website.”

This is not about having a flashy website, it’s about having a well structured and optimized website. Nailing this step is important. To execute this step properly, you need to have your keywords picked out and ranked in order of importance.

Put your most important keyword in your Title, Meta Description, and in the first sentence on the page, you’re ranking. If you can fit any additional keywords in naturally, go for it. Use your keywords naturally throughout the rest of the page.

Don’t overdo it.

Beef up your page so it has around 1,000 words of quality content.

Include an image or two on the page as well. Set the image name and alt text to one of your keyword phrases. If you use two images, set the second image name and alt text to a different keyword phrase.

This is the Pareto efficiency for on-page optimization. You could do a lot more, but this is 20% of the effort and will harness 80% of the power.

Get social.

Make sure your business has the four main social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.

You don’t have to go overboard with these. You don’t need to use them every day and you don’t need 10,000 followers. Just keep them semi-active, post once a week or so. You need to have a few followers. A hundred followers is a good start. The more the better but the juice isn’t worth squeeze right now. Here’s the key to social media.

Make sure you have a link to your website in your bio or in the dedicated space for it. Don’t forget that step! That’s how Google knows to associate the account with your website.

Google will see that it’s an active account with a decent following and give you a little bump because of it.

If you are feeling ambitious, create several more social media accounts on Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.

Be everywhere.

Get your name, address, and phone number (NAP) listed on all the top sites.

This will show Google that you’re a legit business in your industry. Google can’t see all the customers you have or all the business you’re doing in person. This helps combat that. You have to speak Google’s language if you want to be on the first page. Here’s the key with your NAP.

You want to make sure your business name, address, and phone number are exactly the same or as close as possible on every website.

That’s the trick that most people do not know. It’s really important. If your name, address, and phone number are not exactly the same, Google will get confused. Here’s a list of good places to start listing your NAP:

1) Google.com/business/
2) Yellowpages.com
3) Bbb.org
4) Dexknows.com
5) Angieslist.com
6) Local.yahoo.com
7) Thumbtack.com

Build authority.

If you do the first four steps correctly, you will definitely see a boost in your rankings. Depending on the difficulty of your keyword phrases, the first four steps might be enough to get you onto the first page.

But this step is the haymaker. The first four steps are extremely important and need to be completed before step five. Step five is the icing on the cake and the first four steps are the cake. Without the cake, the icing is useless.

The same thing that makes a person authoritative, makes a website authoritative.

If several really credible people recommended you and said you were an expert in your field, you would be viewed as an authority.

You have to do that process for your website but in Google’s language. To do this, you need to get really credible websites recommending your website.

By recommending, I don’t mean they have to write a letter of recommendation, singing your praises. Google couldn’t care less about a letter of recommendation. You need these credible websites to post a link to your website.

When another website links to yours, Google sees this as a recommendation. In Google’s eyes, a link is a digital referral. It’s telling all visitors to go check out “their friend’s website” because it’s awesome.

Why would anyone link to a site that they didn’t want people to go visit? Why would anyone want you to visit a site that was not good? That’s the way Google sees it.

Now, this step is so powerful, I have to give you a warning.

With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility

As you know, power is dangerous in the wrong hands. If you go crazy with this step, you can get your website penalized by Google.

The worst thing you can do is to buy 1,000 links from some cheap-o-site. Google isn’t dumb and can sniff it out.

Google wants to see links that are natural. Links that look like that site is recommending you to their readers.

So, if you want to build authority to your business’s website, reach out to other website owners and see if you can write an article for them and include a link back to your website.

This will surely help your website get to the first page.

Is this all it takes?

These five steps apply to most search phrases, but not all. For harder phrases, you will have to do more than the five-step Pareto efficiency.

The SEO Duo has developed a more in-depth, seven-step process that works for even the toughest keywords.

If you would like our assistance with getting your website on the first page, fill out this form.

We cannot help everyone who requests our assistance. Our agency is small because we focus on results. We oversee every single step of the process and keep in regular contact with clients during a campaign. This work is time and resource-intensive, and it’s best to keep our agency small, and your pockets, fat.

We do not work with startups, get rich quick schemes, or low ticket item businesses. We work with established businesses that have a good reputation.

If you think you qualify and would like to get on the first page of Google without doing any of the work, click here and fill out the form.