Please put my site on the front page of Google

This is something we get asked all the time by people setting up websites. We often struggle to manage people’s expectations with SEO as there are a lot of people out there who still think you can build a website and its easy to have it coming up 1st in Google.

Invariably when I get asked this question I go into Google and put in the keywords they want to come up first for and after seeing that there are half a million other websites ‘competing’ for the same term I explain to the client that you have to convince Google that you are more important than half a million other websites – some of which have tens of thousands of in-links, thousands of pages and have been around for years.

Keeping search engine results relevant is Google’s core business. Everyone wants to be on the front page but Google has to decide which 10 websites are the most relevant out of the hundreds of thousands or millions of possibilities. Of course there are things we can do to improve your changes but its important to have realistic expectations.

SEO Guru Brendon Sinclair from Tailored showed me this diagram recently which gives some insight into the complexity of what Google considers in determining what to list. Its a useful starting point to gain an understanding of how complex it is to get on the front page of Google. Click on the graphic to go to the original to view the detail of it.

Infographic by PPC Blog