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This is the Branded Bull Podcast, a show dedicated to helping take your business to the next level with winning marketing and branding tips and strategies built for today's competitive world, ready for your business to make its mark and stand out from the competition. Let's get into it.

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What's up, guys? Adam Fullerton here. This is another episode of the Branded Bull Podcast, and today we're talking about why your website isn't ranking well quite yet and what it actually takes to get on the front page of Google. Before we jump into that, though, guys, this is the podcast built for the green industry and for you lawn care, landscaping business owners who want to stand out, get found, and win more work. And hey, guys, there's two episodes every single week. Talk about marketing, advertising, and other tips and tricks so that you can ultimately beat the competition. And like I said, stand out, get found, and win more work. But that said, let's jump into today's episode. All right, so let's talk about something that comes up all the time. You guys ask us this question all, all, all the time. Why isn't my website ranking on the first page of Google? Or more specifically, I just launched my website, or I've had a website for years, and how long until I'm on the first page of Google? And the honest answer is probably not anytime soon, depending on a few different factors. And not because your website is bad most times, not because something is broken, but because ranking on the first page of Google is one of the most competitive things you can try to do online. And let's put it into perspective. For any given search like lawn care near me or landscaping company and insert your city, there are usually dozens, sometimes hundreds of businesses trying to rank for that exact keyword or string. And Google only shows about 10 organic results on page one or per page, Right? So right away, you're competing for for a very limited amount of real estate. Now, here's where most people oversimplify things. They think, hey, I have a website now, so I should definitely show up in theory. But Google doesn't rank websites just because they exist. Google ranks websites based on things like trust banks, based on relevancy, based on authority. And those things absolutely without a doubt, take time to build. So let's break down what actually goes into your website's rank. Okay, first is competition. If you're in a smaller town with only handful of competitors, your path to page one is a heck of a lot easier. But if you're in a dense area, like a, you know, metropolitan area outside of a major city or even inside of a major city, then there's going to be a lot of established businesses and you're going up against companies that may have had websites for 5, 10, 15 years and massive, massive online presences. So that leads to the second factor, your website's age and history. Google trusts websites that have been around longer and consistently updated over time. And if your website is brand new, you're essentially starting from zero in Google's eyes, right? So brand new website equals no trust, no credibility. Even if your company's been around for 20 years, it doesn't matter if your site is brand new, you're starting from square one, right? So you got a score of zero in Google's eyes. Third is how robust of a website you actually have. And we talk about this all the time, a single page website, like our starter package, with a few paragraphs about your services and who you are and all that, that's good, it's a good starting point. But the truth is that it's not going to compete with a website that has dedicated service pages, dedicated location pages, you know, dedicated pages about all your different offerings in who you are as a company. Like an about page, a gallery page, you know, potentially a process page. The list goes on and on a blog, right? These are all things that help you rank better for more keywords, it's more trust, more credibility. And that's why we actually offer that as part of our growth package, right? As you kind of go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and also clear internal linking in optimized headings and structures and the list again goes on and on. Google wants depth about your business and through your website, it wants content that clearly explains what you do, where you do it and why you are relevant. The next is backlinks, and this is a huge one. Backlinks, I've explained, go back a couple episodes and what they are, how to obtain them. But backlinks are essentially other websites and linking to your website. And Google sees those as votes of credibility, right? That means other companies, other websites are trusting your websites. And if your competitor has dozens and dozens of backlinks and you have none because you just started, or hey, you've had a website for a year and you have no backlinks, well, that's a major gap. That's a major opportunity, realistically. And so backlinks, again, the list goes on and on in terms of factors, but backlinks is just another major factor that impacts your ability to get on the first page of Google. Then there's on page SEO, right? Search engine optimization. We've talked about that how many times. Things like proper use of H1s and H2s or your heading tags, right? Those are huge. H1s. Specifically keyword placement, page titles, meta descriptions, image optimization, alt tags. I mean mobile optimization. We've talked about this ad nauseum. You can go back into our previous episodes and learn more about each of these things. But this is all of these things help Google understand what your website is about. And the great thing is that we of course take care of all of this with all of our packages. Check us out, brainable.com, hard plug there of course. But we do all this for you. But if your website isn't ranking well and you've had it for a while and you're wondering why isn't it working? Guys, these are the things that could be absolutely impacting your ability to get on the first page, right? And then finally, and this is isn't a complete comprehensive list, but this list could go on and on. So I'm going to really focus on the most important things. But user behavior is a huge one. And Google pays attention to how people interact with your website. Do they click on it and do they stay right? That's called bounce rate. Do they leave immediately? That's again called the bounce rate. Is somebody going into your website and interacting with your website, searching things, clicking around, actually doing things, or do they see it and then leave immediately? The higher the bounce rate, it means that they didn't actually take any action and navigate to other pages or do anything on your website. And so, long story short, if people are engaging with your website, that's obviously a positive signal. If they're bouncing quickly, that can absolutely hurt your ranking. So when you stack all of this together, the competition, your website history, your, your SEO and content depth, your backlinks, user behavior. Again, this is not a comprehensive list. The list goes on and on. There's a lot that goes into it. You can start to see why ranking on page one doesn't happen overnight whatsoever. Unless again, you're in a very, very small market and there's not a whole lot of competition because at the end of the day, there's not a whole lot of competition. Then you don't have to fight your way to the top as well as much organically. So basically you can start on the second page, third page or whatever, and you can get to the top very quickly because there's not a whole lot of competition that you need to deal with. In fact, Most cases, getting ranked on the first page doesn't happen in a month. It can take a year, it can take longer than that. And that's the part that's important to to understand. SEO and websites is not a short term play, it's a long term investment. It is a foundational piece. Your website is to the longevity and the credibility into the growth of your business. So people, we tell them all the time, you gotta stop thinking about websites as a short term investment and that you're gonna pop up and bam, you're gonna be ranking number one on Google overnight. That is just not realistic in any way, shape or form. My analogy here is it's like running a marathon rather than running a sprint. You don't just show up on race day and expect to win big. You train, you build your endurance, you stay consistent and your website works the same exact way. You build it properly, you structure it correctly, you support it with ongoing content, backlinks, local signals, local SEO. Check out our other episodes about local SEO. And over time your website starts to climb. And it will climb in the rankings as long as you continue to focus on the right things. And remember, it's about consistency over the long run that can produce massive results. That one is from Darren Hardy. Now here's the key takeaway to wrap everything up. Just because your website isn't on page one yet doesn't mean it's not working. It doesn't mean everything's not structured properly, et cetera, et cetera. And just because you launch a website doesn't guarantee that you're going to rank well. The goal early on isn't instant visibility. It's about building a strong foundation that Google can trust. That means a clear professional website, clear services and location targeting, proper SEO structure and ongoing support through other forms of marketing. Because your website doesn't exist in a vacuum, it works best when you support it with other things like your Google business profile and having it optimized and having make making sure that your website is listed on your profile, getting reviews, using social media, local citations, backlinks, et cetera, et cetera, things we've talked about, right? All of that feeds into your overall visibility. So if you're sitting there thinking, hey, I lost my website, why am I not ranking so well? Or when am I going to get to page one? The answer is simple. You're early in the process. And that's okay. Because the businesses that do win in search are the ones that stay consistent over time. They don't expect overnight results, they stay focused on doing the right things over and over and over again over time, like I said, and eventually they earn their spots on the first page. That's how it works. So if you have a current website that's not ranking well and you need help, check out our website packages@brandable.com of course we take care of all these things for you guys. We talk to you and walk you through our packages and how our starter package is about establishing credibility. The growth package is about taking that to the next level. And then of course, we have our custom website packages. But for all of our prices, all of our package, and everything you need to know about what's included, go to biteable.com, check out our pricing page. But guys, even if you're not working with us, or if you are and you're wondering the same things, this is what it's all about. These are the factors or some of the most important factors that go into impacting your website's ranking and just setting a realistic expectation about when you might rank on the first page and when you can start seeing more and more rankings from your website. So that's it. That's what I've got for you on this week's episode of the Branded Bull podcast. If you guys like what you hear, tune in, subscribe, check out the website brawl.com but yeah, come back every single Tuesday. Every week we have a new episode that can help you guys stand out, get found and win more work. That's what I've got. Thank you as always and I will catch you guys on the next episode. Take care.