How to get your property to the top of every search

Getting your property to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) can increase traffic to your website and net more direct bookings. Google understands that users are most likely to use their search engine and click on results when they can trust they’ll find what they’re looking for, whether it’s an ad or an organic result. To get your property to the top of relevant searches, you need to implement strategies that show Google that your site has exactly what its users want: helpful, reliable, quality, people-first content. 

Google is invested in serving technically sound, quality landing pages that match the context of a user’s search. Users trust Google to deliver highly relevant search results full of landing pages that are easy-to-navigate and give them the experiences they’re looking for. Maintaining this trust with its users is crucial for Google to keep its status as the most reputable and highly trafficked search engine in the world. With over 90% of the global search engine market share, demonstrable user trust is precisely what allows Google to attract its customers: the advertisers. 

At the end of the day, the real people providing value to your business are the same ones providing value to Google. So, to rank higher in Google search results, your site needs to demonstrate that it is precisely what those very real people you’re targeting are going to Google to look for. Take a three-pronged, people-first approach to improve your search engine ranking.

1. Ensure that your site has strong technical health.
2. Optimize your site for helpfulness, reliability, and quality.
3. Provide search engines and AI bots with signals for the context of the site.

Ensure that your site has strong technical health

Before Google can show your site, it needs to establish that the users it shows your site to will have a good experience. Users are more likely to lose confidence in search results when they experience page errors, slow page load speeds, difficult site navigation, and other technical errors from pages they’ve been served by Google, diminishing their trust in the search engine. To protect user trust, Google prioritizes serving sites devoid of major technical errors.

Keep your site free of major errors like the ones listed here to make certain that search engines and AI bots can reach your content.

• Fix broken links and page errors like 404s.
• Ensure search engine crawlers and AI bots are not blocked.
• Maintain a clear, logical site structure with internal links and updated sitemaps.
• Improve mobile friendliness and site speed.
• Hide outdated content from the SERP.

A healthy site devoid of technical errors gives Google confidence that it’s serving users with a solid landing page experience and relays to AI systems that the information on the site is likely to be valuable and authoritative. Ultimately, Google sees sites with strong technical health as reliable for its users.

Optimize your site for helpfulness, reliability, and quality

At the heart of it, people go to Google to be connected with sources that are helpful, reliable, and get to the gist of their query. Design and optimize your site with the experience of the very real people that patronize your business in mind. Doing so will signal to Google that your site provides quality to users. 

Try these suggestions to improve your site’s content by optimizing for a people-first experience.

• Use human-centered content and conversational, natural-sounding copy.
• Expand content depth to provide helpful answers for your prospective guests.
• Publish content surrounding your local area and particulars about your business.
• Build itineraries and travel guides for people planning to visit your area.
• Add thorough FAQ content, including a dedicated FAQ page, Q&A sections on key pages, and applicable schema markup.

Everything you do to your site should improve your user’s experience or make it easier for them to find your content. Google rewards sites that are more likely to be relevant, helpful, and appealing to users by pushing them to the top of search results.

Provide search engines and AI bots with signals for the context of the site

Optimizing for search engines/AI and for a people-first experience are complementary pursuits. You can provide signals directly to search engines and AI bots to tell them about your site and the content on your page. While implementing these signals, it’s important to center people-first practices to not sacrifice page quality. 

Give AI bots and search engines rich, contextual signals by using the following methods:

• Practice traditional SEO strategies with a strong keyword focus and page element optimization.
• Implement schema markup across your site and on FAQ content.
• Regularly update the information on your social media accounts and local listings to ensure accuracy and clarity.
• Practice PR-minded online behaviors by engaging with content about your property on social media, in forums, and across the web.
• Keep an active online presence by responding to reviews in a timely manner, making use of Google Business Posts, and posting regular, unique content on social media and on your site.

Rich, contextual signals help search engines and AI bots to interpret your content with clarity and understand its relationship to user queries. By explicitly providing these signals, you make it easier for Google to match your property with relevant searches. These signals greatly incentivize Google to place you at the top of searches coming from users who are more likely to convert.

Is this approach still applicable with AI searches?

Yes, a people-first approach is still applicable in the age of AI. Google has even said so itself in its Google Search SEO documentation, “You can apply the same foundational SEO best practices for AI features as you do for Google Search overall: making sure the page meets the technical requirements for Google Search, following Search policies, and focusing on the key best practices, such as creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.” 

Google’s foundation of user trust has not changed. Neither has what the search engine considers to be a relevant, quality landing page. As such, a people-first approach is the best method to reach the top of relevant searches.
In your pursuit to rank your site higher on Google, the team at GCommerce Solutions is here to help. We can provide additional resources, audit your site to find how it currently matches up, and offer thorough, practical solutions to reach your goals, whatever they may be. Tell us what goals you’re pursuing, and we’ll find a way to help you achieve them.