Alternative site promotion becomes really important in modern conditions of constantly increase of competition for a place in a Google top 10 for high-frequency queries. That is getting to SERPs due to successful ranking in one of special services.
1 . Google local business
2. YouTube
3. Google Images
4. Google Product Search
5. GoogleAnswers и YahooAnswers
6. Thematic forums
One of such resources, which we would like to draw your attention to, is the Google Local Business. This service can be a significant source of traffic for your targeted queries. Due to its geo targeting you have an opportunity to get maximum targeted traffic.
Many sites use this method as primary in their optimization and structure. We can take the site www.alphaelectricallincs.co.uk as an example. The site is located in the top of Google Local Business and it is displayed on the first page of search results as well for the main queries for this site: Electricians Lincoln, Electricians Lincolnshire.
fig.1 The site gets to the basic SERP thanking Google Local Business
Competent promotion together with considerable quantity of reviews about a company in special thematic catalogs helps to occupy such position. As an example I`d like to indicate such sites: www.build.co.uk, www.ilincolnshire.co.uk, www.electriciansfinder.co.uk etc. It also allows receiving target traffic directly from the given resources.
Quantity of mentions of a company in Google.co.uk:
In addition, promotion in this resource will help you to highlight your site, to give more information about your company for potential customers designing your page in a special way in GoogleMaps. It allows you to specify location of your office, upload photos or videos related to your work.
The next alternative source is YouTube. When your video gets to the first two positions of this service for necessary request, it automatically gets to the main SERP.
fig. 2 YouTube Video at the main SERP
To estimate the profitability of promotion in the given service, it is enough to analyze a reviews quantity of those videos, which Google puts to the basic delivery.
Pay attention to presence of desired keyword in “title” and “description” of a video while promoting the video in YouTube. Distributing video among friends, at forums and blogs you improve its position.
A link to your main resource can be located at the beginning of a video description or inside a video. Practice shows that a usage of links to your site inside a video increases direct transitions to your site if your video is really popular. It is desirable to mark such link for more accurate tracking of productivity in Google Analytics.
You can also get to the main SERP with the help of properly optimized images on a site. Achievement of top positions in Google Images also means getting the top of main SERP.
fih.3 Images from Google Images at the main Google SERP
Competently registered “alt” attribute and also text surrounding a picture (should be relevant to the “alt” attribute) influence successful ranking of this image.
Transitions from this service and their utility can be tracked through a specially tuned filter in GoogleAnalytics.
fig. 4 Keywords which bring some users from Google Images.
% 2 is gaps that can be easily removed in Excel.
Having such statistics we can learn the effectiveness of actions for images promoting.
If your site is an on-line shop, don’t forget about possibility to place goods in Google Product Search for free and also to get to the basic SERP with the help of this service.
If a site provides moderate amount of goods, goods can be added to the service manually with Datafeed, however if there are more than 1000 of them, it is much more convenient to adjust a mass loading of the goods with Google API. Also it is necessary to update information about goods monthly if you use manual addition. When you use Google API, goods update automatically.
For today the service is available only for 6 countries: USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan, China. Language and currency at the site should correspond to a target country. It is very important.
Pay attention to titles of goods and keywords in titles for good ranking in Google Product Search. A long title may cause underestimation of positions in this service. Do not forget about the importance of qualitative images of goods which make your goods more competitive among others.
Google Answers and Yahoo Answers are two more alternative sources of targeted traffic to a site as well as factors which contribute getting to the top for some of low-frequency queries. You need to monitor if questions on your subjects are present and to give professional answers on them, at the same time advertising your resource. If your site has professional articles containing an answer to a question it is possible to leave a link to them.
fig. 5 Example of an answer with a link to a site in YahooAnswers
fig.6 AN answer of the service Yahooanswers in the top 10 Google
Use thematic forums and directories of a city or a region related to your topics to tell about yourself. Themes at forums that contain helpful answers to questions get to the main SERP of search engines, so we also include it to an alternative type of a site promotion.
And the last piece of advice: make your site socially open. The modern Internet is rapidly moving toward a large social network, where visitors recommend each other helpful resources, ignoring inconvenient services. Also do not forget that search engines consider data about “likes” at facebook and retweets in their own ranking formulas, and their importance for ranking is rapidly growing.
Use potential propensity of “advertisers”, put Sharing button on your website.
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