We all use Google everyday to search for useful web content such as products, restaurants or a cool local web design & marketing company 🙂 But when you are looking at the Google search results you may not appreciate that Google often displays three different types of results on the same page. If you want your business to appear in one or more of the three it takes a different approach for each.
I have screen-grabbed the results of a search for the term “web design in Epsom” (which we rank first in the organic listings for!) and added coloured boxes showing the three different types of result. You can see this below:
Google Adwords
At the top of the page with “Ad” written next to them, outlined in red, are the Google Adwords pay-per-click Adverts. These are the list of adverts that Google thinks are relevant to the user’s search query. Whenever these advert listings are clicked, the user is taken to the advertiser’s website and Google charges the owner of the listing a small fee. The order of the adverts is decided predominantly (though not entirely) on a bidding system. To get your advert setup is pretty instantaneous via the Google Adwords system.
Read more here: adwords campaign management
Google Organic/Natural or ‘Free’
Outlined in our example in green are the organic / natural or ‘free’ results. These are the list of webpages that Google thinks are the most relevant to the user’s search query. Although these results are often referred to as ‘free’ it usually takes quite a bit of time and effort creating good, relevant content, optimising it for Google and promoting it and getting links to it from other authoritative websites in order for the pages on your website to have a chance at being listed here.
Google Local
The third type of result are the local results, outlined in our example in blue, in the middle of the page. These results have pins next to them that correspond to the map. These are the top results in a list of websites and Google My Business Pages that Google thinks are the most relevant to the user’s search query. These local results only ever appear if Google thinks your search query has local relevance. This is why they appear for the search query “web design in Epsom” but do not appear for “how to do smoky eyes?”. For your business to have a chance at being listed here you need to be located in the relevant geographic area, have a Google page and have spent some time optimising it. If you have a Google account you can leave a review for businesses listed here.
Read more here: Google My Business Pages
How difficult it is to get a link to your website listed as one or more of these results depends a great deal on how much competition there is for the search terms that you want to rank for.
If you would like to speak to us about Google Adwords, Organic Search Engine Optimisation or Local Search Engine Optimisation, please call us on 01737 350 389 or email us at hello@indigomarmoset.co.uk
Article updated 12th April 2016