Few digital marketing agencies have conquered the first page of Google.
The first page of Google is the holy grail of digital marketing for every small business, moreover for B2B small businesses.
To appear at the first page of Google whenever a person searches for a product or service is a major digital marketing objective for every small business, overall for every B2B small business, because it represents a qualified lead generation marketing tool.
There are two manners to appear at the first page of Google. One manner is paying to Google for a Google AdWords advertising campaign to appear at the paid search results. The second manner is to do search engine optimization to the small business website to appear at the organic search results.
The first page of Google has 17 results. The first 4 and the last 3 are paid search results. The 10 results in the middle are organic (free of charge) search results.
Google says that if your business appears at the paid search results you will get a return of USD $ 2 for every USD $ 1 invested in AdWords.
Google also says that if your business appears at both places, paid and organic search results, you will get a return of USD $ 8 for every USD $ 1 invested in AdWords.
You can see Google methodology to estimate above numbers in the following link:
https://economicimpact.google.com/about/index.html#/?sections_activeEl=methodology
Google search engine has evolved during the last 19 years and keeps evolving to give search users the most relevant and useful information in the search results. Google mission is to satisfy search engine users’ needs every time they perform a search. Not an easy mission.
At the beginning, when Google launched the search engine, their engineers use links as a very important variable for the search engine algorithm. The websites with the higher number of important and high quality website incoming links ranked at the first page of the search results. Matt Cutts in 2010 explained very well how this worked in the following video:
If your website had the search term in the website content, and your website also had high quality incoming links, then you had high probabilities of appearing at the first page of Google for that search term.
Matt Cutts explained very well in the above video how Google search engine works. Cutts says that every time a person performs a search at Google, the search engine makes more than 200 questions, saying in a manner that Google search algorithm has more than 200 variables. Perhaps being the most important the search term (content) and the incoming links, as Cutts explained it at the above video.
Andrey Lippattsev from Google in 2016 said that the 2 most important variables for Google search engine were content and links pointing to your website. You can see the Lippattsev comment at the minute 30 in the following video:
Now we know from Matt Cutts and Andrey Lippattsev from Google, that there are more than 200 variables or ranking factors in the Google search algorithm, and we also know that the two most important are content and links pointing to your website.
Recently, on September 6, 2017, John Mueller from Google said in a Twitter that “awesomeness” is the most important ranking factor for Google.
Content and “awesomeness” are easy ranking factor to accomplish by every small business. All you have to do is to produce, publish and distribute relevant, high quality, and awesome content about your products, services, and customer needs.
Links pointing to your website is not an easy ranking factor to accomplish. Google takes into consideration natural links pointing to your website. Google does not take into consideration spammy links.
Matt Cutts explained very well in the following video how to get natural links pointing to your website, which is by producing and publishing high quality content. By accomplishing content and “awesomeness”, you will also accomplish links pointing to your website:
In essence, sooner or later, you will conquer the first page of Google if you keep, in a permanent manner, producing, publishing and distributing high quality, relevant, and awesome content about your products, services, and customer needs. You will end being an authority for Google and for the Google users about your business products and services.
We wanted to run a short and basic search experiment to see how important were content and links as ranking factor in our digital marketing for small business industry.
Following are the results.
Basically what we did was to perform different searches to search for digital marketing agencies using different relevant search terms.
We use the following search terms:
Digital Agency
Digital Advertising Agency
Digital Agency for Small Businesses
Digital Marketing Agency for Small Businesses
Digital Advertising Agency for Small Businesses
Marketing Agency
Advertising Agency
Marketing Agency for Small Businesses
Advertising Agency for Small Businesses
Digital Marketing Agency for B2B Small Businesses.
We selected the above search terms based on the following study performed in 2011 about what search terms were used by search users when they wanted to search for digital agencies: “How potential clients search for an interactive agency”:
https://searchengineland.com/how-potential-clients-search-for-an-interactive-agency-67443
Our search experiment use MOZ domain authority and page authority as the variables to measure links pointing to the website. Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) measure the quantity and quality of links pointing to the website. Both variables go from 0 to 100, being 100 the highest possible. If your website has DA and PA of 100 both, this means that your website has many links pointing to the website, coming from high quality websites, or websites that also have high DA and high PA.
Our search experiment use number of articles in the website as the variable to measure content.
Our search experiment did not measure “Awesomeness”.
Some of our search experiment conclusions are the followings:
- You need quality content in your website to rank at the first page of Google.
- You need quality links pointing to your website to rank at the first page of Google.
- You can rank at the first page of Google with very few content in your website.
- You can rank at the first page of Google with very few links pointing to your website.
Following we present the tables with our search experiment data which are open to further analysis.
Google Search phrase: Digital Agency
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Upanup | www.upanup.com | 36 | 43 | 18/134 | >100 | 1 |
| Digital Agency Network | www.digitalagencynetwork.com | 47 | 41 | 4/5 | >200 | 2 |
| Digital Agency Network | www.digitalagencynetwork.com | 47 | 41 | 4/5 | >200 | 3 |
| Blitz | www.blitzagency.com | 47 | 56 | 225/2,220 | >200 | 4 |
| Wikipedia | www.wikipedia.org | 100 | 96 | 42,794/2.9m | >200 | 5 |
| Paramore | www.paramoredigital.com | 50 | 58 | 160/4,922 | 10 | 6 |
| Commonplaces | www.commonplaces.com | 45 | 54 | 80/3,529 | >200 | 7 |
| Clutch | https://Clutch.co | 72 | 76 | 431/7,772 | >200 | 8 |
| Alternabit | www.alternabit.com | 32 | 42 | 20/3,829 | 0 | 9 |
| Upanup.com | www.upanup.com | 36 | 43 | 18/134 | >100 | 10 |
Google Search phrase: Digital Marketing Agency
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Uhuru | https://uhurunetwork.com/ | 38 | 48 | 32/6,354 | >200 | 1 |
| Digital Agency Network | https://digitalagencynetwork.com/ | 47 | 41 | 4/5 | >200 | 2 |
| Koozai | https://www.koozai.com/ | 59 | 66 | 331/917 | >100 | 3 |
| Clutch | https://clutch.co/ | 72 | 76 | 431/7,772 | >200 | 5 |
| Uhuru | https://uhurunetwork.com/ | 38 | 48 | 32/6,354 | >200 | 6 |
| Connection Model | https://www.connectionmodel.com/ | 29 | 33 | 16/348 | >100 | 7 |
| Blue Fountain Media | https://www.bluefountainmedia.com/ | 66 | 72 | 564/36,376 | >100 | 8 |
| 8 Digital | http://8-digital.com/ | 35 | 41 | 33/1,870 | >200 | 9 |
| Forbes | https://www.forbes.com | 96 | 95 | 15,987/886k | >1000 | 10 |
Search phrase: Digital Advertising Agency
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Digital Agency Network | https://digitalagencynetwork.com/ | 47 | 41 | 4/5 | >200 | 1 |
| Top 50 Ad Agencies | http://www.top50adagencies.com/ | 28 | 40 | 35/62 | 0 | 2 |
| Blitz | www.blitzagency.com | 47 | 56 | 225/2220 | >200 | 3 |
| Indeed | https://www.indeed.com | 92 | 94 | 13,411/2,9m | 0 | 4 |
| PMG | https://www.pmg.com/ | 45 | 54 | 59/520 | >200 | 5 |
| They Say | http://theysaydigital.com/ | 11 | 24 | 2/37 | 0 | 6 |
| Report Garden | https://reportgarden.com/ | 36 | 45 | 46/77 | >200 | 7 |
| Helix House | https://www.helixhouse.com | 40 | 50 | 135/1984 | >200 | 8 |
| https://www.pinterest.com/ | 100 | 97 | 69,444/6.6m | 0 | 9 | |
| VML | https://www.vml.com/ | 60 | 66 | 455/9,058 | >200 | 10 |
Search phrase: Digital Agency for Small Businesses
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 1 |
| Kexino | https://kexino.com/ | 36 | 46 | 87/187 | >200 | 2 |
| Small Business Trends | https://smallbiztrends.com/ | 82 | 86 | 1,149/31,108 | >200 | 3 |
| Main Street Roi | https://www.mainstreetroi.com/ | 40 | 50 | 87/1,051 | >200 | 4 |
| Visify | https://visify.com/ | 31 | 42 | 22/191 | 13 | 5 |
| Light Post Digital | http://lightpostdigital.com/ | 27 | 28 | 4/4 | 21 | 6 |
| Digital Agency Rankings | http://digitalagencyrankings.com/ | 30 | 35 | 9/86 | 23 | 7 |
| Clutch | https://clutch.co/ | 72 | 76 | 431/7,772 | >200 | 8 |
| Forbes | https://www.forbes.com | 96 | 95 | 15,987/886k | >1000 | 9 |
| 3AM Ideas | http://3amideas.com.au/ | 22 | 35 | 13/196 | 11 | 10 |
Search phrase: Digital Marketing Agency for Small Businesses
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Visify | https://visify.com/ | 31 | 42 | 22/191 | 13 | 1 |
| Clutch | https://clutch.co/ | 72 | 76 | 431/7,772 | >200 | 2 |
| Main Street Roi | https://www.mainstreetroi.com/ | 40 | 50 | 87/1,051 | >200 | 3 |
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 4 |
| Kexino | https://kexino.com/ | 36 | 46 | 87/187 | >200 | 5 |
| Kexino | https://kexino.com/ | 36 | 46 | 87/187 | >200 | 6 |
| Small Business Trends | https://smallbiztrends.com/ | 82 | 86 | 1,149/31,108 | >200 | 7 |
| Light Post Digital | http://lightpostdigital.com/ | 27 | 28 | 4/4 | 21 | 8 |
| 3AM Ideas | http://3amideas.com.au/ | 22 | 35 | 13/196 | 11 | 9 |
| Digital Agency Rankings | http://digitalagencyrankings.com/ | 30 | 35 | 9/86 | 23 | 10 |
Search phrase: Digital Advertising Agency for Small Businesses
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Kexino | https://kexino.com/ | 36 | 46 | 87/187 | >200 | 1 |
| Main Street Roi | https://www.mainstreetroi.com/ | 40 | 50 | 87/1,051 | >200 | 2 |
| Visify | https://visify.com/ | 31 | 42 | 22/191 | 13 | 3 |
| Clutch | https://clutch.co/ | 72 | 76 | 431/7,772 | >200 | 4 |
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 5 |
| Aum | http://www.aumcore.com/ | 37 | 47 | 141/1,236 | >100 | 6 |
| Entrepreneur | https://www.entrepreneur.com/ | 93 | 94 | 10,335/204k | >200 | 7 |
| Light Post Digital | http://lightpostdigital.com/ | 27 | 28 | 4/4 | 21 | 8 |
| Forbes | https://www.forbes.com | 96 | 95 | 15,987/886k | >1000 | 9 |
| Emergent Digital | https://emergentdigital.com/ | 16 | 17 | 0/0 | 40 | 10 |
Search phrase: Marketing Agency
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| PMG | https://www.pmg.com/ | 45 | 54 | 59/520 | >200 | 1 |
| Digital Agency Network | https://digitalagencynetwork.com/ | 47 | 41 | 4/5 | >200 | 2 |
| Top 50 Ad Agencies | http://www.top50adagencies.com/ | 28 | 40 | 35/62 | 0 | 3 |
| Blitz | www.blitzagency.com | 47 | 56 | 225/2220 | >200 | 4 |
| Wikipedia | www.wikipedia.org | 100 | 96 | 42,794/2.9m | >200 | 5 |
| Wikipedia | www.wikipedia.org | 100 | 96 | 42,794/2.9m | >200 | 6 |
| Koozai | https://www.koozai.com/ | 59 | 66 | 331/917 | >100 | 7 |
| Altitude Marketing | https://altitudemarketing.com/ | 52 | 58 | 46/3,477 | >200 | 8 |
| Uhuru | https://uhurunetwork.com/ | 37 | 48 | 35/5,921 | >200 | 10 |
Search phrase: Advertising Agency
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Wikipedia | www.wikipedia.org | 100 | 96 | 42,794/2.9m | >200 | 1 |
| Wikipedia | www.wikipedia.org | 100 | 96 | 42,794/2.9m | >200 | 2 |
| The Balance | https://www.thebalance.com | 80 | 84 | 323/15,677 | >200 | 3 |
| The Balance | https://www.thebalance.com | 80 | 84 | 323/15,677 | >200 | 4 |
| PMG | https://www.pmg.com/ | 45 | 54 | 59/520 | >200 | 5 |
| Adweek | http://www.adweek.com/ | 93 | 93 | 5,684/592k | >200 | 6 |
| Ad Age | http://adage.com/ | 92 | 93 | 3,927/723k | >200 | 7 |
| Ad Age | http://adage.com/ | 92 | 93 | 3,927/723k | >200 | 8 |
| Management Study Guide | http://managementstudyguide.com/ | 43 | 46 | 10/3,515 | >200 | 9 |
| Business Dictionary | http://www.businessdictionary.com/ | 79 | 83 | 703/40,790 | >200 | 10 |
Search phrase: Marketing Agency for Small Businesses
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 1 |
| Kexino | https://kexino.com/ | 36 | 46 | 87/187 | >200 | 2 |
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 3 |
| Clutch | https://clutch.co/ | 72 | 76 | 431/7,772 | >200 | 4 |
| Visify | https://visify.com/ | 31 | 42 | 22/191 | 13 | 5 |
| LucidPress | https://www.lucidpress.com | 59 | 66 | 339/1,596 | >100 | 6 |
| Marketing Eye | http://www.marketingeyeatlanta.com/ | 28 | 39 | 17/9,466 | >100 | 7 |
| Cicle Marketing | http://circlemarketing.com/ | 30 | 38 | 20/411 | >50 | 8 |
| Small Werks | http://www.smallwerks.com | 20 | 30 | 7/186 | 0 | 9 |
| Main Street Roi | https://www.mainstreetroi.com/ | 40 | 50 | 87/1,051 | >200 | 10 |
Search phrase: Advertising Agency for Small Businesses
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank |
| Kexino | https://kexino.com/ | 36 | 46 | 87/187 | >200 | 1 |
| Entrepreneur | https://www.entrepreneur.com/ | 93 | 94 | 10,335/204k | >200 | 2 |
| Visify | https://visify.com/ | 31 | 42 | 22/191 | 13 | 3 |
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 4 |
| HubSpot | https://www.hubspot.com | 90 | 90 | 8,796/85,938 | >200 | 5 |
| LucidPress | https://www.lucidpress.com | 59 | 66 | 339/1,596 | >100 | 6 |
| The Guardian | https://www.theguardian.com | 97 | 94 | 6,151/298k | >200 | 7 |
| Horton | http://www.hortongroup.com/ | 50 | 58 | 196/10,200 | >100 | 8 |
| Business 2 Community | http://www.business2community.com | 82 | 85 | 934/8,687 | >200 | 9 |
| Small Werks | http://www.smallwerks.com | 20 | 30 | 7/186 | 0 | 10 |
Search phrase: Digital marketing agency for B2B small businesses
| Agency | Website | DA | PA | Established Links. Root Domains/Total Links | Articles | Rank | |
| MSalesLeads | www.msalesleads.com | 11 | 22 | 5/8 | >200 | 1 | |
| Tastic Marketing | https://www.tasticmarketing.com/ | 20 | 33 | 9/17 | >50 | 2 | |
| https://www.linkedin.com | 100 | 97 | 148k/11.1m | >200 | 3 | ||
| Iron Paper | http://www.ironpaper.com/ | 55 | 63 | 80/10,025 | >200 | 4 | |
| Fired Up Digital | http://firedupdigital.com/ | 26 | 28 | 5/139 | >50 | 5 | |
| Demand Gen Report | https://www.demandgenreport.com/ | 64 | 70 | 172/94,061 | >100 | 6 | |
| Smart Insights | http://www.smartinsights.com/ | 81 | 81 | 618/17,863 | >200 | 7 | |
| Smart Insights | http://www.smartinsights.com/ | 81 | 81 | 618/17,863 | >200 | 8 | |
| Adweek | http://www.adweek.com/ | 93 | 93 | 5,684/592k | >200 | 9 | |
| Launch & Hustle | http://www.launchandhustle.com/ | 32 | 41 | 26/960 | 20 | 10 | |
You can read our previous article in the following link:
https://www.msalesleads.com/small-business-authority-and-its-importance-for-google-search-ranking/
About the Author:
This article was written by Julio Sanoja Rial, CEO, founder and digital marketing consultant at MSalesLeads, a digital marketing agency for small businesses. We help small businesses to go and grow their businesses online.
