Polianna – an Alexandria, VA-based SEO, and Online Marketing Company

What are you waiting for? 24/7, access to the over 3.2 BILLION Internet users, and the ability to be location-independent. The Internet is a sea of opportunity for your business to connect with customers who are looking for your products and services. With the opening of the 21st century, behavioral consumer trends have consistently grown to show that people look online to find answers and solutions to the problems in their life. Whether someone needs to go online to find a reliable replacement for a burnt out light bulb or to locate the best-rated burger joint for a greasy late-night snack, the Internet poses itself as one of the greatest opportunities to connect with customers with search engines as the gateway.

If you’re a business owner, you know that the only reason that you are around is to SOLVE PROBLEMS. Whether you fix aching backs or mow lawns, someone who needs your services is likely to type into the search box something like “plumber Richmond.” The #1 place to be when someone types that in is at the top because you are placed FRONT AND CENTER to a client who needs to solve a problem. Not only that, you get the validation of having the largest company on the planet telling your customer that you are one of the best plumbers in Richmond which is at the very core of why where you rank on search engines is so important, and so profitable.

“I’ve built a website, but I have no visitors…”

One of the biggest misconceptions that people have about the Internet is that all you have to do is “built it” and your customers will come. You just have to build your website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and then one day, a mob of clients come knocking down your door. Wouldn’t that be nice? If you’ve already taken the time to hire or self-design your website, you may already realize that this is not the case. Your website may have little to no traffic going to it and the time and monetary investment you made may have you feeling like it was a sunk cost. However, that is not the case. The reason why you don’t have much traffic going to your site is that online traffic is not a given. You need to be building targeted streams of traffic to your website actively. And the greatest source of traffic in the world is, you guess it, Google.

“How does one do ‘the Google’?”

While no one knows the exact number, there are over 200 factors that Google takes a look at when determining whether your website is valuable and relevant to a search query. On top of the 200 factors, Google has thrown in its machine learning artificial intelligence algorithm, “RankBrain,” which can make it extremely convoluted for a busy business owner like yourself to figure out how to optimize given so many different factors. In fact, unless someone had direct access to the source code of Google’s ranking algorithm, it’s near impossible to know with perfect certainty what’s going on in the algorithms backend. However, what we can know for certain one thing:

Google’s entire business model is built on delivering valuable and relevant content to users whenever they type in a search query.

It couldn’t be any other way. If I were searching for “cat images” on Google and received back a picture of a laser-jet printer, I would stop searching on Google. Soon enough, no one would be searching on Google, and we’d move to another one of Google’s competitors like Yahoo, Bing, or even try resurrecting AskJeeves. For Google to stay in business, they MUST serve up websites and content that meet the user’s desired intent for information or services. Because Google’s model is based on the premise that they MUST serve up content that is relevant to the user, the process of search engine optimization is then learning how to increase the perceived value of your website for a Google search. The higher your perceived value = the higher your ranking. What that means for you as a business owner is that you need to “dress up” your website in such a way that Google clearly understands what your site is about and account for the vast multitude of factors to push your site to the top of search engines.

“What’s next?”

From sunrise to sunset (and typically much later than that), our passion is decrypting the mystery of Google’s search algorithm. The way we do that is through rigorous testing over thousands of sites to see what works and what doesn’t. We’ve done all the hard work for you in a data-driven fashion so that you don’t have to sort through the hordes of articles, videos, courses, and “gurus” out there. Even with the hours of study and research, many still end up with the saddening result of ranking nowhere on Google. All attempts at SEO are but guesses at what Google is looking for. As you can see, our specialty at Polianna is putting websites on page 1 of Google:

Alexandria SEO Expert
Poquoson SEO Expert
Mount Vernon VA SEO Expert
James City SEO Expert
Rappahannock SEO Expert

Feel free to check out any of our page 1 rankings. We’ve deciphered the Google’s algorithm such that we can rank websites on page one at will for multiple terms and in various cities. whether you’re a local business looking to grow, an international brand attempting to capture a larger market share, or an e-commerce store seeking to increase sales, our team at Polianna can help you get there.

If you’ve read to the end of this short article, as our way of saying thank you, give us the opportunity to show you how search engine optimization can grow your business. If you CLICK HERE and complete our discovery form, what we will do for you is take your website to the Polianna garage shop, look under the hood, and give you the good news, bad news, and the possibilities your business website can create for you. We have a friendly team and a very quick response time so once you’ve completed the discovery form, keep a close watch on your inbox for the next 24-72 business hours for our video.