How to Achieve Status in the World of Search
Status Equals Authority
In social situations and society, there are three sources of status: wealth, power, and celebrity. This is a good thing to know when sizing up people in a meeting, at a convention, or in a boardroom. In the virtual world of content marketing, status plays a role as well—but in a different context.
Your online presence as a company and as a brand is determined by where you show up. As an example, if I look up ERP on Google, I will see Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP. These are obviously big players with lots of status on that front page.
Now, imagine if you did a search for your product or service and you appeared beside the large competitors in your industry? As an example, at an enterprise software trade show you would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the same prominent position as the ERP vendors above. In other words, if you don’t have status, it can be expensive to get it.
What If You Could Get That Status Without All the Expense?
Thanks to the democratization of information, you can position your company next to larger competitors in Google search results. You just need one essential qualification that will grant you that status: authority.
Google wants to deliver a great product to its customers, in the same way that you do for your customers. In Google’s case, a good product is organic content that is relevant to your search. Over the years, Google has filtered out poor-quality content, and they provide very consistent results across the search spectrum.
The Meaning of Google Authority
If Google sees your website as an authority on a particular subject, you have the opportunity to rank beside competitors who have more money and status than you do—even on a very competitive market like the U.S.
How do you convince Google your company website is a reliable go-to source of good information and expertise in your industry? The good news is your website has more authority than you realize. We find that many clients underestimate how much authority they already have and are in the dark about how to take advantage of it.
Massive Leverage
Much like a nondescript sedan that has a high-performance engine, companies are usually unaware of their unfair advantage. So, it helps to understand what you’ve got under the hood.
For starters, with Google you are considered an authority in your particular field if:
- You have an established company with employees, products, and revenues.
- Your company website (in Europe or the U.S.) is 7 years or older.
- You have one or more physical locations
- You have content on your site related to your products, services, and industry.
- You have a few blog posts of indeterminate date.
- The topic of your website has not changed over the years (in other words, you are still in the same business).
This is not a very high bar. If you are thinking there are a lot of businesses like that, you’re right. The upside is you are reading this book and finding out how to leverage the authority your company already has.
Not that you can snap your fingers and get instantaneous results—but with just a bit of work, the content you create can gain the status necessary to “show up” in the company of larger established players. In other words, you’re taking your website with the credibility described above and leveraging the authority Google has already given it!
And by making your content even more relevant, that authority will provide the status necessary to get you onto those first few pages of the search engine results.
Once that happens, you are leveraging your website’s status and presence. That means more traffic, more people looking at your solution, more buyers seeing you as a viable second or third option, more prospects asking for more information, and more prospects booking a demo and wanting to know more.
Do You Have a New U.S. Website?
If you are starting out in the U.S. with a brand-new website, you do not have any authority at all, unless you bought a URL that had some history. The issues around a new website can be rectified, but it will take some effort depending on the industry and the amount of competition you have. Don’t let anyone convince you it’s because of the “design” or other creative nonsense. Contact us for strategies on how to fix this.
