Getting your taxi website to number 1 on Google

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Tips on getting started with the search engines

Generally, getting to number 1 on google and other search engines is the number one thing on your mind when you think about your ‘online presence’. I am pretty much obsessed with the search rankings we achieve for our products, and can take it rather personally when I see us fall a few places on Google and other search engines. From experience I know it can take a lot of effort (and often money) in achieving a good search position – but it really depends on the competition for the top spots for that search term.

Here are some tips I would give on how to get stated with investing your time, rather than money, in trying to achieve that number one spot:

• Keyword research – make sure you know what keywords you want to target – so you need to be sure about what your prospects and customers are searching for online. A good tool to measure this is the ‘keyword tool’ on Google Adwords (you can sign up for free to use this) – this gives you an idea of the number of searches carried for each search term you test.
• Monitor your progress – Optimising your site to get to the number one spot on Google will take some time, and you will undoubtedly have some ups and downs along the way. You should register for a free website monitoring tool that you can log into so you can track how well your site performs. A good free site to use would be sescout.com – which gives you basic information on how well your website is going on Google and Bing
• Local search is key for taxis and private hire – Google and the other search engines are constantly improving their user experience. More recently they have focused on ‘local search’ – providing their users with content that is relevant and local to them. This has changed the game for many industries including those in the taxi and private hire industry. You should definitely make sure your Google Places page is complete and up to date – to take advantage of showing up in local seach results – this can propel you to the top of Google very quickly as local search results take precedence over national ones. Read my article on setting up your Google Places page.
• Make sure your website contains the right content – If you want to get to that number 1 spot on the search engines then you definitely need to make sure that the content you put on your site is relevant to the search terms you want to be number one for. Making sure you have important keywords in the title of your pages, the heading tags of your pages and also in any of the copy you write for your pages is vital. If you don’t know how to update your own website (I find that many people have employed others to do this for them) – then we suggest using WordPress – a free website management tool that allows you to quickly add and change content on your own website. If you want to find out more about this you can always drop me an email at richard.morley@exelmanagement.com
• Directories – Make sure you are included on all directories online (e.g. yell.com) – these sites are already highly ranked and credible source of information for search engines – so getting your business listed on here could you get to that number one spot (albeit not with your own website). They also provide links to your site – which is important for search engines (and what you usually end up paying experts to do – but I wont go into ‘backlinking’ at this stage – if you want to find out more you can always Google it!).
• Make sure your site is mobile friendly – the amount of searches carried out on mobile devices is ever on the increase – so make sure your site can convert easily for Mobile devices (for when they find you at no 1) – again WordPress can be easily modified to identify mobile phone users and show them a cut down, easier to read version of your site (it’s so easy to do this using WordPress with just a few clicks of your mouse)
• Using Facebook and Twitter – Many of your users use Facebook and Twitter – so getting yourself on there can help to grow awareness of your website and business. Many of our customers have used this and achieved some good results – there will be some groups of people
• Getting clever with your website address – think about what your customers and prospects will search for and buy domains that contain those words – for example if you were a taxi or private hire business in Nottingham you could consider using ‘taxisnottingham.co.uk’ (if it were available to purchase) – this makes your website address highly relevant to the searches that are being used to find taxi services in your area.

Remember, getting to number 1 on a search engine takes time, effort, patience (and often money!) and you will have some disappointments along the way – some weeks your search results will improve and on other occasions you will find your results have decreased. It’s a long term game – you have to keep investing your time in maintaining your search presence, particularly if your competition are investing time as well.

Further information

If you would like any further advise on your online search and advertising strategy, please contact Richard Morley on richard.morley@exelmanagement.com.