As some people may have read on this blog, a couple of months ago I visited the Adtech:London exhibition on Advertising, Online Marketing and SEO/SEM. One of the best seminars I saw was an SEO seminar on completely taking over the first page of search results for a given keyword and different hints and tips for how to go about accomplishing this.

This talk was shortly before the most recent changes to the Google algorithm became apparent, and the Google algorithm changes have made this (in my opinion) a SERP takeover a lot easier than it was prior to the changes (more on this in a minute). To demonstrate the concept of a SERP takeover, I am lucky enough to be able to use one of my own SEO clients as an example.

The Hearing Clinic (www.thehearingclinic.co.uk) is a private health clinic based in St Albans, in Hertfordshire. As such, most of their key terms are focused around a combination of medical terminology and locations. Probably their most obvious important target keyword is "Hearing Clinic Hertfordshire". If you check out the screenshot below (taken on November 1st 2010), you will see that The Hearing Clinic occupies or is mentioned in the top SIX organic search result positions for the term "hearing clinic Hertfordshire". If you want to know some of the factors that have contributed to this being possible, please read on.

As any half decent SEO professional will tell you, having an almost exact match domain name for the search term gives you an enormous leg up in ranking well for that term. As with my client, the domain name is an exact match for the first two thirds of the keyword search term, so that presents a nice advantage right away.

Prior to the Google algorithm changes, the most results you were ever likely to see from one website was two links (without the extra kinds of links that I will discuss shortly). With the changes now being in effect, it is not unusual to see a website have many pages displayed on the SERP (search engine results page), although you will normally only see 2-3 by default and have to click to expand to see other results from that website.

In addition to standard links and link building, there are many other ways of taking over a SERP. Having a Google Places listing so your website appears on the included google map for local based searches can increase your clickthroughs considerably. Having a Facebook company page or a Twitter profile can help you take up valuable spots on the first page of a SERP (especially where the search term is a brand name) as those websites have such high ranking capabilities as soon as you begin to use them.

Local SEO is also extremely powerful for taking over the SERPs for a business such as The Hearing Clinic. There are an awful lot of regional or county based websites out there (especially in the UK) and although some of them charge for listings, a lot of them do allow free profiles too. Even if these profiles do not give you a dofollow link back to your own website they can help to increase awareness of your company leading to an increase in clickthroughs, even if it is by slightly less direct means. In the screenshot you can see a listing for The Hearing Clinic on a website called "iHertfordshire". This is a prime example and I am sure that there are many equivelent sites for whatever the area your business is located in.

There is also the old fashioned means of advertising on other sites. In my opinion, there is a big difference between link buying and advertising. Link buying may get you one or two text links from a site (and is frowned upon by Google if they can deem that you are doing so) but a good old fashioned advertising campaign can be very effective. In the screenshot you can see The Hearing Clinic's profile page on a website called Private Health(.co.uk). This is one of the biggest private healthcare websites in the UK, so my client took the decision to advertise with them. As a result of having a paid profile on their site, not only does it raise awareness of the business through being on the private health website, but it also has created another positive entry for The Hearing Clinic when it comes to taking over the SERP.

So what is missing? At the moment in our example thehearingclinic.co.uk has the top 6 entries in this SERP - but it could be more. In this instance I have not followed some of my own advice. At present there is no Twitter account and no Facebook page - in theory that could be another 2 links taken up. There could be some hosted video which could further monopolise things. There are other things that I am sure I have not thought of that some people may mention in comments on this post (if they do I will update this).

The main thing you can see that has not been done in this instance is PPC. It is arguable that when you have the top 6 organic entries for a SERP if PPC is necessary, but some people like to go that extra step further, that one is largely down to available budget and personal preferences. PPC also becomes a more attractive option the more competitive the keyword, but price will rise in parallel with the amount of competition.

I am sure this has not covered even half the possibilities, but demonstrates how The Hearing Clinic has been able to end up in such a favourable position for one of its main search terms. With a bit of work (or a lot of work depending on the keyword) anyone can achieve something like this.