SEO ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS. WANT THE TRUTH??? HERE IT IS.
I know we all have A LOT of time on our hands right now … and what are a lot of us doing???
TRYING TO FIX THINGS THAT MIGHT NOT EVEN BE BROKEN …
And I get it, I do … we want to feel useful, to have purpose, to get out of this BETTER than we were before … one of the things I’m seeing a ton of in business owner FB groups is this question:
I’M LOOKING FOR AN SEO EXPERT … WHO KNOWS OF A GOOD ONE?
Then, as FB page strings typically go … EVERYONE all of a sudden knows the best of the best and on and on they go with all their advice and bullsh*t … sorry, it’s true … and nobody actually focused on the REAL FACTS: which is this:
SEO ISN’T ONE THING.
THE TERM ‘SEO’ IS BASICALLY: MAKE YOUR WEBSITE FINDABLE VIA SEARCHES
That term is not what it used to mean when it comes to being SUCCESSFUL with paying for SEO experts to push you to the top … SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is soooo many things bundled into one term, and in my opinion, the way people think of SEO should be thrown out … it’s an OLD WAY of thinking about your website and how you receive new clients.
Here is the break down of how you should be looking at SEO … and ALL OF THESE THINGS should be considered BEFORE you hire an “SEO Expert” … and honestly, unless you are a HUGE corporation that has a service or product that EVERYONE can benefit from??? Paying for SEO is useless ;)
So, here it is … all the things that need to be accounted for when you consider SEO …
BOUNCE RATE
There are a lot of SEO companies out there who will charge you thousands of dollars promising you the world … but fail to tell you: uhhh, your website is a piece of crap, so none of this will actually work! So, it’s important to know if your website is hideous! You have to be your own critic. If you spend all that money on SEO and then your bounce rate is ridiculously high …. well, you’ve just spoiled your entire investment to make your SEO ‘rate’ even worse than it was before!
When I talk about a BOUNCE RATE, I am referring to the number of people who ‘click in’ to your website and then immediately LEAVE because they weren’t impressed in 5 seconds or less …
What you want to see in your analytics is more page views than visitors … and preferably by about 2-3 times … so if you had 100 visitors that day, you want to see around 250-400 page views! That will tell you that people like your website … and beyond that, you want people to contact you from that traffic … to see an action take place from the visitors.
Below is a screenshot from my daily visitors and page views from yesterday:
^^ as you can see, I had a lot of page views … which is what I care about … visitors aren’t important if I have 37 visitors and then 37 page views … so always pay attention to the comparison!
MOBILE FRIENDLINESS
Where are people THE MOST these days??? On their phones … if your website breaks or works poorly on a phone and you get tons of traffic from GOOGLE SEARCHES and then they click in to your website on their phone … and they can’t work it quickly or make sense of what they just opened up, welp … you guessed it: they will BOUNCE OUT and you just paid money to increase your bounce rate once more :(
THE GOOGLING CLIENT
Honestly: are your clients Googling to find the people they want to hire?
I do Google for some things ... I Google to find a plumber or someone to come and fix our dishwasher ... I Google to find out the latest news on Taylor Swift ... what else do I Google ... images of Charlie Hunnam << YUM, you gotta try that immediately ... my point??? I am not a Googler for the stuff I value! How do I find the things I value and want to spend my money on?
Me personally, I go to the places that I know VALUE what I VALUE. For instance, if it's clothes: Nordstrom or Free People ... Beauty products: Nordstrom ... Shoes: Nordstrom ... ok, ok I should branch out more ... but I know what I love! And most people in the demographic of who I am guessing you're after ... they also know what they love.
I believe that most brides and grooms these days are going to places that they value to ask for referrals ... those referrals lead that potential client to either your Instagram feed or your website ... and from wherever they start from, they go to the other ... so they will either click from your website (if they like it enough to stick around) to your Instagram or they will go from Instagram (if it's impressive enough) to your website.
I understand that when people are paying an SEO expert, they truly believe they are bettering their business … that they are doing something productive with their hard earned money … they are ‘fixing something’ that was broken … and in some cases, very rare cases, they are!
But if you are a small business owner who is in the service providing, event planning, wedding designing industry, or creative industry … and you seek a higher end client or have goals to attract that type of client … well, I feel VERY CONFIDENT making this statement:
YOUR CLIENT IS NOT GOOGLING TO FIND YOU.
And if you do get traffic via a Google search and they inquire with you, I’m going to go out on a limb and say: they aren’t your desirable client … and they probably can’t afford you OR they can, but they aren’t what you were hoping for.
AND WHEN I MAKE THESE CLAIMS, I AM DOING SO FROM THE STANDPOINT OF: MOST PEOPLE WHO HIRE ME ARE SEEKING TO LEVEL UP AND ATTRACT A HIGHER END CLIENT
What is my advice? If you really want to pay for SEO, make sure your website is in the best shape of its life … like: EXACTLY what you want to show off … your money needs to be spent FIRST to get your website lookin’ and workin’ like a dream before you spend a bunch of money in hopes to get a ton of traffic to come see it ;)
XO~ Heather
