Understanding your company’s ranking on search engines seems like a pretty straight forward idea, unfortunately, it can be easily confused and easy to misunderstand.
Thankfully there a couple of simple things you can do to find out what your company’s current rank is and then be able to formulate a plan to get where you want to go.
Quality Traffic is King
When it comes to having a website on the internet, the purpose is to attract searchers, clients, customers or donors who are looking for what you have to offer whether it is information or a product. Without any traffic to your website, there is essentially no reason whatsoever for the site to even exist… unless your ego simply needs one to feel complete.
Traffic… or PEOPLE is why we build or pay somebody to build a website and make it available on the internet anyway. And while traffic is important, quality traffic is the desire, heartbeat, and dictator of search engine supremacy and website success.
Let’s face it, while we all love to see our analytics numbers grow as the amount of traffic coming to our site increase, it is far better if the traffic coming to our site is actually seeking out what we have to offer. That means they will actually utilize it whether that is via gaining information, donating, or purchasing.
Just like customers that come through the front door of your business, you would prefer to have people there who are looking for what you have than those that could care less.
WHERE do they come from?One of the favorite jokes in the Search Engine Optimization community is “Where do you hide a dead body?” Punchline… “On the 3rd page of Google.” And it’s true. The percentage of searchers that actually get beyond page one of the search results much less to page 3 is a fraction of a percent. So if your website is on page 3… it might as well be a dead body.
Website traffic actually comes from 2 places: 1. From the search engines if your website comes up where searchers will see it, and 2. From people who know about your website from word of mouth or traditional paid advertising methods.
What does this mean?This means that you need to understand what quality search engine optimization is so that your website appears in front of the people who are looking for what you have to offer or you better have a good grasp of the fact that the only way people will know about you is via paid advertising.
Truthfully, both are important in the big picture. They both have very important parts to play.Almost without exception, a higher Return On Investment is achieved once a quality
SEO (search engine optimization) standard has already been established on your website at which point the two work together to completely maximize the exposure and performance of traffic to your website.
So what’s the problem?One of the biggest problems we witness on a regular basis is business owners and managers that INSIST there is nothing wrong with their search engine ranking and that technical
SEO will not help their company. Yet while they are insisting, I am looking at their website statistics and seeing the numbers that show me there is little to no traffic to their website and that they only rank for a single search term (keyword) anywhere in the top 3 pages of any of the search engines.
Inevitably that keyword is their company name. That… is exactly where the problem lies.
Branding is an important part of company establishment and growth, however, it often is the sole focus of many business owners and managers.
Therefore they will insist that they have first page or even number one rankings on the search engines and not even realize that unless you’re one of the BIG guys with a completely recognized brand name like Nike, Audi, or Home Depot, the chances of people actually searching for your company name or brand are actually very low.
The average person searches on a much more general level. Like “running shoes”, “cars for sale in my city”, or “hardware store.”
Not everybody recognizes NorthFace if they are looking for “sleeping bags for sale.” Does that make sense?
What does this mean?This means that the truest measure of a company’s successful ranking on search engines is not for their company name or brand, rather it is based on the search terms or keywords that are relevant to the message or product that they have available.
If you have a bakery specializing in custom cakes, your best website traffic is most likely to come from your site being on the first page of a search engine when somebody is searching for “custom birthday cake” or “cakes for special occasions.” Especially if they have no way of otherwise knowing your company’s name.
If your bakery site is on page 3 and your competitions bakery site is on page 1, who do you think has the better chance of getting the new customer?
So the reality of judging your company’s search engine ranking is not an accurate picture when looking at the ranking of your brand name, rather, it is in considering all of the terms that are relevant to what your site is offering and where your site ranks for those terms.
So before you throw the idea out the door of hiring a quality SEO consultant, consider the current traffic of your website and the quality of that traffic. Find out where your site ranks for the relevant keywords other than your brand name.
If you have any questions about how to find or figure that out, you can use tools like www.semrush.com or www.ahrefs.com, but those can be confusing if you don’t know what you are looking at.
Many
SEO companies will gladly perform an SEO site audit for you and let you know what your current standings are, what your potential is, and where to start or how to formulate a plan. We are no different.
If you fill out our Discovery Form, you will receive a complete video analysis of your website and it’s current status completely free. It will include a quality snapshot of the possibilities available as well. Just click here or on the tab above to fill out the form.
Bob Proctor is a master at showing you how to change your paradigm. It’s how he changed his own life, and it’s what he has been studying for the past 50+ years. He knows that changing your paradigm is the only way to bridge the gap between how you’re currently living and how you want to live.