SEO companies make promises like this that sound good. What are they really offering, and is it the right thing for your business? In this article I will give you some information to help you decide for yourself if this is what you need.
Table of Contents
Is Google page one ranking your business goal?
No, it is not.
Your business needs inquiries from customers in order to generate sales. Inquiries come from:
The 10 Steps to Attracting Inquiries
- Accurate keyword research
- SEO ranking optimization
- Fast web hosting
- Great web design for mobile / desktop
- Useful, well written content
- Great Images & Videos
- The right products / services that the customer actually needs
- Easy navigation to take the customer to the contact form.
- Easy to complete contact form.
- You receive an inquiry from the customer
There are more things that affect inquiries, but this gives you an idea of the most important ones.
SEO companies make a big thing about the first two points – keywords and SEO ranking, because they can do these without understanding your business or creating new content for you, which requires time and effort. Unfortunately, keywords and search ranking on their own will not deliver the results that your business needs.
Summary:
You want customer inquiries not just ranking.
Where are your customers?
Google is a global search engine but the results are all local.
When an SEO company says that they can rank you on Google page one ask them in which country and which language.
To see how this works, just try this:
Go to google.com on your phone and search for “Italian restaurant,” When you see the results, you will find that all the restaurants are nearby. The same is true for any other search.
Google will prioritize the results that are local to the person making the search.
It’s the same with your company.
If you want people in other countries to find your business then you may need to host your website in that region, make sure that the language is the same as your customers and then you will have a chance of appearing in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Local hosting makes pages load faster, and paired with good website design for mobile and desktop makes it more likely customers will stay on your page to read the content.
Remember that to be really successful you need to complete all of the 10 Steps to Attracting Inquiries
Summary:
Google search results are local even though it is a global search engine
You need content not ranking
Customers use Google to search for products and services. The right content leads customers to purchasing decisions. Google ranking won’t generate sales on its own.
Using SEO tricks to fool Google into putting a website with poor content onto page one looks clever, but it won’t generate inquiries. Your customers need quality content to make purchasing decisions. If the content is not there, they will look elsewhere no matter how high your page ranking is.
There is no shortcut to good content, it is a key part of the website creation process. In today’s competitive B2B business markets, businesses struggle to succeed without it.
Summary:
Without good content, SEO is a waste of money.
So what should you do now?
The first thing is to invest in the high quality website and content you need to sell your products. Once you have that you can then use SEO to attract new customers to your business. The best websites integrate content and SEO as part of the build.
Some companies have a website built by one company, and then go to an SEO provider to magically boost their Google ranking. They then wonder why they are not getting many new customer inquiries despite having spent all that money.
In my experience the problem is almost always the content.
If your website isn’t right, don’t bother with SEO ranking.
Sometimes these companies decide to continue with the site they have and just spend even more money on SEO, hoping it will somehow work. This is a poor business decision for these reasons:
- The additional SEO to boost your ranking will cost more than a new website with the right content – and it won’t even generate inquiries.
- Your competitors who follow the 10 Steps to Attracting Inquiries will be ahead of you.
- Fixing the issue now will give you an immediate sales boost.
Ok, but what if I do have a really good website with great content?
Congratulations, you can now look at SEO as an option, but remember: don’t focus on the ranking, only focus on the inquiries as that is what your business really needs.
Summary:
Make the right business decision or your sales may be affected
At GlobalSense we focus on helping Taiwan’s traditional manufacturers to be more competitive in the global marketplace. If you would like to talk to us to see how we can help your business, please contact us.