A good site that ranks well says you’re good at what you do. A bad site or one that ranks badly tells customers you’re not good at what you do.
If you’re thinking “the two aren’t related,” you’d be correct. This is absolutely a case where correlation is not causation. Your website and how it ranks likely have little connection with how good you are at what you do.
As the old saying goes, “Googling your symptoms only tells you which diseases have the best SEO.”
But your clients don’t see it that way.
Here’s an example: My wife is an exceptionally good realtor. She also happens to rank well for certain local realtor-related search terms. She gets calls all the time from new leads that report, “you came up first on Google, so you must be the best.”
Your clients are likely no different. Her anecdotal experience is backed up by data.
Year after year, the data has been pretty consistent:
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the top organic search result gets roughly 40% of clicks.
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The second organic search result gets 19% of clicks
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the third result getting 10%.
The remaining ~30% are split between the ads and other search results.
With over 80% of all buying decisions starting online, if you don’t rank well, it’s likely you won’t even make your potential customers’ short list.
Next, of course, you have to give them something credible when they get to your site. There’s obviously a lot of factors that go into defining what “a good site” is, but here are some questions to ask as you look at your existing site:
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Does it show and tell your brand story in a way that your salespeople AND support people would agree with?
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Your potential customers are coming to your site with a problem (or three). Is it easy to find the solutions you provide to those specific problems?
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Does your site show and tell why you’re the best option to solve those problems?
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What keywords do your clients use to describe their problems? Use these when describing your answers – industry terminology may make sense to you, but does it to them?
You don’t need to be an expert in technical SEO, and answering the above questions doesn’t require hundreds of pages of content or a full-time in-house web team. But it also won’t ever be something you can check off and call it done, and getting outside perspectives and help are always useful in uncovering blind spots.
If you want credibility at scale, there’s not much better “bang for the buck” than investing in a well-designed, well-optimized website.
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