I was networking the other day in 1 Mill Street, a beautiful collaborative workspace for businesses in the middle of Leamington Spa.
I started chatting to a nice guy from a Coventry company that provides audio/visual tech equipment for events.
He told me how his company was making good SEO progress. He had recently been asking more customers to write a Google review.
“Sounds great”, I said. “Also, make sure you respond in the right way to all these reviews.”
“Yes we reply to them all”.
“Great, this is your chance to show your company’s personality so it’s good you’re replying like that. First impressions count. When prospective customers see your Google Business Profile, it’s likely one of the first times they’ve come across your business. So don’t just give the standard, ‘thanks for your review, it was a pleasure to work with you’, but be personable and give people a glimpse into how you helped that customer. People won’t just read the review, they’ll read your reply too to see what you’re like.”
After the networking event I went and checked his Google reviews and he was right, he was responding, and his personality was coming across. I’d be more interested in how they had helped them, expanding more on what the customer said.
“Thank you” he said, “So what’s the one thing my company should be doing to get more Google traffic?”.
I thought I’d write this article to let you in on what I told him.
“Keep getting reviews like you’re doing, that’s great. Businesses are seeing very good results from optimising their Google Business Profile.“
“Also when it comes to Google keep it simple. Google isn’t going to show your website to your target audience if your website hardly contains the keywords you want to rank for. It’s so strange to see that many businesses think Google is a mind reader, and that websites/pages will appear in search results, even though they only have a small amount of content related to the keywords in the search.”
I had a sneaky look at the gent’s website when I got back to the office.
It was surprising and not surprising at the same time, to see a less than ideal amount of content on the pages. There was a lot of content that could be written for Google, but which was missing…
…or should that read: “missing content that’s written for your target audience”?
Put simply. Make sure your website contains enough helpful content to rank for your desired keywords, at least you then have a foundation.
“As a major strategy, the one thing to get more Google traffic would be to follow a People-First SEO strategy.”
Some people glaze over when you mention SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. But People-First SEO is non-technical and simply means creating content for people, and largely forgetting Google.
If you’re serious about getting more traffic on Google, this is likely to be a very good opportunity.
Keep it simple.
Just answer the questions your target audience is asking.
What is People-first SEO?
People First SEO is the practice of putting people before search engines, with the goal of building engaging content and trust. And of course, the ultimate goal if you do it well, is to get more customers from Google.
That means creating content that appeals to your target audience first and foremost, rather than trying to game the system to rank higher in search results.
While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to rank well in search, if your sole focus is on search engines, you’re likely to miss out on opportunities to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.
If you want to do well on Google nowadays, it pays to forget Google, at least to begin with.
Check out my explanation of People-first SEO here.
Turn your website into a beautiful haven of content that answers your buyers’ questions, until you become the number one trusted educator in your space — like the great guy I met at the networking could do.
For him, through his trusted content, he’s got the opportunity to become “the no.1 service provider of audio/visual tech equipment for events in Coventry” – that would be powerful.
But he needs the helpful and unbiased content on his website to do that.
For other types of company, their space might be a specific industry or sector in the whole of the UK.
Could you create content on your website like never before to engage and earn trust