Google Ranking Isnt Everything

There’s a lot to be said nowadays about where your website ranks on search engines. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are extremely valuable tools in marketing your business. In essence, SEO and SEM help to increase the amount of people and potential clients you are able to reach in fairly efficient forms.

However, just ranking well on a search engine doesn’t guarantee your business will be successful.

Read on to discover why your Google ranking isn’t everything.

There are a few key points that should be addressed regarding a website design and how users and potential clients view your website (and your business) once they actually get there.

Helping more people find your content is challenging enough as it is, but helping them actually take action once they do find you is another challenge altogether.

In an optimal situation, your business would be doing both: increasing the number of prospects who find your business, and, in turn, closing deals and creating relationships with them.

Here are a few key reasons why your Google ranking alone isn’t everything.

Poor Communication

Your website, and your business, needs to effectively communicate with your visitor quickly and efficiently. One of the largest hurdles businesses run into is understanding how to tell their prospects exactly what they do in exactly the type of language their prospects can relate to.

Many businesses, and subsequently, websites, end up talking about the nuts and bolts of how their business operates and often overlook the fact that their target audience often doesn’t care about the details of how they run business. People want to know why they should use a particular product or service. They want to know what it will do for them and not necessarily how that particular business does what they need.

So, driving more traffic to a website is good. Not communicating with the audience in the most efficient manner is not.

Lack of Strategy

Going along with the idea of poor communication is a lack of strategy.

An efficient strategy helps determine who a target audience is specifically, what the target audience needs, and how to show this target audience that you can help fulfill that need.

By not understanding exactly who you are attempting to communicate with, your website may actually do more harm than good.

For example, if your target demographic is male and 30-40 years of age, it would be important to make sure your website design is tailored to that audience. In other words, the use of soft, pink colors and light, thin typography mixed in with photos of flowers probably wouldn’t be the wisest way to go about establishing a strategy of communication to your audience.

This is obviously an extreme example, but the point remains. It’s vitally important to develop a strategy and a foundation for who you want your website to communicate with, how you should communicate with them, show them the need they currently have, and present the fulfillment of that need in a way that your potential client can quickly and easily relate to.

Driving more traffic to your website is good. Not having a strategy for how to handle that traffic is not.

Bad Design

Finally, another thing to watch out for is in relation to the website design itself.

This could refer to the visual presentation, the organization of content, or even how quickly your website loads and adaptability to make sure potential clients on different operating systems, different browsers, or different devices (most notably smart phones) can view your website and understand its message equally.

Something else to consider is that if your website design is executed poorly, it sends a subliminal message to your potential clients about the investment you place in your company.

In turn, it tells them a lot about how you might treat them and their business. If you take the time to really develop your brand and identity, then your prospect knows you’ll take even greater care of your relationship with them.

However, if you demonstrate that you aren’t really concerned with how you present yourself and your business (via branding, website design, collateral or otherwise) your potential clients could quickly assume that you’ll treat their business the same as you treat your own company: not going the extra mile.

Bottom Line

Getting to the first page of Google and drawing lots of traffic to your website is one thing.

Retaining those users and encouraging them to take action is another entirely.

Don’t focus all of your efforts on only getting to the first page. Make sure, when you get there, and you receive valuable traffic, that you communicate clearly with your target audience and provide them with a pleasant experience.

Their experience on your website is a subliminal microcosm of how their experience with your business and your brand would go.