How SEO robs you of sales appointments
Over the years, I've worked with a lot of independent professionals. The vast majority of them launch a website that looks more or less like this:
1. A client (let's call her Andrea) isn't booking enough appointments. 2. She writes her website to solve her prospect's chief problem. 3. Her designer publishes her website (pushes it "live") 4. She optimizes her website's SEO, fills out her Google My Business info., and begins to blog weekly and post on LinkedIn 5. She waits. 6. After 3 months with no contact forms on her site filled out, she pays an SEO marketing agency $30,000 to make her website more visible 7. The SEO agency tells her to be patient. 8. They rewrite her website using keywords that they think will work 9. Two people fill out contact forms over a 6-month period 10. She buys retargeting ads that pop up on her target market's most frequently visited websites like CNN, Fox, Forbes, and YouTube 11. These bring her 2 more leads, one who shows up for the discovery session but doesn't buy and another who never shows up at all. 12. Meanwhile Andrea is spending more and more time and money on ads and trying to make it to page one of Google and tring to screw up the courage to cold call or cold email her prospects directly. 13. Andrea gives up on her website ever bringing leads and comes to uses her website for "branding" purposes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SEO is not the answer to your prayers. You are.
Most SEO agencies try solve the inherent problems of search by optimizing your website's keywords. They think the solution is to use better keywords, or to run ads, or - everyone's favorite - bill clients for time spent searching.
It is true that enough time (often years) and blog writing (at least one per week) you can make your website appear at the top of a specific page your prospects might be searching for, provided that your client knows to search for you or your keyword and that you have no competition (in which case, your clients should be beating a path to your door without search).
However, optimization treats the symptoms and ignores the disease. The real way to solve the inherent problems of your prospect not finding your website is to bring your website to them. When a website is delivered directly to a prospect rather than waiting for the prospect to arrive, the issues listed above simply evaporate.
In order to do that though, the website needs to offer enough value so that you get explicit permission from the prospect to stay in touch with them until you've either offered enough value to motivate them to contact you or they choose to no longer give you that permission (aka they unsubscribe).
Either way, a successful website can't be a true success without booked calendar appointments - at least for a solo independent professional. High-value calendar appointments are the natural result of both prospect and website getting value from each other. 7-second websites create a shared risk/reward environment for both parties.
To be continued...
To be continued...