Picture this.
You’re at home and want to fix yourself a sandwich.
You’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to bother you.
So you take your time, you pick out your bread and fillings.
You get the sandwich press out.
And you begin assembling the sandwich you’ve been craving for.
As it’s coming together, your mouth starts to water.
It’s looking DOPE.
And you’re just bouncing around with excitement at this perfect sandwich you’re just moments away from devouring.
Then… in a quick second… it all falls apart.
An accidental nudge and your sandwich falls to the ground.
Fillings go everywhere.
The bread lands buttered side down.
And that’s it. It’s over. No more sandwich.
You’re gutted. And lose all motivation to make another one.
Then you decide to grab something from Uber Eats. You know it’ll do the job even if it costs you more now. But you also know it just won’t be as fulfilling as that sandwich you were lovingly putting together with your own two hands.
Now what’s this got to do with SEO and dumb things that ruin it?
Excellent question.
SEO is about improving visibility – whether for a website, app or video.
And when done right, SEO will achieve that goal.
It takes time but is worth the effort and investment that uses up those beautiful limited resources we have like:
Time
Money
SANITY
But you will lose time, waste money and destroy all sanity if you’ve got any of the following:
– a SLOW loading site (do I even need to explain?)
– a website experience full of distractions and disruptions (live chat, cookie notice, newsletter signup, push notifications…)
– basic screenshots of your app in the app store (instead of detailed, creative pictures that SELL your app)
– videos with poor sound quality, no captions and boring content (if you don’t grab attention within the first 5-7 seconds, you’ve lost them).
– a website that focuses on trying to hit keyword density targets instead of answering people’s questions (looks like spam, smells like spam, it IS spam)
Essentially: a terrible experience all round.
SEO is about improving visibility.
And when done right, it will get you great visibility that can make a huge difference to your bottom line.
And because SEO requires TIME, MONEY & SANITY (resources that are limited), it’s absolutely essential that you don’t throw it all down the toilet with a terrible experience all round.
Think about it and how obvious it may seem.
You might rank first in the app store but compare your app with its basic screengrabs and no creative marketing VS the 2nd/3rd/4th ranked apps with properly set out screenshots with USPs clearly laid out (they made an effort, you didn’t)
You could outrank larger businesses in Google but your site is slow and is stuffed with keywords and doesn’t make it easy for people to convert (CALL or EMAIL).
Some days I struggle to choose a business when doing searches for things I need done. Like, it shouldn’t be this hard. BUT IT IS.
As an SEO professional, I can smell an optimised site a mile away (whether it’s a good or bad smell is also clear as day).
But it’s so disappointing seeing top ranking sites that suffer from being slow, crowded or just plain stupid because they put up so many barriers to conversions.
All that money invested in SEO? GOOOOONE.
What an absolute waste.
And that’s why it’s dumb. Because you just show no respect for the limited resources in your life and you throw it away by being SLACK and not caring about all the details.
What it all comes down to is: making sure people can easily choose you over the competition: whether it’ a click through from Google, downloading your app, or choosing to watch your video instead of the thousand others on YouTube.
Why should people pick you?
Being #1 in a search engine isn’t a good enough reason.
Tell this to your clients. And tell it yourself as a business owner.
Don’t be dumb. Don’t waste your resources. Make it all count, all day every day.
You know it makes sense.
Now I’m hungry. Time for a sandwich.
