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Google The Gatekeeper

Today, we're going to be talking about something so important and completely underestimated. Significantly more important than your website. I'm sure you're thinking it's 2022. My website is super important. And it is just significantly less important than what we're about to talk about.

Nobody's said. Let's go Yeah, who is that? Let's face it. Google practically owns the internet. Everybody uses Google. If you were one of the very small percentage of people that United is Google, let me know in the comments. But let's be real. Few and far between 84% of businesses are found by Discovery Search versus search. To me, what is Discovery Search versus search. When you know exactly what business you want, you know that you want to call Bob's cleaning company.

You go to Google, and you type in Bob's cleaning company; somebody's searching for a specific visit. However, if you go to Google and type in "cleaning company near me," this is a discovery search; someone is searching for a specific category of business. And then they're going to look at the businesses that show up at 4% or less in category searches. Now, when we get to the search and we have these results, 92% of the time, a consumer is going to go with a business on the first page. So this tells us that if you're not on the first page, go home because no one is going to be calling you. Because, let's face it, 8% of the searchers could potentially call you. Keep in mind that there are many businesses that are not on the first page of Google. So if you're not on that first page, Google is not a good source of leads for you.

So let's talk about this. Let's dive in. And let's talk about why Google is significantly more important than your website. Google needs information. Google needs to know what type of customers are looking for you. And what kind of customers are going to like your site. This is very key. Just because you want to work with X group of customers does not mean that X group of customers likes your website. So let's break this down a little bit. 

I was recently talking to a client and they were talking to me about their website. Their website, a little outdated, fairly basic. No bookings, no reservations, no payment processing, just a fairly simple straightforward information based site. If you were using your site for reservations, booking appointments, taking payments, your site is going to be a little more complex. This is just a very basic information site. And when I was speaking to them about why they had not updated their website, it's been several years. They said it was cost prohibitive. And I thought about it for a minute. And I thought that if your website isn't offering you anything in return, I could see how investing into a website could be harder to decide this was a good investment.

However, getting a website or even just keeping it current doesn't have to be super expensive. Base websites don't have to be a huge investment. So I almost fell off my chair when this customer told me that they had been quoted $8,000 for a website facelift. So my first question after, "Where did you find this web designer?" was, "How many views do you currently get to your site?"

Google, the wonder tool.
The most beautiful website worth $1,000, $10,000, or $50,000 is not helpful to your business if no one is looking at it. This is where we introduced Google as the gatekeeper. When it comes to finding your website, most people search, even if they know the name of your business. Rather than going to the top of the browser window and typing www.dot-your-business.com, they are going to go to the Google search and type in your business. When we look at the content that comes up when someone searches for your business, it can be crowded. There are so many ways that your customers can get distracted between going to Google and searching for your business and actually converting, whatever conversion looks like for you. This is the objective of this different customer journey. So whether that is to book a sales call, book an appointment for a free quote, pay you for an online service, or whatever that conversion is, your customer has many, many different steps and possible distractions to take between Googling and converting.

 

So the average business has 1009 searches per month. 1009 out of 5,000 of those will convert. 5% does not sound like a lot of conversion. But this actually surpasses the average e-commerce conversion rate by nearly 2%. The average ecommerce conversion rate hovers around 3% depending on the time of year, and this means that in order to book or convert a set number of plants, you need a fair amount of eyes. So if you're going to invest $8,000 into building a website, the question should be, "How many eyes are seeing it?" Is this a good investment? Because there are two components to the website. Number one, is it beautiful? There are thousands of very talented web designers that can build a beautiful site that is aesthetically pleasing and cohesive. But there is a select group of good web designers that can build a site that is both aesthetically pleasing and beautiful, but also functional. And when we say functional, what does the website need to do? In this example, we already established that we're not collecting payments, booking appointments, or doing e-commerce; this is just an information site.

 

 
So the question then becomes, "What is the purpose of your site? Why are you continuing to invest in your website? What step of the customer journey does your website support? Investing $8,000 in a site that doesn't get any views is not helpful. investing in getting more views. Having more functionality could potentially have a bigger return. It's the same thing as somebody investing hours into writing a blog. The question then is, "How many people are reading the blog? It really comes down to: are you meeting your customers where they are?

When we look at the discovery searches,Google is pairing up businesses with consumers. Google is the leader in this space, because the Google algorithms and Google's ability to match people with the information that they want is very good. But Google can only do that if Google has the appropriate information about your business. So when we look at the information that you are providing Google, if you think of Google, as a team member of your business, you want to provide the training, the information, the key details that Google needs to do their job. If you want Google to successfully match you up with the appropriate ideal clients, you must provide Google with the information in order to do that. And so when we say 56% of the people, 56% of the people who are searching for your business are going to go on to look at your website, we're going to say that you need to invest in the process of taking the people from searching to your website. And where is that middle ground? Well, that's Google the gatekeeper. So let's chat a little bit about the Google My Business Profile. And it's relevant in this conversation.

How important is Google my business profile?
The Google My Business Profile is significantly more important than your website. Significantly. So many Google My Business profiles go unclaimed, or they are outdated. When someone goes to Google and, and does a search, they're doing a direct search, they know your business name, maybe they have seen a vehicle driving around town, they've they've identified that this business is a service that they need, and now they've gone to Google Now they're going to search for your business name in Google. And if your Google My Business Profile is up to date, accurate, providing concrete information. Everything's working as it should. Your Google My Business Profile is going to come up on the right hand side of the Google screen. So this is that profile that hosts your reviews, it talks about your business hours, your website, all of these pieces. And so let me say the gatekeeper, most people are going to click on the website button of the business that comes up on Google my button, that's where you're going to see reviews. That's where you're going to get information about the hours if you're open your location, all of these pieces, 82% of consumers look for online reviews before making a commitment. 

82%. We're gonna dive into that in just a moment. But what this should tell us is that investing in this initial pop up, this Google My Business Profile, is so critical. Because it is only if that Google My Business Profile tells the potential consumer Hey, this is this is correct. This is the business I want, then they're gonna click on the button. That's gonna go to your website. And ultimately, that will only happen on average 56% of the time.

What happens to the others, they get distracted. They get distracted by paid traffic, paid ads that are appearing on Google, other websites, the phone, their kids, just about anything. Our world is full of distractions. And so when we look at the potential for distraction, we must be able to say hey, this business is the correct one for you. Click before they get distracted. It is so important that your Google My Business Profile is a fantastic snapshot of your business that entices them in. If you think about it in a brick and mortar type store visual. The Google My Business Profile is the outside of your store. It is what you know, we all know you're not supposed to judge the book by its cover. But let's be honest, we do. And when it comes to a store, if you are searching for a mechanic and you are looking at a row of mechanic shops, and one does not look well kept, it's completely out of date. It's of poor quality. You might get distracted by one of the other mechanic shops that looks on brand cohesive, looks like quality, great branding, great messaging.

Potentials for success
The factors in the online space, it's competitive, most things have been done. That's not to say that people can't be successful. Thousands of people take an idea that's been previously executed, executed better, and go on to be wildly successful. So anyone who says, hey, that's been done, hey, that's too crowded. Hey, that's not going to work. If you're going to go and do the exact same thing that's already been done, you might have success. But if you're going to go and you're going to improve, if you're going to level up something that was already successful, if you're going to put your own spin on it, your potential for success goes up 10 fold.

When we look at what can help entice people, the average business top three, top three business has 47 reviews. Now, let's talk about that a little, such businesses have the opportunity for more reviews. So let's just let's go through this for a sec. Now, if you have a hair salon, and you have three chairs, and each of those chairs sees three people a day, you have the potential for nine Google reviews. Sure not everyone's gonna ask, not everyone's gonna fill out the Google review.

Significantly less people are gonna fill out the Google review if you never asked them to. But now let's compare that with a company with a landscape company that's going to go and they're gonna have maybe they have a whole crew when they go to site and they work off a full week typically. So they start at a job on a Monday, and they all work all week, and then they wrap up the job on the Friday. One potential Google review, you have one opportunity compared to the other. The hair salon has nine opportunities each and every day.First, we must establish what our review opportunities are, then we must establish how we're going to ask for the reviews. There's a fair bit of data that says texting review requests versus emailing could be more successful. There is data that says sometimes you have to follow up.

People get distracted. If you have done a great job. People don't mind taking a couple of moments to leave a positive review. It helps your business grow. If you are investing into marketing, if you're investing into social media, and you're not investing into reviews and gathering reviews, we have to look at what is the objective of your investment. Now, if you're an online service provider, this is a little bit different. But if you are based in a specific location, let's go back to the mechanic shop example. Having followers across the continent does not generate sales. This doesn't help your business grow. Likes and followers who are not providing the revenue or even revenue potential are insignificant to your business. What is more significant to your business is review.

Reputation Management
So if you are investing, if you're investing even in your business Social media, blog writing, website development, pamphlets mail outs, any of these pieces you need to be invested into reputation management, asking for the review. Gold stars have become reviews between Amazon's gold stars, Google's five gold stars. When we see the stars, is it connected to quality in our bide. So we want to be sure that we are asking for the reviews, because know not everyone's going to leave one. But the chance of someone leaving one when you don't ask them for it is highly unlikely.

So we're gonna go back to the Google profile, my business profile. And we're going to look at other things that can help take your client from Google through to your website. Keeping that content up to date, using all the features. And depending on your industry, you will have different features available. And when you select your categories, it will turn on and off features by default base that would suit your industry. If you have the potential to assist your customer in a way that they want to do business, you should turn it on, you should use the features something like Google My Business messaging is a newer messaging platform for businesses. But today's generation, you know today's group of people don't always want to pick up the phone. A lot of times texting is easier. Now that could be because they're multitasking. And it's loud. It could be because they're super busy. It could be because they're working on something in the middle of the night and you're not open a lot. It's a lot of people have a list of things a calls appointments, yada, yada, yada. And then they get all the way to the end of the day, most businesses are closed, they're laying in bed, and they're like, Oh, now I didn't call. I didn't set up that appointment.

Now, if that person can just go on your website, go through Google and book that appointment. All is not lost. This is not a missed opportunity. It's important that you have the ability to meet the client where they want to do business, whether that be messaging, whether that be the phone, whether that be you know a form. You want to meet the client where they want to do business. It's important that we understand that everyone is different, but also know your audience. If you are serving a very tech focused industry, then your communication style and your channels can be fairly innovative. If you are serving an older population that is less tech savvy, chances are you're going to need more communication channels that have some some basic components to them. It's important that we focus on giving Google the information Google needs to pair our business up with our ideal client.

Pictures on a Google My Business post, increased the click through rate to 35%. To take that a step further, adding geographical information into your photos. When we're talking about adding this into the photos, we're looking at geotagging photos. Again, another layer of information we can get Google, do we have to do them all? No. However, we have to decide and look at what is the objective of our business. How each of these channels, whether it be Instagram, Facebook, Google My Business or the website, how all these different channels are supporting that objective. And then make the investments into where this is relevant.

So looking at tangible tips that we can take away from today. If your Google My Business Profile is not optimized, I want you to go home. And I want you to open up your profile and claim it. If it has not been claimed, Google's gonna send you a postcard. So the process is not overnight. So you want to claim it, so that you can verify that with that postcard. And then I want you to go in, and I want you to optimize and use the features. Features, like the Q and A section Question and Answers section is a great place to take your most frequently asked questions and drop them in, and then answer them and add in pictures, posts, and your location. Now, a lot of service based businesses say I come to the client, the client doesn't come to me, I don't they don't need my address. Why is location important?

How important is your location?
Location is important. And you don't have to give all of the specifics of your address. You do need to give regions that you're serving because people are going to say, I want a physiotherapist near me, a massage therapist near me, a massage therapist in XYZ city. If Google does not have the information to know that, that the city is you, this is a missed opportunity. So after you have claimed your Google My Business Profile, or if you've already claimed it, you want to go through and fill out the information. Think of what someone would be searching for that you would want them to find you? What keywords is the customer using?

Not necessarily what your industry terminology is. But what is someone searching for? What is your ideal customer searching for when they are looking for you. And this is the kind of key words terminology that you want to add into your Google My Business Profile. What to add in those pictures, you want to add in the details you want to give Google as much information as possible. If we come back to that analogy of Google working on your team and needing that information, Google can be a highly valued member of your team. But Google needs the information. If you're not requesting reviews, and want you to start to die.

Now, you might say how, how am I going to do this? Requesting reviews can either be done through automation on an automated workflow. It can also be done through copying and pasting on a very basic level, you could type up your review request, save it in the notes of your phone, and copy and paste it to clients. Can this be done with automation with multiple workflow steps and whatnot? Absolutely. And we can dive into that on a future episode.

But on a very basic level, request to review. People will be happy to help you if you have provided them great value, you have provided a great service. So the big key takeaway from here today is websites are not all about aesthetics, and branding. They must also be functional. If someone is not able to see your amazing content, whether that be a blog, post a website, an Instagram post, or any of these things, if you are investing into something and no one is seeing it, this is not a great investment for your business. Good marketing means the right people need to have eyes on what you're offering.

So before you make a decision, whether to build out your website or not, build out your website, give it an update or not give it an update. One of the first things that you should ask is how many people are looking at my current website. This is not to say that if your website views are low, you should never improve your website. But what it means is there needs to be a secondary component to your strategy that also has the views of the website increasing. You're going to go through the effort of giving your website the update then you absolutely want to make sure that you're getting as many eyes on the website as possible.

If you have questions about your website. If your views and what these numbers can mean for your business, your customer journey, looking at your Google Analytics can really be quite helpful. But most websites, hosting providers, so whether you're with Squarespace or Shopify, or you know any of these different website platforms, most of them have a very basic idea: how many people saw your website last month? So while the word analytics can be a bit nerve racking, and a lot of people who especially startups don't necessarily have Google Analytics turned on, or added to their website, basic. This is a very basic question. How many views are you getting to your website? Just about any website platform should be able to help you.

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the service based business society, Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching surface based business society. Click subscribe, click the fifth star and leave us a rating review. Have a great week and we will see you soon