Google doesn’t care how pretty your website is. A gorgeous design with a searchability score of zero is nothing more than an expensive digital brochure sitting in a dark corner of the internet where nobody can find it. If that makes you gasp, you’ll enjoy this episode.
Resources
- Tool of the Week 👉 wave.video.
This tool can create videos from existing blog posts! - Recommended Podcast 👉 Knowledge Mindfulness for Complex Times with Dr. Laila Marouf on the Speaking Your Brand podcast.
Speaking of being an expert, Dr. Marouf spoke about how we “tend to just cling to what we know in many ways, defend what we know in many ways, become static, become hardened of what we know.” She encourages us to open up to different views and different perspectives.
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Remember when you just launched your beautiful website. You had spent weeks picking the perfect fonts and colors and images. You maybe even took the time and money and energy to have a brand shoot.
You finally have a place to send people when they ask what you do. Guess what? Google does not care how pretty your website is. A gorgeous design with a searchability score of zero is just a digital brochure.
Are you gasping at my saying Google doesn’t care about your design? We’ll get into that soon.
Small back story… Back in my days as a professional fitness photographer, I had a site I was incredibly proud of. It was visually stunning. I had an amazing offer. I truly wanted to help people feel proud of their fitness accomplishments.
The problem was There were no leads coming in from it. I was relying entirely on referrals and word-of-mouth. And while referrals are great, they leave your business at risk because you cannot control when they happen.
Having a beautiful site that is invisible in search is basically like having a stack of business cards in a desk drawer.
A lot of us start our website journey just needing “something to send people to.” That is a fine initial tactic, but it often leads to a site that looks great and says nothing to Google.
In some industries, like a local hair salon, a simple site might be enough to show Google you are a real business for your local listing. But for a service-based business like yours, your website has a much bigger job to do. You are showcasing your authority and expertise and experience. You are proving that you can be trusted and explaining why your specific service is vital to your client.
In all my years, I’m still seeing a lot of “build it and they will come” mindset. People build their sites, check them off the list, and never go back to them. Or they might throw up a handful of blog posts.
It’s assumed search traffic will just happen. But searchability is a strategic sales strategy.
Let’s talk about how your site actually connects with people. Many people think keywords are just words you sprinkle on a page to satisfy the algorithms. Keywords are topics that people are actually searching for.
Think about the intention of what your ideal client is typing into that search box. They are looking for a solution to a problem. If your website doesn’t talk explicitly about the things people are searching for, how is it going to get found?
Remember earlier when I was saying how it’s not effective to have just a pretty website? The visuals do matter but not to Google. What Google cares about is if people stick around on your website. Do they convert? The pretty visuals are for the visitors to get them to stick around and convert.
When you combine the right copy with the right pretty visuals, your website becomes your best marketing tool. It becomes a salesperson that explains your value and captures leads while you are offline. We live in a world where you can get clients while you are sleeping! That is so incredible, but it only happens when your site is searchable.
The Takeaway
Your website should be pulling in leads, not just sitting there looking pretty.
You don’t need to learn technical jargon to rank; you just need to talk about what people are actually looking for.
And if you’re not sure if SEO is even for you, take this 2-minute quiz.
