Search is more fun when you keep score

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgPHWXA5hRQ

Hello again, Michael Byrd with Home Services Digital video number 13, Lucky number 13. I want to speak about some fundamentals around what we talked about in the last video, and I’m going to be fairly picky at what might seem like minutiae but it’s very important to understand conceptually. And, you know, I go back to this conceptual thing all the time and my trusty legal pad. You know you can keep your books on paper. You can understand search on paper. You can do the keywords analysis on paper or on a simple worksheet. You can understand these things conceptually and then if it gets big and massive and so on you at least understand what that’s all about and you don’t get overwhelmed or intimidated by the same concept repeated over and over.

Focus on Google

I do equate search engine optimization — now that is a fancy term and it’s a term we’re stuck with which we’re stuck, with “search engine optimization.” I’ve whittled that down to one or maybe two variables for you in terms of search engines. People still say “I want to come up in all the search engines.” Well, there aren’t “all the search engines.” There are only essentially two players: Google and Bing/Yahoo. So search engine optimization is really Google optimization. Just win at Google and you will be making so much money in your business that you won’t have to worry about anything else.

What I walked you through last time, the the amateur, seat-of-the-pants, using the legal pad or a or a simple worksheet to do a keywords analysis — it’s not something that SEO companies do. We do it this way because we wanted to find a way to make sense of all this for ourselves before we went out and sold it to customers. And we did this about six years ago. Search engine optimization as a business — well, it’s a good bit older than six years — but we didn’t want to get into it until we had a business model that made some sense. And now of course we do. I’m not pitching that.

Understand the concept

What I’m pitching is understanding the concept and so one of the things that I don’t want you to do is to pay for so-called SEO on any sort of a flat rate. “Here’s what I’m gonna pay every month and I want to get good SEO.” You’ve got to know what good SEO is. You’ve got to know, like I said last time, you’ve got to know: A pipe that leaks? It’s not good. And a pipe that doesn’t leak is good. A toilet that works is good. SEO: What that means is coming up for the searches that matter; for one of the searches that have volume for your business, on page one; the searches that are going to bring the phone calls.

And they do bring phone calls! When you get there you’re gonna see.

Keep score so you can avoid a bad deal

So I’m gonna switch over to the screen and we’re gonna talk a little bit more specifically about understanding this and what to watch out for because I don’t want you to get in the wrong deal. You don’t want to not know how to keep score.

All right, so here I am at my generic worksheet. I actually made a copy of this first tab we talked about when we did a couple of searches last time. We found our example company on the third page and in this case in position three, which makes his position 23. We did a slightly different search for a house painter and we found our example company in position 24. We said that it is that page, that position in Google for this term on this date.

Here’s what “winning” looks like

Now I made this other sheet over here so I could show you an alternative. What if you did your seat-of-the-pants Google keywords analysis slash score sheet — this is a score sheet? You need to know how to keep score. You need to know whether you are already getting good search results or whether you are getting abysmal search results. Let’s just say I did that search and I was in position three. Let’s just say over here I was in position two. Let’s say I do this search and I’m in position one and over here at position six. You see what I’m getting at here.

And let’s just say I left this Column A blank for a reason. I’m going to show you an example of a  scoresheet similar to this that we do for an actual client. I took the name of the client out. But let’s just say we’re gonna call this relative — well, we’ll just leave out the word “relative” — let’s just call this search volume. That means what people are actually typing in. It’s a fancy term for what people are actually typing in when they’re looking for a painter.

High volume – popular! – search terms

As you might imagine, Google has all these statistics. It’s numbers, and numbers, and numbers, and they have rooms and caves and hard drives full of data. Let’s just say this is a high volume search term — 2500 searches in the last month probably not that many but, OK. And I’ve ranked these in order of search volume. I’m just making this up but you get what I’m saying here. And this is actually how we do it when we use tools so that we’re not doing this by hand. We’re gonna rank them using a worksheet. You can use a worksheet to order things by whichever column you want. Let’s just say this one happens to be 21 and so on and you get what I’m after here.

And we do our baseline keywords analysis. We decided that we were going to do that today. And here’s what I find: I’m in the top positions for all the good search terms. Now, I’ve got a dumb question: Do I want to pay somebody or do I want to spend time doing so called SEO? The answer, of course, is no. I’m already winning, OK? I’m already winning. If you’re already winning that game don’t play that game. You’re already winning your phones are probably ringing from people who say “I found you on Google. I did a Google search.” You don’t know. Maybe you’re not paying attention to whether it’s organic, Maps, or ads. And I’ve shown you, I’ve walked you through that part.

If you’re winning this game go play a different one

But you’re getting phone calls from the internet and this is why. Somebody who built your website had done a really good job and your website’s 15 years old. You were ahead of the crowd. You get good search results. You modernized your website so that you have a responsive site. You have a high page load speed. You don’t have any broken links. We can talk about broken links but you don’t have any of that and you’re getting good search results. You’re winning. Don’t play this game. Just track your search results a month at a time. Go next month and just see where you’re coming up. If you’re getting similar search rankings you don’t need to fix this. This is not broken don’t fix it.

Alternative scenario: Let’s say you’re in position 99, and here you’re in position 86, and here you’re in position 75, and hear you’re in position 92, and here you’re in position 97. I’m making these numbers up, of course. Position 99 is the tenth page, the ninth result. You are essentially nowhere. Would you do search engine optimization? I’m gonna say probably not. It’s probably not your next movie. You can move from position 99 to position 66 a month later and then maybe after that you can move to position 51 and a month after that you can move to 47 but you’re putting time and money in and here. We are four months in and you’re still nowhere. You’re closer to the front but you’re nowhere. When you get to position 17 you’re within striking distance but you still don’t get phone calls. You still don’t get phone calls until you get to position 10 and, better yet, Let’s get to position 4.

If you’re losing badly, plan for a long climb to the top

OK, so here we are. There’s September, October, November, December, January. Start now; you don’t get anything until January. You probably have some moves that come before this. You need to do this at some point but this is not your next move. This is a long cycle proposition – longer cycle proposition – for you so this is why getting a baseline is important and measuring it month after month is important.

This is how you understand the game. This is to keep score. This is how to know whether you’re winning, this is how to know whether you’re losing or whether you’re getting better so we’re gonna stop there since we’re almost at ten minutes. Michael Byrd with Home Services Digital. Please remember to subscribe. You’ll get a notice about the next video.