If I look back at the number one reason why I started my podcast, the number one reason why I named it marketing Above all, is that I still stand completely firm, that I believe that marketing can save any situation in any struggling business.
Now, obviously, there’s asterisks, and caveats and things like that. And there’s I mean, cash flow that comes in and again, there’s other factors that could potentially sink a business. But I firmly see some really interesting opportunities right now for every single one of you.
The topic for today is taking some next steps with your content marketing, and in particular, what do you actually have to do to start ranking your website better.
Like a lot of other marketers, I love to study attention, where’s the attention. And as the attention has shifted from offline to online in the past, and it shifted from big screen TVs or big monitors down to iPhones and androids, and then back to iPads and back to mobile and kind of all over the place, I always watch that attention. And I’m obviously always watching the attention between online and offline and trying to help find that right marketing mix in that right balance.
What I’m seeing now obviously, with pretty much everyone hunkering down across the United States and for that matter, the world, I’m seeing the amount of searches that are being done online, increasing exponentially for pretty much everything.
So yes, there are going to be some searches that are the ones that you would expect. So I’m in the search for people typing in “restaurants near me”, “cleaning companies”, Covid-19. I mean, all the things that are obviously going on. But I wanted to see what the search traffic looks like for other businesses, other phrases, landscaping, vacations, real estate, even marketing, churches.
So I started going through and just looking at all of these different industries, that again, I shouldn’t say that nothing was affected by any means. Everything’s been affected. But I looked at industries that I didn’t necessarily think there would be a difference in the amount of search volume over the last couple of weeks. What I’m finding is that people are literally sitting around, trying to work. And they’re starting to get things done now in preparation for things that are going to be happening over the next couple of months. They’re lining up their landscapers, they’re looking at what Home Improvements they can make. Everyone thinks that all of a sudden everyone is broke, and no one can afford to do anything. They think that businesses are no longer going to do business.
From a b2b standpoint, they think that all the consumers have absolutely no money. Everyone has a different situation in a different new normal. But that doesn’t mean that they’re going to take action next week. But if they’re sitting at home and they’re doing this research, and they’re looking for real estate agents, and if they were planning on moving, they might be putting that on hold for the next couple of weeks because they can’t go to houses. They’re still looking for real estate agents. They’re still looking for houses online. If they were planning on buying a new car because their lease is expiring in a month or two, they’re doing that research now.
So things have been speeding up. The opportunity, among many others that I’m seeing right now is for you to really dominate. From a search engine optimization standpoint, aka someone going to Google in finding your website, organically. Someone typing in landscapers, church near me all those different phrases, used vehicles, new vehicles.
You need to make sure that you are putting out more content across your website and optimizing that content for search than you ever have been before. Now that’s not to say that other tactics like Google Ads ads and Facebook ads and geo fencing and video marketing and all these other tactics aren’t working. But what I’m encouraging you to do, and I’ve mentioned it a couple of times over the last two weeks is that I want you to amp up to times three, times five, even 10 times the amount of content that you’re putting out there. I want you to get as much content out there as you possibly can.
Now, I want to make sure that again, you’re meeting people like the episode I did a couple of days ago, on messaging. You’re acknowledging where people are today. So you might say, well, I understand that you’re now looking to purchase a vehicle today. We put together this helpful guide on the three best SUVs that will do well in the summer heat, for example. But I don’t want this to stop all of your content efforts. Because I am seeing again an exponential growth of searches over the last week. And the businesses that are going to capitalize on that are going to drive a lot more business in the coming months.
The way that you combat that and you start to grab your share of that wallet is by putting out more content, adding new pages to your website and making sure that those are the right keywords.
My big piece of recommendation for today on keywords and content and search engine optimization is the key words matter to you can use the Google free keyword tool. You can also use a tool called Google Trends. There’s a lot of other tools but the one that is the easiest to use is the free Google Keyword Tool. And just type in a phrase like landscaping, type in a phrase like lawn mowing, grass cutting and just look at all the different things that people are searching for and then start to do an article, a video, an audio, something like that on each of those particular topics, and get it up on your website.
Now, there’s obviously other things you want to do. But you will be lightyears ahead if you start looking at what everyone’s searching for matching those keywords with a piece of content. Usually, the best thing that I like to encourage you to start with is what are all the questions that you’re getting asked on a regular basis?
And then the second piece is what are the questions that you’re not getting asked on a regular basis that you think someone should ask?
So if I stick with landscaping, people are probably going to ask you how much does it cost? Is it organic? So if they’re spraying your lawn for example, do you come on the same day? Do you also pull weeds like what are all the questions that people are asking? Do you do spring cleanups? What’s the cost of spring cleaning? Do you recommend mulch or rubber mulch? Can you plant bushes? What does that cost?
So rather than just jumping into price, maybe they should ask you the type of mower that you’re using because you’re using a special mower that cuts the grass a certain way, or did you know that we’re using electric mowers so we’re helping the environment?
I’m just giving you some examples of some things that people are not thinking to ask you that you’d want to do a video on. And it can be a video, can be text or audio. Again, if it’s video, then I want you to very quickly take that video, get it transcribed. And there’s your text. If you want to start with text, that’s fine as well. But just go through and start to amp up your content marketing efforts. It’ll drive you more search traffic and you will be in an amazing spot in the coming weeks when things continue to recover.
