At LaFleur, we pride ourselves on our open communication and transparency with clients. That means we get a lot of great questions and the occasional complaint. When this happens, we listen to our client’s concern, analyze relevant data, and create solutions to meet their needs.
Below, we outline some of our clients’ most common concerns and ways that we address them.
Why Isn’t My Website Ranking for a Specific Keyword?
You may want to see your name on the first page for every keyword associated with your business. However, this is virtually impossible, especially if you’re working in a competitive industry like law, healthcare, or retail. A small family practice clinic is probably never going to rank for a broad keyword like “healthcare” because they’d be competing with industry giants in both the medical and insurance fields.
Instead of trying to rank for every imaginable keyword, it’s best to focus on keywords and phrases that actually bring in new business. This may include long-tail keywords that highlight your specific areas of expertise, geographic location, and ideal customers’ needs and concerns. At LaFleur, we use sophisticated analytics to evaluate and track keyword trends and website performance, and we use these insights to improve our clients’ content marketing strategies.
Why Is a Smaller, Less-Experienced Business Ranking Ahead of Me?
When search engines rank pages, they use hundreds of metrics to analyze your website’s value. These factors include:
- The age of the domain or website
- How frequently you publish new content
- Your use of on-page SEO, such as Title, H1, and H2 tags
- Content length and depth
- How similar your messaging is to other websites’ content
- How quickly your website loads
- The quality of your internal, inbound, and outbound links
- Whether your website is optimized for mobile devices
- The number and quality of your online reviews
While well-respected, established businesses typically have the upper hand, an upstart can build a well-optimized page that overpowers them—especially if the established businesses don’t take their digital marketing seriously.
Some companies will even guarantee that you’ll get to the top of page one. Typically, they’ll get you there through paid advertising instead of organic placement, which means as soon as you stop paying, you stop ranking. And there’s no guaranteed way to reach (or remain) at the top of search results, whether through organic or paid approaches.
To improve your organic rankings and drive long-term business growth, you will need to evaluate your website’s editorial calendar, the strength of your existing content, and your site architecture. If this sounds like a daunting task, you should consider working with a trusted marketing partner like LaFleur.
My Website Has Been Live for Three Months. Where Are My New Leads?
No matter how impressive your website and content marketing, it will still take time for it to gain traction. We understand why our clients are eager to see leads pour in, but an organic-only strategy typically takes six months to a year before it starts pulling in consistent leads. Multiple factors contribute to this timeline.
First, webpages don’t typically skyrocket to the first page overnight. According to an in-depth Ahrefs study, the average top-ten webpage on Google is at least two years old. Many top-ranked pages are even older. The study concluded that only 5.7% of pages will make it into Google’s top ten in their first year, and most of those are for lower-volume keywords.
Thankfully, there are ways you can achieve short-term results while you and your marketing partners work toward improved organic rankings. We typically suggest that clients implement paid advertising alongside a robust organic content strategy. Depending on client personas and business goals, this may include pay-per-click, programmatic, or social media ads.
Another reason lead funnels take time to mature is that website and social media users rarely become leads immediately upon encountering your brand. Client and customer journeys can be circuitous, and someone may read your website for months or even years before they fill out a form or call your office. You need to be willing to nurture these developing relationships with compelling content, email campaigns, and other targeted messaging.
Why Is It Taking So Long to Make a Minor Website Change?
Sometimes a “minor” website update isn’t as simple as you might expect. Suppose you just want a new landing page for a new product or service. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, and you already have a couple on your website. However, your marketing partner can’t just press a button and create new pages. Instead, a few crucial steps are involved:
- Fresh, targeted content needs to be written and edited for your new landing page, thank you page, and the associated email campaign.
- New webpages, emails, and automations need to be built and designed.
- Pages and forms need to be tested before publishing them live.
- Client feedback needs to be sought and implemented at crucial project milestones.
This whole process can easily take several days to complete—assuming your marketing partner can drop everything and dedicate themselves to your request.
RELATED ARTICLE: 10 Essential Best Practices for Creating Dedicated Landing Pages That Convert
Too Many of My Leads Aren’t Ready to Buy or Sign a Retainer. How Do I Filter Them Out?
Once your website takes off, you may be inundated with calls and requests. However, you may discover that some of these leads aren’t really interested in your product or services. Instead, they have questions about needs that are unrelated to your company or firm. While this can be frustrating, some unwanted calls (and even spammy messages) are inevitable. Among those poor leads, you’ll have spectacular leads, and all your marketing tools are designed to provide a positive experience for your best leads.
However, if you’re getting a lot of unwanted calls and contact, it may be time to audit your website and messaging. Are you publishing content that narrowly targets your ideal clients? Are your calls to action misleading or confusing? Can you put safeguards in place to reduce spam? Can your lead nurturing strategies be improved to help good leads self-identify (and encourage poor leads to self-disqualify)? Could automation techniques qualify your leads before you respond to them?
And just because a lead isn’t a good fit right now, it doesn’t mean they’ll never be a good fit. “Bad” leads are still leads, and adding them to your marketing list will help educate them about your brand and keep you at the forefront of their minds. If they have a positive experience with your business, even if you don’t close a deal with them, they will recommend you and come back when they are ready to purchase your products or services.
Struggling with Your Marketing or Your Marketing Agency? Contact LaFleur Today.
Whether you’re struggling to build a new website or you’re not getting the results you want from your marketing efforts, the solution to your problem requires a strategic approach. At LaFleur, we have an outstanding team of experts in every facet of online marketing. We can help you troubleshoot your issues and find the right answer to meet your needs.
If you’re searching for a marketing partner or just looking for a fresh perspective, we’d love to chat. To get in touch, complete our online form or call us at 888-222-1512.
Reference
Soulo, T. (2017, February 6). How long does it take to rank in Google? (A study by Ahrefs). Ahrefs. Retrieved from https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank/
