The secret to SEO revealed in a silly joke
Like any ten year old, my daughter is full of fun and wonder.
Everywhere she looks, there’s a nut to be cracked, a puzzle to be unpuzzled, a thread to be pulled.
It’s a joy to watch. Sometimes I envy her endless pursuit of answers, even if I’m sometimes exhausted by her endless stream of questions.
Perhaps more than anything right now, she loves exploring words — figuring out what they mean and why.
Why is a tomato a tom·AY·to over there but a tuh·maa·tow over here?
I used to have all the answers she needed. But I think I’m running out.
Naturally, she loves a joke. But in particular, she loves the ones that reveal a curious truth.
Like this little observation, that popped up the other day:
“Why is it that when you lose something, it always shows up in the last place you look?”
The answer:
“Because once you’ve found what you’re looking for you don’t have to search anymore.”
Haha. Very funny.
It’s a terrible Dad-joke, but she loved it.
It was starting to get annoying, but after hearing the joke for the fourteenth time, it suddenly hit me. She nailed it.
This is actually the secret to understanding SEO.
It’s the answer to the two basic questions:
How do I get more visitors to my website?
How do I convert more website visitors to buyers?
Once your customers have found what they’re looking for they don’t have to search anymore
That’s the secret, right there.
We’ve been trained by Google to call it search, because that’s what they want us to do. But we should call it find, because that’s what we’re trying to do.
Of course search is the number one way to find things online.
Typically, we start at Google, and we click on one of the first few links. Then we bounce from one website, back to Google, then off to another website, back and forth until we find what we were looking for. And that’s the last place we have to look.
In other words, if you have what people are looking for, they stop on your website. They don’t have to go anywhere else.
You have one job
You could say there are two kinds of people who visit your website. On the one hand, there are the people who find what they’re looking for and on the other, there are the people who leave. It’s that simple.
So whatever site you’re working on, your job is not to make it faster or more “usable” or nicer looking or any of that. And it’s certainly not to send more people to your website.
Your only job is to make sure more people find what they’re looking for.
So the two questions you have to ask are, who am I trying to help? and what are they looking for?
Trust is the magic word
The number one thing people are looking for is someone they can trust to help them out.
That makes sense right?
But trust is not built on skills. It’s built on empathy and understanding.
If you’re in agony because you’ve cracked a tooth, you don’t just pop over to your neighbour’s house and ask them to yank it out. If they can use a set of pliers, they probably have all the skills required to pull a tooth out. But skills aren’t enough.
You go to the dentist because they understand your pain. They know what’s causing your pain. They know about related problems that could spring up. They know how to treat you before, during and after the procedure. And once you’re comfortable with all that, then they grab a set of pliers and yank out your tooth.
Trust comes first.
As soon as you find someone you trust to get the job done, you can stop looking.
Who are your customers? What are they looking for?
Why don’t they call you?
Don't they trust you?
Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. It’s probably because your web designer (who was focused on making everything look nice) missed the one thing that actually matters…
Your website is not about you
It’s about your customer: their pain or their challenge or their desire.
Sure, it’s important that you know what you’re doing. There’s a place for that.
But the most important thing people want to know is that you understand them.
Anything else will only frustrate people and push them away.
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”
― Albert Einstein
When you cut out the noise and show that you understand the problem, it draws your visitors in. And then they are more receptive to hearing how you solve it.
They will know exactly what you can do for them and you will earn their trust.
The last place they ever look
It might sound a little simplistic, but I think it’s a powerful insight.
There are plenty of tips and tricks to drive more traffic and convert more leads.
A lot of that comes down to pushing people and even manipulating them to improve various metrics.
But the simplest strategy of all, and the one that is guaranteed to work every time, is to find a bunch of people that need your help and then be more interested in their problems than your solutions.
When you can do that, then you will always be the last place they need to look.
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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
