Changing SEO
Several years ago, back when I was extremely active working with a digital marketing agency and picking up clients on the side through that, networking regularly, conducting digital marketing workshops on weekends and evenings, teaching WordPress and digital marketing bootcamps on holidays, and meeting others in that field, I vividly recall getting a phone call one afternoon from a very gregarious local area competitor.
Here were the first words I heard:
“You beautiful bastard!” “What did you do?”
Taken aback by the immediate, loud statement, it took me a minute to respond and ask who it was calling.
I could vaguely detect the voice and tone so had a fairly decent idea who it was calling, but wasn’t totally certain, especially with his robust opening.
After he slowed and verified his identity, I asked him what he was talking about.
“Well, you’re number one in Google!” he exclaimed and followed up with “how the hell did you do that, man? There are multi-million agencies downtown that you just blew past!”
He was clearly incredulous.
And honestly, I was pretty surprised as well; pleasantly so.
Why I Changed My Company SEO
Several weeks earlier I had begun identifying factors about my current company website at that time that I wanted to change. SEO was at the top of my list but I knew I needed a plan.
I wasn’t acquiring sufficient leads through that company website, what leads I was converting weren’t very good (too many tire-kickers and wantrepreneurs unable or unwilling to commit to taking action of any sort), and I wasn’t happy with the written content and what that articulated about me or my company back then.
I knew that other much larger competing agencies (including the agency that I was still working for full-time and frankly didn’t care what I did as long as my “day job” was performing on all cylinders) were providing substandard work to clients who expected more and that I could do better work, more sincerely, and for much less than they were charging.
Granted, I didn’t have the massive infrastructure of a large agency, the lease, the HR, the insurance, the outsourcing bills, and so forth, that a large agency did, but that seeming deficit also allowed me to be mobile and pivot where they couldn’t or wouldn’t.
I believed in my own innate ability, so started tinkering with website copy, links to other pages, other blog posts, alt tags for images and links, links reports, and changing the website SEO to play against larger competitors – not matching SEO, but varying from others in slightly different ways.
Here are some reasons why you may want to change or update your company website’s SEO in an infographic below. (If for any reaosn you can’t see it, visit the Behance links.)
Trouble seeing my sweet infographic? Check it out on Behance.
Changing SEO Results
By changing my website SEO, the website text, blogging every day and then linking to other website pages, changing blog categories, linking to referenced blog posts and competitor’s blog posts as scholarly sources, rewriting older text, adding alt tags (titles) to everything possible, and adding meta descriptions or even refreshing them, changing my site SEO and description from time to time, in addition to the networking and events I was already involved with, roughly a week or so before my competitor’s phone call, I had begin receiving at least 3 to 5 more phone calls and emails from potential new clients on a daily basis. After that phone call, it was like someone had poured gasoline on fire, as I began receiving phone calls and emails from potential new clients about once every 20 minutes or so.
This process of screening potential new clients, onboarding those who made it through the first phase (going beyond the superficial questions about pricing and moving on to whether or not the caller had an existing business that could actually grow and whether or not achieving specific goals was worth investing in to them or they were more passive about possibly doing something one day if all conditions were perfect), and then working with those subsequent leads who had moved beyond that, that process went on for several months until I’d felt that I needed a break and was slowly entering into a new phase of semi-retirement where I’d be much more selective going forward. But the lessons learned were valid: if I changed my SEO accordingly (listing possible approaches and then methodically going through those approaches in order, followed with daily blogging, linking to the main page, and so forth) and did that daily for several months, it could pay off and do so by attracting many more leads.
In Review
Were some of the visits my website were getting a result of my networking events, bootcamps, schmooze fests, webinars, and other events? Probably. But all of them? No way, no how. I certainly wasn’t getting that many phone calls and emails before I’d started tinkering with my website text, links, alt tags, images, videos, links to outside blog posts from larger competitors, and other factors mentioned, so the work did pay off, and if I’d kept it going, it would have most likely maintained that streak.
So what happened after I decided to slack up after a few months and stopped blogging daily, rolled back linking to new larger competitor blog posts as scholarly references? The calls and emails slowly began to fade back like ocean waves ebbing back to sea. I’d achieved what I wanted to achieve at a pivotal time in my life. The efforts expended proved to me that I could make it work if I tried hard enough, smart enough, and focused. Yet as goals changed and lifestyles changed, so too did what I was doing on a daily basis. Google’s algorithms change regularly, often in unpredictable ways, and SEO certainly isn’t what it was ever 5 to 10 years ago, but regularly blogging and updating a website, validly and not just for the sake of going bonkers changing things around for the sake of moving content elements around, can elevate your SEO and bring in more leads for you, too.
Trouble seeing this infographic? Check it out at Behance.