The Untapped Wealth of Search Engines
In other posts, you saw how much consumer online search traffic there is – trillions of searches by consumers actively seeking products/services — to fulfill their intent. It’s not like social media where users are inundated with irrelevant, low-intent topics/ads they have little interest in. And social doesn’t connect to your high-converting website — it connects to the noise that confuses customers, including yours.
Search puts your company on the same path these consumers are walking, building offramps to your website. It also connects you with journalists, bloggers, and influencers who also use Google, Bing, or ChatGPT. Google is a connector of small businesses to customers. And SEO can help you reach those same audiences that the monopolies are accessing to maintain their massive revenue flows.
Google Search is fusing its Gemini LLM GPT into the Google search, calling it AI Overviews or AI Mode. As you can see in this example search below, they’re listing specific vacation tour provider’s content. Yes, your well-designed and optimized content can build significant exposure on regular or these new AI LLM GPT search engines. And let’s not forget YouTube!
Big Companies Would Crash without Google Search
Google search remains pivotal to consumer search. If we look at the major brands and companies in your sector (who do value SEO), you’ll note they draw a significant portion of their traffic and leads from search engines. If travel brands such as Expedia, Booking.com, Airbnb, or United Airlines lost their exposure on Google, it would be devastating for their companies. Expedia for instance, gets 15 million users via Google each month for free along with 3.2 million from paid. The estimated value of their SEO program is $20 million per month or $240 million per year.
Why is it Expedia will invest in SEO while small travel companies won’t? Is it confidence? Because with a plan and a strategy, SMB owners can build their confidence and become dominant in Google search. Visualize the traffic and potential revenue, and you’ll build that path to success.
Small company owners often accept the rumor that search engines are passé — that big companies aren’t dependent on them and have mysteriously have moved onto something else. In reality they still acquire most of their traffic from Google/Bing. It’s just SMBs that have given up.
The task here is to get small to mid-sized business owners re-engaged with the potential traffic, lead and revenue generation that search engines do still provide. Search engines remain as vitally important and truly accessible source of leads, brand awareness, engagement and customer retention. Letting this opportunity escape to your competitors is truly troubling because it will create sales/revenue erosion for you.
Whatever you leave on the table goes straight to your competitors
Why the Reluctance?
Is there a typical owner profile of businesses that don’t win on Google/Bing (and now ChatGPT/Gemini)?
There likely is, and in my experience, it comes from many sources:
- Lack of belief in organic traffic and leads
- Lack of knowledge and insights into search engine strategies
- Lack of belief in marketing and promotion
- Lack of confidence in their products, brand and to compete to establish market leadership/brand preference
- Lack of expertise, authority, trust and experience to share with audiences
- Lack of willingness to go big and spend where necessary on SEO and content
- Lack of SEO expertise – from content to backlinks
- Lack of content creation expertise
- Lack of marketing expertise and digital marketing effort to support an SEO strategy
- Fears about the economic forecast and spending
- Unwillingness to support their SEO pro properly or assist with their professional development
Since confidence is a key factor, SMB owners need to actively build and nurture this confidence. It’s something you build within yourself, committing to your business – beginning with a plan that creates assets, hiring outstanding talent, and crafting your strategy to win.
Elevate Your View Of Search Engine Optimization
And SEO/Content Strategy isn’t a task – it’s a platform. And it’s a passion/obsession for a pro who will lift the value for all your business activities and successes. Being on top of Google/Bing is prestigious, creating trust and credibility a company can’t achieve via other channels.
SEO connects you to customers, influencers, bloggers, journalists, suppliers, and industry experts in a very uplifting way.
Not that SEO/Content strategy is easy street. There are hurdles such as strong competition, real asset creation, and SEO has its own unique competitive environment up against companies determined to have the market all to themselves. That means special assets and strong, overall marketing strength are needed. SEO isn’t a low-budget add-on. There are visual assets, customer engagement, branding, and promotion activities needed.
SEO Presents Your Unique Value Proposition
SEO needs an active brand buzz to capitalize on – meaning presenting a brand UVP that impacts people on the web. Searchers need to see more than your company name to generate clicks with buying intent. They need to have a compelling reason to click through to visit, engage, and be persuaded to buy or to share your pages/events with their connections.
Simple Solutions for Weak Performance
- Hire an SEO/Content Strategist to investigate the opportunity for you in the form of an Opportunity Audit (clarity).
- Hire a clever, creative SEO/Content Strategist on a part-time basis to begin the building process and create a workable strategy (affordable approach).
- Create a budget for quality content creation and promotion (building assets)
- Have your team collaborate with the SEO/Content Strategist to develop expert-level content and customer testimonials (collecting internal resources/value)
- Use a powerful analytics solution to guide progress and find your path to success
Given the impressive dollar and brand value of search engine-created presence, it’s imperative for SMB owners to take SEO seriously. Your business deserves success and this one channel is accessible. Confidence doesn’t happen magically, you need to believe in your business and build the path to customers through this fantastic direct channel.
Learn more about advanced SEO strategy and the raw fluid power of building traffic online.
