‘I’d like to rank number 1 for x’ is a sentence I hear. A lot. And I can totally understand why.
Many business owners believe that hundreds or perhaps thousands of people are searching for ’x’ on Google every month, and if their business could come up in the prized first position for it, they’d be inundated with sales or enquiries. This post will hopefully explain why this is a flawed approach and what you should be doing instead.
I had an enquiry back in September 2020 from a lovely chap, Scott, who is the founder of Scott Jenkins Water Softeners. At the time, he was receiving an average of 400 organic visitors each month, mostly from the West Sussex area and was installing an average of 12 water softeners per month.
Fast forward 18 months (and a few lockdowns) to March 2022, and sjwatersofteners.co.uk has just received 2,600 organic visitors (an increase of +511%).
On the same day the London Fire Sprinklers website was set live, the business owners received a phone call from a London-based business who were after more info about the sprinkler systems, after finding their website online. They were a little bemused as to how they’d found the website so quickly and joked with me some hours later that they weren’t yet ready for incoming enquiries.
This is a good example of a niche market with plenty of scope for early Google visibility. Getting online at the right time has enabled these business owners to drive new customers to their door.