A couple of months ago, I visited a friend who runs a small business. I picked him up and we went for a quick lunch. Our meal started as usual, but after a while, I noticed that he was distracted by his phone. At first, I thought it was normal—after all, which business owner isn’t? But this was different. He looked obsessed.
Being the conversationalist I am, I asked, “Anything new lately?” — while looking at his phone. He looked up and blushed. He set the phone aside and excused himself. “I just can’t stop looking at it,” he said. “Remember how I was always bragging about us being ranked one with no effort? Well… that’s no longer the case. There’s new competition in town, and they have tons of blog posts, so we’re down to rank 7 in our area. I already hired an SEO agency. They are going to fix it. I know it takes time, but I’m addicted to checking our ranking. I can’t stand the idea of losing business.”
I looked at him, confused, and he knew. He asked, “What is it?”
Long Game
My friend isn’t alone. This story is happening to thousands of small business owners right now, and here’s why… When we are frustrated, we often ignore other possibilities and focus on the first solution. Although long-term SEO sometimes makes sense, in most cases, it’s overkill.
We want to rank higher on Google. What can we do? We can write blog posts. It makes sense: if we have content mentioning the search terms, Google will recommend us first. Right?
Yes, we will rank higher, but what doesn’t make sense is why we need to spend months writing posts, waiting for them to get indexed, or pay thousands in retainers. So we can rank higher…. And it’s not even guaranteed.
If you are a small business, you don’t have six months to waste on a maybe. You wanted customers yesterday. What is the alternative?
Simple, we pay for it.
It’s called Google Ads, rather than investing months’ worth of effort and energy in an investment that might not have a positive ROI. We bribe Google.
Not a “long-term” solution, but an instant solution.
Coffea Break Solution
This is exactly what I told my friend as well. He thought about it for a second, and you could see in his face the duh moment he had:
• He didn’t need to wait.
• He didn’t need to pay months of retainers.
• And, he didn’t need to risk his investment.
Seeing the excitement in his eyes, I suggested we grab some coffee so I could set him up. We sat down, and he gave me his list of keywords. I checked their search volumes, and together we decided on the highest volume ones we want to pay for. I went home and worked on his campaigns.
A week later, he was ranking top for all the keywords. SEO agency’s retainer disappeared, and his business was back on track. If you, too, are stuck in an endless SEO cycle, but all you want is to rank at the top, take a look at Google Ads.
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Until next time,
Emre