Lets say for argument’s sake that you are someone who has grossed over two million dollars from a website. Can you envision a scenario where you would be so petrified of making the wrong SEO decisions that you do nothing while your business slowly erodes?
The reason I ask these questions is because I know someone in this scenario. Today I flat out challenged him when I said you can either take action by doing something or you can go out of business! Like it or not that’s the eventuality of not taking action. It might not be tomorrow and it might not be six months from now but eventually it will happen.
Honestly I understand how he feels. Lord knows I have seen my websites decimated in the Google SERP. I also know that I’ve seen some of them return by trying different things. I have told him what he should do but he wants to wait until he figures it out.
Wait! What? What is there to figure out? Look at what your competitors are doing! They are honking as they drive by your site on their way to the front page. Anything you need to figure out can be figured out in thirty minutes or less. Look at their sites and look at their link profiles. It’s pretty simple in my opinion. I know it may be challenging to execute but you won’t know unless you try. Trying something beats the shit out of standing idly by and waiting to figure it out.
I don’t think I would be as passive about it as he is if I was in those shoes. I mean, if you possess a cash cow you’re not going to shoot it dead. You’re going to do everything in your power to keep that cash flowing. So what if it costs you some money. Search Engine Optimization is a whole hell of a lot more cost effective than pay per click advertising. You don’t get the instant gratification from SEO that you get from PPC but the benefit of SEO is a more consistent SERP and greater overall exposure.
He’s a pretty whimsical dude any way and he has said before that he would just shut it down rather than pay Google for advertising again. It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy when he talks so matter of fact about closing a business that I have put my heart and soul into.
Oh well, I guess we’ll all see what happens. I got let go from this job – that’s what happened!