Nick Jervis

Helping Service Business Owners To Grow Their Business & Enjoy Their Life

SEO Search Engine Optimisation

Why Website Speed Is Important For Google SEO sAnd How To Test It

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I am told that speed is not always of the essence.

Apparently, talking too quickly can be a problem. I am definitely guilty of that one at times when my excitement runs away with me.

Another problem with speed for me is thinking words onto paper faster than my fingers can keep up.
I make a lot of typooo as a result of this, which I know annoys some people.

Thankfully as I am still here 17 years after starting my small business marketing consultancy I must attract the more forgiving type of business owner (phew).

One of my marketing mantras is this:

“Marketing needs momentum, PERFECTION kills momentum.”

It is definitely better to get something live promoting your services which is slightly less than perfect than it is to never send anything out for fear of making a mistake or offending anyone.

However, when it comes to your website, speed is very much of the essence. It’s as simple as that.

Which speed and why?Why Website Speed Is Important For Google SEO sAnd How To Test It

Which speed? Page load speed.

Why? Because Google says so.

If your website doesn’t load quickly, Google will send less people to it.

Page load speed is now a part of the algorithm that Google uses to decide if they like your website enough to send more people to it (i.e. list you higher in the organic search results).

If your website loads slowly, less people are sent to it.

The good news is that you can find out how quickly your website loads by using Google’s speed testing tool.

The test scores your website for both mobile and desktop versions of your website. Seeing as more than 50% of visitors to websites are now on mobile devices, that score is very important.

I have seen scores as low as 3/100 and as high as 90/100, so don’t panic if your score is very low. It doesn’t mean that your website is broken, just that it needs some attention. It may have started off fast, but as you add more images, plugins and other technical bits, it has slowed down.

When you know your number, just as with any marketing it is about continually measuring it and optimising it, because, as one of my other mantras says:

“What gets measured gets better.”

Add it to your monthly Key Performance Indicator checks.

You do do those don’t you? If not, we definitely need to talk. Tracking KPI’s transforms the success of a business.

If you find your score is very low and you do not have a friendly website developer to look into it, I can point you in the direction of some.

Here is your speed test: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

If you want to know what KPI’s to track and how to grow your business quickly, let’s talk.

Click the link below to choose a time to suit you:

More Clients Now Strategy Call

P.S. Just remember the expression “don’t shoot the messenger” if you find your score is below par.

How To Write SEO Title Tags & Google Ads For Higher Click Through Rates

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Listen, do you want to know a secret?

Do you promise not to tell?

Whoa-oh-oh, closer

Let me whisper in your ear……

OK, I will stop with the Beatles lyrics now before I get to the intimate part, but I do want to share a secret with you today, one that will help you with both your SEO and your Google Ads.

It is a secret that I have tested to the ‘enth degree and that works 99 out of every 100 times – there is always one exception, isn’t there.How To Write SEO Title Tags & Google Ads For Higher Click Through Rates

The Secret Is To Do What I Am Doing With This Paragraph With Both Your Google Ads Advertisements And Your Title Tags And Description Tags.

Leading Capitals, whilst grammatically incorrect, will get more people to your website from both your Google Ads and your title and description SEO tags.

Most websites, in my vast experience of looking at dozens every single month, have either no SEO title tags and description tags, or worse still have the same wording on every single page.
Why does this matter?

  1. It is these title tags that tell Google what each of your website pages is all about. If you leave them empty, Google has to guess. Not only that, you will be below every one of your competitors’ websites too if they have taken the time to add title and description tags.
  2. Your title tags and description tags are the words that Google uses in the search results which encourage you to click through to a website. If you have done your job well, Google lifts the exact wording, leading capitals included, from your title tags and description tags from your website and displays them in the search results.

This is why it is so important that you have individual title and description tags, matched to the service you provide on that page, on every page of your website.

You are soon going to be enjoying a lovely two week or more break away from your business.

If you want 2020 to be an exceptional year for your business, if you have not already done so, The Law Firm Growth Formula book which works for every owner of any type of service based business, will provide you with a detailed understanding of what you need to do to your website to make it work harder for you.

I had a Steady Stream Of New Clients Meeting with a non lawyer last week who had read my book at the beginning of 2019, applied what they learned from it to their website and by the time they came to see me in November 2019 they had had more visitors to their website and more enquiries for their services and most importantly more clients, all because they implemented what they learned in the book.

 

 

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How Do You Know If Your SEO Is Working – Business Owners Guide.

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If you are paying someone to do SEO for you and you are not seeing an increase in both the number of visitors to your website and ALSO an increase in enquiries for your services, you are wasting money on SEO.

If you do not currently check both of those numbers each month, you need to start right now, otherwise how you can calculate your return on investment?

In my vast experience of SEO companies (having spent tens of thousands of pounds on their services), I know that they will try and confuse you with all sorts of metrics, such as reducing your ‘bounce rate’ or showing that you are top of Google for the keywords ‘Business Owners in Bristol with two left feet’ (in other words search terms that will not win you any new clients), but the metrics above are the ONLY numbers that matter.

Sometimes SEO companies will show you that you are getting more visitors, but if that doesn’t convert How Do You Know If Your SEO Is Working – Business Owners Guide.into more enquiries for your services, it is because, more likely than not, they are targeting keywords that whilst leading to more traffic to your website, will not produce new clients for you.

You might see the visitor numbers rise, but because there is no ‘buyer intent’ behind the keywords, these additional visitors will not turn into fee-paying clients.

By way of an example, if you were a Consultant, your SEO company might generate results for the search term “How to become a business consultant.” This term is not going to produce results for you, so whilst it might attract people to your website looking to start a consultancy, it won’t attract the clients you are looking for.

A good tip for finding keywords which will convert into clients is to use Google Ads first. This way, you can instantly see the results and know that the right keywords are converting and then target them with SEO as well (which takes much longer to achieve results).

The other thing to be really wary of is that Google tailor’s your search results based on your search history. I am often told by a prospect “I am at the top of Google for XXX which is really good.”

When I explain to them that for me they are on page 30 of Google for that search term, they believe that I am mistaken. However, the truth is that because they kept on searching for their own business name in the results for a certain search term, then clicked through to their own website, Google moved their firm up to the top of the search results for THEIR computer (but not for anyone else).

Are you spending money on SEO services?

If you are spending money on SEO services, the only way to be certain that your SEO is working is to see an increase in monthly visitors to your website AND an increase in enquiries for your services. If both of these things are not happening, it is time to stop SEO and save yourself some hard earned marketing budget. You could then use this saved budget to purchase Google Ads services for which you can instantly measure the increase in visitors and enquiries for your services (and see the immediate increase in income from it too).

If you would like to discuss Google Ads or your current SEO campaign with me, I am happy to help. You can request a free copy of my Google Ads Whitepaper by clicking here :

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How To Know If Your SEO Is Working/ Stop Wasting Money On SEO

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How To Know If Your SEO Is Working/ Stop Wasting Money On SEOI have had a lot of chats with business owners recently about Search Engine Optimisation/ Marketing (SEO); the dark art of getting your website to the top of the Google search results for searches related to your services without paying for each click.

On each occasion there was uncertainty as to whether it was actually working.

I explained my two step system for ensuring that SEO is working and thought that you might like to know it, in case you too are paying for SEO but do not know if it is working.

Your SEO is working ONLY if BOTH of these things are happening:

  1. Every month more visitors are finding your website than the month before (GoogleAnalytics/Search Console will tell you this; AND
  2. You are getting more enquiries for your services from your website than the previous month.

That is it. If both of those things are not happening, you are wasting money on SEO.

If you do not currently check both of those numbers each month, you need to start right now, otherwise how you can calculate your return on investment?

If you would like your website to work harder for you, Chapter 10 of The Law Firm Growth Formula has all of the detail you need to ensure your website is working as hard as it should be for you. The advice works for all service based businesses.

of explaining everything clearly. Armed with this book alone, someone who’s never marketed anything before would quickly be able to start generating good quality new leads and clients for their law firm.

 

Would you like the first four chapters of the book?

I appreciate that your time is valuable, so how can you know if my book is worthy of a few hours of your time? I thought the easiest way for you to assess this would be to gift you four free chapters of my book. If you would like these delivered to you to read at your leisure, please enter your details below and it will be my pleasure to forward them to you.

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The Law Firm Growth Formula Book For Solicitors

Legal Marketing Services

Selling & Marketing Your Services By Reference To Personal Relationships

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It suddenly struck me yesterday how selling and marketing your services can be incredibly similar to how people behave in a personal relationship. I see the same sorts of traits in people trying to sell their services as I have seen with many different people in how they are in their relationships, so I thought I would run through the key ones.

Which one are you?

Needy

“Where are you going? Stay with me. Why would you want to leave me? You don’t love me. Come back, come back, pleassssseeeee!!”

It’s not the best trait is it? If someone is that needy, it can become very unattractive. It is exactly the same when someone is desperate to sell you their services.

A needy sales person doesn’t make many sales.

I can vouch for this. When I left the legal profession in 2003 I decided to run a franchise before launching my marketing consultancy so that I could prove I could market and sell my own services before telling other business owners how to do the same for their services.

I bought a franchise selling promotional merchandise; golf umbrellas with company names on, pens and clothing etc. I started completely from scratch with a brand that no one had heard of.

In the beginning, I really was very needy. I had left a well paid job as a solicitor, spent a large chunk of money on a franchise and had absolutely nothing coming in, whilst having a wife and two very young children to feed at home.

I really did need every sale, and it clearly showed. I was being far too needy.

One day I stopped. I still did my marketing, I looked for the value that the merchandise would bring to the business owner and started talking about that. I didn’t ask for the sale, I just presented my recommendations and prices and left it with the client.

The sales flowed in.

I had gone from Needy to Confident in one fell swoop and it worked. I sold more merchandise in that first year of the franchise than anyone else had done in that sector, mostly by moving away from needyness.

Jealousy

Another relationship trait which is not attractive is jealousy. It can eat people up, pushing them to the point of illness. They spend so much time and energy worrying that someone else, normally everyone else, is after their partner.

I see it in business when people are crippled by jealousy in reaction to their competitors.

”Look at their website. They must be bringing in hundreds of clients every month with that amazing website.”

Or

”How can I compete with them? Their branding, their marketing and the client bank they have. There is simply no point in me trying.”

If you think I am joking, I can assure you that I am not. I have seen countless business owners do this to themselves. They become so paralysed with jealousy of their competitor that they do nothing to marketing their own business. They simply give up ‘because there is no point’ in even trying.

They may spend all day looking at their website, believing that it is the best website for their type of service, so they would simply be foolish to try and compete.

The funny thing is, or the sad thing is, that on nearly every occasion where I meet a business owner who feels this way, when I analyse their competitor’s website it is clear that it isn’t doing half as much as they believe it to be the case. I can see that there is no SEO, they aren’t featuring well in the search results* and so the website which paralyses my potential client is really not doing much at all.

*”they aren’t featuring well in the search results…”

I wanted to mention something here to ensure that you don’t make the same mistake. When someone goes looking for their competitor, let’s say they are a mortgage broker in Reading, they might naturally enter “mortgage broker reading” into the search results. If they find their competitor in the top 10 results and click on them, then do the same most days, Google or whichever search engine now starts to personalise the search for this user.

They notice that they keep on entering “mortgage broker reading” and clicking on the competitor’s website, so they move that search right to the top of their personalised search experience. Now, every time the person enters this search term they see their competitor at the top – because they have put them there by clicking on them all of the time.

Please be aware of this personalised search so that you don’t believe your own website or a competitor’s website is doing better than it actually is.

Playing the field

Seeing more than one person at a time isn’t a particularly nice relationship trait, and it is equally as bad in business.

What I mean here is when I see certain businesses, such as Google Ads agencies or Search Engine Marketing companies acting for two competitors in the same town or city targeting the same services.

How can that be right?

When I ask them they tell me that it is not a problem because there are 10 organic search results or 3 to 6 Google Ads results on the first page of search, so acting for two or three clients is fine.

I don’t think so.

Some people charge a premium for exclusivity, some people don’t but offer it in any event just because it feels like the right thing to do.

I agree. Act for one client, give them your all and let the relationship thrive.

Which moves me onto the next relationship reference: love.

Love

You find your perfect partner. You complement each other, making each of you the best you that you can be.

This is the same when you find the perfect clients. You do your best work for them, they get the best results possible and make a healthy return on the investment in your services, whilst you get paid a reasonable fee for the work that you do.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Love is the best outcome in a relationship as it is when you find the perfect client.

Ignore the jealousy, avoid the neediness, don’t play the field, just focus on proving the perfect service for your clients in exchange for your reasonable fee, and watch your business thrive.

If you would like to know the best forms of marketing for service business owners, simply download my free guide by clicking the button below:

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