Many e-commerce companies know the importance of ranking high on Google. It makes perfect sense since high rankings drive brand visibility.
But a successful digital marketing strategy doesn’t just involve high rankings. The truth is, taking the number spot on Google’s search results is far from being the end-all-and-be-all of digital marketing.
Does a High Ranking Actually Mean Something to Your Customers?
In terms of visibility, a high ranking on Google makes your website easy to find. But even if you’re winning at searches, you could be losing people.
Around 70 to 80% of people ignore paid search results and even the first few organic results. This data suggests that high ranking might not be as valuable to your prospective customers as it is to you. The reason? More people are starting to distrust the first few entries on the results page because of the kind of content they normally find.
For example, if you search “living room design ideas”, you would sometimes end up on a page that’s trying to sell you furniture, curtains, hardware, and other related products.
People do not like being sold stuff to, even in the digital sphere. Customers don’t want to feel that they are merely a transaction to your business.
Helping Your Customers Become Better Versions of Themselves
Without the trust of your audience, marketing becomes harder, especially when people are constantly being made to feel that your company doesn’t care about them and their needs. Once people have built this kind of perception about your brand or website, it will be difficult to earn their trust.
The key to gaining the confidence of your customers is giving them what they’re looking for. After reading your content, people should feel like they learned something or that your product or service will solve their problem and change their life in some way.
Before asking people for their money, you should be also able to give them valuable information without asking for anything in exchange. Don’t ask site visitors to sign up for your newsletter on their first visit. Not when you haven’t given them something important yet.
Consider Your Customer’s Journey
Site visitors don’t like a mismatch between the keyword you are ranking for and the site content. This happens when you’re not using the right keywords.
Let’s take the “living room ideas” keyword as an example. The key term suggests that the user is looking for ideas to revamp their living room. Most likely, they’re not ready to make a purchase, so they don’t want to see product pages telling them to buy furniture.
Now let’s say another user searches for “bulk rags for sale“. We can assume that the person is planning to buy rags in bulk. They’re not looking for inspiration or insights; they just want to find a website that sells quality rags.
The key is to analyze your keywords and content thoroughly. Check for any keyword-content mismatches and fix them, if there are any. If necessary, go back to your keyword research and make sure your content optimizes the right keywords.
If you focus more on ranking high on the results page, you might not be reaching out to your audience in a way that inspires trust and confidence. But if you invest in good content that users actually find useful, you’re perceived as a trustworthy brand that cares about their customers’ needs. And that, more than Google domination, is a priceless competitive edge.
