These days, it seems like SEO and digital marketing companies are a dime a dozen. Just about everyone knows someone who does this type of work, either full-time or as a side hustle. As a company that specializes in SEO and digital marketing, we know this better than anyone. Our clients are constantly being bombarded by other SEO companies trying to get them to make the switch to their companies—often promising better results for less money.
Here’s a recent story that happened with one of our clients: Gary (not his real name) runs a house painting company in San Diego. It’s a great company with an excellent reputation for quality work and great customer service. The company has hundreds of glowing reviews across various platforms.
We’ve been working with Gary for several years. We did all of his company’s SEO, social media marketing, web design, and other marketing-related services. Things were going great! Gary’s company was busier than ever, with no signs of slowing down. His company’s award-winning website was ranking well on Google for the top keywords and phrases relevant to his business. The website was getting a ton of traffic and bringing in a substantial number of leads. Gary was thrilled with the work we were doing for him.
Then, we got a call from Gary. His wife’s friend had started an SEO company, and he wanted her to take over all of the SEO and digital marketing for his painting company. Of course, we tried to talk him out of it. We reminded him of the great results our marketing work had produced, and how digital marketing was a key part of his company’s growth strategy. We asked him if he really wanted to risk all of the progress we had made over the years by allowing another company to handle his digital marketing.
He said he understood the risks, but thought it was important to give his wife’s friend a shot. We were disappointed to lose a great client like Gary and were concerned for the future of his company.
About a month after Gary made the switch to the new SEO company, a new website was launched for his house painting business. At first glance, the new website looks fine. It’s not going to win any design awards, and it’s not particularly attractive, but it’s okay. It features much of the same copy from the website our team had written for Gary’s company, but the anatomy of the site (the way that it’s coded) is vastly inferior, and we could tell right away that there were issues that would affect the website’s Google search rankings.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of on-page optimization as a key component of a successful SEO strategy, and unfortunately, the new website is severely lacking in this area. Without each element of a website being designed and coded to meet Google’s requirements, a company will never achieve top Google search rankings—especially in a competitive industry like house painting. Almost immediately after the new site was launched, the company’s hard-earned search rankings began to drop very quickly—and are continuing to fall at a rapid rate.
When we built the company’s previous site, we optimized it for the top search terms in the area—the terms that are most relevant to their business and that also have the most search volume. Naturally, these are the same terms that other painting companies in San Diego are targeting, because they offer the most potential traffic. Over time, we helped the company achieve top rankings for these highly competitive, but highly valuable, search terms.
When the new site was launched, stripped of all the technical SEO elements needed to earn top search positions, the rankings for the most competitive search terms were the first to begin dropping. This means, when potential customers search for a company like Gary’s on Google using a common term like “San Diego house painters”, they will no longer find his website at the top of the search rankings.
At the time of this writing, their painting company has already lost more than 65% of their search visibility. Our SEO software has already identified more than 20 of the most important search rankings that are suffering massive losses, with many of them falling from page 1 of Google search results.
It’s hard to overstate how dramatic this loss of Google rankings is for a small business. It will likely take Gary a little time to feel the effects of his website’s falling rankings, as they are still busy with projects that were previously booked, but unfortunately, he will soon feel it in a big way. We don’t wish this fate on anyone—especially a business owner with whom we had a great working relationship for many years.
We hope Gary will decide to make a complete course change before it is too late. With competitive Google rankings, it can be a monumental task to regain major losses once they occur.
How to Choose the Right SEO Company for Your Business
When hiring an SEO company, it’s important to understand what you will be getting for your money. Any SEO company can make claims about how they can help you achieve top search rankings and increase traffic to your website, but make sure they can also clearly explain to you how they will do it.
SEO is much more complex than most people realize. It is highly technical, and is becoming even more so every day, as Google increases the requirements for top-ranking websites. Strategies that were effective a few years ago are no longer enough to achieve the type of results most business owners expect from an SEO company.
At Modmacro, we work hard to stay abreast of the best SEO strategies. We work hard on behalf of our clients to achieve top search rankings that will bring more traffic to their websites, resulting in more leads for their businesses. If you would like to learn more about Modmacro’s approach to SEO and digital marketing, contact us today.
