Client Question About Their New Website We Built: We’ve had multiple people tell us that can’t find us online. What Should We Do?

Are you crazy Greg? Don’t tell the world a website you built isn’t ranking on the first page!

– Fellow web designers

We launched Jurassic-Fishing.com in December 2016. Although it didn’t start as Jurassic Fishing. The name of the company was Rivers To Seas. We launched it on the domain RiversToSeas.com. But then Sarah the owner got a call from another company named Rivers To Seas and they said Sarah better change her name, so she did. Sarah rebranded as Jurassic Fishing, and we moved the domain and relaunched under Jurassic-Fishing.com. Months later, just today actually, Sarah writes me an email, asking why they still aren’t ranking for “Jurassic Fishing”.

Now, after I had a few of my fellow web designers read this blog post, they all said; “Greg, have you gone batshit!?! Why would you write a blog post about how a website your team built not ranking well? You’re making yourself look bad. You know what I told them all? This is real life. This happens to your clients too (and they agreed with me). THIS S*** IS REAL! It certainly didn’t help Sarah’s rankings to start out as one brand and completely change, but we are working through it.

SARAH’S EMAIL TO ME:

Hey Greg,

We’ve had multiple people tell us that can’t find us online. I’m wondering if you have any insight about this. Is this just normal for a new small business that doesn’t have much traffic yet? Is there any way to become more visible? Any insight would be helpful. We really want to be able to be found!

Thanks,

Sarah

MY RESPONSE:

Hey Sarah,

Great question, you’ve gotta tell people to search for “Jurassic Fishing Reel”? or “Murray Reel”. Check out the search result screenshots attached.

The search term “Jurassic Fishing” is an extremely general search term. If you were a brick and mortar business where people come to your store, then Google Local Search would kick in and stick you at the top of the search results when people were near your location.

But since you ship your items out, Google local doesn’t play much of a role unless you begin to type in your address. See screenshot of “Jurassic Fishing San Francisco”… you do come right up.

Eventually you will begin ranking for just “Jurassic Fishing”, but you have some stiff competition, mainly from Jurassic Fishing Mountain Resort in Thailand. They likely spend $1,000s per month on digital marketing.

The more videos and pictures you post to your website, and the more backlinks you get from review sites and users, the better you will rank. This is why blogs are important. The more content you post on the website with the keywords “jurassic fishing” the more Google robots will rank your site. BUT don’t keyword stuff. Don’t just put jurassic fishing in a sentence over and over. The robots are now so sophisticated, that they read the “intent” of what you’ve written on your website. If the robots think you are “keyword stuffing” they will black list your site, and it will be very difficult to rank for a while. The artificial intelligence of Google robots are becoming exponentially smarter everyday.

EMAIL YOUR CURRENT CUSTOMERS WITH CONTEST

I’ve exported all your orders with your customer data. CLICK HERE to view and edit the spreadsheet. It’s not many people right now, but this list is like gold for your marketing efforts. Use your customer list to email first, and also find and like your customers online. Engage them on social media, ask them how they like the reel. Ask them to post pics and videos using the reel and catching fish. Pick a #hashtag and start using that. #murrayreel is good. or #jurassicfishingreel

You really should run some Facebook or Instagram contests, have other people do the marketing work. Buy a couple $100 Bass Pro Shop gift cards, and stick them in a few reels, video yourself doing this, then write up a contest and post it to your FB & Instagram. Post the video to your website. Post it to FB & instagram.

To help kickstart the contest, use Mailchimp, or since there’s not many right now, individually email to your current customers from the list above, send something like this…

SUBJECT: Exclusive Contest For Jurassic Fishing Murray Reel Owners

Dear _____,

Thank you so much for purchasing our Murray Reel! We hope you love your Murray Reel as much as we do. As a token of our appreciation to you, we have an awesome contest we’d like you to be a part of.

CONTEST DETAILS

Post a video on Facebook, Instagram or both using the hashtag #murrayreel or #jurassicfishingreel, tag our page https://www.facebook.com/jurassicfishingco/ , then share the video with your friends and encourage them to like it. The video with the most likes on July 31 @ midnight will win a $100 Bass Pro Shop Gift Card and a brand new Murray Reel in your choice of color. You will also be featured on our blog (if you want to be :-).

Thanks, we look forward to seeing your videos! Good luck!