What If Your Main Website Traffic Source Disappeared Overnight?

Hey everyone, Sandy Waggett here with MSW Interactive Designs. Imagine waking up one morning and finding out that the way that your customers found out about you has disappeared. Gone. So I wanted to make a quick video about this and how to plan for and recover from something like this because it's happened in the history of my business and we are really looking at a great shakeup in search. So through the months of March and April, Google has been releasing a massive core update that is impacting a lot of websites and will continue to impact a lot of websites. If your focus was on search and you are dominating, let's just say page one and that's where the traffic to your website was coming from, it's possible that those rankings could drop and you could lose all that traffic overnight. Now the question is, would your business be able to survive if that were the case? So I'm going to tell you a quick story that really impacted my company going back to 2008, 2009. So these are when the Panda and Penguin algorithms changed in Google, it was a big deal. So in addition to my marketing company, MSW Interactive Designs, I owned and still do own actually a website called where brightsgo.com now it was a perfect storm when it happened, but we literally lost 30,000 sales in $30,000 of sales per month over freaking night. Like we were on page one, dominating page one for wedding supplies, wedding accessories, all the things that brides were searching for back then. And the orders were just coming in. He was crazy, could barely keep up. And then these algorithm changes happened with the Panda and Penguin changes that Google released back then. And we literally dropped out of the top 50 pages in Google. One of the big things that Google was penalizing back then was essentially duplicate content across multiple websites, which we had not with the intent of manipulating Google. We had wedding portals in multiple cities across the country. And there's only so many ways to write an article about like Diamond Clarity and how to hire a wedding photographer and all that stuff. So our city's websites had the same wedding planning content, but the vendors who were advertising on those sites were different. In any case, neither here nor there. We got basically be slapped by Google and literally dropped off of page one everywhere and could not be found literally in the first 50 pages. It was horrible. It would have been devastating and put us out of business, ultimately ruined the website. We did recover somewhat from the search thing. It took many years. By the time we recovered, Amazon was going beyond books and put wedding products on their website. And then at that Point, we just couldn't compete on a pricing standpoint with their free shipping. So any case, it happens. So what we're looking at today is.

Another massive core update, the biggest that they've had probably since Panda and Penguin. And then top that off with AI, literally, search is going to fundamentally change and we really don't know what that looks like yet. So I did put out a video and blog post about the algorithm update just to warn clients that this was coming. And so I had clients asking, what does that mean? What do I need to do? So the answer is, I really don't know. From the search point, no one knows yet. We know that Google loves great content and they have come out and said that with the new algorithm and everything, they've always loved it, but now they're really focusing on in depth, quality content that solves people's problems in a way that makes it simple for them, Easy to scan, easy to find, all the stuff. But here's the thing, with AI involved now, we really don't know what that hybrid environment is ultimately going to look like. Users are really going to determine that. So as a business owner who has been through like a massive E slap, for lack of a better term, the thing that I took away from that because that was the only place that we drove traffic from because we rocked search, we rocked the rankings. I didn't really have to spend money advertising anywhere else, is that you never put your eggs in one basket, especially if you don't own and control the basket. So don't depend on search. Yes, you want to rank well, but that should not be your only effort. Make sure that you're out on all social media channels. Yes, all of them. I know there's people who disagree with me, but all of them in the best way you can be right. And that you're also marketing in other places. So online sites that sell digital ads, like in my local area, that would be Lake Expo. Every city has these websites that are aggregators of news and content for the local area. Great place to market your business if you're, especially if you're serving and targeting a local clientele. Chambers, networking events, business after hours, billboards, radio, magazines. You just really need to diversify where you're bringing your traffic in from, because if you don't and something changes on the platform that you do not control, like an algorithm update, then you could be screwed. And there's really no better way to put it. So diversification with your business is so important when it comes to your advertising dollars. The Other thing is, if you're going to invest and you are going to invest, if you're going to stay in business and driving traffic to your website, then you need to make sure that your website doesn't just allow people to pop on and leave. So people will come to your website and most people will not convert on the first visit. So you've invested, whether it be your time and money in search or billboards are radio, all the stuff and you drive them to your website and there's nothing there for them to do except for decide to buy today or not today. So if they leave, you run the very real risk because people are busy and they get distracted of them never coming back to your website. So this is where an agency like ours comes in, having a lead magnet and actually ideally multiple lead magnets for the various things that you do where someone will exchange an email address for some quality content that solves a problem for them and then that goes into your email list. You build your list so now you have an owned audience. So you capture the email addresses, they go in the list and then you can continue to market to them. Doesn't matter if your search engines fail or if your search engine rankings drop or if we get another thing like Covid, it doesn't matter if Facebook goes down. It doesn't matter if anything happens because you own the audience. So from there you have the ability to communicate with these customers on a dime. So listen.

Nobody really knows what search is going to look like over the next year, two years, three years. That remains to be seen. It's being played out right now in real time. What we do know is that Google just did a core update. We do know that it impacted search for a lot of people and their rankings. We do know that it's going to continue to impact. We do know that Google loves great content that solves people's problems. Always remember, go Google is in the business of returning the results that help people. So if they are looking at weighing your site against a competitor's, what are the signals that are on your site that tell Google that you are better than your competitor? It's the content around the problems that you solve for the customer. It's what people are saying about you online. It's how long people are spending on your website once they get there, because it's a signal of quality. But we also know that you don't control Google and that if you master this, if you're, if your rankings drop and you master this core algorithm update and you get your website back up there, we know it'll happen again. So diversify where you're putting your efforts in drawing people to your website and then make sure once you get them to your website that you are capturing the information. And I should have mentioned, and I didn't. You also need to have retargeting in place. Because what happens is once you get someone to your website with retargeting, you know those creepy ads that follow you around the Internet, that's retargeting. You need to have retargeting in place. If you are investing any time, money, energy, employee resources in driving people to your website, you need to have retargeting because what it really does is, is it gives you leverage so you are in front of these people over and over and over again. So if I were going to prioritize the two, honestly, I would say whatever you're doing to drive traffic, immediately implement retargeting so that you follow the people around. So they see and they're like, oh, you were interested in this the other day, but you didn't, you didn't do anything. Hey, here, we're still here. And they're like, oh, yeah, I need to go back and look at that. So it drives people back and then have lead magnets on your website so that you can capture the name, email, cell phone number of the person that's been to the site so that then you own the audience and you can retarget them at will. Okay, so that is my advice. This is a follow up to the video I did about the algorithm update. And this is by way of answering client questions around this topic. I hope this helps. And just know that at MSW Interactive Designs, we're here for you. We can help you build these lead magnets, we can help you implement retargeting, and this really helps grow the asset of the contact list in your business. Sandy Waggett, until next time, signing off. I'll see you soon.