Google Is KILLING Your Traffic...heres what to do.

🚨 Is Google Killing Your Traffic? Here's What You Need to Do! 🚨

In our latest Lean and Mean Academy podcast, we dive deep into the rollercoaster world of Google updates with web design expert Chris Lonergan from Footbridge Media. 🎙️ With Google’s ever-changing algorithms, your website's traffic might be taking a hit, but don’t worry—we’ve got actionable tips to help you bounce back!

Chris shares insights on: 🔍 Why Google is shaking things up 
🛠️ How to optimize your local service business for these changes 
💡 Key strategies to boost your SEO and protect your business 
💼 The importance of diversifying your lead streams beyond just organic rankings

🎯 If you want to stay ahead of the game and keep those leads flowing, this is a must-listen!

Like, subscribe, and share if you find this helpful! Let’s navigate these changes together and come out stronger. 💪 #SEO #GoogleUpdates #DigitalMarketing #LocalBusiness

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Transcript

Google Is KILLING Your Traffic...heres what to do-
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[00:00:00] What's up guys. Welcome back to the Lean and Mean Academy. Today's video is a very special one. I've got my friend, Chris Lonergan, a web design expert from Footbridge Media. today we're talking about Google volatility. since COVID, Google's made a lot of changes and it's, Help some folks.

It's hurt some folks within their rankings. And we're going to talk about today about why Google is doing these things, how it's going to affect you and your local service business and what you can do to mitigate some of the damages or, you know, boost some of your SEO so you can get some leads as well.

I got my buddy, Chris Lonergan from footbridge media right here on the line. What's up, Chris. How's it going, Aaron? Man, I'm good, Hey guys, listen, before we jump into this discussion, if you're wanting to get your website designed, here's the deal. We talk about web design, a lot of people's, their brain fogs up immediately.

But here's what you need to know. A great website built by a good company who knows how to build websites, Footbridge Media has been in business for 20 years. it [00:01:00] drives long term, consistent, predictable lead flow. the big thing a customer wants to see is a professional looking website If you use the lean and mean discount mention lean and mean and you'll get it for 199 You'll save like 600 bucks a year by mentioning my name over at footbridge media.

I'll put the phone number below you'll give Aaron a call and he'll talk to you about getting your website done. your marketing concerns or anything else like that. Chris, let's talk about Google updates and some of this volatility that's come on in the past couple of years.

They're doing a lot of switcheroos, man. Blog traffic's being funky. some guys have been way up, way down. How have you noticed this in the market as far as not just contractors, but other businesses as well? We see a huge variety of business types being hit from, you know, tangentially travel blogs and entertainment and review sites all being hit by these different changes over time, over the last couple of years with the helpful content style updates that Google's been pushing through [00:02:00] basically what Google's trying to do is figure out is this content actually answering questions that people are asking, fixing and what's the context and how these people are asking these questions.

these changes, go back and forth. Sometimes they make a change that is way too aggressive and they've got to walk it back. But in the meanwhile, companies creating good quality content, are being left in the dust trying to see where this all settles.

Some go for months with diminished ad revenue and site visibility because of these organic SEO changes and algorithm changes it can be very difficult to survive through to get to that point whether it's a change you've made or Google has made to correct an overcorrection.

There's a lot that has to happen for you to be successful while weathering all of those changes. So you're saying that there's sites out there, that have been around for years who, built content that Google at one time deemed helpful, right? they were giving them tons of traffic and then Google started to kind of throttle some of that traffic.

guys, [00:03:00] if you know why, I want to see if you have an opinion why Google might do this, put a comment below. maybe it's the Google gods or the AI Chris, tell me about not just the contractor world, but other types of sites, like travel, I think you have a friend that's in the guitar world or something like that, that he, he's built a lot of content, but Google's throttled that content back.

It's getting tons of traffic. Absolutely. outside of contractor world, in the entertainment and review type world, I've got a friend who, Creates content focused on deep dive musical instrument, content, he and I were talking about a specific niche of guitar performance.

they wrote a really in depth article. about the equipment that is most popularly available. They talked about a variety of price ranges of equipment. They even talked about specific bands and their guitarists and the equipment they used. It was a very deep dive.

really in depth content and now that piece of content is outranked by a single reddit post from years ago that says, you don't really have to have all this equipment You could just throw in extra distortion and you're [00:04:00] absolutely fine and can be proficient guitarists in this genre.

it just goes to show that sometimes The recipe goes a little awry with these algorithm changes. For a long time, all of us in the marketing world have been trying to figure out the recipe for how Google works. some of these algorithm changes punish folks who have done too good a job of identifying the recipe.

But also sometimes those folks are actually authentically answering the question at the same time, they hit all the right technical notes, they hit all the right notes for a customer. But sometimes if in some of these instances, we've also seen house blogs that have similar problems where they push out this content, it was previously ranking number one.

now all of a sudden it's deemed to not be answering those same questions, but it's being replaced by what's clearly subpar or user generated content or just the most popular answer, which isn't necessarily what people want. But Google, I think in this last algorithm change, has kind of accidentally [00:05:00] pushed, you know, the most popular answer over the most correct answer.

Interesting. So, what's the fix for this as far as guys with their website? My fix is to keep pushing out content. you guys know, I don't trust Google as far as I can throw them, but we use their platform to get a lot of leads. I've been a big proponent on the channel for years, having a great website, Providing content with project pages and really building it thick and robust.

you guys already built a killer website out the gate, but it's like adding to it, helping fuel the fire, getting a lot of reviews to your Google business profile, which we'll talk about in a second you can elaborate the business profile as a pro here.

But my goal, my job, is to keep trusting the process. I think Google will auto correct. they always want to give the end user. The best result. What do you think about that? the creation of content that [00:06:00] always answers the questions and needs of a searcher Is ultimately going to be what wins here we've talked before about google ai overviews and how that was going kind of crazy and giving a bunch of terrible answers.

google has walked that back last I saw we're at the lowest percentage of those ai overviews showing up That shows Google is responsive to some of these concerns when people are reaching out to them and using customer support to say, I don't like this answer on giving that feedback appropriately, which you should also do too.

If you're using Google and you get an answer that doesn't make sense, and there's option for feedback, give the feedback so that Google can correct it, but ultimately creating the content that makes sense and contractors are fortunate enough to be someone insulated here. You can still survive based on other things you're doing marketing wise.

But on the website side of things, if you continue to make content that answers the questions and needs of customers, that will eventually course correct and be the best way to go about it. technically, there might be changes that have to happen to your website. If you're using a company like Footbridge Media, we already know what technical things we need to change in the [00:07:00] layout and the format of how we present this information to Google on your website.

as far as content generation itself, you need to get more project posts up there. We need to create blogs that answer the questions that your potential customers have. We want to make sure that we are ultimately focusing on the searcher, not on the search engine. Our job is to massage the search engine parts.

The creation part ultimately is to answer the questions you're probably answering anyways with customers on a daily basis. But let's take it and codify it and put it on your website so that you can get repeat value out of that, instead of repeating that same answer over and over on the phone, you could say it once on your website and now Google understands it and they understand that you're a little bit more of an expert 

So. Keep building great content. Keep putting up your project posts, like kind of weather the storm, if you will. You know, most people that I've talked to, you tell them to do some of this stuff. We have a few superstars who just, they take all the advice and they implement it and they're crushing, 

But those guys out there who were never going to do a [00:08:00] blog anyway, you need to start for those guys who are already out there doing it, just keep doing the process. Trust the process because at the end of the day, Google wants to give the searcher the best result.

Chris, what are some other ways guys can diversify? Talk about Google business profile as well, as far as, you know, how that relates to this, as far as the content and diversification of their lead channels to get more leads and not just, worry about organic rankings.

Absolutely. The key here that I always say to contractors is you have to insulate yourself from these kinds of changes. We know Google SEO organic volatility will be there. It has always been there. There are always ups and downs when it comes to organic optimization.

the thing you need to do is insulate yourself by diversifying your lead stream. Your Google business profile is a great way to do that. Contractors compared to other brick and mortar stores or review only type sites that may, depend on ad revenue, are very insulated in that when they have good local success, good Google business profile presence, [00:09:00] and you get that by having good citations, which is those, good mentions of your business online.

And good reviews. When you have all of that, that can help your Google business profile to rise in the rankings, making you hopefully in the top three in the map section in the area near you, where you're servicing your clients. That's one of the easiest things you can do to insulate yourself from organic SEO dependency.

It's great to have organic SEO. It's great to have those long term. low cost leads, but you'd still need to protect your business. You never want to have only one lead stream as the primary way you get business. You want to diversify your lead streams. You want to try different things over time. It could be Google ads.

It could be Facebook ads. EDDM cards. It could be mailers. It could be cold calling. It could be creating those relationships in your community with other contractors or realtors who can help guide you to the right. Lead sources. It could be BNI groups, those business groups, referral groups.

There's so many things that contractors can do aside from [00:10:00] putting up a website and hoping for success in the long term. Again, a diversified stream that includes short term wins, those paid advertising, and long term wins. Organic optimization business partnerships in the community that combination of things is ultimately will make your business successful.

So you could be insulated when one goes out for some reason, your Facebook page gets spammed and your ads are no longer running. You can still eat. You can still pay people because you have all these are the lead streams. They're helping to push and feed your business. Absolutely, 

getting hit on facebook ads went on a massive ban streak Years ago, it tanked complete businesses in the ecom world you get a ban on facebook ads where your whole account's gone they said, oh you violated terms of service and they didn't really tell you Which line item you violated.

It's just a poof disappear. And so guys, yeah. And so now you got to rebuild the whole thing or do you want to do that when they could [00:11:00] just. Pull the rug out from under you. So that diversification, Chris, I think is very important. I think it goes without saying, having that foundation of a website, having the foundation of the Google business profile, I tell guys all the time, I love footbridge, not just for the website.

One of my favorite parts that you guys, do is Google business profile management, you know, just kind of the overwatch. because Google is. They like to ban people and suspend people, having that ability to, hit the ping pong ball back in y'all's court and allow you to help, if possible, get it unsuspended.

I know sometimes it's not possible, but I've never had it where you guys didn't work out for me. personally, I know sometimes it may be a lost call. So I can't, I can't tell y'all it's a, be all end all or 110 percent here. I'm never going to speak for footbridge like that, but every time I've had an issue with Google business profile, you guys have resolved it on my behalf.

And that's not something to do for one 99 a month, bro. Like you got somebody always in your [00:12:00] back pocket willing to do that. Google business profile. Was how I ran my business I got tons of leads from google business profile local proximity I jacked up the reviews and it was a big portion of my lead flow And so having you all there to help me out with that is huge If you want to get a website give them a call the number is on the bottom of the screen Talk with Aaron O'Hanlon.

he will shoot you straight. He will tell you everything you need to know. Talk to him about your concerns with your marketing and if you're wanting to switch from your current provider or whatever, if you're just getting started in the business. Understand it does take time to rank. Google is not a fast process in any way.

But for the guys who have been in it for a long time, that's great. They've waited went through the storm and now they built that profile into something that sends them consistent leads on the daily basis, almost for free at the, you know, when you start calculating the amount of money you're making off these leads, especially you pressure washer guys, and how much you're paying out for your [00:13:00] web service and your web team 

Chris, thank you for today's talk, man. I really appreciate it. Google updates. They're going through a little, little identity crisis right now. they don't know. Yeah, they're, they're getting a bit of hate mail from just about everybody on the internet. it'll be interesting to see how things get rolled back fixed up and, pivoted to work well for everybody.

it seems some people who own like intellectual property are now taking Google to court because Google's want to import their intellectual property into their AI and people like, I don't know, like Michael Jackson's estate, some of these places I've heard are taking Google to court for this reason, because they're like, you can't import our intellectual property into your AI.

Yeah. Okay. Bye. And use it without paying us, you know, and, and, and so that's probably could be a portion of this identity crisis is because they're really wanting to move towards that direction of AI results. and there's going to be a way that SEO guys figure out how [00:14:00] to manipulate that. I guarantee you that it's a happy bunch of cats hard to hit, bro.

I appreciate you, man. Thank you very much, guys. If you like this video, if you like the content, go ahead and like the video, subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next one.