I want to take a moment to reminisce about a local story that I personally witnessed where a business completely dropped off Google and lost all of their traffic and tons of money. I wish I could say it had a happy ending, but I honestly don’t know what the outcome was for the client, as they dropped off the face of the planet too.
I answered a call one day to a nice older gentleman who said one of my clients referred him our way (we love our referrals!). He recently had his website redone for his petting zoo that was also a wedding venue in Frederick Maryland, and all of his traffic dropped with the new site going live. He was at a loss as to what to do or what even happened, but his business was seriously suffering.
After asking a few questions and looking over his site, it appeared that his site was revamped by a college student with little experience (so I assume the cost was next to nothing) rather than hiring a professional Frederick SEO Company. What I surmised through some digging was that the college student did not maintain any of the SEO keywords, url’s, or structure when he launched the new site. Everything that was causing the clients site to rank on Google, was suddenly not there. It was like he didn’t even exist.
Honestly, my heart was heavy for the guy because I’ve seen clients deal with this before, and it can be devastating for a small business. You are literally putting your life’s work, your career, your business, into the hands of a someone that you are trusting to do the job right and help your business grow, but they are fully capable of doing the exact opposite. And hiring a freelancer or a young student just learning can be such a bad idea and affect whether you will stay in business or not.
Obviously that’s not to say that there aren’t good freelancers out there, clearly there are. When it comes to your business, however, you need to really consider a professional that knows the ins and outs of what is going to help your business grow, and what could tear it down.
“You get out of your website and marketing strategy what you put into it.”
Your nephew or colleagues son may be cheaper, but do you really want cheap to be the impression that you convey about your business? You get out of your website and marketing strategy what you put into it.
To toot my own horn here, I’ve been building websites since the late 90’s, and I come from small town roots. The whole reason I even started Misfit was I wanted to help small businesses be able to get online, showcase themselves in the best possible light, and have a force behind them to make sure they are taken care of. I wanted to be that someone they can trust that knows what it takes and how to make it happen.
Honestly you don’t need to know a damn thing about websites or social marketing to have a strong website and social media presence. You simply don’t. Your expertise is the industry of -your- business. I’m not going to tell you how to run your business, you’re the expert there, and I’m the expert here. You run your business, I’ll make sure you stand out from the online crowd and maintain an active presence to your target audience.
So what happened to our friend in Frederick Maryland?
I honestly don’t know. I had offered to do whatever it took to get him back on the search results fast for the keywords he needed, and he said he would call back. I found his email from his new website and tried to touch base with him about 2 weeks later, and never heard from him again.
My hope is that he’s still in business and managed to get himself straightened out. I genuinely hope he did not fold because he lost all of his online business and searches. And if he ever happens to read this, I hope he will contact us just to check in, and maybe think of us in the future.
Lesson learned: Don’t put your business marketing in the hands of an amateur. Would you let an amateur run your business?
