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Why Your Firm Ranks #1 on Google and Still Loses the Client
Why Your Firm Ranks #1 on Google and Still Loses the Client
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Your business is the first one to appear in the search results for the exact keywords your target client enters into Google. The team celebrates. After a month, there is no phone call, and it hasn’t been more than normal. The forms aren’t getting filled! It’s the same consultation calendar you saw before you got to that high position.
There’s something that doesn’t make sense. You are the one who has attained the rank. If you didn’t get this client, why not?
It’s not because your SEO failed. It is the fact that ranking and converting are two different jobs, and most businesses plan for ranking.
Ranking Gets You Seen. It Doesn't Get You Chosen.
The placement of first place is a visibility result. It lets Google’s systems know that your page is a good candidate for a particular query, and it lets the searcher know that you are a click-worthy page. That’s genuinely valuable. It’s also where the ranking’s role as a job ends.
As soon as a person visits your page, another process begins. They’re no longer being served a search result. In a few seconds, they’re determining if you get their problem, if you’re believable, if it’s worth their while to continue reading. Google’s own advice for ranking systems also follows a similar concept; information should be provided to serve the reader first and foremost, and not to garner them a click. The click is not the end; it’s the start.
It has a value before the first word is spoken on the phone, particularly for accounting firms, law firms and recruitment agencies. If someone is looking for a new lawyer or accountant, he or she isn’t buying a phone case. They are making a decision which they don’t want to make wrong. Your ranking had them wondering. Your page must work its way to the rest.
Where the Client Disappears After the Click
Suppose one of your clients is looking for an accounting firm that specializes in a rather specific issue, like cross-border tax for a small business owner. After looking at your #1 result, they click to get the answer.
Instead, they are placed on a page created for all of their potential customers at the same time. General services. General language. No detail of what led them there. There is a contact form, but nothing on the page has yet explained to them why they need to fill out the form. So they go away quietly and check the second result.
There wasn’t anything wrong with that page; it was just right. It ranked. It loaded. It contained the correct spelling of the words. It never answered the one question that the visitor really walked in with.
The Five-Second Question Every Page Must Answer
The Nielsen Norman Group has been running the five-second usability test for a long time: They show a page to people for a few seconds, then ask them what they remember. After all, people form a working impression about a page within about five seconds. Independent studies into first impressions have discovered that individuals start to evaluate a design within about fifty milliseconds of viewing it.
This is the window you’re working with. In the allotted time, a visitor must have a fast and easy answer to 4 questions: Who are you? What problem do you solve? Why should they believe you? What should they do next? Not a paragraph that explains it. An obvious page.
This is more difficult than it might seem for professional services companies, as it is easy to get into the habit of speaking first with credentials and pedigree. Credentials are important but are preceded by a question of why should I believe you, before you ask whether you understand my problem. Reversing the order would cause the visitor to leave before they would be able to read the part that would have made them feel better.
Your SEO Strategy Should Not End at the SERP
This doesn’t mean any of the SEO was a wasted effort. It is also a part of a much longer chain that encompasses your website’s structure, the clarity of your content, the visual trust signals and what happens after the first visit. Considering these as separate departments with one team focused on rankings and the other team on designing pages is what companies wind up with great visibility and no sales.
Individuals do not always make the conversion on their initial visit. Somebody may check you out, read you, leave you, compare you to two people, and then return a week or two later without completing a form. This is the standard customer buying process for anything that has stakes on the line. They trust a page, a piece of content or a testimonial on visit two as well as the one that got them the click on visit one.
Friction compounds this. A menu that is too confusing, a contact form that requests too much information, a page that takes too long to load on a mobile device: they each provide an already uncertain visitor with a little easy back door to follow, rather than a little easy forward door to go. The Baymard Institute has conducted usability studies of forms many times, and we have repeatedly found that every unnecessary field in a form adds friction and increases the odds someone abandons it before finishing. A recruitment firm’s intake form or a law firm’s consultation request form isn’t exempt from that pattern just because it isn’t an online checkout.
What to Measure Instead of Rankings Alone
Rankings still matter. Not all the scoreboard. In addition to position tracking, it’s also important to monitor the number of visitors requesting a consultation, the number of leads that are a good fit, any pages people visit just prior to conversion and where visitors are likely to drop off during the process. We have conversion and engagement reporting in Google Analytics. We won’t assume they’re the same; we’ll compare them to ensure we’re ranking well and winning clients.
Those two numbers should not be alarming you to give up on SEO. It’s a cue to see what comes next after the click.
Being First Is Valuable. Being Chosen Is the Point.
A place 1 ranking demonstrates that your marketing is effective and capable of capturing someone’s attention. So, what happens after: does this page speak to that specific visitor, does the page get their trust easily, does the next step make sense, will that attention convert to a client?
This is why it’s important to think about the entire customer journey, instead of any one channel, when developing a marketing strategy. There’s no need to check boxes for Search, Web Design, Content and Analytics. These are actions that you’re taking as the same customer makes their way to becoming a client, and every one of them can either keep them going or make them want to stop. Getting found is the opening scene. The decision of the ending comes down to being chosen or not.
In order to turn your rankings into signed clients rather than silent exits, Faber Cre8tive creates the entire experience, from the search result to the page someone truly trusts. Book a call to find out where your own website is losing the customers that SEO has already brought you.
