I shared earlier this year that we need to avoid the mistake of giving Google credit for when other sources are really where your company was found. A few years ago I shared the story of how we found our CPA firm, and how they could have wrongly attributed things to Google.
In a recent post from Rand Fishkin, he shared a simple statement that summarizes this all quite well. He said:
Google has become a reward for getting marketing right in all the other channels rather than the place to start.
While there are certainly many people that still begin their dive into a topic with a Google search, the numbers are continuing to fall. In most cases, people will hear about an idea, a product, or a company on some other platform (often social media or ChatGPT), and then go to Google to find details. This shift is unlikely to slow down.
There’s good news and bad news from this.
The good news is that when people search for you on Google, they’re searching for you. They’re not looking for “home builders in Atlanta”, they’re looking for your specific company. That’s a huge win.
The bad news is that you need to be in those other places in order to be found. If you decide that you don’t want to put the effort into showing up online in places like LinkedIn and YouTube and you just want to focus on SEO, you’ll be fighting over a continually smaller piece of the pie.
If you put in the work to be found on the internet, Google will be your reward.
