The other week I posted on LinkedIn about how my clients find me (word-of-mouth and podcasts, mainly), and I didn’t even mention Google as a contender.
And now all of a sudden I’ve had a flurry of people finding me through Google.
There are one or two good eggs in amongst them (and if you’re one of them, I’m delighted you got in touch!), but I’ve also had a few who clearly haven’t delved into my website before shooting off an email asking for my ‘standard rates’ and whether I’m ‘for hire’.
In each case, their email might have my name at the top but is wide of the mark in every other way.
So, yes, as you’ve probably guessed, I’ve somehow risen to the top of Google in certain searches to do with architecture and writing.
In a sense, that’s great and shows my website is clearly ticking a lot of Google’s boxes.
But, in another sense, it just reinforces my feeling that if what you do is really niche (and what I do is indeed really niche), then going after a high Google ranking isn’t always the best strategy, or at least should never be the only strategy.
Because your net just becomes too wide. And, in my case, if someone emails me looking for a ‘wordsmith for hire’ to churn out copy, then I’m not the person they’re looking for.
Which begs a question to my copywriter friends out there, who I know would never churn out copy or see themselves as merely ‘for hire’: do you like being called a ‘wordsmith’? It’s always made me shudder slightly, but I can’t quite explain why…