Managing director of marketing and sales specialist InspireKbb David Barker explains how you can maximise the chances of your retail business being found by Google search

Like it or not, if you want to beat the big boys and get more leads and sales this year, you’re going to need to crack Google. Essentially, if you’re not on page one, you’re nowhere.

Sure, we’d love it if it weren’t the case – it’d be nice to live in a world where your design and craftsmanship were all that mattered.

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But, thanks to the folk in Silicon Valley, there’s a whole lot more to consider; a whole other language to learn.

Keywords. Negative keywords. Phrase match. Exact match. Campaigns. Ad Groups. URLs. Meta-tags.

Not exactly selling it, am I? But here’s the reality: Google is a necessary evil in 2022; fail to get it right, and you may as well be invisible online to your prospective customers.

Think local

So, how do you get leads and sales from Google this year without pulling your hair out or investing hours into the platform? I’ve got good news on that front.

You see, we’ve been running Google Ads and website SEO for kitchen retailers for years now. But, we’ve also leveraged a Google tactic over the last year that’s working increasingly well for the businesses we work with.

And not just that, it’s an approach that can allow you to out-compete the big brands. You know, the ones that hoover up most of the prime advertising placement and draw people into their national chain’s sales system.

Previously, in our experience, the most efficient way to beat the big sheds on Google was to focus on the more specific search terms – like ‘luxury kitchens’, ‘German kitchens’, ‘Shaker kitchens’, ‘modern kitchens’ and so on and so forth.

Those terms are all well and good, but there’s a reason the big dogs aren’t competing so hard for them – the lower numbers of people searching for them.

But over the last year, we’ve developed our approach to tap into keywords with much larger search volumes without having to complete so closely with the brands.

And it really is quite simple. The two most popular search terms in our space across the UK are “kitchens” and “kitchen design”, and as you’d expect, the big brands are all over them both.

But when you anchor a local town or city after the search term – e.g. “kitchen design Cambridge” – you can tap into a reasonable volume of searches, which are more specific to you, while avoiding the highest volume bidding war.

Cost-effective leads

But even better than that is the data on how successful going after these search terms is.

We’ve noticed this approach is going from strength to strength in terms of results and conversions.

In fact, targeting these location-specific searches is fast becoming the most cost-effective way to gain quality leads.

What’s clear is that Google is looking to reward specificity – it’s important to remember that alongside their desire to make as money as possible, their secondary motivation is to deliver the best possible search experience for their users.

I won’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the Google algorithm. Still, I strongly suspect that they’ve come to regard a high-quality local kitchen website as a more desirable search destination than a generic offering – one that’s trying to be all things to all people all over the country.

Whether that’s true or not, one thing is true, and that is – right now – this strategy is working increasingly well.

HowSo, whether you deploy it with SEO or Google Ads, or ideally both – take it, use it, and let me know how you get on.