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You May Be On Lockdown But Your Website Isn't
Before the time of The Buddha, before what we now know as the Bible or the Quran were written or translated - one man laid down the definitive text upon how to wage warfare. That advice has now been translated from the theatre of war to the theatre of business and, during this time of lockdown, you need to know that every business owns a fighter. You need to know that you can push your website to go where you cannot - beyond the front door, beyond the frontline of your business and out into the minds of your Customers.
SEO is the art of sending your website out to work
Two and a half thousand years ago, one man wrote these words: If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
Sun Tzu - The Art of War 1:23-24
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As we enter a global coronavirus lockdown and try to figure-out what this strategy means for our business and the people who make it, it's also time to ask you to take stock of everything that your website is and isn't.
Make no mistake, we are at war with a virus
Right now we are fighting COVID19 the coronavirus - the only business strategy we have is to lockdown and stay at home. The question is, if you are not taking this time to think, to regroup and to plan ahead, are you not taking your ease? Are your competitors building their website's energy to defeat you from the very moment they step back to work? I'm about to tell you how your website can help your business to beat the lockdown and win back the business you're losing right now.
Now that you are spending time at home, away from the coronavirus, possibly away from your workplace but definitely away from your Customers, you have the perfect opportunity to learn a winning SEO strategy so that your website can develop all the strength and power it needs before you return to work when you will mount your comeback.
SEO is the perfect lockdown marketing strategy
The news that business owners have been waiting so long to hear - is that SEO is not a dry technical subject or an unbreakable code but a digital business strategy - one that any business leader, working from home, planning to make a comeback, can learn.
 Optimising your website for search means filling your website with the very things that your Customers are searching Google for right now.
Steve Whiting, Author - The Art of Search
Let me explain. Imagine you are a plumber and you have a website that (just like every other plumber in town) says what you do: plumbing; central heating; bathrooms; kitchens; toilets as well as showing-off your gas and electric safety certifications.
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Nowhere on your website do you assure that you fix thermostats and keep families warm, or that you mend broken pipes fast to minimise damage, or even help by sharing what the 10 most common causes of an annoying dripping tap are. Your website will never be found by the homeowner searching for help with their "faulty thermostat" or "busted pipe" and so you'll never have the chance to win their business.
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You see? There's a difference between the things you want to sell people and what they want to buy: you want to sell cloud computing - they just want to stop shouting at their IT network.
Start thinking like a Customer
When you start thinking like a Customer you realise that your website has little, if nothing, on the shelves that attracts them and, therefore, nothing for them to buy.
 Whilst you're on lockdown there's no better time than now to do a quick and simple stocktake on your website and commit to restocking your shop window with the exciting things people want to buy.
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Google will recognise that you've made a meaningful change, Google will see that the words you use to describe the things that you do match the words buyers use to search for the things they want. Google trusts you more, your reputation improves and your website rises up the search engine results pages and the only thing you've spent is time thinking of the needs and wants of others.
You see? When I market my web development services, I don't say I develop websites, I tell business owners that I put them in first place on Google. Nobody needs to know how I do that - by writing semantic HTML, PHP, CSS and a little bit of JavaScript on a LAMP stack - Customers don't know what any of that means and, more to the point, they don't care either.
What Customers do care about is a loss of business brought about by the COVID-19 lockdown and how on earth they're going to fight back. Right now, it's your job to show them how they can do that with your help. If you don't spend this time to figure out how you can make a difference in this ever-changing business climate then you'll find yourself emerging from lockdown like a pit pony and not like a fighter who knows that victory is theirs.
Don't let this thing kill your business. Use this unique time you have been given wisely.
@theartofsearch