Invest In A Good Website And Get The Right Components Built Into It.
When we first started working with our notary clients on their Google Ads, a good amount come to us with websites already up and running. For the ones who don’t have a website yet, we create the perfect website for a notary business, because we know exactly what their specific needs are. However, when someone comes to us with a website already done there are a few mistakes we always see.
The first mistake is paying too much for a website that is incredibly simple. We’ve talked to countless notaries who’ve told me they’ve paid $1000 to GoDaddy for a website, and it’s a simple, static one-page website, that’s somewhat generic because they don’t understand all the different aspects of the notary business. There’s no built-in scheduling system for website visitors to book appointments instantly, rather than having to submit an inquiry in a comment box and wait for a reply. There’s not a lot of content regarding the different services of a notary business. The website isn’t set up to systematically collect reviews. For the level of website they actually received, they could’ve gotten it done for a few hundred dollars. But of course, if you’re dealing with a giant company, there are so many people in between that have to get paid. There’s the salesman who’s collecting his commission, there are all the employees in departments outside of the person actually building your website, as well as huge overhead costs at that level. This is why the price begins to balloon.
Now we’re not saying to not spend $1000 on a website. In fact, the professional-level website you need will probably cost about $1000, but it should include 3 things that we don’t see on most websites notaries currently have. These are 3 components that will drive more appointments booked, which is the most important thing.
The first of the three components is some sort of online scheduling system. Customers should be able to book a spot directly on the website without having to email you and wait for a response. In the time that it takes to reply to their inquiry, they most likely will have kept calling around and booked a different notary. That’s why a functioning scheduling system beats a comment box every time. On top of that, some of you may have jobs during the daytime where you can’t take phone calls for your notary business. This is when it becomes crucial to have a website where people can book an appointment with you, even if you aren’t able to pick up the phone. Just make sure the calendar they see only reflects the times you are available (after work ends, and days off.) Don’t forget, the moment the customer books an appointment, it should sync to the calendar on your phone and notify you.
The second component is that your website should be jam-packed with content. That content should be educational, notary-specific content. There should be a good 10 to 20 minutes plus of reading on there. So many notary websites we see have so little content that it can be read in under a minute or two. Not only should all that content be on there, but you should also have Google Analytics installed on your website, tracking a few different things.
One of the most important things that Google Analytics will be tracking on your website is how long the average person is staying on your website, and how many different pages within your website they are reading through. If you build a compelling website with lots of notary-specific, educational content, you’ll get plenty of visitors who spend 5, 10, or even 20 minutes on the website reading through all the information. This helps you in two ways. The first way is that Google Analytics will see a high average visit time, send that information to your Google Ads account (if you are running ads,) and increase what’s called the “relevancy score,” of your ad to the searcher. What a lot of people don’t know about having your Google Ad rank higher than the other advertisers is that it’s not purely based on your bid amount. Just because you are bidding $4 to win the top spot for the search term, “mobile notary,” and your competition is bidding $3 to win the top spot for the same search term, doesn’t mean you’re going to win. Your ranking is a product of both the bid amount as well as this “relevancy score.” That means, by having a great website that visitors spend a lot of time on, you can increase your relevancy score, therefore, having your Google ad rank higher than the competition and winning auctions at a lower bid amount.
The second way that having lots of compelling, education notary-related content on your website helps is by increasing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) When we build websites for notaries, we make sure that the hundreds of keywords someone might search for are included in the paragraphs through the website. This includes location-specific keywords. On top of that, when Google Analytics tracks long visit times, it helps with SEO as well, not just Google Ads.
We’ve covered the first two components your website absolutely must include, some kind of scheduling system, and a wealth of educational notary-specific content that increases average visit times. The final component your website should absolutely include is conversion tracking to make sure your Google Ads are working at their maximum potential. What is conversion tracking? When you create Google Ads within your Google Ads account, you want to measure the results. You want to be able to see if a person who clicked on your ad actually ended up becoming a customer. One way to do this is by tracking the phone calls that come in through a Google Phone Call Only Ad as mentioned in previous blogs.
However, you’ll also want to track conversions on your website for people who are searching from a computer, and not from a mobile device. You can get very specific with what you track. For example, we can track how many people clicked on your booking button to book an appointment on your website. However, in order to track that, you have to install a very specific code from your Google Ads account onto that particular page or button of your website. You may also want to track how many people clicked on your “call now” or “email now” buttons on your website. All of these conversions require a different, unique bit of code to be installed on your website so that they can all be tracked separately. If the website isn’t built from the start with the intention of integrating it seamlessly with your Google Ad account to track different kinds of conversions, it may be very hard to do so in the future. Tracking different conversions helps a Google Ads Manager like us do our job to the best of our ability and make sure your ad spend is bringing you as much results as possible.
If you would like for us to build you a notary-focused website that includes all of these things, you can send us an email at info@notarypublicmarketing.com. We build websites with these features for many of the notaries we work with through our Google Ads Management service and believe us, they are much more robust and effective than the ones you’d get from a company that builds websites for all kinds of businesses and doesn’t understand the specific needs of a notary.