Google’s crazy. In the past few years, we’ve seen update after update, all of which have changed everything we thought we knew about SEO.

It’s exciting to some extent because it’s really forced business owners to up the quality of their websites. It’s forcing people to do things differently instead of doing what everyone else is doing, plus SEO.

But it’s also scary. Because at any minute, Google could make a major change that throws your website into the Google abyss. And if your entire business revolves around SEO, this will obviously have a detriment on your income.

So what’s the key? Build your community. And don’t just build it, love it. Realize your community is where you have control. Yes, you can rank on page #1 of Google. But if Google makes a major change (or even a minor one), you could watch as your site disappears from the rankings. 

If you have no community, you have nothing.

In today’s article, we’re going to discuss ways to build a community. And not just a community with a lot of participants, a community where people love your business. This has incredibly positive effects beyond protecting you from Google updates.

Be Community Friendly

It’s one thing to want to build a community. It’s quite another to actually do it. To build a community, you need to have an infrastructure that supports the community.

Enable comments on important pages. BLOG REGULARLY! This is very, very important. Your blog is the portal to visitor interaction. If you have a blog, people can interact with you. If not, the only way they can get in touch with you is by contacting you directly – something most visitors won’t even think about doing.

With a blog, you can start building a loyal following. And you can start building a list. Suddenly, these people who started by visiting your website are now—to some extent—attached to it.

Besides adding a blog, make sure you have social media badges on your site. Don’t overdo it – you don’t need a badge to every single social network in existence, but have all the major ones and put them in easy reach (top and bottom of posts).

Provide Massive Value

A blog will help you start to attract a following. But the only way to keep it and grow it exponentially bigger is to provide massive value. And the only way to provide massive value is to know exactly what your visitors are looking for.

You need to put yourself in their position – what keeps them up at night? And what can you do about it? 

One of the best ways to provide massive value right out the gate is to get in personal contact with your visitors. If someone writes a comment on your blog that you enjoyed, give them a personal email. Tell them you appreciate them sharing their knowledge and would love if they would continue to do so on future posts.

As you build your community, these initial key players will be crucial to managing your expanding community. Because at this point, these people have relationships with you and care about your business. This will form the base that you build your community around.

Remember to be Human

Lastly, remember who you’re interacting with – fellow human beings! People are very similar to yourself.

It’s always funny when a massive company makes a transparent attempt to “build a community”. They approach it like a business, and no one participates because it doesn’t feel like human interaction.

The internet has made it incredibly easy to connect with fellow human beings. So do that – connect! It’s now possible to connect with thousands of people from all around the world. Doing this is not only rewarding and exciting, it also gives your business a level of resilience most online business owners only dream about.

Because if Google makes a change (which they will), you’ll have a community to fall back on. Suddenly, what Google does hardly matters. They could stop search in general and your business could still thrive.

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