Finding Your Way

How do your customers find you?  It seems like that should be a simple question to answer, but the reality is it can be tricky.  Potential customers have more and more options to find the products or service they are looking for – and it’s your job to make sure your business can be easily found.

Seventy percent of consumers say online search is their preferred method for finding information about local business. Sixty-five percent will use their mobile device to conduct these searches, so it is critical for small businesses to manage their online presence.

As consumers become more internet savvy, it’s imperative that businesses take ownership of their internet presence and manage it.  Your company can show up in various places on the internet without your knowledge through public records, directory listings, and personal blogs. No matter who put your company information out there, you should take it as an opportunity to increase awareness of your company.  Here are a few steps to you can follow

1.     Do an online search for your company.  Your first step is to understand where your company information is on the internet and to take ownership of it.  Search for your company name in any search engine. Be sure to search for common misspelling and possible abbreviations. Check listing for accuracy and completeness. Many sites encourage business owners to claim or own their business listings. Take advantage of that. You should always be in control of how your company is represented online.

2.     Remember Name, Address, and Phone Number.  If you want to be found, you must have this information listed, and it must be consistent in every occurrence. That includes spelling, abbreviations, formatting and phone number. Search engines look for clusters of reference information that are consistent.  When displaying your address make sure paste it into a map website to make the correct address is displayed.  This is what your customers will do and if mapping websites cannot locate your address, you will lose customers. Although this may seem very elementary, they can make a big difference in optimizing search engine results.

3.     Know your business’ vocabulary.  Search engines look for common words when matching websites up to searches. So understanding what words or terms your customers use when they talk about you, your product or service is a critical component of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s because these are likely the words customers will enter into the search engine to find products and services.  There are several free online tools that will provide you with statistics on what words or terms people most often use when searching certain topics. Google Adwords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) is a perfect example. Once you know what words and terms are common in your line of business, use them on your website, especially on your “About” page. Search engines will look for those terms and match them up to what people are searching for.

4.     Look at your competition.  Look at your competition online. What are the results when you search their name?  What is their location? What words and terms are they using?  Are the effective? Are their profiles more comprehensive than yours?  If you were a shopper and you came upon their profile and your profile, which looks more impressive? Why?  Take in all you learn from the competition and apply it to your web strategy.