Understanding Google Searches

Google and Your Business

In the last week, I was talking with two different business owners who made the statement to me that when they “Googled” their business name, they were happy to see their website was at the top of the search results.  My question to them was “so what if they are not searching for your business name, but for your service or product instead?”  

You should be dominating Google for your business name!

Unless your website has no content referring to your business name or website address, you SHOULD be the first result in Google when someone is searching for your business name.  In fact, you should DOMINATE the first page of results.  Results should include individual pages of your website, press releases, social media pages, your business profile on LinkedIn, listings on paid advertising services, and reviews from your clients.  If this is not happening, you need to quickly determine why not!

Have your site optimized for the primary search terms related to your business.

Yes, it’s imperative that you come up on page one of Google for your business name, but you should also be working toward ranking well for the primary search terms for your service or product.  Let’s say you are in the restaurant business at the lake.  A possible Google search term for someone visiting our area could be “restaurant at lake of the ozarks”.  Notice that I used “lake of the ozarks” in the search term.  People search local. A query for “restaurants”, would display a list of restaurants nationally unless the user was signed in to Google. For best organic search results, localize your search terms.

Another example might be a boat business.  A local marina may optimize their website for terms like “boat dealer lake of the ozarks” or “boat repair osage beach”.  By localizing the search terms, you have a much greater chance of ranking near the top of page 1 on Google and you’ll receive more target traffic to your site as a result. This ultimately means a higher conversion rate.

What are some tools to help you look at what people are searching for?

There is a great tool to help you examine what folks are looking for when they search Google.  Go to www.googlekeywordtool.com and click on the Google Keyword Tool link.  You use this tool to see how many people monthly are searching for a particular term.  To illustrate my above points, I entered the business name of a large local real estate company.   The results showed 320 “global searches” for the company name.  When I searched for “lake of the ozarks real estate”, this tool told me that 6600 searches where made for this term in the last month. 

Google is where your customers will find you online!

Google is by far the most utilized search engine in the world.  By making good choices on how to optimize your website, you have the best chance on reaching as many viewers as possible.  If you throw in some social media and drive traffic back to your website, you can dramatically increase traffic to your business website!   

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Mike Waggett, MSW Interactive Designs LLC ~ We put the web to work for you!
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