Have you googled your business lately? If not, then why don’t you do it now? Go ahead – think of it as every bit as important as checking yourself in the mirror before applying for a new job. It’s one of the simplest things that you can do for your SEO efforts – if you’ve been in the internet marketing business and had never thought of doing this before, you can bet that you are leaving a lot of stones unturned out there.
SEO 101 – are you leaving all the Googling to your customers?
If you’ve been in the online marketing business for quite some time, you may have googled the keywords that you are targeting for your business at some point. Many web marketers even obsess about attaining the top page ranks in the complicated world of search engine optimisation.
However, there are still a large number of online businesses out there that don’t really seem to bother. If this sounds a lot like you, you may be losing out on hundreds of potential customers for your business.
SEO Insight – Online users can lookup different kinds of keywords
Now this may seem all too obvious but one good reason to regularly google your business online from the average user’s perspective is that your targeted online users or customers can use all sort of keywords when looking up information about the products or services that you offer. Just to emphasize this point clearly, allow me to tell you a very short story – I once promised to get my younger brother that I’ll get him a gaming console during my business trip to Sydney.
Anyway, I completely forgot and almost made my way back home before actually recalling it so I pulled out my phone to use Google maps and typed in “game consoles Fitzroy” in the search box. I was then surprised to find only 3 shops within a 4 mile radius of where I currently was – “That can’t be right”, I thought to myself.
Now being experienced and savvy enough to make good use of the Google search engine, I modified my search to “xbox360 Fitzroy” and wouldn’t you know it – there were 10 results, some of which are less than a kilometer away from where I was! Many of the results from the keywords “Xbox 360” were not visible in the set for “game consoles” although they were pretty much the same thing (the xbox360 is a type of gaming console).
I made my way to the nearest store which had just what I needed. I told the staff there that I couldn’t find their store when I searched for “gaming consoles and the proprietor was fairly upset because they have an SEO firm that they work with and was extremely thankful for the tip.
Take control of your SEO – Google your keywords from a user’s perspective
Now you may think that I’ve merely given them a keyword that they somehow missed in their search engine optimisation efforts but that’s not really the point. What that short story is trying to tell us is that online marketing businesses need to take charge of their own keywords.
If that gaming shop had taken the time to research and brainstorm the most popular and effective keywords for their business instead of leaving it all up to their SEO firms, they’d have a much bigger chance of getting found by average users looking for them just like I was.
Although you may not have experience or knowledge at all when it comes to search engine optimization, it doesn’t mean that you can’t take control when it comes to where your business SEO is headed and taking control of your keywords is always a good place to start.
You are your own business’ most qualified expert and most likely have a better grasp when it comes to the kinds of terms or keywords prospective customers are likely to use when looking for the products or services that you offer.
Hiring an SEO firm will certainly help but you need to make sure that you play an active role in keyword research and opt for a search engine optimization firm with a stellar reputation that you can rely on. Strive to always be on the same page with your prospective customers and think like them because failure or disregard in this process can make you miss out on all the business that should have been heading your way.
