Making Yourself and Your Business Easy to Find
Have you ever searched for a company, only to find an incomplete Google listing? It’s extremely frustrating when you are seeking the services of a business, but it’s nearly impossible to track down the contact information for said business.
Don’t be that business.
The first step in becoming a successful entrepreneur is making it easy for customers to find you, and in the 21st century, that’s done online.
Stay active on social media.
Every successful business in 2020 is present on social media. Create and regularly update both personal and business social media accounts, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Link your social media profiles to each other and to your business website.
Make your social profiles easy to find by:
- Posting regularly.
- Using hashtags on relevant platforms.
- Selecting the most accurate business category.
- Include a complete address and contact information.
- Tag your business in all photos you post.
- Fill out the About section.
- Add descriptions to photos.
- Create a custom URL, for example: https://www.facebook.com/joomfuse
Update your blog regularly.
Frequent blog updates show search engines that your website is current and relevant. It also allows you to include additional keywords, headings, alt text, title tags, and meta descriptions.
Follow SEO best practices.
Speaking of that SEO jargon… Implementing search engine optimization (SEO) best practices will go a long way in helping potential customers find your business. For example, you can:
Select strong keywords.
Using good keywords, or words and phrases that people search, is extremely important for increasing the likelihood that your business will be found online. There are several tools to help you select the best keywords to use in the copy on your website, such as Google Keyword Planner and HubSpot.
Create a clear structure for your content.
Search engines give sites that use headings a higher priority in results listings. However, it isn’t enough to bold headings—they need <h1> or <h2> tags within the page’s HTML to be identified by a search engine.
Add alt text to images.
Alt text is a description of an image, which allows search engines to “see” the photo you are sharing. This allows your image to show up in search results.
Include title tags and meta descriptions on every page.
When you perform a web search, the main headline links that you see are known as title tags and the short paragraph underneath is the meta description. These elements are your website’s first impression and need to convince potential customers to click on your website. The more clicks you receive, the higher your ranking will be.
Best practices include:
- Create 50- to 60-character title tags.
- Write 145- to 160-character meta descriptions.
- Title tags should be unique for each page of your website.
- Title tags and meta descriptions should accurately describe the content on the page. If they are not relevant, visitors may immediately leave your website, increasing your bounce rate, which will not help your rankings.
- Your headline and title tag should be different and use varied keywords to increase the likelihood that your page will show up in different searches.
Keep your website up to date.
Frequently updating your website signals to search engines that you are providing current information to your site’s visitors. It’s the same concept behind updating your blog regularly, as well.
List your business on online directories.
Phone books are out, online directories are in. Listing your business on multiple online directories is a great way to increase visibility. With over 70 percent of the search market share, Google is the most popular search engine, so we recommend starting with a Google My Business account. This free business profile will allow you to connect with customers through both Google Search and Maps.
Other online directories that you should consider adding your business to include Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, YellowPages, Angie’s List and TripAdvisor. Links to your website from others, or backlinks, will increase your own website’s ranking, which will also increase your discoverability. Additionally, you can use paid services to push your information out to hundreds of smaller online directories at once.
Once your information is out there, ready to be found, potential customers are exponentially more likely to find you and request your services. It’s really rather simple! But don’t forget to update your information if any of it changes so that new customers can continue to find your business.