With all the focus put into SEO these days, one of the expectations is that a properly-managed SEO campaign will automatically take care of your actual presence within the search results (i.e. how dynamic those results are). Unfortunately, however, this is not an assumption any business owner should make lightly and there is still some back-end work you should be doing to give your customers the most complete information about your business in the most direct way.
Working within Google for this example, let's take a walk through what a customer sees when they search for our business, 603 Media Group:
As you can see above, there are a number of elements that are represented within these results. Each of these elements is controllable and configurable by you and your search engine optimizer.
The first listing you should see when doing a direct search for your business name is your OWN website - not a social media page, referral link site or business listings aggregating site. After all, you don't want a customer to look for your business and then lose that potential conversion to a competitor because the result they click on gave them - ack! - choices....
Underneath your website listing, assuming that your website has been properly coded using the "title" and "description" tags, you will see neatly listed and described summaries of different pages of your site. This is especially useful to potential clients because it allows them the opportunity to jump right to the product or service they are seeking without having to first navigate through your site. Remember, design for quick conversions and short attention spans!
The next thing you want your customers to see is your Google Places information. Now, you're a business owner so, of course, you've already created a Google account, uploaded and updated all of your information, added photos, hours, services offered, etc...right? Right? If not, we would strongly encourage you to talk to your optimizer and get the ball rolling on that.
One of the things that Google has been very clear about this year is the importance of using their social media platform, Google+, if you want to improve your rankings within their search algorithms. Their goal is to seamlessly integrate all of your Google-based activity into one comprehensive user experience. So take advantage of that! In this example, you can see a snippet of the last blog we published and shared on our Google+ account just a few hours before this screenshot was taken. We've accomplished two things with this: Our search results now contain dynamic content that engages our customers before they even leave the results page and we are turning that engagement into increased traffic towards our blog. Win-win!
Finally, the next several results that you want to see under a direct search for your business is as many of your social media channels as possible. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Flickr, Instagram, etc. With frequent use of your social media channels, you can improve the ranking of content that is directly related to YOU, thereby providing customers with a better and more engaging search experience and hopefully turning those searches into sales.
As you can see, with the right application of time and effort, you can ensure that your customer engagement within Google's search results page is as dynamic as possible. And, if you need a little help...give us a call! It's kinda' what we do.
About the Author: Jeremy Jones is the Senior Marketing Strategist for 603 Media Group. Primarily tasked with the challenges of keeping our small business running, Jeremy also occasionally branches out into public speaking, blogging, website design and raising his ten-year-old son to not be another one of "those damn kids".
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