How to Help Customers Find Your Small Business on Google

These days, if you aren’t taking advantage of the Internet, and more specifically Google, you aren’t giving your business the best chance to succeed. Even if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to digital marketing, focusing on a few important elements can make a huge difference.

Search Engine Optimization

Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo! use algorithms to find the best content based on a user’s search query. Ultimately, you want your website to show up in as many search results as possible so that more people visit your site. Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques help make your site and its content visible and easy for search engines to understand and classify.

Moz is a marketing software company that specializes in search engine optimization. If you’d like to learn the basics of SEO, their Beginner’s Guide to SEO is a great resource. While it’s important to make sure search engines can understand your content, it doesn’t mean much if you’re not creating content that people want. That’s where content marketing comes in.

Content Marketing

Without a doubt, “content marketing” was the biggest marketing buzzword of 2013. According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Simply put, it’s creating stuff that people want to read about. Some businesses may benefit from educational content, like tips or tutorials, while other businesses should focus on entertainment value. The most important thing to note here is that this content is not about you or your business. It can be directly related to your industry or a problem that your company’s offerings can solve, but it is not an advertisement for your products or services.

Content marketing is really about creating awareness and building brand trust over time. Once your content is created, you need to promote it using social media.

Social Media

You are probably well aware of the benefits of social media for your business. By being active on social media and engaging with your audience, you will begin to build a community of brand advocates who are willing and eager to spread your message.

What you may not realize is that social media is also beginning to play a role in whether or not your content is found through search engines. Google and Bing are both starting to use “social signals” from platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ to decide how much authority a brand, website, or piece of content has. In some cases, social posts themselves are showing up in search engine results.

To learn more about how we can help you grow and manage your small business, contact a small business specialist at a First Bank branch near you.