Veteran business owners using the internet to build their businesses often overlook that a main goal of the internet is to provide information quickly by driving traffic to the
appropriate resource in the form of websites or posts. Having specific information about your particular business in your posts allows the main drivers of this traffic, the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to index the information correctly and get it in front of your target audience. Being too general or vague with your descriptions will cause improper indexing or search engines to ignore your content all together. Be concise, get to the point and be relevant.
Describe your business like it’s the first time, each time
Too often as I look over posts or website content, I have a hard time determining what the product or service actually is.
Consider the following social media post that we have all seen (or made) a version of it at some point,
“Check out what we came up with in the shop the other day, if you would like us to make you one let us know.” You post that on your social media page with a nice picture get a few “likes” and you figure you made a successful post.
You probably spotted the issue with the post right off, what kind of shop is it? Is it a machine shop, cake shop, dress shop, jewelry shop or bike shop. Your followers and people within your circle might know what your shop is about, but when a search engine sends out one of its AI “bots” to index your information they start fresh and will use as many clues as they can pick up from your information, but if its not clear to them what you are topic is then they cannot label it neatly for their search traffic.
Make sure to take the time in your posts and your website content to describe exactly what it is you are doing so the “bots” can index it correctly.
Choose a few keywords that fit best for you
In the internet world the words that are most relevant to your website are called keywords, I have spent years working with clients doing keyword research and SEO to help them find the best keywords for their businesses, you can check out my “Break Glass” page for boring details.
My discussion with a client often starts out the same “I want to come up # 1 in the search engines.” Of course, everyone wants to be number one in the search engines for all their relevant keywords, but since every website is different and there are external factors that influence each one differently it would be disingenuous to guarantee them top of the search results
Let’s take that example of the “shop” from above and say the client is a baker here are some questions I might ask when starting keyword research;
1. Is the bakers focus on cakes or all types of bakery products
2. If the focus is on cakes, do they do special occasions like Weddings
3. If it’s a bake shop, but it focuses on Cookies not Cakes
4. Maybe it’s a bake shop focusing on Greek pastries
5. What is the market in their area like
6. Are there established bakeries in the area
You can see how clarifying your business in your description can affect the type of audience that the search engines might put in front of your content as well as finding an audience that might be smaller but is considered qualified for your type of services.
Asking questions and knowing your business allows you to narrow down the keywords to use to get your post in front of the proper audience.
I suggest picking a few keywords that best describe your business and begin with them, don’t cast a huge net when first starting out.
Many times, on the internet being unique is not always a good thing!
There are two sides to keywords, the first is that it is relevant to your website and the second side is that people are searching for it. When people search for a keyword it is called a keywords search traffic and the search engines like Google keep track of how often a specific keyword is searched for. The reason the search engines do this is because they base their advertising fees on the amount of traffic a keyword gets, the more traffic the more they charge.
Sometimes business owners will invent something or come up with their own name and figure that they will corner the market because of the name’s uniqueness, but it is rare that a brand like “Netflix” actually becomes a searchable keyword. For most small business owners, you need to work in general keywords along with your brand specific keyword.
Its ok to come up with a unique name for your product, but you also need to be able to fit it into a category and use that in your descriptions.
From the example above if the bake shop creates a new pastry and calls it “acme” they can’t just say, “Come to our bake shop and try our new creation “acme”” to catch the search engines attention they need to add more details. “Come to our bake shop and try our new Greek style pastry called “acme””
Post with first-time visitors in mind
The main thing to keep in mind when you are creating descriptions for your posts and website content is that the purpose is to increase your audience, so you need to identify your product or service in more detail.
Taking a few more minutes to provide core information about your business will help the search engines put your content in front of the most relevant audience.
Check out the Owned By Vets blog for more Internet Marketing Tips of the Day to help grow your internet marketing and digital marketing presence.
TYFYS