Ask Questions 
Share Tips 
List Your Business 
Coffee Talk with Experts 
Biz Planning | Sample Plans 
Idea 
Name 
$ 
Do It! 
Promotional Merchandise
Managing | Operations
Work @ Home 
Yoga @ Your Desk 
|
|
Expert Answers to Biz Questions
Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.
Why Small Businesses Need to Care About Google
It wasn’t so long ago that the internet was something for tech-savvy people only. These days, it’s something we have access to on the phones that we carry everywhere. This has changed the world of business, especially for small, local businesses that once considered the internet to be a big, global thing without much relevance to them.
Few things about the modern internet are as important to businesses as rankings from Google and other search engines. But if you’re not sold just yet on why search engines matter to your business, read on for why Google is a big deal for your company.
Because virtually everyone uses Google (or something like it)
An incredible 1.17 billion people use Google to search for things. Many of them are searching for purchases and businesses. A fair share of people use competitors like Bing, but very few people live without search engines entirely. For better or for worse, search engines have become the portal through which virtually all of us access the internet.
Because search traffic drives sales
When you rank better with search engines, you make more money. This is true for virtually all kinds of businesses (including, as we’ll see later on, local businesses). We human beings are an impatient bunch, and we tend to go with the first results we see.
Where you land on the page is up to Google’s algorithm, which is evaluating you whether you pay attention to it or not.
Because Google cares about what you put online
Regardless of what you think of Google, Google is thinking about you. Its web crawlers are analyzing your website and other online footprints, and you are being evaluated by the standards of Google’s algorithm, so it’s good to know some basics about how that algorithm works.
What you don’t know can hurt you, because breaking Google’s unwritten rules can push you down the search page. You’ll rank behind your competitors, and that matters — even if your business is a local one.
Because Google is local
Search engines are clearly important to big businesses. But your business is local — do you really need to care about Google?
You absolutely do. Google has long tailored the results of searches to geographic locations, and it is only getting better at doing so. Mobile searches — queries performed on smartphones and other mobile devices — are particularly important to local businesses, and studies show that folks who search for businesses on their phones are likely to spend money locally very soon.
How to improve your Google rankings
Playing nice with Google is clearly vital for businesses of all kinds, including small local businesses. But how can you go about improving your appeal to search engines? It’s tough to know what Google is looking for, because its algorithm is top secret.
Here’s the good news: there are professionals who dedicate their careers to figuring out what Google actually wants and helping you deliver it. The process of making your business’ web presence as appealing as possible to Google is called “search engine optimization,” or “SEO” for short.
SEO experts can help you fine-tune everything about your web presence, from the density of certain keywords to the behind-the-scenes HTML details that you may not understand, all in service of improving your rankings on search engine results pages (SERP). These pros understand local SEO campaigns, paid search engine ads, organic results, and more.
In other words, you don’t actually need to become an expert in SEO to start caring about Google the way that you should. You just need to be smart about outsourcing to trusted SEO experts who can help your business get from where it is now to where it needs to be.
|
|
Small Business Tax Center • Idea Cafe Home • Sign Up • Biz Grant Center • CyberSchmooz •Coffee Talk with Experts • People in Biz Profiles • Starting Your Biz • Biz Planning • Running Your Biz • FREE Trade Publications • Marketing • Financing Your Biz • Human Resources • Legal & Biz Forms • Managing Your Biz • eCommerce • You and Your Biz • Gen X • Work@Home • The Fridge • De-Stress • Send an Award • Send an eGreeting • Yoga @ Your Desk • Web Guide • Idea Cafe in the News • About Idea Cafe • Advertise on Idea Cafe • Contact Us • Privacy Policy • Site Map • Small Biz News
Copyright 1995-2024, Idea Cafe Inc. Downloads are for personal use only, not for resale to others, and may not be reprinted in any form without written permission from Idea Cafe Inc.
DISCLAIMER: We hope whatever you find on this site is helpful, but be cautioned that it may not apply to your own situation, or be totally current at any given time. Idea Cafe Inc. and all of its current and past experts, sponsors, advertisers, agents, contractors and advisors disclaim all warranties with regard to anything found anywhere on this family of websites, quoted from, or sent from Idea Cafe. and its related sites, publications and companies. We also take no responsibility for comments published by others on these pages. TRADEMARKS: The following are Registered Trademarks or Servicemarks of DevStart, Inc.: Idea Cafe®, Online Coffee Break®, The Small Business Gathering Place®, Take out Info®, Biz Bar & Grill®, Complaint-O-Meter®, A Fun Approach to Serious Business™, CyberSchmooz™, and BizCafe™.
|
|
|
|