website

How many times during the day do you use Google?

During a recent holiday I noticed that I was using Google on my telephone for so many things.  To find restaurants, shops, and even postcodes to enter into my satellite navigation.

It’s no surprise that Net Market Share report that Google’s share of global desktop search traffic is 85%, and 91% of global search traffic from mobiles and tablet devices.

Harnessing the Power of Search

But why is search traffic so good for your small business?

It’s important because when we search we are often in a different point in the buying cycle than those who see an advert, or other form of marketing.  For instance if I search for “accountants in bromley” I’m not searching to find an online answer to a question, I’m looking for a accountant that can help me.  Where as someone who sees an advert for an accountant might not pay any attention because they are not in the same buying position.

The websites that feature highly in the search results stand a much better chance of catching my attention when I am in the right point in the buying cycle, and therefore gaining my business.

So it’s easy, get yourself at the top of the search engine rankings and you’ll avoid the feast and famine cycle for ever, right?

Well, Yes – but it’s not easy.  Because have you noticed that Google seems to love some websites more than others?

Want to know why this is, and what you can do to get your website loved? Keep reading and I’m going to outline the three reasons and show you what to do about it.

1. You Love Google Too Much

The first reason is that you love Google too much. You’re trying too hard.

It’s really important to remember why Google is in business.  It’s customers are each one of us that use it’s search engine to find things. So Google’s primary purpose is to give you and me the best search results at the top of the list, as then we’ll be happy and come back to use it again.

You see, it’s all about people.  People type in the search terms, people select who to click on and ultimately people will decide if they like what you are saying enough to pay you for your products and services.

Loving Google too much means ignoring this and concentrating on trying to use techniques to rank highest in Google, rather than concentrating on the people who use the search engine.  Here are some points to ensure you avoid:

• Repeating words and phrases so often in the text that it doesn’t read naturally
• Buying links to your websites, this is against Google’s guidelines
• Adding extra words and phrases in white text on a white background

If you want Google to love your website you need write for people, not for the search engine.  Make your website a resource for people who are interested in your topic.

For instance, if you are a florist, don’t just have a website that shows the various flowers you can provide.  Give advice on when certain flowers are in season, how to choose the right type of arrangement, what occasions suit what type of flowers and so on.  Basically ensure that people come to your website for anything to do with flowers, they are much more likely to share your advice with their friends and family if it’s useful, rather than just products, and will know exactly where to come when they need flowers.

2. You Don’t Love Google Enough

As much as you can focus on Google too much, you can also focus on it too little.

There is a big difference between loving Google too much, ignoring the people who will read the content, and not taking the opportunity to help Google know what your content is about, or spoon feed it to Google.

Keywords are a crucial part of spoon feeding your content to the search engine.

The Importance of Keywords

Keywords is the term used to refer to the words people use when they search Google or other search engines.  For instance in the example above, “accountants in bromley” is a keyword phrase.

When thinking of your website there are two important points about keywords, selecting the right ones and ensuring that your pages are optimised to tell Google that you are trying to attract traffic for these chosen keywords.

If you are targeting business within a local area it’s often wise to start with a phrase built like this – “your product or service” in “your area“.  For example, accountants in London or graphic designer in New York.  Depending on the size of the geographic area you are targeting it can be wise to start smaller and focus just on the immediate area around where your based, not the whole city.

If you are targeting a product or service that is not based on a geographic area you can use keywords that will attract search traffic for a topic, for instance a graphic designer could have a page on their website targeting the keywords “cheap logo design”.

You can target as many different keyword phrases as you like, but ensure you only target one per page – more than this and you’ll confuse Google about what traffic you are trying to attract and you won’t get the benefit you want.

When you’ve chosen your keywords there are two very important places that they need to be included to help spoon feed your page to Google:

• Page Titles: Using the keyword at the start of the title of your page is a very important step in highlighting it’s theme to Google.  For instance a title for the example above might read “Cheap Logo Design from ABC Design Studio“.  See how that really highlights the keywords.  The title can be up to 72 characters long.  But keep the titles attractive to human readers as often social sharing buttons will share these titles rather than your page headline.
• Page Descriptions: The text that you see under the title on the search engine results page is the page description.  It doesn’t impact how the page ranks in Google’s results, but is your chance to get someone interested and picking your link out of the rest on the page.  You have up to 165 characters to make your page sound relevant and interesting.

As well as focusing on keywords, you need other people to link to your website and talk about you and your business on social media.  Each time someone links to your website, perhaps citing a blog post that you’ve written that they found particularly useful, it’s like a “thumbs up”.  Google counts these “thumbs up” or links and uses them as a key component in ranking websites in it’s search results.

You should ensure you encourage people to link to you and talk about you, make it easy by adding sharing buttons to your content, like the ones I have at the bottom of this page.

These points are key elements of search engine optimization.  Could your website be optimized better, are you making the best use of your chances with Google? My website critique service will help by highlighting where you can improve and giving you an action plan.

3. You Don’t Love Your Website Enough

Sometimes it’s nothing to do with Google at all, it’s about how you treat your own website.  I mean if you don’t love your own website why would Google?

Ensure that you regularly add fresh, relevant content so both your readers and Google can see that your website is alive and not been left to gather dust.

Adding a blog to your website and publishing posts sharing your knowledge is a great way to keep your content fresh.  But don’t just cover subjects once.  It’s no good writing your best post about a subject three years ago and then never covering it again.  Things change and your readers and Google’s search customers are looking for an updated view, ensure you’re the one to give it to them before they look somewhere else.

Another factor in loving your own website is investing in it.  Did you know that Google takes account of how fast a website loads in it’s rating of the quality of a site?  If you’re serious about using your website to grow your business don’t host your website on cheap web hosting where it’s slow and impacted by the traffic of all of the other websites on the same server.

Google also takes account of website downtime, if it’s unable to access your site on a number of occasions because it’s down you will find your website fall down the rankings and it will ultimately be deleted from Google’s index completely.

Invest a small amount of money to ensure that your website is welcoming and gives both readers and Google a great experience when they visit your site.  Also avoid making the common small business website mistakes.

The Bottom Line

Google doesn’t love some websites over others on a whim.  It’s a combination of the best content for a topic, how that content is optimized for Google and ensuring your website is a fast, reliable, easy to use destination for your visitors.

Have something to add?  Please join me for a discussion in the comments.

Does your website have personality?

Is it showing that you’re a real person, friendly and a great choice to do business with? Or is it faceless, dull and boring?

I wrote before that having no personality is one of the very common small business website mistakes.

But why does it matter?

Your website often creates the first impression of your small business.

When a potential customer visits your website they are looking at how capable you are of helping them and if you are someone that they could connect with.  If they have a choice between two businesses and one looks bland and uninteresting while the other looks friendly and helpful who will they call?

You’ve got it – the website with personality, every time.

You need to have a welcoming website.  But more than that, if you want to show visitors that you are the right person to help them, you need to show your personality.  Give them enough so that they can connect with you as a person that they want to work with.

So how do you add personality to your small business website without making it all about me, me, me?

Keep reading, I’ve got three steps that will help.

Step 1. Add Your Photos

Adding your photo to your website is the first step in giving it personality.

It’s very hard to create a personal connection with someone when you don’t know what they look like.

Take for example Brian Gardner’s Website.  Brian is the founder of StudioPress and a partner at Copyblogger Media.

As soon as you open Brian’s website you see his photo on the right hand side and can read an introduction to him.  He shares the fact that he’s a Starbucks Addict and a Sarah McLachlan Fan.  We already know something about him, we’ve started to make a personal connection.

You might not like having your photograph taken, you’re shy or don’t have a photograph you like.  But all you need is a photo with lots of natural light (mine was taken outside).  It doesn’t even have to be taken professionally, ask a friend to help.

Step 2. Add Your Tone

The text of your website conveys a tone.  When the reader reads your website it’s as if you are talking to them and it conveys your personality.  How you phrase things and the rhythm of your text all adds to the tone.

You can be the most interesting, friendly person on the planet but if your text is boring who will know – and what’s more who will buy from you?

Ensure that the text of your website is written in the same tone that you use to speak to people.

I’ve read several websites and then met the business owner in person and straight away realised that the text doesn’t sound the same as the person would speak.

Just be yourself.

Be the best self that you can portray, but don’t try to be too perfect.  Don’t try to be something you are not.  Just draw from what is authentically you.

Sure, make the text professional, ensure it doesn’t have errors and is easy to read.  But ensure it sounds like you.

If you outsource the writing of your content make sure you brief the writer well so they know the tone to write in.  You can also edit it afterwards to ensure it sounds like you.

Once you’ve written the text for your website ask someone close to you, a friend or partner, to read it.  Get their honest advice on whether it sounds like you.

Step 3. Add Your Story

Everyone loves a story.

Your small business website needs to tell your story to your readers.  It helps them become interested in you.

The more of your story you share the easier it is for people to get to know, like and trust you.  Which are key steps in starting to build customer relationships.

Paul Cox from SpinLessPlates does a great job of this on his website.  He explains the events that led up to why he created his micro business software.

Include your experience in your story and help your reader understand why they should buy from you rather than someone else.

Include lessons and share tips and always lead to a key point or takeaway.  The more of your experience you include, and the more you give something that your reader will be able use, the more they will like you, keep returning and share your story with their friends, family and contacts.

The Bottom Line

All things being equal, people prefer to buy from someone that they like.

Adding personality to your small business website will help prospective customers get to know you and could well be a deciding factor in whether you get their enquiry.

What are your thoughts?  How important is personality on a small business website?

Is your website welcoming to new visitors?

It needs to be welcoming as your prospective customers will likely visit your website long before they ever walk into your reception.

The welcome they receive at your website will create their first impression of your company.

If you want to roll out the red carpet ensure your website has the following five characteristics.  I’ve included five top tips that you can start to action straight away.

1. A Website that loads fast . . .

No one likes to be kept waiting.

A website visitor won’t be as committed to waiting as a visitor standing in your reception.  If your website takes too long to load your visitors will simply hit “back” and go somewhere else.

You only have a few seconds to grab a visitor’s attention.

Also, it’s not just visitors who hate slow websites.  Google penalises websites in their rankings if they don’t load quickly as it means they offer a bad user experience.

Top Tip: Test your website speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

2. A Personal welcome . . .

Unfortunately it’s not possible to have a receptionist waiting on your website ready to give every website visitor a warm welcome, so what else can you do?

Avoid the common small business website mistakes and ensure that your header tagline clearly tells the reader what you do at the top of every page.  Remember that not every new visitor will land on your homepage.

Pick a welcome that suits your target market but remember that just saying “Welcome” at the start of your homepage text isn’t really that welcoming.

Top Tip: Add a video to your homepage that visitors can click on to get a personal welcome from you.  Keep the video short, around a minute and depending on your audience you might not want it to autoplay – especially if they are likely to be sharing an office.

You can see a great example of a personal welcoming video on Christine Kane’s website.

3. A Clear place to start . . .

When you wait in a reception there is often reading material on the coffee table, perhaps even television news on a flat screen.

As soon as you’ve welcomed a new visitor to your website you want to start engaging the reader and showing the very best of what you have to offer.

You wouldn’t leave a visitor wandering around your office building or showroom so why do it when they visit your website?

Top Tip: Create a “New Visitor? Start Here >>” page which lays out your best content and shows the new visitor what they should read first.

Tom Ewer has a great example of a “Start Here” page on his blog Leaving Work Behind

4. A Useful gift . . .

In a physical reception visitors would be offered coffee, perhaps even a couple of biscuits while they wait.

What can you offer new website visitors?

Offer something that will be of great interest, relevance and that you know will be useful.  An accountant might offer a guide on how to keep track of invoices and receipts, an IT expert could offer a set of keyboard shortcuts or an eBook on how to get the best performance from your computer.

Introduce your free guide or other gift content at the bottom of your “Start Here” page and explain the benefits of reading it.

Top Tip:  Offer your free guide in return for the visitors email address so you can add them to your small business email marketing list and send them your future relevant content by email.  I offer a copy of my free eBook “Focused Marketing” to anyone who signs up to receive my future content by email.  It contains actionable information you can use straight away to attract your perfect customers – if you don’t already have a copy please sign up for one at the bottom of this post.

5. A Invite to get to know you . . .

Profitable small businesses are based on successful customer relationships.

Invite your visitors to get to know you, join you on social networks and contact you through your contact form so you can start to get to know them and build conversations.

You’ll not only begin building valuable relationships but you’ll learn more about your customers problems and issues and in turn be able to be more relevant in offering them solutions.

Top Tip: Add links to your social networks on your “Start Here” page and homepage and encourage visitors to connect with you and get in touch with questions or comments.

The Bottom Line

The internet is filled with millions of websites, several just like yours from small businesses offering similar products and services.

To stand out from the crowd you need to give visitors a fantastic welcome to your website and really roll out the red carpet.

Use the top tips listed above to start improving your welcome today.

Is there a top tip missing, what would you add?  Please join me in the comments for a discussion.