Growing your Business on Google: What you Need to Know to Get Started

“Why does Google matter for businesses?”

This question might be obvious to some of you reading, but it is important that we start by clarifying its importance, and Google’s impact as a whole on the way that business is being done today. Google’s world usage is immense, and people are using the world’s most used search engine today in unfathomable numbers. Here are some statistics to further emphasize this:

• There are over 5.2 billion Google searches per day
• The average US resident performs a Google search between 3 and 4 times a day
• As a company, Google is worth over $700 billion and is on it’s way to being worth over $1 trillion.

Why does this size matter? Well, because it shows that for anything, any question, people are using Google to answer it (especially in the United States). For you, the small business owner, there is one type of question that you should be particularly interested in: Those who are searching for your particular service or good directly on Google.

 

So, how do you capitalize on this? This is where it starts to get a bit complicated. Luckily, we have a couple of videos on our YouTube channel associated with this topic specifically. But for now, we will go over a couple of ways that you do it – one being a complete free way, and one being a paid strategy.

 

SEO: The “Free” Way to get leads through Google

 

SEO is a marketing term that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of making sure that your website and your content are directly relevant to what people are looking for when they use search engines. This concept can get complicated, so let’s take a look at an example.

I have just Google’d “popcorn” as a small case study. After scrolling past some ads and the obvious Wikipedia result, we find an example of a small website with very strong SEO: popcorn.org/facts-fun/history-of-popcorn

I’m sure you can see a number of appealing things about this page (outside of the delicious popped and unpopped corn), and they have all been strategically placed to build good SEO. Let’s start at the top of the page, where it is most important to have a relevant page title and links to other content. Backlinking, or links to other pages AND to your page (click here for a more in depth explanation) is very important because it is one of the main ways that Google judges the relevancy and popularity of your page.

There is far too much to SEO to cover all of it in this blog right now, but again, we have a seminar series that will be covering this specific topic very soon.

One clear rule of thumb for good SEO, create relevant, quality content that people want to read, and be consistent! The traffic will follow.

 

Paid Ads and PPC Marketing: How you can get new clients like the big guys

 

There’s no doubt that you have heard and seen ads on Google, but do you know how to create them? Truth is, most of your competitors do know how. Another truth is: you can figure it out as well!

Let’s go through some of the first steps to get there now, starting with a couple of the building blocks you will need to understand to write successful ads on Google.

 

• Audience: who is going to see your ad?

If you have been in business for a long time, I am sure that you know all the different types of customers that you have. You have the one-timers, who will use your service once and probably never call again. You have the every-once-in-a-whiles, the people who are going to more often, but don’t drive your business. Then there are the regulars, the ones that keep coming back and back.

If you understand the different types and more importantly their personalities, you have the tools to build your audience. Google’s audience builder allows you to target people online in so many ways: from what websites they visit to how many kids they have, and more. You can be as detailed as you want, as in “plumbing fans with 4 kids that live in two particular zip codes in Iowa” but the more detailed you make it, the less people are you are targeting.

 

• Keywords: How do you want your audience to find you?

Google defines keywords as the words that you are putting into the search box or into your Google Home. Simple enough right? For now. You input your keywords into the Keyword Planner Tool on Google and you can see a bundle of information, the most important (for us) is seeing how many people are searching for that term in your area.

In our live seminars, we break down exactly how to use this tool to affordably and smartly. Watch the video of the second of our seminars on YouTube where our CEO breaks down how to use this tool in a smart way!

Each keyword will have an associated price with it – and unfortunately nothing is free. The good thing is though, you will only be charged when someone clicks on your live ad! You can also control the cost of your campaign and keep it from getting out of control by setting a budget, something you are prompted to do right at the beginning of your journey in the Google Ads Manager.

 

• The Ad: What do you want potential customers to know?

Now that you have your audience defined and your keywords picked out, the fun part happens! You get to write your ad and introduce new people to your business. You have most definitely seen Google ads before, because they usually appear toward the top (and now the bottom) of each search engine page!

You write these within a box on the Google Adwords platform, and there are all sorts of strategies and components you can use, but we are not going to go over all of them in this article. What I want to talk about are the guts of the ad, and how completing each of them well can lead to success!

Like I have said before, Google is complex, and their features (and algorithms) are robust. By reading this blog, you have by no means completed your advertising journey, but I hope you now have the tools to start it out! I may sound like a broken record, but our seminars can help you get a good handle on how all of this works!

 

Follow us on YouTube to see the vods, and check us out on Facebook if you want more up-to-date information! Cheers, and happy Googling ?