Why your business needs to be Googleable

This is a major gap for many businesses across TT: they cannot be found via the number-one way that people learn about businesses today – Google.

Think about this: whenever you have a question, your back is hurting, you need to find out who got standing desks for the office, you have a question about insurance – it's the first place people tend to go with their questions or queries.

There begins the customer journey.

For context, according to Hootsuite's yearly data report for 2021, the most viewed website in TT was Google, followed by YouTube and then Amazon. In September members of the population visited Google more than 835 million times.

Now here is why your business needs to be Googleable – Google and other search engines like Bing or Yahoo do not index social media content. They do index usernames, so if someone Googles your business name, your social media handles will show up, but your content won’t.

However, unless you are a celebrity, nobody is Googling your business name or even the name of the business owner.

They Google the things they have problems with, the things they are want, and then whoever shows up on the Google search, that’s who will typically get the sale on their website, the phone call or even the visit to their physical location.

According to Google, while 63 per cent of all sales transactions online start from a Google search, 88 per cent of those who Google your business will typically visit your physical store within seven days. Google also gives you the tools to track how many times people are calling your business and then how many times people are visiting your business.

The shift that businesses need to make now is that rather than focusing on ads, they need to start focusing on: what exactly people are searching for within our industry that we can help them with?

Once you know that, then you need to start creating content and information that answers their questions, and doing it on platforms that Google indexes.

What you want is that anytime your audience or potential customers are going on Google to search for something in your industry, your company should be showing up in the search results, giving people the information they need – and also have your products showing up in the results.

The more Google results your content or products show up for in the search engines, the more trust you will build with your audience. This is also how to go about building organic traffic, which is the most coveted type of traffic in marketing.

Organic traffic costs you the upfront investment of creating the content or information, but once it gets indexed by the search engines, it will continue to be shown on Google for years to come, as long as that content remains on your website.

A business's goal now needs to be to show up for as many Google searches in your industry. That way, whatever your audience is searching for, your brand is a part of the results. This will help to establish trust with your audience and increase traffic to your platform. The more traffic your site can bring in, this the greater your ability to build your e-mail list and push your notification list and also help to build your targeting pixel pools (think Facebook Pixel for retargeting site visitors on Facebook).

Here's one way to find out exactly what people are searching for: start typing into Google a word in your industry and look at the auto-suggestions that Google gives you in the drop-down. Those are questions that are currently trending in your country surrounding that word.

Learning how to be Googleable is how you are going to be able to take market share away from competitors and also start showing up where they are not.

Social media in TT is crowded, but still, most businesses aren’t showing up on Google, and this is a big gap that we need to take advantage of, especially if we want to start getting international clients.

If you would love to learn how to get your business Googleable, learn the strategies needed for your brand to become the top resource for clients and also learn about all the ways Google pulls info from to index so you can show up in various formats for your clients – then Ive got something for you.

On October 15, I am having a workshop called Becoming Googleable. This is for businesses, entrepreneurs, advocates, influencers, and even employees who are looking to build their names to land a new job should attend.

You can get all the information on KeronRose.com.

Becoming Googleable is the most important thing to do digitally for your business to succeed.

Keron Rose is a digital strategist who works with Caribbean entrepreneurs to build their digital presence and monetise their platforms. You can learn more at KeronRose.com or listen to the Digipreneur FM Podcast available on Apple Podcast/Spotify/Google Podcast.