Page one search results are a snapshot of your business
Think of these search results as your Google resume. Negative findings here can be devastating. Position yourself or your business well, however, and you will benefit greatly from it.
How often do you conduct a Google search for your name or your business name? How you stack up against your competition should be monitored closely.
People research before they buy products or services
Have you ever used Google to find information on a product or service before making a buying decision?
It makes sense to see what other people are saying about a product or service they have bought. Right?
If someone else had a negative buying experience, you have the opportunity to avoid making the mistake yourself.
If you have done this, it would only make sense that your prospects do this very same thing. Call it research, call it due diligence, call it what you will, it has become a normal process in the buying cycle.
Before making a serious buying decision, it is natural to want to eliminate as much fear of making the wrong choice as possible. If we see someone else have a positive experience, we can picture ourselves having that same outcome by making the same choice. This helps making the decision feel safe.
People are influenced by what they find online.
The last thing you want to do is give your prospects a reason to choose your competitor. What they find about you and your business when they do their research is the key to closing those leads you work so hard to get.
Let’s face it when someone is at the point they are basically conducting a background check, they are serious about making a decision. You do not want to fumble at this point in the game. Positioning yourself as an authority in your field will make all the difference.
What does your page one snapshot look like?
It is important to conduct a search for both your name and your business name. Use an incognito window in the Chrome browser or an equivalent to make sure your search results are not biased based on your daily search habits. Take note of what you see on page one.
- Are the results all about you or your business on page one?
- Are the results positive and do they best represent your business?
- Are the results informative and helpful to your prospects?
- Do the results demonstrate your expertise?
- Are the search results impressive in any way?
If you can’t answer yes to all of these questions you may want to consider spending some time to get this right.
By taking control of your authority positioning and creating digital assets that you want your prospects to find (meaning good stuff that will make your prospects feel comfortable and in good hands) conversions will come a whole lot easier and more often.
What do your compeditors Google resumes look like?
It is important to do a quick search for your competitors in the same way. See how they measure up to your page one results. If they are doing a better job than you at the moment this is ok. You can change your page one results in a relatively short amount of time. You can build your digital assets one by one and blow your competition out of the water.
What a good looking page one snapshot looks like.
What would your competitors think if your Google resume looked like this?
Keep in mind ultimately Google decides what shows up on page one, however, we have the power to feed Google good positive information.
What would make you the safe bet?
If a prospect is looking for the best in a particular field, they are looking for an expert. What are things experts do that others do not? They get interviews, they are quoted in the media, they are on the radio, they are in magazines. These are the next level things that most professionals cannot touch.
A perfect page one snapshot or Google resume would have only you or your business in the search results for page one and possibly beyond. The results would represent your business well, including your social sites. Your images in the Google images results would be professional and if your results include an image bar your photos take up that space. Your video would also be on page one for your prospects to find. How about your best-selling book written about your industry, news articles you have been quoted in, interviews and other media mentions?
What you can do to improve your page one snapshot.
The page one results I just described may seem far fetched to some… or a (maybe someday) kind of thing. Imagine, if you could achieve this in the next twelve months… That would be great right? The truth is that with some effort your “Google resume” can look great much sooner than that.