Customers know you deliver quality goods and services.They have your business card, phone number, cell number, email and website addresses, and more. They can find you in person or online through multiple channels.
Referrals and prospects may have some contact information or none at all. That makes the F-factor – the findability factor – crucial. If prospects can't find you, let's face it, it's difficult to convert them into customers.
There are countless ways to improve search engine results. One way is to create and use online content, which can quickly boost search rankings and findability. Let's look at two examples.
Example 1 - The Invisible Provider
Our client works for a service provider. The company website includes brief profiles of key employees, so he's had some form of web presence for some time. Nonetheless, even in highly specific searches involving his name or his name coupled with additional specifics (such as company name, franchise name, state, region, etc.), our client never surfaced on the first three pages of search engine links.
These results changed shortly after we posted some of his success stories online. Now, if you search for him by name, by name and company, or a wide array of other combinations, links to his content appear on the first page. Even more important, in most cases these links appear as the first or first and second links on page one.
Example 2 - Lost in the Crowd
This client has also had a website for some time. When you enter the entire company name and conduct a Google search, the website appears as the first link on the first page of search results. That's good, it means both customers and prospects can find them ... as long as they know the full name, use it and spell it correctly.
The company also happens to have a very common name, and many similarly named competitors sell the same type of products. It's like having a hamburger place called McDonald's. To complicate things further, most of the client's customers refer to the company using a nickname or shortened name. The company doesn't surface anywhere in the first three pages of search results if the short name is used.
The client hired us to create some practical product sales literature. When we completed the materials, we took the extra step of uploading it to ensure it could be accessed by the sales team, customers and prospects.
Did this pay off? Yes and no. Using the nickname alone, the results are unchanged, and the company remains lost in the crowd.
Search engine results improved in other ways, however. Customers or prospects who search using both the company nickname and any broadly related product category (for example, "Company hamburgers") will find two or more links to our client on page one. In the past, there would have been none. Better yet, this client often dominates first page results, representing the first four links in the list.
Bottom Line
For both clients, quality online content has significantly improved their search engine rankings and findability, and provided a value-added supplement to their existing websites.
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