Understanding how Google helps potential customers find your business

As a small business, it is critical to understand how potential customer searching for your products or services can find you on the first page. Although there are many factors to consider at the heart of a Google search is something called a keywords. keywords or key phrases, are the most commonly searched terms to find your products or services.

Let take “House Cleaning” as an example. Now if you’re in the house cleaning business, it’s important to identify the top keywords and phrases a potential customer might use to find you so you can build your website around these key terms.

Luckily Google provides an excellent tool to help you discover the best keywords in Google analytic’s called a keyword planner. You can easily search key phrase in locations to determine what your local customers are searching for.

As you can see above we did a keyword search for “House Cleaning” in the locations Leesburg VA, Ashburn VA, Loudoun County VA, Sterling VA, and Herndon VA.

Here’s what we discovered in our small sample size:

• “House cleaning” is searched on average 720 times a month
• “Housekeeping” is searched on average 880 times a month
• “Maid” is searched on average 720 times a month
• “House cleaning services” is searched on average 590 times a month
• “Carpet Cleaning” is searched on average 590 times a month

Now you also see a “Suggested Bid” column in the keyword planner with a dollar amount next to each keyword, for example “House Cleaning” has a Suggested Bid price of $20.29. What this means is if you want to advertise using the keywords “House Cleaning” on google you will need to pay a bid price and anytime someone clicks on your ad you’ll have to pay your bid price it for. Using keywords to advertise on google is as known as Adwords.

As you can see below google adwords have a little yellow box with the letters Ad. This tells you they are most likely paying for adwords based on the keywords “house cleaning”.

If we scroll down from on this page we’ll see websites that appear on the first page with the adword advertisements.

You’ll notice a few things.

1. The major review sites appear (Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, etc). This is because these sites have a huge influence on how a customer
2. All sites have the keywords “House or Home Cleaning” in their Title and Description.
3. A map with 3 local businesses. To learn more about how to get your local business to appear in this area check out our article The Top 15 Google Local Search Factors

Ensuring your website is optimized with the best keywords is a good start. There are also many other factors to consider to get your website on the first page for important keyword searches.

Consistently increase your online reviews from major sites. Checkout the RealiReviews App to instantly help your business start capturing the reviews that matter.

Consistent Business information across you the web. This is extremely critical.

Ensure your website is mobile friendly and Google optimized. If you need help with your website our web development team is standing by to help.