Gaining ground
Google’s impact on your business (and why you should care)
Hundreds of millions of searches are performed on Google.com every day. Other than when someone enters your company's name or web site address into a search box, will people find your company?
To give you a sense of how important Google is to your business or organization, consider this: 80 percent of all web site visits begin at a search engine. Even though millions of results appear for practically any search term, only a tiny fraction of searchers look beyond the first page of results.
Be a search rock star at your company
Appearing on the first page of Google search results does not happen by accident. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the name of the methodology used by marketers and web developers to help web sites achieve first-page status. SEO involves a combination of techniques both on your web site and on other web sites that help make it "search engine-friendly."
When you look at the billions of words people type into search engines, branded terms (like your company's name) make up a very small percentage. To get your company noticed, SEO requires outside-the-box thinking.
Here are some ways to use SEO in your role:
HR professionals
- Increase the number of qualified job candidates applying for open positions
- Use your unique employee culture, convenient location or exceptional benefits package to attract job seekers
- Advertise job fairs and other career events – for free
Benefit brokers
- Increase brand awareness and attract new business
- Sign up people for your upcoming seminar series
- Establish your position as a thought leader among industry peers
Here are some examples. If you are in HR, do you offer flextime, an on-site workout room or telecommuting? Job candidates who search for "company employee gym florida" must comb through hundreds of results to find even one Florida company that lists this perk. Instead, your company could be listed first.
If you are a broker, did you recently publish a white paper about risk management? Prospective clients who search for "employee benefits risk information" will drown among the 29 million results in search of a concise list of tools and resources. How do you make your offering stand out? SEO!
First, ensure all web pages appear in Google
The first question to answer is: does Google even know my web site exists? Sure, when you type in your company, your web site's home page is listed in the first spot. But what about the other pages on your web site? The ones that explain why you are a great company to work for or why you are the best at what you do.
To be found, you must play the odds: the more pages from your web site listed in the search engine, the more likely someone will find you.
In any search engine, do the following experiment. Search for "site:yourwebsiteaddress" (no spaces).
How many results are shown? How many total pages are actually on your web site? (A quick call to your IT or marketing department can give you this answer.) Next, scroll through the results. Are your most important web pages listed? If not, raise a red flag to your web team immediately. Ask them to look into why search engines are not listing all of the pages on your web site.
Know the words your audience uses
It is important to understand the words your prospective candidates or clients use. This process is called "keyword research." A keyword is the word or phrase that people type into a search engine. You will quickly find that most people enter 3-, 4- or even 5-word phrases to find the relevant web pages they are looking for. Free online resources can help you conduct keyword research.
How you describe your benefits, job openings and competitive differences are not necessarily the words people outside your company use. For example, a mid-size home decorating company sold a very popular product they called "housemarkers" for many years before the advent of the Internet. Later, when the company began implementing SEO, they made an astonishing discovery. Almost no one searched for "housemarkers." Did everyone suddenly lose interest in this item? Not at all. In fact, a lot of people were searching for this very product, but they were calling it an "address plaque."
Become an advocate for SEO
By raising awareness about SEO at your company, you can begin to have an impact on how people (and how many people) find your web site. For more information, use any search engine to search for "Google SEO starter guide." This in-depth document, written by Google, shows you all the basic building blocks of SEO.
About the author
Kristine Remer is an independent Internet marketing strategist in the Twin Cities. She has been helping companies get found on Google since 2003.
