We mentioned this tip on our Instagram page and wanted to elaborate more on it here as there is immense value to your business gained by being intentional about how you appear online.
It is critical to keep track of your business' presence on the web to ensure a cohesive aesthetic and proper display of information. When you put yourself in the eyes and ears of your potential customer, you start thinking about things differently. I can't tell you how many of our clients have started to "research" themselves within the depths of the wild-wild-web and discover an address they had 10 years ago is still associated with their business page or end up finding photos of old staff who don't even work at their facility anymore, or come across a phone number that doesn't belong to their business... etc. You get the point, but if you don't look, you'll never catch it!
A few things to look for:
+ Check that your business' contact information is correct
+ Review the hours that are displayed for your biz
+ Read through any Google reviews your have and make sure they are truly from your customers
+ Make sure the link to your website is working
+ Look at Google images and make sure there aren't any weird ones popping up
+ Check that your pages are part of the results (Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, etc.) Are you using a consistent name and location on all of them?
Not only is this task useful to spot things that may no longer fit with your business or brand, but it's as equally as helpful to figure out what you could be adding to your presence on the web to enhance your customer experience. I've found that if I start thinking like my potential customer, I begin brainstorming things that are missing from our current web presence.
For us, you can imagine the things that came up when we first Googled ourselves (Peanut Butter Creative) three years ago - yep, you guessed it! A whole bunch of 'creative' peanut butter recipes (that looked to-die-for, btw). When we thought about it from a customer's perspective, we realized we should probably add the words 'graphic design' to our Google business page and website to make it super-duper clear to out potential customers what our company was all about.
Now, we check our web presence roughly once a month and I think we've added an edit each time! Whether it's updating our photos so they are fresh and relevant, switching around keywords to help improve our SEO and ranking, or even just for spellcheck purposes - we've found it to be so helpful. It may seem simple but it's made such an impact on our little business. Make some time to Google yourself and let us know what you find! Was there anything you changed or added?
Happy Business Building!
xoxo
Jenna