Dec 19 2008
Small business year-end website checklist
I came across this Small Business Year-End Marketing Checklist on Search Engine Land and thought is was worth sharing. Then I had second thoughts, and thought that I could do better, and make the checklist more relevant to the UK. So here goes:
1. Claim your Google Maps listing
Go to Google Maps and search for yourself (such as by business name and city name). If your business is there, click the EDIT link, and then click CLAIM YOUR BUSINESS. If you’re not listed, use the Google Local Business Center and follow the directions to add your business.
2. Do the same at Yahoo Local and Microsoft Live Search Maps
The steps are pretty similar. Search for your business on Yahoo Local and Microsoft Live Search Maps. Yahoo specifically asks, “Own this business?” with a link to claim it. Live Search has a link that says “Change Your Business Listing.”
Extra Credit: Claim or cleanup your local listings on Yell.com; the free listing is generally adequate.
3. Claim your social media name/profiles
You may not be active in social media right now, but chances are good that you will be at some point. When you do, you’ll want to make sure you own your own profile on the important social media sites. With that in mind, create accounts for your business — using your company name — on sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace. Complete the profiles and be sure to link to your primary web site when possible. Even if you never use these social media profiles, at least you’ll know that no one else will be using your name.
4. Do basic online reputation management
What other people say about you online matters a lot. Bad business or product reviews can spread quickly, hurting your bottom line. At minimum, use Google Alerts to keep track of what people are saying. Use it to monitor your company name, your own name, and the names of important people in your company. Choose the “Comprehensive” alerts and get alerts at least once a day.
Extra Credit: Learn how to use RSS, and subscribe to RSS feeds of your company name and important staff names. These make an excellent supplement to what you’ll get from Google Alerts.
5. Get involved with your analytics
Don’t have web analytics? Google Analytics is more than adequate for many small businesses, and it’s free. Once you have analytics installed, pay attention to what the data tells you. Look at what keywords are sending natural search traffic to your site. Look at what other sites are referring traffic to you. There are usually new marketing opportunities to be found in both of those data sets.
6. Make sure that your Sitemap is up to date and registered at Google Webmaster Tools. It’s free and helps search engine spiders to index pages and tell them things that the site doesn’t, like how often the site is updated.
7. If you sell products, make sure you’re registered on Google Base. Formerly know as Froogle, it’s a cross between an online shop and a price comparison site with two features things that set it apart: it’s free, and the results appear on the Google search results page.
Try typing ‘trainers’ into Google and you’ll probably see ‘Shopping results for trainers’ with 3 direct links to trainers. These are selected results from the product search. The results are a little like Google’s search results - you don’t pay to be here and you can’t buy your way in. But if you’re not submitting your product file, you can’t be here. I have a client in a niche market who can get up to 12% of their sales from Product Search - for free.
So if you’ve got an ecommerce web site, you should be on Google Product Search. Register at Google Base and upload your product file. It could be your shortcut to the top of the Google search results page!
8. Review the title tags on all your pages. What is the title tag? It’s a few words of text that probably appear in the top right hand corner of your browser, especially if you’re using Internet Explorer. Look at the BBC home page - the title is “BBC homepage.” Similarly, the title of the Marks and Spencer homepage is just “Marks and Spencer.” For both of these iconic brands, home page titles don’t count for a lot.
Look instead at the Next site. The title tag here is “Next - Women’s & Men’s Fashion, Children’s Clothes, Homeware & Electricals” telling the search engines exactly what Next does. Type “Women’s Fashion” into Google and Next is on the first page. Where’s Marks & Spencer? Not on the first 10 pages yet it’s probably the UK’s leading retailer of Women’s fashion.
When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, there are few things as important as the title tag.
So thanks to Search Engine Land for getting me thinking, and here’s hoping that 2009 is a good year for small business and marketing consultants alike!
