What’s in a name? Have you managed to make a good impression with Google and your customers? If you own an online website and business, you should be concerned about making good first impressions. In fact, first impressions are all that you may have with some visitors.
People are often browsing and surfing or shopping online and using certain search terms when they come onto your site. They may not have intentionally come upon your site, but for whatever reason, they landed there.
Are they going to stay on your site? How do you keep your bounce rate down and your retention rate up when you get people to come to your website? An even more important question is how do you get Google to rank your site high for your keywords and produce results that will attract new people to your site?
First impressions are important so you should first think about what it means to make a good first impression with Google and then how you can get people to stay on your site long enough to get them to go to your call-to-action?
Below are some of the factors that you should think about if you are trying to creating a good first impression in Google and the search results so that you can get people to click on your link and to stay on your site longer than a few seconds.
Start with quality keywords
One of the single most important techniques that you should use to make a good first impression with the searches is to use quality keywords. These keywords should include some long-tailed keywords as well as some shorter words. Don’t focus on the keywords exclusively but try to incorporate them into your page naturally so that Google’s crawling algorithms will return the results that you need.
Look at your “queries” report
If you are having trouble getting your site to rank or having people come to your page, you may want to take a look at the queries report. This is available in Google Analytics under “search engine optimization” (queries). Here you will see all of the phrases you are currently ranking for as well as the number of times your pages have been visited for certain keywords. It also shows your current ranking or position. (In other words, it tells you what kind of impression you are making in Google).
Beyond this, as our title conveys, you should also focus on your brand name so that you are creating associations within the Google search indexes regarding your name and what you do. One real test is to put your name in the Google search and see what results it returns. If your business has a name other than your name, then put in your brand name instead. The results you see are what Google has information about, and that is readily available in the searches.
Remember that Google crawls every page, not just your main page. This is why it is important to make a good impression on all pages, not just your main home page.
Keep errors in check
Checking your site for errors and running tools like SEO optimization tools can be helpful in keeping your site in as good of condition as possible in Google’s index.
Focus on quality of content
Think about how you make a good first impression on people in the real world. Do you put on your Sunday best, shake their hand, compliment them, or offer something to them as a gift of friendship? When a man is courting a woman, does he offer to buy her a cup of coffee, invite her to meet him for lunch, and pay for the bill? This sends a message that he is wining and dining her and that he is trying to tell her she is special to him.
In a similar way, your website connects to people in similar fashion and sends a message that it is compatible with their needs due to a variety of aspects that they are looking for. In most cases, this is about the keywords. But it can be other factors, too.
One way that you can help create a good impression with Google is just to produce the best quality content you can think of. This includes having a variety of types of content available such as:
- Photos and infographics
- Slideshows/videos
- Podcasts
- Online webinars
- Articles and downloads
When you provide the above content to your viewers, you are offering something of greater content than if you had text only or if your content was of lower quality. Remember that your website is the main thing people see first. It is also the thing Google seems first. If it looks good and there are relevant backlinks to other credible sights with relevant content, you are going to look better to Google than if you had broken links, irrelevant content, and Javascript errors.
Combatting Java Errors
Remember that Javascript typically does produce a lot of mistakes. Also, links can go bad when someone removes a page that you had a link to. This can do a lot of damage and can reverse your great “first impression” with Google if it crawls your pages and finds dead links. So make sure you have someone check your page for such errors or use an error-checking tool that does this for you like Deadlinkchecker.
Check ranking often
Something else you may want to do when you are trying to improve the quality of your website in Google is to check your ranking often. By making the changes you want to make and then checking your site again to see how your ranking is doing is a good way to keep up with the impression you are making in Google.
In other words, mind your store. Just like in the real world where you have to greet customers, check on your business license, pay taxes, and get business done, you should also think of your online business as something you must keep up regularly, rather than something that you can put up and forget. At the same time, don’t forget to use some of the best tools and tracking sites to keep an eye on your brand mentions and online reputation.
Don’t underestimate the importance of making a good first impression. By producing high-quality content, offering your visitors something of value, and checking on the status of your site on a regular basis can go a long way toward making and keeping your credibility with your target audience, as well as Google.
What’s in a name?
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare once asked through Juliet in the famous play. But the line was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Though the basis of the feud was illogically based on a name, it was because either the Capulets or the Montagues must have made a wrong impression on the other family at one point and that’s why their name was now considered worse than treason!
So guard your good name and make sure you that follow Google’s expectations for content and relevancy, and make your content mobile-friendly so that your first impression with Google will last.
Whether you agree with everything Google does or not, you can’t get views if you don’t get ranking in Google. It is that simple. And your name is important, too.