Mike Paetzold here for my last day as the guest poster as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week we have been discussing how to help offline businesses use the net effectively.
We have covered
- Mistakes that offline businesses make
- Protecting your online reputation
- 4 advantages of using a blog as your web site
Today we will discuss using what the 800 pound gorilla gives you. Yes, love them or hate them Google is the 800 pound gorilla online but there are some things they have that can help you immensely.
When we discussed protecting your reputation we mentioned one – Google Alerts. That is just one of many tools that Google provides that you can use.
Google Local Search
For offline businesses one of the often overlooked items is Google local search. Adding your profile there can be very helpful as the local search shows at the very top of the page.
It sits above the regular listings but if you do not sign up and submit your site you probably will not show. Even if you had the number one listing there were 7 other choices first if you do not go and submit your information.
You can add your own description, some pictures and even coupons that you can offer directly from local search. Your customers can leave a review and if you are smart you will ask your happy customers to do just that.
Google Analytics
Google will track your visitors and give you a ton of great information so you can find out exactly how people find you, how long they stay, how many pages they view and much more. You can not improve what you haven’t measured.
Google Webmaster Tools
When you sign up at Google Webmaster Tools it will allow you to see your site the way Google does. You can see if your site map is working, how many pages they have indexed and a lot more.
The more you know about what is happening the easier it is to improve what you are doing. Google has made it easy to find these things out if you take the time to look.
Hope you have enjoyed my visit and you have learned a thing or two. It has been fun to be here but next week I will be off to another blog.
Remember though that knowledge without action is worthless so follow what Nike recommends and “Just Do It!”
About the author
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Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and works with offline businesses through Coal Region Web Services. Currently you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. |