A new reality of doing business is forcing us to take a long hard look at the way we do things.
In this new reality, your business is as real as your digital footprint. Small businesses with no digital footprint are finding it hard to attract new customers. In addition, the lack of a digital footprint will reduce the rate of returning customers.
A negative digital footprint can be worse than having no Digital Footprint at all. Inconsistencies in visual branding, incorrect information about your services, and negative reviews can have an enormous negative impact on your business.
Today is the time that we all need to take a good long look at our Digital Footprint and see if it is either supporting our business or having a negative effect on our business.
Digital Footprint Self-assessment for the Company
There are a few things you check to do a self-assessment of your Digital Footprint.
1. Google your business name
The results should include
- Your website home page
- A sidebar for your Google My Business listing
- At least one inside page from your website
- Your business is linked in the page listing
- Your Facebook page listing
- Other directory listings
The first page of Google should be filled with results relative to your business.
Click through on all the listings that are relative to your business name
We have no control over where our business's digital footprint travels, but we can, to a degree, ensure that it works to reinforce our business persona and branding, resulting in a positive effect on our business.
Visual
- Is the correct logo used across the different links and listings?
- Are the photos and images using a positive reflection of your professionalism?
Visual brand recognition is vital to reinforce the “7 touches” now required to create trust with prospective clients. Viewing your website, Google My Business listing, Facebook and online directories are all “touches” in this digital world.
NAP (Name, Address and Phone)
- Is your name, address, and phone number uniform across every listing or mention of your business?
The strongest local indicator used by the search engines is the combination of your name, address and phone number (NAP). This, in turn, becomes your business identifier across the internet. If you have different versions of your address or phone number, or you have moved and not updated your address across all your listings, you are diluting the strength of your local indicators with the search engines. In other words, this will have a negative impact on Google, seeing you as a strong local business.
Reviews
- Do you have reviews on listings you weren’t aware of?
- Have you responded to all your reviews, both positive reviews and negative reviews?
- Are there some supportive customers that haven’t reviewed your business?
- Do you have reviews across several platforms?
Reviews are the single biggest element for your business that can reinforce trust and confidence for prospective clients or customers. You need to be sure that you are aware of any reviews that have been left for your business across the various platforms.
Everyone can get a bad review at times, but the important thing is how you respond to the negative review.
2. Google your main business service and your suburb
Local Search indicators for your business will ensure that the search engines know that you are a local business offering this specific service.
Try a few of the different main services that you offer.
The search results should include
- Your business in the Google My Business pack
- Your website landing page for the specific service
- A directory listing for your business
If your business doesn’t come up all in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) then the search engine doesn’t know you provide this service in this location.
View all pages indexed by Google
Search bots will index any web page that they find unless they are instructed otherwise through the robots.txt file. Poorly developed sites will have hidden pages and template files open for indexing.
In Google, enter the following search term site:example.com.au
Replace example.com.au with your website url. The result will be all pages that Google has indexed on your website.
- Check that you are happy with all the pages that Google has listed.
- Check that the title tags and meta tags are good descriptors of the web page.
The Way our Customers are Finding Us is Changing
The new reality is going to be here for a long time. When things go back to normal, people will still use new ways of searching for local businesses.
- Trends have shown a huge decrease in mobile searches because more people are working from home.
- E-commerce sites are booming while bricks and mortar stores are struggling
- People are online more and using the internet to connect with people.
