With billions of web pages out there, how do you show the world that you are a legitimate business? Since anyone can build a website, or create a social media account, you need to do something to legitimize your business and add credibility.
There are several ways to do this, and this post will show you a few ways:
Number one: Verification
Proving to the world that you are who you say you are, is a big deal in a time in history where you receive fake emails, people create fake webpages and more.
Quit simply, verification proves you are who you say you are. As an example, on some Twitter accounts you will see the verification mark. Twitter verifies many celebrities, and other public figures so people aren’t confused by fake accounts. You see this for actors, politicians and more. But, they also will verify other accounts. As an example, Twitter verified my account @roosites (see image). Facebook also verified us as well. So if nothing else when people come to my pages, they know I am who I say I am.
Number two: Testimonials
Testimonials are great way to show people that your company is a legitimate entity and also allow you to brag without having it come directly from you. But, here are some important things to know about testimonials. Testimonials which are vague or don’t show a person’s whole name or their company our next to useless.
“They are a great company”
~Bill
(This may not be fake, but it sure looks fake!)
What I do is I recommend to my clients that when they show testimonials, only if the person allows them to show their full name, their company as well as their title. As you can see below, this is a real person from a real company having a real review testimonial. Nothing legitimizes a company like great testimonials from real people. See below, here is an example from my testimonials page.
Number three: Local Search
Most people search for things by location. So if you are looking for a plumber, you don’t typically just type in ”plumber”. You typically will type: My Town + Plumber as an example.
By having your company listed in local directories, This will further legitimize your company. In the old days people would just pick up there yellow pages and that’s how they found you. But as we know, those days are gone. However there are still local directories, Google My Business, YP.com (The old Yellow Pages ), as well as a bunch of other local directories. Start with Google My Business, this will give you a listing that appears right when people are searching for your business or similar businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. See my Boston listing below as an example. We can recommend several ways to gain local business citations. Contact us for assistance.
Bottom Line
These are just a few simple ways to add legitimacy to your small business. There are of course many different ways to do this, and we would be glad to help you. All of our support plans include time each month for working on your company’s credibility through time-tested methods.
Update 7/14/23: Twitter has now gone to a pay for play model, where you need to pay to have your blue check. Although this is not as impressive as the previous methodology, it is still a way for people to see that you have been verified and legitimize your business, so what you need to do his way the cost of getting the blue Check you used to get for free.
We all get the calls and the spam emails from SEO firms promising to make us number one in Google. These come from companies all over the world, promising things that we know they cannot possibly deliver. We know logically that someone can’t promise you that they can get you number one rankings without even knowing your business or even what you’d like to be found for! Still, search engine optimization is something we all work on, whether you do it yourself, hire a management company like RooSites, or an outside agency. But, before you do anything here is a list of 5 things you should determine before starting any search engine optimization campaign.
What do you want to be found for? This is the most basic, but also the most important thing. Seems simple, but a lot of companies and businesses can’t tell you. Until you determine what key phrases you want to be found for, you should not proceed. Because no matter how legitimate the company you’re working with is, if they don’t know what to shoot for, then chances are they will fail.
Are you looking for local or broad search engine ranking improvement? This is very important. Depending on what you do, you can focus all your energy on local search improvement which is a much faster and many times a more successful process. For instance, if you are a plumber in Smalltown, USA, Getting found for Smalltown USA plumber is a lot easier than being found for plain old “plumber”. This is simple, in small town USA there are a limited number of plumbers, where as nationwide there 10s of thousands. Now if your company is an e-commerce company selling to customers nationwide or even globally, the process is much different.
Where are you today? Before you start a campaign, you need to know where you are ranked at this moment in time. Otherwise you will not be able to see if your SEO work paid off or not. Simply type in the search phrase looking to be found for, and see where you come up. There are also many free SEO tools to do some preliminary tests. But be aware, many of these are trying to sell you something, so be sure you don’t get yourself tied into some kind of commitment.
Set reasonable expectations. Before you start, try and come up with a reasonable measurement. What would you view as a success? Now, it is simple to say I want to be number 1 for 300 key phrases. (wouldn’t we all?) But that isn’t reality. If you have a much more competitive key phrase, then perhaps being on the first page of Google is a solid goal. This is also very good test of the company you’re working with. If you tell them you want to be number one for 15 or 20 key phrases and they say no problem, then it is a good time to end the relationship.
Be ready to commit time and resources. A lot of of true search engine optimization has to do with adding consistent, quality content. A lot of that is in the form of news and blog postings. Now, while you can hire people to write it for you, the best material is likely written by you or someone that works for your company. Because you don’t want content to be written just for search engines, because that fails. Search engine’s are looking for the best possible search results, not ghost written garbage. So if you aren’t willing to put in the time or at least have a resource in your company put in the time, then perhaps you should not be planning an SEO campaign.
Bottom line: Search engine optimization is not an instantaneous process. It requires research, and ongoing improvements. Since the Internet is still a very relatively new science, a cottage industry of SEO companies have propped up and made false promises for years. So, follow these five steps before you even speak to an SEO firm and you will be better off in the long run. RooSites is a full service agency and we work SEO into our normal service plans. If you need help, contact us at https://roosites.com/contact.
