It sounds like a simple question.
You probably use Google every day. You might search for suppliers, competitors, restaurants, services or potential customers. But when did you last search for your own business — and look at the results as though you’d never heard of the company before?
Try it.
What you find might surprise you.
First, open Google and search for your company name.
Don’t immediately click through to your website. Instead, take a moment to look at what a potential customer sees.
Does your business appear clearly? Is the description underneath your website accurate? Is the information current? Does your Google Business Profile appear, and are the telephone number, website, opening hours and other details correct?
Google compiles Business Profile information from a number of sources, including information supplied by businesses and users, as well as publicly available information from sources such as your own website.
You can read more about this in Google’s official guide to
how it sources and uses Business Profile information.
For many potential customers, your Google Business Profile may be one of their first interactions with your company.
So, take a critical look at yours.
Are your opening hours correct? Are your services properly described? Have you uploaded good, recent photographs? Are there unanswered customer reviews? When did you last add something new?
An accurate, well-maintained profile doesn’t just provide useful information. It can also help potential customers understand who you are, what you offer and whether your business is relevant to what they’re looking for.
In addition, Google recommends keeping Business Profile information complete and accurate, responding to reviews and adding photos and videos. You can see Google’s own recommendations in its guide to
improving local visibility on Google.
This is important.
Rather than checking your website from the computer you normally use to manage your business, pick up your phone and visit it exactly as a customer might after finding you through Google.
Then ask yourself a few simple questions.
A website doesn’t necessarily have to be broken to be costing you enquiries. Sometimes it simply hasn’t kept pace with the business it represents.
Modern business website design isn’t just about making something look attractive. Your website needs to work properly across different devices, communicate clearly and make it easy for potential customers to take the next step.
Next, actually use your website.
Click the main navigation. Follow a few links. Try your contact form. Tap the telephone number. Look at your services and check your location information.
If you sell online, for example, go through part of the buying process.
It’s surprisingly easy for a business owner to stop noticing small problems on a website because they already know where everything is. However, a new visitor doesn’t have that advantage.
They need to understand who you are, what you offer and what they should do next — quickly.
This is perhaps the most interesting part of the exercise.
Instead of searching for your company name, imagine you’ve never heard of your business.
What would you type into Google if you were looking for the service you provide?
Now try it.
For a local business, that might be something like:
Alternatively, use whatever genuinely describes the product or service your customers are likely to be looking for.
Where does your business appear now?
Searching for your company name tells you whether people who already know you can find you.
By contrast, searching for your products or services tells you something quite different: how visible you may be to people who don’t know you yet.
Google explains that local search results are mainly determined by three factors: relevance, distance and prominence.
In simple terms, Google is trying to understand how closely a business matches what somebody is looking for, its location in relation to the search and how established or prominent that business appears to be.
Importantly, there isn’t a magic button that puts a business at the top of Google — and Google specifically states that businesses cannot request or pay Google for a better local ranking.
However, accurate business information, a properly structured website, useful content, customer reviews and a well-maintained Google Business Profile can all form part of a much stronger online presence.
Your website itself remains an important part of that picture. At STORM we build WordPress websites with SEO, mobile performance, usability and ongoing maintenance in mind.
Businesses change over time.
New services are introduced, teams evolve and the quality of your work develops. Your customers may change too, while your branding and the way you present the business can move forward considerably.
However, websites and online profiles can easily get left behind.
A website created five years ago might still function perfectly well while no longer representing the quality of the business behind it.
That’s why occasionally looking at your company online as a customer rather than as the owner can be surprisingly revealing.
It’s also why regularly adding genuinely useful information to your website matters. Our own STORM Website Design News section, for example, covers website design, SEO, AI search and other developments affecting businesses online.
Finally, set aside ten minutes today and run through these simple checks:
What would you think if you were discovering your business for the first time?
If those ten minutes highlight a few things you’d rather your potential customers hadn’t noticed, it might be time to give your online presence some attention.
STORM Website Design helps businesses create, improve and maintain websites that properly reflect the businesses behind them.
Sometimes you don’t need to start again.
You just need to look at what your customers are seeing.
Contact STORM Website Design for a friendly discussion about your website and online presence.