I Was Googled

It was just yesterday that an old friend of mine got in touch with me by Googling my first and last name. He found all sorts of articles, which mentioned my name, including my own website as #1.

Googling Your Name is Money in Your Pocket

This reminded me of a client I had who was nowhere to be seen when you Googled their name. This was a huge problem since they were 100% referral and many people searched for their company name on the Internet to find thheir website. It took two months for them to start showing up, but when they did, it was a HUGE money maker for them. Potential customers who had been referred were finally able to find them.

With the pursuit of optimizing a site for certain keywords, so many companies forget to optimize for their own company name.

The Proof is in the Puddin`

A recent study by Nielsen//Netratings suggest that when web users know the name of a website, they prefer to type in a domain name in the ?search box? of Google or Yahoo, rather than typing a domain name into the browser bar.

What does this tell you? Well, it says that if someone has heard of your company, they?re either going to type in your website name or your domain name into the search box and your website better be ready and waiting at the top of the search engines.

Do YOU show up when your name or company name is Googled?

Here`s How You Do It

To search engine opptimize (SEO) your company name on your website, here are some tips. (This isn?t an exhaustive list of all that you can do, but it`s enough to get you started.)

** Choose one page on your website to optimize for your company name. It might be your Home page, Contact Us page or About Us page. I recommend your About Us page ? it seems that it?s easier and better to talk about you on that page than any other page. Conversely, the Home page should be all about them (What?s In It For Me?) ? not about you.

** Add your company name to the ALT tags where possible. ALT tags are the tags that are connected to the images of your website. Search engines don`t index images, so any text on your site that is in the form of an image won?t get indexed. The search engines read the text and the keywords in the ALT tags instead.

** Add your company name to your Meta Tags: namely, Meta titles, Meta description and Meta keywords. A recent study showed that only 34