The Main Tactics to Promote your Business on Google

Google Search, or simply Google, is the most used search engine worldwide with over 90% of the search market share. Pretty impressive, right? Since almost half of the world chooses Google’s search engine, making your business more visible among its search results will undoubtedly contribute to your company’s success.

As we all know, online marketing – or Internet marketing – is an incredibly valuable asset for businesses nowadays. Billions of people navigate the Web daily, and nearly 4 billion of those people use Google; just imagine the growth to which your brand would be subjected to if you helped it gain more exposure on Google. So, if I captured your interest, just keep reading, because I’m going to share with you some of the best ways to market your business on Google!

Let’s start by saying that there are 3 fundamental methods of promoting your brand on Google:

– Google Ads

– Google My Business

– SEO

1) Google Ads (SEM)

Google Ads is a service that belongs in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) category, also known as pay-per-click marketing (PPC). I already talked about SEM and PPC in this article and also in this one, so check those articles out if you’re interested.

Google Ads can make your advertisements show up on the very first page of the search engine results. This service places you in Google’s “ad” slots, but in order to appear up there you’ll need to pay. Actually, you’ll only pay anytime a Google user clicks on your ad; that’s why it’s called a pay-per-click marketing strategy.

Now, how much do you have to pay when you use Google Ads, exactly? Well, there’s no set price for it, because prices are dynamic. They vary based on a few factors, such as:

– how much competing advertisers in your area are spending

– how relevant your ad is to a person’s Google search

– how likely a person’s search will result in a sale

The secret to delivering successful ads is a careful keyword selection, something that SEM and SEO have in common. In order to succeed with Google Ads, you’ll need to choose those special keywords that can attract more customers to your website. Link the most relevant keywords to your ads, meaning the keywords that better meet the user’s needs, and your chances of visibility on Google will surely grow.

Apart from good keyword selection, paying more to rank your ads higher is the other, although pricier, option.

Get started with Google Ads here!

2) Google My Business

Google My Business is another way of marketing your company optimally on Google, and the best thing about it is that it’s completely free of charge!

How does My Business work? Well, a My Business profile is very similar to a business social media profile. While My Business is not a social media platform, it’s a service that uses almost the same features employed on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for the promotion of a business: you can enter info about your company, you can exchange messages with your customers, you can enable reviews and answer to them, and also add pictures that describe your products and services.

Moreover, you get notified whenever a customer interacts with your My Business profile through Google.

The only true drawback of My Business is the fact that only local businesses that do face-to-face business with their customers are eligible: if you don’t own a brick and mortar store, you cannot create a My Business account for your brand (want to know more about My Business’ guidelines? Go here!)

If your store has a physical location, you can create a Google My Business profile right away by clicking here!

3) SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the go-to strategy for growing your business online, although it is not super easy to get right. SEO is a marketing strategy that allows your website to place higher among Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), therefore giving your business more visibility.

SEO is pretty similar to the aforementioned SEM, with the exception that SEO is free, and helps market your company organically. By “organically” we mean that with SEO your site is going to gain more Internet exposure in a non-artificial, unpaid way, contrary to the SEM’s pay-per-click tactic.

While you can “cheat” and place your site higher on Google with SEM, if you choose SEO you’ll have to work on a number of aspects that will help you with achieving your purpose: On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Technical SEO and Local SEO, for instance. Let’s check them out:

– On-page SEO: optimization of your website’s content and features, meaning keywords, headers, meta titles, meta descriptions, images, etc. On-page SEO basically helps Google understand the content on your site

– Off-page SEO: getting exposure and promotion from outside sources. This strategy is primarily focused on link building, which consists in getting other reputable websites to link back to your site

– Technical SEO: optimizing your website in order to make it more crawlable to Google. A crawlable site is mainly faster, mobile friendly and well-structured

– Local SEO: promoting your website locally rather than nationally or internationally. There’s a higher focus on marketing your site to your local community and customers. If you intend to invest in Local SEO, I suggest you also create a Google My Business profile to drive even more sales