How do you make sure other people can find your business online? A website! Great idea. But how do we know that’s being found or displayed by search companies? What if you don’t have a site? Will no one ever know about you? Well, now the paranoia has set in, we have good news! Google provides a slew of useful tools to keep track of your site/business and its performance online.

Search Console

Google’s Search Console is a good place to start. This handy tool lets you examine all sorts of useful data about your site and its SEO. If you want an introduction to what it is and how it works we have another article that will get the two of you acquainted. For the purposes of this article we’re interested in its ability to check up on crawler and indexing activity. Specifically, you’re looking for the ‘Index Status report’, a graph which will show whether you have been included on google’s ‘map’ of the internet. What you want to see is a steady increase in line with the content you release. This indicates each new page you add to your site can be found by google and included into its Search results. Drops, on the other hand, indicate that there is infact a problem accessing your content and action is required.

Google My Business

Google My Business is another great (and free) online service available from google. As the name might suggest, this particular tool is specifically designed for companies and allows them to fine tune how they are represented across a variety of google’s services. Most importantly – Search and Maps. If you don’t have a website but still want to customize how you appear on Google this is one of the simplest and quickest ways to go about it.

So how do you get started?

• First, head on over to the Google My Business site and hit the big green ‘Start Now’ button.
• Now, enter the name of your company in the text box and press ‘Next’.
• You’ll now have a page where you can enter your business’s address information.
• One important point for this page – see that tickbox labelled ‘I deliver goods or services’? If you work from home, you can use that to ensure your home address is hidden from Google results.
• Once the address is sorted the next page lets you enter what type of business you run – specialty butcher, vintage baker, artisan candlestick maker, etc. Select something from the dropdown menu and hit ‘Next’.
• The next page allows you to enter a business phone number and website. While they’re optional, it will provide customers with useful links for contact and engagement.
• You’re on the home straight now! You just need to decide whether you want Google to deliver you some personalised SEO tips (like your own personal marketing butler) and choose your preferred method of authentication.

And that’s you set up, good to go! If it looks like a fab tool (it is) and want to know more about it (you do), worry not. We’ll be exploring Google My Business features in a later article. We’ve also got a whole range of other informative content to get you and your business set up in the digital world. If you found this article useful check out the rest of our blog.