The Pedestal Group

Have you ever tried to pick out a picture for a brochure or website?  It is amazing how much thought goes into it. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, than I think I use about 3000 when eliminating images.  ”These people look like they are thinking something weird” or “I wish these people were doing something instead of just standing still”.  Trying to find the image that captures your business is definitely tough.

Which then led me to keywords.  At some level if I can narrow my search to the right keywords I should find more images that are worthy of consideration and less that make me want to throw up (sorry – been at this awhile now).  What did I find?  Different people who post the pictures use keywords in different ways. Where I was looking for “business people”, the site I was using uses “business teams”.  Once I used business teams, I started finding groups of people who (in theory) were at work.  But it never would have occurred to me to use business teams because I want two people – not five. So to me, they aren’t teams.

Okay – so what?  Why should we care how people are finding images on some random picture site?  Because people are also using keywords to find you.   And those people don’t think like you – because if they did, they wouldn’t be looking for you; they would have already found you.  So how do you find the right keywords so people can find you?

First, geographic location is a no-brainer.  When people are searching for something and need to narrow their results, their first stop is to add a geographic location.  Cool.

Second, check out the keywords people are actually using in searches.  One site that is helpful is  Google Adwords Targeting .  This site is designed to help those interested in AdWords identify the right keywords for their ads.   (NOTE: Doesn’t work with Opera as your browser just in case you’re like me and don’t figure that out quickly)  By using tools like this you can figure out keywords that other people will use to find your business. Then, those keywords go in your text, in your page descriptions, and in any profiles you have on sites, etc.  Optimizing those keywords is critical to people finding you.

Third, talk to real people.  I know this sounds silly, but asking people what they would type into a search engine to find you is a great way to get more customers like them.  Different regions of the country use different phrasing and ways to say things so appeal to the right people.  Also, if there’s a way people most often mis-spell your company name, enter that in your keywords too.

At the end of the day your keywords will either get you found or leave you buried on page 15 of the results.  You need to get good keywords.  And if you find great pictures of business people who look cool but also like they are working, let me know!

Let me just go on record – I hate jumping through hoops. I’m not very athletic and grace is definitely not my middle name so I never learned the art.  So last week when I went to a certain motor club’s website to try to figure out if and where we would vacation this year (won’t say who, but their first name starts with A, their middle name starts with A and their last name starts with A), I was surprised when I got a message that my membership ID wasn’t valid.  I sent an email to their “contact us” section which is apparently motor club speak for “black hole”.  Today, I tried calling.  Suddenly I was in some weird fairy tale – the first lady didn’t know anything. The second lady knew I had the wrong website (oh silly me – www.aaa.com was WRONG) but didn’t know the right one.  The third lady knew the right site. Yay. Went back to the site, tried to download travel books, can’t. No error to speak of so I couldn’t troubleshoot, just click on the button and get a page that at the top says “You are already logged in” and below has a login box. Huh???

At the end of the day, I will get over this and somehow get what I want. And if previous interactions are any indications, will receive my order very quickly.  But for this morning, I wasted a lot of time jumping through hoops for no obvious reason. Now if someone does follow up on the “survey” I took and expressed my concerns, that would be great and I will renew next year.  But if they don’t, I will certainly think very hard before renewing.

So what does it all mean?  I’m confident that internally there are great reasons this all happened.  It makes total sense to someone at AAA that their main website doesn’t have a way to route users to the proper state site and / or could at least communicate in some obvious way that there are state sites.  I really don’t care if they are all independently owned, franchises, or something else. I just want a good customer experience.  What about your customers?  What happens when they go to your website?  What if there is a problem – do they just get a big “404 error” or have you customized that to give better information (did you know you could customize that page)?  Help your customers have a great experience so they come back again and again.  Make your contact information easy to find. Make sure what they want is obvious. Don’t make them jump through hoops like the trained dog at the circus – because your customers don’t come back just for a treat.