Your Small Business Name On Your Small Business Website

A name is a very personal thing. Whether it is your name, your child’s name, or your business’ name, you are likely to have a soft spot for it. For many of us, our business is like an extra child, so it is no surprise that we are proud of it.

I remember taking a long time to choose my business name, before finally deciding that I could combine two of my hobbies together; cooking and business.

I spent 14 years fighting my naturally more creative talents to be a solicitor, so when I finally broke free to pursue my passion of marketing, it was a big relief. I wanted the name to reflect the fact that I knew so many small business owners could have in many ways the perfect business, yet still be a million miles away from being truly successful.

You might provide the best service of its type bar none. You might deliver that service better than anyone else. You might charge a very reasonable price, and provide your clients with some hidden benefits of your service that they were simply not expecting to woo them even further. You might do all of this and a lot more, yet if you are missing just one crucial element, you may well be left without enough clients.

Just like when cooking a meal you can prepare the finest ingredients, create a great sauce and slow cook for hours, only to discover that the final taste that you are left with is largely underwhelming. That is, until you add the right amount of salt and pepper. Seasoning is often the vital ingredient to a perfect meal as is marketing to your small business.

If you provide the most exceptional service yet no one ever gets to hear about it because your marketing is so ineffective then you will have missed the whole point and will have a very quiet business.

So that is what the Small Business Salt is meant to symbolise; I provide you with the missing marketing ingredients that will make your business flourish (if you go off and apply the advice that is). I provide the seasoning to your otherwise perfect small business to make it complete.

Back to my original point; our small business name is very important to us. Which is why, I believe, some business owners go a little overboard when it comes to putting their business name all over their meta tags, which is completely the wrong thing to do.

For those of you who I have just lost by using some jargon, please bear with me because this is important. You can see your meta tags very simply by going to one of your website pages, right clicking anywhere within the content (not on an image or in your header) then selecting ‘view source’. On a Mac, select the Develop button then view code from that tab in Safari.

You will be presented with something like this below (click the image to see a larger version):

This is for my home page and you will see that I mention the website name in the Title Tag and the Description Tag. This is really important as I want people already searching for my business name to land on the home page, for the reasons mentioned above and in the previous blog post.

However, if we look at a different page, you will see this Meta Tag:

This is an internal page of my website and you will see that there is no mention of the business name either in the Title Tag or the Description Tag. This is because I do not want or expect people to land on this page if they Google my business name. I want them to land on this page if they would like a website built for them, copywritten and marketed without them having to lift a finger (except to answer the telephone when they receive a new client enquiry).

The problem I see in 80% of all cases is that some business owners put their business name in the Title Tag and Description tag on every single page of their website. This is such a waste of your prime retail space.

It is akin to having a shop window in a shopping centre and rather than displaying your wonderful goods that will pull people into the shop, you just put your name in the shop window over and over again.

What would this do for your shop?

No one would come in would they? Why would they? Unless you were the biggest brand in the world, no one would know what you do. Even the multibillion dollar Apple display their products in their shop window rather than just their brand name.

So you must display your services in your shop window, and on your website this is your meta tags. That way, you actually have a chance of someone finding your website when they Google the service that your business provides.

Carry out the check I mention above and see how often your business name appears on each page. If it is on every page, go and change this as quickly as possible, instead replacing your business name with keywords which reflect the content on the page and which people might actually type into Google when looking for your service.

Tomorrow I will share a tool with you which allows you to see all of your meta tags in one place so it can save you a lot of time.

Click the button below to see the four most effective marketing tactics for small business owners:

Small Business Salt – Practical Business Advice For Small Business Owners.