As a marketer, you’re probably concerned with how your company looks on Google, but you’re probably also someone who does a lot of research on Google too. Here then are a few tips which might make your use of the search engine more efficient.
1. Don’t ask Google questions!
I don’t know why so many people who want to know the capital of Peru type in “What is the capital of Peru?”, but they do. Google is not your own personal researcher, it’s an index of what’s on the web. If you want to know the capital of Peru, you’re looking for a page which has on it the phrase “The capital of Peru is”. That’s what you should be typing into Google.
2. If you’re looking for a specific phrase, specify it.
If you just type in “the capital of peru”, Google’s going to prioritise pages with that exact term, but it’s also going to consider pages with those words featuring quite separately. The importance of the website can then overcome the fact that the words don’t feature together, as has happened in the example above. That wasn’t the page you were looking for. The smart technique is to put the term in speech marks, then you’ll just get the exact phrase.
3. If you only want pages from a certain site, say so.
If you’re looking for pages on the Blue Widget Company’s website which are case studies, you’re going to get a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff if you query Google with “blue widget company case studies”. You’ll also only get a selection of results from the Blue Widget Company’s website mixed in there, rather than a comprehensive list. The smart Google user knows the “site:” operator, which not only returns results from a specific site exclusively, but has a full list.
