Lesson 2 - Be found where customers are looking

You’ll find the most qualified customers by thinking about the problems that your products and services help them solve – that's what they’re searching for.

• Cover the everyday words or phrases your customers use to describe your business
• Describe the problems your products and services solve in 4-6 word phrases – turn those phrases around and describe the solutions
• Think about the needs your customer’s have when they seek you and describe those needs in short phrases
• The more relevant your keywords are, the more likely you’ll be found by the right customer
• Be comprehensive - profiles that have at least 35 relevant keywords or phrases appear in more search results

Here are 4 handy tips on being found by your customers:

1. Be comprehensive

Maximise your profile's reach by selecting basic keywords not only for your business, but also for the individual products and services you offer. Add both general names for products as well as specific brand and product names, including popular variations or shortenings of product names.

2. Describe solutions to customer problems

A customer with a stove that won’t light is more likely to search “broken stove” than they are “electrician” because they don’t always know what type of business is best to solve their problem.

3. Address customer needs, in their words

Your customers needs are usually very specific, so think about the specific things you do and sell. If you are a baker, “birthday cakes” is OK for customers looking for birthday cakes, but "Dora the Explorer birthday cakes" is better for customers looking for something specific and special.

4. Don’t worry about plurals or locations

Search engines ignore plurals of words, so just provide the singular version of each keyword. For locations, Hotfrog already uses the location of your business to match searchers in your area, so providing locations in your keywords creates duplicate data that can make your keywords less effective.

Keywords have to be kept fresh - Revisit them at least once every three months.

To keep your keywords delivering the best results, visit your profiles Dashboard to see which keywords are performing well for your profile – add more like those and remove keywords that are delivering no results. Also, think seasonally and add or remove appropriate keyword phrases that relate to seasonal products or customer problems and needs arising more frequently at different times of the year – it can take a few weeks for search engines to index your profile on new keywords, so think at least 8-10 weeks in advance for seasonal changes.