( We talk about Google Adwords and how to find out how people are searching for your business. Headings have been added for your convenience)
Joe: Welcome to the being found show! The Being Found Show is your internet marketing helpline. If you need help with your online marketing, your website, or figuring out how to grow your local business, give us a call with any question and we’ll will answer it. Or we’ll tell you to google it. Because that’s where the answers are. I’m your host, Cloud Wise Joe, and I have half of my internet super heroes team here that’s right so who are you?
Sean: I’m Sean.
Joe: Yeah we have that half. Sean the content wizard. Sean tells us he’s got a pretty good – what’d you say you had?
Sean: I said I had a “kind of interesting story” because I habitually underestimate how interesting what I have to say is. For the purposes of radio you want to stay tuned for this story. It’s just shocking. Mind-blowing.
Joe: Wow so I don’t know what to think. So stay tuned. He won’t even tell me about it. If you have questions or you want to be a part of the show, give us a call at 530-605-4567 again that’s 605-4567. Or you can check us out online at being found.com. There’s all kinds of good stuff there.
Scammers impersonating Google, and how to talk to Google
Joe: Ok so I like to answer questions for businesses. That seems to be what I do all week – and so I think the show is no different. So I do want to answer a couple questions before we get started. One of them is a Google scam alert that that I want to talk about. A local company called me up and said “hey Joe, I’m getting these phone calls that say they’re from Google and they say that they’re gonna help me get to the top of Google’s front page.”
Sean: Uh-huh
Joe: I actually get that same call. It’s a robot call – you can tell that it’s a robot voice. I get that call about three times a day and I get it from different phone numbers. Nowadays, I’m sure you all know this now telemarketers can actually call you from the area code you’re in and so you’ll think it’s your friend calling you from a cell phone and it ends up being a robot voice that says “ this is Google and we can help.”
Joe: Well, that is a total scam.
Sean: Yeah that sounds very trustworthy and legitimate.
Joe: Well it must work because they’re doing it, right? So let me tell you what Google says about this:
Joe: First, Google calls it the robot call scam. It says that they’re automated recordings that are sent out and once you speak or say anything, a sales rep jumps on and basically sells you a search engine optimization service.
Joe: Google wants to be clear on the Google support blog that they never call you like that. So if you’re getting that robot call from Google, it’s not them. Don’t push the button, just hang up.
Sean: So who is actually doing this?
Joe: Well, I didn’t actually look into which company is doing it this time. But if you’re a business or if you have ever bought a domain, your email is probably full of search engine optimization companies from overseas who are basically just bombarding you with ads.
Joe: This is a technique that’s not just used by one company. Iit’s it’s one of the many ways that basically all of these companies out there are just trying to get contact with anybody they can to sell them their products. So: It’s not Google. It’s not Google. Google is not gonna call you like that.
Joe: Now, as a side note, this doesn’t mean that you can’t talk to Google.
Sean: Yeah
Joe: Google’s actually has phone numbers. One of them is available in your support area of Google My Business. Another one is in Google AdWords. There’s a phone number up in the top right corner – if you click on the little gear icon – and Google actually surprisingly is very helpful on the Phone.
Sean: Yeah we talk to Google all the time.
Joe: That’s right.
Sean: We ask “Hey, how can we get this guy ranking more? Help us.” And they say, “Oh, do this and this and this.” It’s really it’s much easier than you’d think.
Joe: Yeah they are helpful and, you know, even if you don’t have money for a search engine optimization team, reach out to Google.Even in their support blog, it says “hey we’re gonna try to give you everything you need to know in in our guidelines, so that you you can at least attempt to optimize your content and things like that by yourself.”
Joe: You can reach out to Google. Doesn’t mean you’ll succeed – there’s still a lot of technical complicated stuff has to be done – but they’re there.
Sean: Google wants the maximum number of people to optimize and follow its guidelines. The more people do that, the more effective their services are. So really, it’s win-win.
Joe: That’s exactly right. I want to move on to one other thing real quick before we get into into your interview, Sean. I call this the “did you know?” segment.
Did you know? How to figure out how people are searching for your business
Joe: I’m gonna say you probably don’t know what I’m about to tell you. And I say that because I talk to I don’t know how many businesses every week, and and one thing I always ask them is “did you know that Google will actually tell you how many people are looking for your services in any given area?” “Did you know that Google will tell you what they’re looking for and how hard it would be to be ranked and found for those things they’re looking for?” What I want to do is actually this tool right here on the air and give you some idea of what I’m talking about.
Joe: This tool is completely free, everyone can use it. it’s in Google AdWords. Google AdWords is their marketing platform, and it is totally free to set up. So you can go to tools and use the “keyword planner” and here’s the kind of things that it will tell you:
Joe: I typed ‘camping’ into the keyword planner and I just highlighted Shasta County – so essentially what Google’s now telling me is a whole bunch of important stuff about what’s going on with the term camping. So if I’m a camping store, if I have if I rent out campers, if I sell camping shells, or anything like that, I can start to see for one well how much potential is there out there for me. Is this something people really care about in this area? Are there lots of people searching right now?
Sean: You get a really specific number, don’t you?
Joe: You do get a specific number. So here’s the deal. For all terms google relates to camping in Shasta County there’s anywhere between 14,00 and 4,300 searches for those kinds of words. and words might be “locations for camping,” “camping vacations,” “camping reservations,” “camping equipment,” etc.
Joe: Now here’s a really interesting thing. This tool is how many times people are typing in this term per month. So in July it’s 1,400. In December it’s 4,300. So now if I’m a company who may sell anything camping related, II can actually start to schedule out my advertising or maybe adjust my sales down to the month as I’m watching this trend.
Sean: Yeah you hear a lot nowadays about the kind of insight that’s available on the Internet, and this is the kind of thing we mean. People might say, “ok, but where do I find all the data that the Internet supposedly has?” Well, Google Adwords is a great place to start.
Joe: It is a great place to start.
Joe: We’re coming up on the end of the segment. Next segment, Sean is going to tell us all about this mind blowing interview he had. Stick around!
