I was reading an article about Google’s visual search, and I was wondering how this could be applicable to contractors and other small businesses. If you get back to the basics, the way people have been looking for information has changed over the past 20 years. 20 years ago, search engines just started. So it was very important for all of us to think about having a website, people going to a browser on their desktop, and searching for the information that they need.
Today, there’s a much faster pace to work. What this means is that people are absorbing different kinds of content. A website is no longer just enough. People are also not searching just on their desktops, they’re also searching on their mobile devices. Consumers today consume videos, photos, podcasts and not just written content anymore.
And more than searching for information, content, and information is actually coming to them. What’s an example of this? If you have a mobile phone, and if you stand near a restaurant at 12 o’clock, chances are any one of the directory apps on your phone will send you a notification, something like – Here are the top five restaurants in the area.
This means that for homeowners or consumers, a lot of companies, companies like Google, Facebook, Apple … already know where the users are, and will provide the right information for that particular location. So it could be your company, or it could be your competitor who will be presented to the consumer on their mobile phone.
To get the best leads and the right leads, you want to be able to be the best or the first available result when somebody is looking for your services. That is why I want to discuss the power of photographs. Now, yes, a lot of us have a strategy, we pick up pictures, and we post pictures on websites, on blogs. But to tell your story, the most important thing is a photograph that you take at your customer’s job site.
Why is this important? Every image that is taken in a particular area actually contains a lot of metadata. Now, the metadata has elements like which camera the photo was taken on, what is the image resolution. Plus it has data like the location, and this is very important.
Now, in addition to this, no matter what you have in the picture, Google and many other companies have actually figured out how to look at a picture and using AI machine learning, figure out what is in the picture.
An example for you to try, especially if you’re using Google Photos. Go to your Google Photos, (Photos.google.com), and maybe look for trees in the search bar. Every picture that you’ve ever taken with trees in the picture will actually appear.
Now, again, back to your taking a picture of your completed job. Your company does beautiful work – it’s a beautiful roof, or it’s a beautiful kitchen, beautiful bathroom that’s just been remodeled, or a patio, landscape, paving, whatever your job is. Or you actually went on a service call and cleaned and made the AC look perfectly great, the filter is clean, and the AC is humming smoothly. When you post a picture of this equipment on to your website, when Google comes and crawls your website, it finds and collects information and knows about the picture. The geotagged location where the picture was taken. It notes what’s in the picture. Then it says yes, this is an HVAC company that services Rockville, Maryland, or the area your company serves. This is not the only signal that Google looks at.
Then it goes and looks at your entire website and crawls the photo and knows this is in Rockville, Maryland. What else can I find out about this business? Then Google’s crawler could take a look at your address that’s on the website. And once it’s looked at all the important things on your website, it needs to validate that the business is legitimate and then tallies this data with the Google My Business data. If the information that is there on the website and Google My Business is consistent. So if it finds the same picture that is on the website on Google My Business, there is confirmation that the two sites are related. While looking at pictures, the crawler can identify stock photographs and determine original photograph.
When we consider our example, the photograph created by a mobile phone in Rockville, Maryland, and it’s in these two places that are identified as belonging to the same business, then the likelihood of the website getting more points for accuracy in data is better. The same verification usually takes place when Google’s crawler looks at different directories on the website and can use those citations as verification of your business information. The reason why these directories are important. To verify the accuracy of data, the industry uses something called a “citation”. It is almost like these databases are talking to each other and saying – hey, I am Google Maps. I know this business is located in Google Maps. And I’m sure of this because this site is also listed on Yelp. And is serving people in this location. This site is listed on Facebook and has this location. So it says, I think I’m quite satisfied.
So we talked about why a photograph is important that is taken from you or your crew’s camera/phone and posted to your website. Now, where do you post these? there are tools available there, I’m sure if you talk to Surefire or if you’re a Surefire customer, you already know that we have a tool called GeoJuice that lets you post pictures not only to your website but to other directories and social websites. Now, Surefire also creates a lot of blogs that are very relevant content and the pictures that come along with these blogs. If they come from the projects that you’re doing, you have a surefire way to get into the results of Google for the areas that you serve.
So if this is a good tip for you create a lot of pictures, post them to your website, post them to your blog, post them to your Google My Business and send them to the person who’s managing your website so that they can put it in other places too. I hope this was useful to you. Let us know if you need us to talk to you about any subjects and we’ll be more than happy to do this. You can reach us at marketing@surefirelocal.com. Thank you.