I first heard this mentioned by search engine optimization expert Jerry West. He said if you’re a business, you need to add “real world sh**” to your website. Things like your street address, names & business profiles of business owners, and other information that demonstrates to the world that your website represents a real business. It’s easy to put a website online through some automated website creator software and forget to include basic information like this.
Apparently, This Is NOT Common Sense
If it were, everyone in business would do it. I’ve come across websites for all manner of companies that didn’t have any information about the business owners. Companies offering digital services also tend to avoid putting their street address on their website. Some companies even force you to contact them through email or their social channels by omitting their phone numbers from their websites.
Why This Matters
People choose you in part because they trust you. When a website only has information about the products and services the company offers but no information about the people providing those products or services, how are we to trust you? You might be thinking “Well yeah, but we don’t know anything about the companies providing products through Amazon, but millions of people buy stuff every day”. That’s true, but Amazon has done the work to vett a company. If a customer trusts Amazon, they will trust the products sold by companies through Amazon. The same may not be true with your own business website.
If you have no information about you or your team, how can I trust that your company will be a good provider of whatever it is you sell? In short, I can’t, so I won’t deal with companies who don’t share at least some basic information about the people running the company. Maybe I’m just one person out of a hundred, but with competition so fierce already, how many leads are you willing to lose for the sake of not providing some basic information about yourself and your company?
It’s also important from an SEO perspective, as having a business address on your website is another signal to Google that you’re running a real business that deserves to be ranked. If you want to get the best rank possible in Google, make sure there’s information about your company including your street address(es). Real world sh** matters to SEO.
I met a business owner today at a networking meeting who didn’t have a business address on the website. They also didn’t have any information about themselves. I’m actually in the market for what they sell. I told them that if I found them online, I would not have taken the time to make an inquiry about their product. Since I had the chance to learn about them in person, I asked them to call me. Perhaps they won’t, because I was forthright in telling them that I wouldn’t have contacted them if I’d just come across their website. Maybe that would have been to my detriment, but I know of at least two other companies who sell what they sell. I would have called those other companies and gotten what I want, and this business owner wouldn’t have had a chance.
Am I a Hypocrite?
If you’ve read this far and looked around a little, you may notice I don’t post my address. Hypocrisy at its finest, right? Perhaps, but here’s the thing: I’m not looking for new clients. Most of my clients have dealt with me for more than a decade. They know where I am and how to get a hold of me. If I were actively looking for new clients, I’d be posting my address on my site.
If you’re looking to grow your business AND if you care about your search engine positioning AND if you want people who come to your website to trust you, put your address on your website, and post some information about you. If you’re like me and don’t care about any of the above, then go ahead and leave it off.
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