“Should my business have a website?”

From the desk of Roy Furr, Tuesday, 8:39 am

In the article below I reveal a surefire (and remarkably simple) technique for finding out if people search for your type of business on Google. Use this technique before you spend a penny to determine if building a website for your business will be a profitable investment.

Internet marketing firms and website builders will usually tell you every business needs a website… especially when they’re trying to sell you something.

Well… Contrary to popular belief…

There are still a solid cases for some businesses not to be online… yet.

In fact today I’d like to show you a simple method for determining if people search for your type of business online. This can be the key determining factor in deciding whether or not to invest in a website for your business.

We’re going to use a tool called the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It’s free to use, and located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

This tool exists to tell you a few things. One, how many people search for specific terms, or keywords, that you’re interested in. Two, what keywords are similar to the ones you’re interested in. And three, what sort of advertising competition exists on the keywords you’re researching.

I’m going to show you how to use it to find something else.

I’ll show you how to discover how many people search for your type of business on Google. Because if nobody’s going to Google to search for your type of business, it’s probably NOT worth putting a website online for it. However, if there ARE a lot of searches on Google for your type of business, then you absolutely SHOULD have a website so you can be found over your competitors.

So let’s jump in and check out this tool…

When you first hit the website you see something like this:

We’re going to do our work on the right-hand side of that box.

Start in the box where it says “Enter one keyword or phrase per line:” and enter a general word that describes your type of business.

Start very general here.

If you have a Chinese Dim Sum Restaurant, type in just “restaurant.”

Below that you could type “Chinese restaurant” and “Dim sum restaurant” too, if you’d like. But be sure to include the general overarching category for your type of business.

Also leave the “Use synonyms” check box checked and the tool will give you a more general picture of your market online.

Then follow the instructions and type in the characters you see in the picture — this is Google’s way of making sure you’re a human using their tool and not just a computer program designed to yank out data and abuse the system.

You do not have to use the “Filter my results” link.

Then click “Get Keyword Ideas.”

Next, you should see something like this:

Now we’re going to do a very minor but important step, and that’s sort the results. Click on the words “Approx Avg Search Volume” at the top of the second column from the right to sort by that stat (it’s my preferred stat to sort by because it represents search trends over time).

So that should give you something that looks like this:

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Like I just said, I like to look at the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column because I think that represents the most reliable data over time. The number you see is an approximation of how many searches are done on Google in a month that contain that keyword.

So in an average month, people will type “restaurant” into Google 24.9 Million times…

In an average month people will type the words “italian restaurant” into Google 550,000 times…

And one of our keywords, “chinese restaurant” will be searched for in an average month 450,000 times…

That’s a lot of people searching for restaurants!

Of course, based on my default settings this is a snapshot of the entire United States (sorry, can’t drill down any further) so you have to take it as what it is.

However, if you consider that the population of the United States is about 300 Million people, that means every month there’s roughly 1 Google search for restaurant for every 12 people you see out walking around.

Of course, when you look at “Chinese restaurant” specifically, there’s only 1 search for every 660 or so people every month (.15%). However, let’s imagine that you’re the first website that comes up when someone searches for “Chinese restaurant” in your local area. If you can leverage this position to get .15% of your local population to visit every month, you’re getting incredible ROI from your website.

Let’s do some quick math.

.15% of 250,000 (small local population) is 375, multiply that by a $30 average ticket — because they didn’t come alone — and you get $11,250 per month from your website. Even if only half of those are new customers who come because of your website, that’s $5,625 per month from your website. Now that math won’t work out 100%, but it starts to make an investment of a few thousand in a website seem very reasonable.

I would say unequivocally that if you have a restaurant — whether it’s Italian, Chinese, or some other cuisine — that you should have a website.

Now let’s look at another — smaller — industry

Let’s try this same thing for “pet grooming.” I’ll include “cat grooming” and “dog grooming” too because those are the two primary niches within pet grooming. I’ve gone fast forward through the steps above to get the sorted results:

Because this is a smaller industry, let’s take my technique one step further.

In the restaurant industry I omitted this step because it quickly became clear how much opportunity there is for a local business to build a business website that would return high ROI.

In a smaller industry like pet grooming, taking this extra step will help you determine how much opportunity is actually available — when a quick snapshot doesn’t give you the confirmation you need.

It’s as simple as adding it up.

So at a quick look, here are the relevant keywords with their approximate average search volume (I’m omitting keywords that look like “do it yourself” searches because these are not customers for a pet grooming service):

• pet grooming – 368,000
• dog groomers – 60,500
• dog groomer – 49,500
• pets grooming – 33,100
• dogs grooming – 22,200
• pet nail grooming – 22,200
• mobile pet grooming – 14,800
• groom dog – 12,100
• mobile dog grooming – 9,900
• cats grooming – 8,100
• pet dog grooming – 8,100
• groom pet – 5,400

If my math is right, that’s 591,700 searches per month across these keywords. Which is more than the 450,000 searches I based my math for “Chinese restaurant” on above. So even though 368,000 is smaller than the number for Chinese restaurant, it becomes clear quickly that there is a lot of opportunity for a local business to put a website online in the pet grooming business.

Quick side note: If you have a high customer value (let’s say $5,000 per customer instead of $30) then you don’t need traffic anywhere near these levels to make your website pay off. In a case like that just getting one or two customers from your website can make an investment of a few thousand be worth every penny and more.

And now for an industry that may not need a website.

I had to rack my brain and do a few searches and I could be wrong on this, but I did find one industry that my technique suggests may not need a website for your local business.

If you run a business that exclusively teaches aerobic fitness classes (not a gym with classes, just classes alone), then the opportunity may NOT exist for you to create a local website for your business that will be profitable.

Here’s a snapshot of traffic stats for “fitness classes” and “aerobics classes” and related keywords:

As you can see, the numbers there just don’t add up to anything that makes sense. So I wouldn’t suggest building a website to promote a business that exclusively offers aerobic fitness classes — at least not without some more research.

So there you have it!

Use this technique as you decide the answer to the question, “Should my business have a website?”

It’s a definite way of finding out if people are searching for what you’re offering online. And if there’s enough traffic you can be reasonably confident that your local business can build a website that will pay off dividends.

Of course there’s more to the story.

How to do it? What to put on the website? Who to have help?

Those are questions to be answered a different day. Stay tuned.

- Roy Furr

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