Has your business found its niche?

Every business, every person, has one specific thing about them that can’t be replicated or improved on. Most businesses don’t see offering contracts by recorded mail as a USP, but it can be, and everything about you and your business that’s unique must be capitalised on as soon as possible.

I’ll give you an example – one man found that several CEOs had no featured results in Google when searching their names. So he placed a few adverts, and voilà, he was offered a job by two of them within a couple of months. The total cost? $6 dollars. That’s right – it cost him the price of a decent meal at MacDonald’s to gain a senior copywriting job at one of the biggest firms in America, dealing with clients such as the BBC, Sears, Cadbury’s and other brand giants.

This is something you could potentially be putting to work, but chances are you’re not. Search yourself, search your company, and see what comes up. If the top results aren’t linking back to you, you’re not doing it properly. Set your SEO goal for the year to outrank Wikipedia’s entry on your CEO, and if, by the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, the Google result for CEO Joe Bloggs of BlueCorp’s links back to BlueCorp.com before anything else, then you’re doing well.

The problem with Wikipedia and other online community sources of information is that they’re taking away chances for you to speak about what you do, both as an individual and as a business. By letting Wikipedia talk about your USP, you’re not selling yourself properly. If you’re the only packing and distribution company putting a GPS tracker in every shipment, then make sure that all 500 searches that could lead someone to that site propel you to the top of the list.

However, Wikipedia does have its business uses. When talking about your philanthropy, tooting your own horn is a bad idea, both from an individual and a business perspective. Bill Gates has never once directly said how amazingly generous he is on Microsoft.com, but the Gates Foundation is everywhere. It’s not doing wonders for Microsoft’s reputation as a monopolistic entity, but some people (usually the ones at the top of other companies) have to respect the fact that, at least in the public eye, Gates is a stand-down former CEO who put all the cash to good use. That’s more than can be said for many London bankers.

Interestingly, London bankers were missing one key weapon against the massive press-onslaught against them during last year, and that was anti-press statements. Most people think the fact a banker earns £400k a year is disgusting. It’s easy to point out that it’s ridiculous that they’re earning more than the President of the United States. However, when speaking with one of their representatives at a financial journalism seminar late last year, I realised something; footballers and film stars are no different.

It might have done bankers a world of good had they put money into PPC to pick up searches for “dodgy bankers” and then sent users to a site exonerating bankers – saying they earn a lot of money, but in ways that are no more, if not less ridiculous than sports and entertainment icons. The point is this: your page rank on Google decides whether someone reads your positives and your USPs, or your negatives and your generic aspects first. Work on it, and you’ll find that the first words into any curious net-user’s head are always words that will make them invest, rather than criticise.