It’s 2020 and unfortunately, the social media giants still haven’t given the Caribbean the full versions of the social media platforms that they have given to other markets. Key features are missing for us to really push e-commerce on social media and this is why Caribbean businesses need to be relevant on Google.
Simple things like being able to tag our products on IG, so that clients can begin the buyer journey, without having to read a paragraph of your sales info or clicking a link in bio. That feature alone is one of the key reasons why social media marketers, swear up and down by social commerce and yet, we don’t have access to it.
So why must Caribbean businesses focus on building their Google presence? We have everything we need need to build e-commerce on platforms like WordPress and now with payment processors like Wipay, it is the big push that we need to build online.
Google has also made some SIGNIFICANT changes for 2020. SEO before was largely about optimizing for keywords. While keywords are still relevant, Googles 2020 focus is all about relevant answers for search enquirers.
SEO can be broken up into 2 main activities now. For humans, we need to continuously learn what the audience is searching for and provide the relevant answers to their questions.
The 2nd activity comes down to the technical side of things. Doing all the necessary things that the Google bots need in order to properly index your website and understand what your landing page is all about.
If you are simply doing the technical stuff, optimizing your pages for the Search Engines, you are going to struggle because the focus of Google is to now give the push to questions.
Click through rates to pages have dipped because Google is putting more work into optimizing their search tool, so that we can get relevant information on Google Search without having to click through to a page.
So while Click through to pages has dropped, search queries on Google have doubled.
What needs to be done in order for your business to thrive on Google for 2020 is too much to type out but I am planning Webinars and Workshops to break all of this down.
For our Caribbean businesses, if we can begin building our websites and learning how to properly use Google for 2020, it will allow us to be set up properly online and create e-commerce in a way that is currently limited on social media, due to regional restrictions from the platforms.
Currently, businesses in the Caribbean have a graphic created with their product or service and plaster it all over social media. Click “boost” on their post and allow Facebook to dictate who the add gets shown to. They spend a ton of money advertising on cold traffic and then complain when they don’t get the results they want.
The boost feature is a complete waste of money, if you have not properly built out your audiences in Facebook Ad Manager (If you don’t know what FB Ad Manager is, you shouldn’t be doing ads).
Having your website, you can install things like a Facebook & Google Pixel (at a bare minimum), so that you can now specifically begin marketing to people who visited the pages on your website (warm traffic) and increase the return on your campaign ads. Again, you need the data from your website in order to do this.
Instead of that graphic, you could do a quick blog on the 5 benefits of your product/service, whoever clicks on that blog can now be added to your pixel pool or list, so that you can begin marketing to them and you will create relevant ads to them.
Just to wrap this blog up…We need to understand and learn what people are searching for on the search engines and then create relevant content that solves their problems.
We then need to properly optimize those pages for Google, so that it understands exactly what is on that page and can begin showing it to those who are searching the interwebs for that content.
If our Caribbean businesses do this, we will be in a much better position, than trying to build our business on social media. Yes, we can use social media for awareness and engagement but the real commerce cannot be set up in a way that is automated for us, like the other markets.
It all comes back to having that website and building our presence on Google.
Feel free to check this blog out, if you want to get a gist of what it will take to start a WordPress Website.