When companies come to Texas Creative for help with reputation management, our first strategy is to perform a comprehensive Google search to explore what type of information about the client is out there. I thought we were thorough at SEO research until I stumbled upon a Twitter post by Chris Hladczuk (@chrishlad) that walked through the “8 Googling Tips You Probably Don’t Know”. I will share his tips below.
These tips offer great efficiency when trying to find the things you want and avoid the things you don’t. Google is a very powerful tool in advertising and marketing consulting work. We use it for researching content for websites we design and build. We help clients improve and repair their reputations online with sound advice, and we study the business so we always have the cutting edge approach to building an online presence for businesses at every life cycle of their company.
Tip #1: “Quotation Marks”
Put quotes around search terms to let you search exactly for that phrase. In our case, I have to always do that with “Texas Creative” or I would otherwise get results for “Texas” and “Creative”.
Tip #2: -- Dashes
If you want to exclude a term from your search, include a hyphen before that word.
Example: spurs-basketball if you want to look at “spurs” and not our championship Spurs basketball team.
Tip #3: ~ Tilde
Use a tilde when you want synonyms to appear in the result.
Example: music ~classes and you will get music classes, lessons, coaching, etc.
Tip #4: | Vertical Bar
This is the same as using OR.
Example: Netflix | Hulu and you’ll get results for both.
Tip #5: .. Two Periods
Use two periods to search within a 2 number range.
Example: movies 2000..2020
Tip #6: Location
Find news related to a specific location.
Example: Margaritas location:sanantonio and you will find all sorts of “Best Of” lists to choose from.
Tip #7: Filetype
If you are looking for a specific PDF or any other file type in your search you can filter out all of the clickbait responses and other articles you don’t need.
Example: david robinson filetype:pdf
Tip #8: Site
Use this search to find something within a specific website.
Example: logo site:texascreative.com will deliver a quick search response featuring all of the great brands we have designed and featured on our website, as well as links to informative and educational blogs about logos and branding.
Perfect your Google results by using these tips the next time you need a shortcut. It opens up a whole new world to the power of Google.
Drop us a note if your SEO and website as a whole needs to be retooled for today. Texas Creative is one of the most respected ad agencies in San Antonio and Texas. [email protected]