I bet many of you reading this blog or about to scan through it, for key topics, can recall that big book that we ignored at our house door steps. It was dumped off yearly. It listed all the businesses in your county or city (I don't quite recall).
Yet, it became an eye sore. Where to put it?
Anyhoo, this is what search engines are. They are yellow pages, in a way. (not to get confused with YP that is another online directory).
If you have heard about Google, Yahoo, or Bing then you are close to what you need to know.
They are search engines and they are directories, of businesses. If you are old enough (again) you remember that blocky and heavy book.
Businesses were filed or indexed under the alphabet. ABCDEFG...
Now businesses are filed under key words (ice cream, marketing, shoes). So, it is important to sprinkle key words onto your website and in the content; so that search engines can recognize where to file/index your business website.
Hint: the longer the key phrase the better. So, if you sell marketing then don't stop with the word marketing (remember your competitors are also using that word). It could be ideal to sprinkle the phrase "marketing freelancer near Winston-salem." That may be another blog post to write for you later. But, I hope this example helps a little?
Another idea, so that you can wrap your mind around this even more is imagine a book store. Books are filed or placed on shelves based on topics or key words.
Well, this is no different than what search engines do; but with long phrases that include your main key words.
How do they know the topics that your pages are about? Pages are the pages that show up when someone clicks on a tab. Each page should be about one topic, ideally.
Search engines use their "spiders" to crawl hosting sites like "go daddy" or even "Wix" for websites to crawl. They crawl for key words. Key words are part of the SEO (which is search engine optimized). And they will file these words or index your site to these words.
When a searcher starts to type in key words, into a search box, and on Google, Yahoo or Bing then there is great chance that your business will come up as a listing; after several years.
Yes, it is a long process but it will happen. So be sure to claim your listing on Google, Bing, or Yahoo and even Yelp. It is free to submit your information and your website.
The more listings that you claim, the more likely your business (brick and mortar) business will come up.
I don't believe you can claim a listing for a product (unless you are an LLC). Since then you are a business. Here is a link to get you started. https://www.bingplaces.com/