The story is etched in my memory. My friend Eric recounted last year how his mother had told him about her plans to get new window-coverings throughout the house and why he told her to cancel her next appointment. We’ll get to that in just a moment.

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My friend is like most adult children I know. They don’t want to intrude into mom and dad’s privacy, but they’re also protective. One way adult children try to ensure their parents are not taken advantage of when purchasing a good or services is to check on the chosen individual or company. And how do most of us research a company before we do business with them? Online.

Eric asked his mom for the name of the company and she handed him the business card the young man had left behind. No website was listed, so he searched for them online and found nothing. Zero, zilch, nada. Rather than risk his mom doing business with a complete unknown who isn’t online, he asked her to cancel and go with his personal recommendation. That window/blind salesperson lost out on a $5,000 sale, all for the mistake of not having an online presence.

All which leads us to the question. What will happen when the adult children look you up online? Will you be found? Do the search results build confidence or undermine it? Even better, would mom or dad have found you first online searching for ‘reverse mortgages’ in their city? If you’re going to win that game you have to show up on the first page of the search engine results. Studies show that 94% of web users click on the links on the first page of their search results, with only 6% clicking on a listing on the second page.

If you cannot be found online, your competitor will be. How many additional loans could you have closed this year had your website (if you have one) showed up on Google’s first page results?

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