Well, it happened to me over Christmas. I grabbed the wrong bag at the gate en route to our connecting flight.
I know this has happened to many people before, but this was my first time. The luggage I grabbed was identical to my 8-year-old daughter’s bag, and since our flight out of Sioux Falls was delayed, we were in a hurry getting to our connecting flight.
It just so happened our connection was delayed as well, which allowed us time to wander the airport and find a bite to eat. Fast forward to 20 minutes before departure when it hit me–I had the wrong bag!
Panic ensued as my daughter’s bag not only contained all of her clothes for Christmas, but her American Girl doll, and no amount of presents would avert the trauma of no clothes or her doll being lost.
Layered on this catastrophe is the fact that my daughter is a Christmas baby. Christmas is the most special time of year for her, and I was about to make her world come crashing down with a simple oversight.
The bag in my possession had no identification tag and nothing in the outside pocket to identify the owner. I took it to the counter and turned it in, hoping the airline could get it to the owner, who would most likely do the same with my daughter’s bag.
The ending couldn’t have been better for a made-for-TV movie. As we were settling into our seats, minus my daughter’s bag, my wife received a call. It was the other traveler with our bag. They just realized they had the wrong bag, and since ours had a noticeable tag with my wife’s information, they called. We were only two gates from them, so they raced it to us with no time to spare.
As we were in midair, finally headed toward our destination, I started thinking about how this whole ordeal was similar to the World Wide Web in which I operate as an Internet marketer. The luggage, minus any clear labeling, was like a business’ website missing a solid search engine optimization strategy to tell the world how to reach it.
SEO is the process of affecting the visibility of a website as it relates to search results. Without good SEO, your website will have a hard time being found, and without a clear call to action in messaging, your efforts won’t produce the results you seek.
Like the visible tag on my daughter’s suitcase, with a clearly marked cellphone number, we would not have obtained the results I so desperately needed.
If you’re a business owner, make sure your website has proper tags, ensuring solid SEO.
Take advantage of every opportunity to be found by your customers, and make it easy for them to contact you, and more importantly, to buy from you.
