November 2022 - Page 4 of 11 - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Advanced Mobile SEO TIPS For Mobile Marketing

In 2016, Google introduced the mobile-first index system to provide the best user experience for their mobile users by prioritizing mobile-friendly websites. This new indexing system will first look into the mobile version of your website to determine the ranking. Websites without a mobile version or poorly optimized mobile websites will drop out even further in search engine results pages (SERPs). But, the good news is this Mobile SEO is simple and easy to do yourself tasks.

Advanced Mobile SEO Tips for Mobile Marketers:

Mobile SEO is nothing than a conventional SEO, creating content and tagging to make it stand out online. These white-hat mobile SEO tips will help you to avoid search engine penalties and maintain better online visibility.

1. Google My Business: mobile online marketing.

One of the most important and effective mobile marketing move that business owners can do is signing up for Google My Business account. It is free and simple, by filling the information to the best of your ability and add more possible pictures of your business. When people searching for the keyword that is related to your business, there is more likely to visible your 2nd information first. So, think of using it for mobile marketing.

2. Using social media:

According to reports, average mobile users spending their 80% of the time on social media of the total times they are spending on the mobile. These social media sites bring a huge amount of traffic to your website. So, to improve visibility to mobile users, priorities your social media marketing strategy. The frequency of posting, Quality of content and optimized social media campaign will help your brand stands out. Also, read our Content Marketing Guide.

3. Take advantage of plug-ins for mobile SEO:

If your website uses WordPress or another content management system (CMS). you can use various plug-ins to improve your mobile site more user-friendly. One of the popular CMS, WordPress offers a large number of plug-ins to optimize images, improve speed and take care of other important mobile SEO factors.

WPtouch is the popular universal WordPress plug-in that will create a Google-approved mobile version of your website. If you can’t afford a professional to update and optimize your website, try these plug-ins to build a mobile-friendly website and improve visibilities.

4. Use keywords for mobile users:

It is proven that mobile users search differently than other desktop users. Optimize your content for mobile keyword search phrases to show up your content to the right people. Find the right tools to find the right keywords for your content, you can find keyword comparisons by the device in Google’s Search Console.

5. Improve page loading time:

When it comes to mobile SEO, page loading time is the most important issue. There are many factors that define the page loading time. Gzip compression, Image optimization and using Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), there are some tools and plug-ins to perform this tasks and improve the faster loading of mobile web pages.

Final Words:

Digital marketing trend changed the whole scenario of marketing. Mobile SEO is becoming a most essential task for all bloggers and webmasters for mobile marketing.

Local SEO Services to Promote Your Local Business

For the past few months, I was struggling to get my restaurant business in Denver, Colorado on the initial pages of Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing. I finally found the perfect solution to all my difficulties – local SEO. I contacted a professional SEO company providing local SEO services. After analyzing my business and its visibility issues, the SEO team presented me with an SEO package that included a wide range of strategies designed to enhance the search engine page ranking of my website and drive more traffic and sales. Let’s look at how these strategies worked to promote my business.

Local Listing Sites: Local SEO makes use of local listing sites (e.g. Yellow Pages, Yahoo, Google, Bing etc) that target local/geo targeted terms, for optimizing local search results. The SEO Company provided strategies that helped increase the ranking of my local business listing on these sites. Now, when someone searches for Denver-specific data relating to my business, the information on my business that is stored on all these sites appears as a top search result.

With enhanced online visibility, I find that more local customers have started to visit my website, which is working to promote my brand. My service provider took care to choose only local listing sites authorized by Google for promoting my small business.

Back linking: Local SEO services include building inbound links to a business website. In keeping with Google’s latest Penguin update, my SEO service provider took care to build backlinks to my website from reliable websites with content relevant to my business. I realized that relevancy was crucial because the search engines identify keywords on the basis of the backlinks. Another significant aspect is link speed or the speed at which backlinks are created. The SEO team built backlinks slowly and systematically, as any unnatural speed could make Google look at my links as spam. In addition, they also employed tactics such as social bookmarking, article and forum submissions and other off-page activities. Keyword variations, branded text, and other strategies were adopted to improve results.

Social Media Promotion: My service provider also used effective social media optimization strategies to drive my target audience to my website. They built my business profile on popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more and created posts in them which helped draw local customers to my website. They spread the posts via ‘Share’ or ‘Like’ buttons. As search engines, particularly Google, show search results from social media sites (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and more) these profiles are also helping to drive more organic traffic to my site. The SEO team also promoted my business by creating videos and images of my restaurant and sharing them through YouTube and Pinterest.

Social media marketing involves the maximum utilization of marketing potential with the features (paid advertising facility, contests, business pages in the case of Google+, and more) in social media sites. In my experience, focusing on a particular social media site for marketing purposes (Facebook Marketing, Twitter Marketing) is the best way to promote your business online.

Online Advertising

Pay per Click advertising (paying money to search engines to display your website on top search results) is regarded as a powerful way to promote business online due to easy implementation, high Return on Investment (ROI) and better traceability. The SEO team provided my business with PPC advertising services, also known as geo-targeted PPC. The advertising was focused on the Denver area, which resulted in more local customers visiting my website. Both open-ended keywords and focused keywords were used in my geo-targeted PPC.

The local SEO services provided by the SEO company help draw the attention of more local customers to my website and helped in the online promotion of my restaurant – something which I definitely couldn’t have achieved on my own.

Why Is A Local Search Engine Important For Businesses?

“Go Local”… This new mantra to shop local, buy local and go local, etc. has become a game-changer for the businesses. Eight out of ten consumers use search to find local information that means if your business is not optimized for the local search, your business is missing 80% customers. The local search engine is critical if you want your business to grow and expand.

What Makes Local Search Important?

With every search on Google, local search is happening. When someone is searching for any product and services, they search with the “near me” keyword. For e.g. “coffee shop near me” “Thai restaurant near me”.

The below-mentioned statistics suggest how Local Search has become imperative in providing business.

50% of consumers who performed searches through their smartphones have visited the local stores in 24 hours.
35% of people searched through their computer visited the local stores in a day.
73% of the local businesses witnessed a boost in their sales and got unique consumers based on who searched them locally.
68% of people suggested that they prefer searching online for local businesses before visiting them.
92% of users looked online for local businesses in the year 2017 and that number is growing every day.
86% of the people look up the location of the business in the Google Maps

To give you better clarity, let’s pretend my tap broke. I do not want to search whichever websites that Google lines up for me. Rather, I will search for writing “plumber near me” “Plumbing services near me”

The SERPS will get me a bunch of local plumbing services including ratings and testimonials as well as price packages. – Get it? This is how the local search engine works.

How Local B2B Search Can Be A Game Changer?

We understood the power of local search SEO, but if you think who cares? Well, as a matter of fact, your customer cares. Because local consumers will always rely on the local search engine results to find the information. So, how can you make your local search engine better for your business?

The crucial parts of local Search SEO involve:

When it comes to local SEO, it is different from organic practices. When optimizing your business for local search below are the immediate areas you need to focus:

Optimize “Google My Business”
Improve your internal link structure
Create local content
Make sure your website is mobile responsive
Make sure that your business contact details are updated
Engage more on social media platforms by adding daily posts
Optimize online directories
Add location to your web pages
Optimize your meta description, content, title tags, images, and URL

Local search engine results are based on geographical factors. It is impossible to rank based on organic SEO unless you are a huge brand. Especially B2B businesses where competition is stiff, your business can enjoy benefits like:

Increased web traffic
Increased visibility
Build a loyal customer base
Enhanced brand awareness
Increased business inquiries/leads
Your business earns more trust through high page rankings
Repeat customers
Reduces advertising expenses
Get exposure in local business community directories
Gets more positive reviews

To Get Rank On Google – You Need Local SEO

You might be wondering what it takes to get first-page ranking on Google? Well, to say least there are literally hundreds of things that go in from best SEO practices to ratings and reviews, optimizing the mobile experience, focusing on user experience, regularly updating and maintaining Google listing, and so on.

Google algorithms are constantly changing to deliver relevant search for the users. Google’s “Venice Update” was one of the first changes that influenced the local search for businesses. The update made it imperative to have landing pages for the businesses for every location they provide service and optimize it with the right keywords.

Another significant rollout was “Google Pigeon Update” which had several makeovers with the recent one including “Local 3 pack” as opposed to how earlier they used to display 8-10 businesses in a pack.

Recently, Google announced another change suggesting that the search results are local and even more relevant.

The top half search result page is covered with the “Paid Ads” and the “local pack listings”. About 86% of the customers use this listing when they are looking for local businesses.

With the right local SEO strategies and practices, your business can come in the top 3 local pack searches.

Algorithms are adapting local “near me” search hence to get your business listing higher on Google page ranking you can’t overlook Local Search SEO.

It’s a step by step process that you need to perform to get on the first page of Google.

Local Search Vs General Search Engine

Search engine giants like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. use hundreds of factors to rank and index in the searches that include SEO keywords, inbound and outbound links, content, to name a few.

Local businesses having a physical office in a specific location will want to rank high in the local search. The user is likely to search for the products/services in a specific location they want to find it nearby and easy to commute to visit. Therefore, it is important for local businesses to show up in local searches.

Can Local Businesses Rank High On Search Engines Like Google?

It is not impossible but tough. Also with every search engine, the algorithm varies, Google competitors like Bing, Yahoo adopt different strategies to place the businesses.

Ideally, multi-location brands have better chances to rank locally as well as organically since they have a website to help boost their ranking when searched.

That is where organic SEO comes into play. Search engine optimization is the process of trying to make sure search engines know which searches your business or website is relevant for. However, there are marketers who manipulate the results using SEO techniques.

Google considers search engine manipulation to be extremely serious and expends substantial resources to try to identify and eliminate it. Hence, Google is now emphasizing more on “local searches”. The local search algorithm update, “Pigeon” is giving importance to the local search results hence benefitting the local business.

Closing Thoughts

Currently, if you have not performed local SEO, we recommend that you devote your time to getting those things done. It is important that your customers find you.

When it comes to Local SEO we are pro at it. If your website is not showing in local searches your business is missing a huge opportunity.

4 Essential SEO Strategy Elements for Service-Based Businesses

Unique Elements Required for a Service-based Business to Rank Properly in the Search Engines.

While big multinational companies employ SEO strategies to gain clients and customers from all over the world, a small business who deals only with customers in its geographic region only wants local leads.

This article looks at what you must have in your SEO strategy if you’re one of those smaller businesses and you’re trying to gain visibility with clients local to you.

1. Your website

Look at your website and see if you can tell where your business is located and who it services.

Your target area should be prevalently noted in the Home page copy, your contact page, as well as in the footer. You can even incorporate it into your business name or URL.

The idea is of course to make sure that when someone gets to your website looking for what you provide, they are also affirmed you service their area.

Put these terms in your META data too. It makes a difference in reaching local customers doing specific searches for your city or business service area. Additionally, when you create individual pages for each service you provide, work the locations serviced into the headlines and copy.

2. Google My Business

If you haven’t already done so you should create a Gmail account for yourself, so you can easily log into all of Google’s apps and products.

Google My Business is one such tool available for free that gets your business pinned on Google Maps and if Google sees the right signals you’ll show up high in the local rank results too. The local rank results are those results you’ll see when Google has understood your search query to be location specific.

Try typing ‘plumbers near me’ into Google and you’ll likely see a few ads and some localized listings before you see the organic search results. This could be 1 – 3 ads or 3 or 4 local listings depending on how competitive the market is.

Those local listings are valuable to your business and by creating and verifying your business with Google you’ll have at least initiated the steps it takes to get listed in those local listings.

Once you have the account, fill in everything you can. Provide photos and use your service and locality keywords in the description and anywhere else you see a sincere opportunity.

3. Local Citations

Local citations are when your business is listed in local directories. You’ll likely only ever need to do this once and it’s very easy.

Just look up your location with the word ‘directories’ after. There are some obvious ones like Yelp but you may find some niche directories for your locality as well as your service too.

Don’t ever pay for these as those paid directories will have already been flagged by Google when it reviews their site. Paying for links or citations will always harm your ranking efforts.

4. Reviews

When it comes to local customers, reviews are golden. They’re testimonials that other potential clients can trust. Requesting these from previous customers is totally fine; however, falsifying them is not.

Don’t have them log into their Gmail account from your computer to leave a review or Google will see that your reviews all come from the same IP address and the reviews then won’t help your rank.

There are plenty of other things you can do as well but those 4 points are staples in any local SEO strategy and if you’re a service-based business you’ll need them in order to get the right traffic.

Of course, if you’re looking to really dominate the rank results and ensure you’ve got a solid strategy you’re going to want to hire someone providing professional search engine optimization. They can take things further as well as actively maintain the efforts needed to let Google know you provide what you do, where you do it, while you spend your time actually providing your service!

Have You Optimized Your Site for Different Identities?

In this question, we mean the identity of your identity, such as your identity, including your name, national code, address, telephone number, and other things that your legal authority identifies.

Google looks at your site the same way.

Now consider your wife. Your spouse’s profile is a series of issues related to your identity, such as your address and phone number. Maybe even work one place and get one.

Maybe someone else is your name. Now if this person is in the same place, you will have more details with you. Suppose this person has his name and city name in the list of people who have the flight ban and leave the city. You might be in trouble for the airport at the time, and you will not be able to get out of your way.

How does Google look at identities in SEO?

Google is not Adam. Use the algorithm to determine the SEO rating. So it’s likely that like the flight listings, these similarities cause Google to think your site is trying to deceive the ranking system.

But Google does not have the right to defend itself as a legal system, but if it does, it will be labeled as offending.

When this happens, all the work that you have done to optimize your site is going to die.

Who uses multiple identities?

Medical practitioners – doctors, dentists and surgeons. Usually, the optimal size of their site for SEO is such a problem.

Imagine having a physician building six to a doctor. Each one has its own identity, with different specializations and branches and different patients. Every doctor wants to browse the directory and take advantage of Google’s local identity.

While optimizing the site for medical activities is something defined, but when we want to optimize for each of these doctors, Google’s algorithms label them.

Legal and specialist services such as accountants and UML agencies have the same problem. Even if several identities do not come together on a website, your name, address, and contact number may not be logged in correctly and you will encounter the same problem.

Suppose employees of a company each and every one have a separate website for themselves. Google thinks a company wants to boost its use of several SEO websites.

This problem sometimes affects companies with the same address (one place) but their names and their phone numbers are differently influenced.

Solve multiple identities and website optimization problems

SEO companies are tricky to overcome multi-identities.

Although the work we do to solve this problem is complex, we use the listing for the Google My Business. If you want your company to be in the best position, you need to look after the independent identities of your company.

If any doctor chooses to rank himself personally, we can use the individual listing tricks individually, and in this way we will let Google know how many you are in a company, and Google will not list you as a blacklist.

With this method, you can let Google know that each of the different identities of your site performs different tasks. For example, an internal doctor will perform surgery and an orthopedic surgeon will give patients on another floor. The website of each of these specialists is linking to the local Google directory or the main site services page and we will optimize your site for a few experts and keywords. We can also create Google My Business for our company and Brands.

What Is Local SEO and 5 Reasons Why It’s Important

What You Don’t Know Online Can Hurt You

How do you know if you need a local SEO strategy? The critical word in this question is “local.” Do you own a business that draws in customers from zero to 15 miles away? Would potential customers looking for your products and services drive up to ten minutes to get to your business? If you can answer yes to these questions, chances are you need to manage your local SEO strategy.

So, what is local SEO? And why is it important?

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO involves optimizing your online presence to attract business from local searches on Google and other search engines. According to Hubspot’s local SEO statistics, 46% of all Google searchers are looking for local information. And 72% of consumers who searched for a local product or service using local SEO near me searches visited a store within five miles.

So, does local SEO work? It sure did if you were one of those businesses. Are you wondering where to start? To illustrate the benefits of focusing on local SEO, we’ve put together a list of five reasons why it’s essential for your business success.

5 Reasons Local SEO Is Essential for Your Business Success

Reason #1 – Your Business Details Appear in Front of Consumers Looking for Your Products and Services

Remember the good old days when you scoured the yellow pages to find businesses offering the products and services you needed? Today, all you do is type the product or service you’re looking for into a search engine on your laptop, desktop, or mobile device. The businesses that provide those products or services will pop up. And, if you type “near me,” it’ll show you everything close enough to drive to from your current location.

Pretty slick. Those local SEO “near me” searches save you time. Just choose what you like, pull up the map and directions, and you’re good to go. If you look at those results carefully, you’ll see they’re populated by online business directories, much like the yellow pages of bygone days.

When you compare local SEO vs. organic SEO, both are still important. You want a content marketing strategy that helps your pages rank in search engine results for specific keywords and keyword phrases (the goal of organic SEO strategies). But local SEO is critical for businesses that serve a localized community. It’s somewhat less important for global companies that draw customers from all over.

Reason #2 – Consistently Accurate Online Directory Citations Boost Your Organic and Local Pack Rankings

You must list your business name, address, and phone number accurately and consistently across the top-ranked local citations and business directories. That information is referred to as your NAP Data (name, address, phone). A search engine bot is more likely include your business in the search engine results pages (SERPs) if it’s confident that your information is consistent and accurate.

That seems fair. Do you think you might get frustrated if Google sent you to a business that isn’t there or gave you a phone number that’s no longer in service? Search engines want to find this basic information about your business in numerous places throughout the internet.

When they find that information in several places-and it’s all consistent and correctthey trust the data. But if Google or Bing, for example, see confusing, inconsistent data, they consider it less valid-less reliable. Therefore, search engines are more likely to bypass you in favor of a business with more consistent NAP Data.

Reason #3 – Your Business Site Gets More Links Back to It from Authoritative, Trusted Sites

Backlinks, or links pointing to your site from trusted, authoritative websites, play an essential role in SEO. They validate your website’s existence, proving that your site is a viable force in the vast internet universe. Additionally, some directory citation sites add a website URL field to their listings and display these URLs as ‘dofollow’ links. That passes valuable link equity to your site. Search engines use backlinks to determine your domain authority, boosting your SEO (as opposed to ‘nofollow’ links, which are nice but don’t give you any juice).

Want another great way to snag a backlink while doing something else worthwhile to build your business? Join the local chamber of commerce or other business group. Doing this will provide a relevant local link back to your website, and you can network at local events. While you’re at these events, you might pick up some business or even more backlink opportunities.

In addition, if you have vendors or are a product provider, you may want them to link to your website as well (with a dofollow link, of course).

Reason #4 – Your Business Will Be Closer to Landing on the First Page of Search Engine Results

Online business directories take up quite a bit of real estate on search engine results pages (SERPs). As a result, local businesses they list in their directories get top billing on local search queries. If you’re not on those lists…

You need to know how to get your business listed in these local citations business directories because you’ll lose out on valuable business. And what you don’t know online can hurt you.

You might have the best pizza in town, but if the guy across town doesn’t find you when he searches for “pizza near me,” he’s going to go buy his pizza from your competitor. And that brings us to Reason #5.

Reason #5 – Your Business Will Gain Opportunities for Third-Party Reviews

Here are the three core pillars for ranking well in the Google Local Map Pack.

Relevance

How well do you target the keywords or topics your potential customers would search for on your website?

Prominence

How well does your business stand out online?

Proximity

How close is your business to the potential customer searching for your products or services?

We’ve touched on relevance and proximity. Now it’s time to talk about prominence: the positive reputation and comments your business enjoys across the internet. How do search engines find this information? Many citations and directories allow customers to post reviews and grade their experiences with local businesses.

If you deliver excellent service, your business will benefit from this added perk. But it’s not enough to get good reviews. You should also respond to them. And, if you get a negative review, don’t sweat it. Just be sure you keep your cool and respond appropriately. Work on resolving the issue as quickly as possible. Even a simple apology is better than no response at all.

More Tips for Local SEO

Local SEO for multiple locations, list all of your staffed locations, including the complete name, address, and phone number on a Contact Us page on your site.

For businesses with 10 or fewer locations, list the complete name, address, and phone number of each location in the sitewide footer.

Make sure people can easily find your phone number on your website-and that it’s clickable on mobile devices.

Just as you want to be consistent on the directories, make sure your NAP Data is consistent across all pages of your website.

If your business serves multiple locations, you need a separate page with unique content for each site. Avoid copying and pasting from one page to the other.

Customize Your Local SEO to Your Business Type

So, what you don’t know online can hurt you. If your business isn’t working on a local SEO strategy, you’re leaving money on the table that your competitor across town will pick up.

Local SEO works well, but it takes time and patience just like organic SEO. That’s why many businesses hire a local SEO agency to put all the pieces together.

4 Marketing Strategies for the COVID-19 Crisis

How to Market During the Pandemic

From connecting in our relationships to running our small businesses, COVID-19 has transformed the way we live, work and socialize. I do feel fortunate that my family and I are healthy and safe, and I’m trying to find the positive opportunities in all of this.

That’s why I recently shared an article called “How to Pivot Your Small Business Strategy During the COVID-19 Crisis”, on our website.

I am also hearing from many small business owners who are wondering whether or not to stop marketing during COVID-19. That article showed entrepreneurs how to market during the pandemic, including ways to create a crisis marketing strategy and to:

Help customers rather than simply selling to them
Focus on online events and offerings
Plan for future growth
Empower employees

As we continue self-isolating to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, I wanted to follow up with some other effective ways to keep your business running smoothly and successfully.

Here’s 4 marketing strategies to consider:

1. Focus on Digital Campaigns

With the shutdown or slowdown of most brick-and-mortar businesses, entrepreneurs are relying more than ever on digital strategies. A big part of brand marketing during this pandemic and into the future is going to be shifting most (if not all) of your small business online.

In fact, Larry Kim from Mobile Monkey just wrote, “One new customer closed their brick and mortar locations nationwide and found web traffic is up +150%.”

According to Klaviyo, an email marketing platform that taps into a network of 30,000 businesses for insights, 22% of brands said they’re spending more on ads. And 66% of brands that are spending more on ads are also seeing increased efficiency, with a reduced cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) and cost per click (CPC).

If you’re wondering how to market during the pandemic, consider using Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Instagram for Business or LinkedIn Ads to direct traffic to:

Well-researched and useful blogs and videos
Online products with free shipping
Virtual services you can offer, whether that’s financial therapy or online music lessons
Gift cards that can be used now or in the future

That said, don’t be afraid to pause campaigns that aren’t relevant right now, or that you think may turn your customers off.

Part of brand marketing during this pandemic is knowing when to re-strategize and pivot, rather than continuing with an ad campaign that’s not going to resonate with-or even offends-your target audience.

2. Update Your Google My Business Listing

Your customers and potential customers are counting on you for the latest information about your small business. If you’re closing your company temporarily, whether you’re changing the hours you’re open, or offering curbside pickup right now, you need to let people know.

Using Google Posts can be a great way to update people on everything from reduced hours to gift card purchases. Here’s some guidance from Google on how to best change your profile.

And don’t worry about SEO implications when you’re editing your profile. For example, marking your business as temporarily closed will not affect your search ranking, and Google will still display you in the search results.

If you don’t immediately see the changes that you make to your Google My Business profile, don’t panic. Google has said they may review updates for quality before publishing.

3. Don’t Stop Posting on Social Media

Even if you have to completely shutter your business for the time being, stay active online. In addition to tools like Google My Business, customers look to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram channels for the most up-to-date news. It looks really bad to have outdated posts or information languishing on your social media pages.

Some of the updates you could share include:

Your crisis management strategy, including the steps you’re taking to protect your employees and customers (sanitizing workstations, not letting sick employees work, ensuring employees wear gloves, etc.)
Changes to hours or business policies (for example, only letting one person into the store at a time)
If you’re taking online orders and/or offering free shipping
If you have private shopping or curbside pickup options
Uplifting quotes or personal messages

One of our clients is offering private shopping appointments and curbside pickup for customers. Malary’s in Cloverdale, BC is a good example of a small business that’s pivoting during COVID-19 and providing customers with a little TLC.

4. Be Careful What You Share

There is a lot of misinformation circulating on social media, and it can be dangerous to give your customers the wrong advice (not to mention hugely damaging to your reputation).

Here’s an example of poor marketing strategies for the COVID-19 crisis: A yoga studio in Delta, BC was shut down in March following complaints that the facility wasn’t following social-distancing. Not only that, but they sent out a newsletter claiming that hot yoga can help prevent getting COVID-19.

So map your crisis management strategy out and think before you send out that article to all of your email subscribers or repost something you saw in your Facebook feed. Use trusted sources for coronavirus resources, like the World Health Organization or the Government of Canada.

For example, rather than forwarding one of the articles on homemade hand sanitizers that are circulating, consult this list .

READ: “Finding Your Purpose During Self-Isolation” on our website:

Stuck at home? Now is a good time to figure out your purpose! Our lives are so busy, and we rarely have a moment to just sit in silence and reflect on our life journey and how it has led to where we are now.

For many of us who have chosen to self-isolate, now is a good time to take advantage of the quieter environment to discover if your precious resources are being used to maximum effect.

Whatever your marketing strategies for the COVID-19 crisis are, always look to your brand for guidance. Your brand vision, mission, and values should always be your “North Star” as you stay active online and let your customers know that you’re here for them-now and in the future.

Selling Online – Make it Easy For Your Customers to Reach You With Google Voice

Too many online sellers want to remain anonymous and do business without having to have any contact with the buyer. That’s just not going to work and if you don’t build relationships with your customers they may buy from you once, then never again. Building an online business means being accessible when the potential buyers have questions. Ignoring them and leaving their questions unanswered will only make them find another company to do business with.

I had a telephone call today from a gentleman in another country wanting to purchase some of my items in bulk. He called me on my business phone and we worked out a deal. This man told me he hates doing business via email because he can’t type well and would rather have a conversation face to face or on the phone. I agree. Although I do most of my correspondence via email, I would rather talk to my customers and find out who they are and what they really need. I can make recommendations that help my customers get exactly the products that will work for them and maybe upsell them a related product they didn’t know we carry.

Now, with that said, you don’t want to give out your home telephone number and have people calling at all hours of the night and day. You need a separate business telephone number and I recommend you get a Google Voice account. It is a free service from Google that you can sign up for. Google Voice issues you a telephone number in an area code that you choose and you get free voice mail with your account. You can set the call forwarding so that it rings at your home, your work or cell phone. There are a lot of features offered with this product but I like the voice mail feature the best.

When callers leave voice messages for you, Google Voice translates them and you can view them on your computer screen or cell phone like a text message. I have found that the translation service is pretty accurate considering a computer is doing the translating instead of a human being. I have even called my own Google Voice account to record myself when I had an idea I didn’t want to forget. When I get back to the office my voice recording is all typed out for me. You can even email the message to another person if you need to.

There is no reason not to have a business telephone number if you are selling online. The call you miss may be money gone forever.

How To Attract Local Customers – A Quick Guide To Local SEO

If you are running a local business, you may be wondering how you can target even more customers in your region. If you already have a website, that’s a great start, and if you don’t, it’s definitely time to join the digital marketing revolution.

More and more people are searching for businesses like yours online. That means they are using their computers, tablets and phones to find you. If you’re not online, or your website can’t be found, you can kiss goodbye to the chance of doing business with them. Whether you are selling products or services, you could be missing out on a huge chunk of your market.

But I have a website. Isn’t that enough?

No, you need to ensure people can find your website. The only way to do this, short of delivering your website address to everybody in the area by hand, is by making your website known by the search engines. And the only way you can do that is through local SEO.

Local SEO – It’s Not As Hard As It Sounds

When it comes to ensuring local customers can find you, the process is easier than it sounds, but it needs work. It also needs constant maintenance if you want to ensure you stay in front of your target audience and ahead of your competitors. Fortunately, there are companies offering professional assistance with search engine optimisation that can do everything for you, but more on this later.

Here are 5 ways you can improve your chances of being found by local customers:

1. Create a Google My Business account – by claiming your own Google My Business page, you will be joining the millions of businesses that are benefiting from this service. It’s almost like an additional web page, and is just another way to get your business known. This services allows you to add all the important details of your business, and to receive and show customer reviews too.

2. Acquire as many local reviews as possible – local reviews also have a direct impact on local search, and so try to get as many as possible. Use Google, Yell and other review sites, and ask previous customers if they would be happy to leave a review.

3. Optimise your landing pages – every single page on your website is a chance to get your business noticed in the search engines. By using the keywords that your audience is using to search for you online you automatically increase your chances of being found. So, if prospective customers are searching for “roofing”, make sure your pages contain that search phrase.

4. Build a link strategy – business is largely based on trust, but how do you convince people to trust you if they haven’t dealt with you before? The answer is to become an online authority in your field. Blog posts are a great way to do this and will add more keyword juice for the search engines as well as showing you know your stuff. You should look to write blogs on your website that link to good quality sites within your industry, and also look to write guest posts on relevant blogs that then link back to your own website.

5. Don’t forget social media – social media is another way you can boost your search engine rankings, so use it as much as you can. It’s also a great method to build a rapport with your target audience, and yet another way you can advertise your service, communicate directly with your customers and attract reviews.

If You Don’t, Your Competitors Will

Search engine optimisation is one of the best ways to reach your target audience. When it comes to attracting local business, you have a lot of tools and options open, but you must use them well to get the best returns. It’s only a matter of time before your competitors start to take up these methods, if they aren’t already doing so.

How To Make Your Product Stand Out With Local SEO

When you stay in a specific area to check out products/services on the internet, effortlessly, you wish to prefer local SERP’s shown in Google and other web search tools. Basically, local SEO is an arrangement of distinct standards and directions utilized by the digital marketing experts to improve websites for particular topographical areas.

For example- if you enhance your website for the local market, Google will show the website or its pages unmistakably to local visitors initially and after that to the guests living in remote zones. In the event that you run a nearby business in your local area, it is imperative to enhance your website for the neighborhood market. But, how will you do this? Let’s find out.

Put A Local Address on Your Website

Google uses your site’s details to show it in nearby indexed lists. In this way, while optimizing your site for a specific domain name, you ought to take after the Google’s rules for local SEO. As a matter of first importance, put a residential location your site which contains the physically obvious details with a live land phone/mobile number, and business E-mail ID. It tells Google and users about the precise location of your site and manages you appropriately.

Enhance Meta Information and Title Labels according to the Location

All SEO experts know the tremendous significance of Meta Information and Title Labels for SEO. Both of these let web indexes and visitors know the real features of this content. Along these lines, they become in a position to guess the sort of content beforehand. It encourages web indexes to show the content according to their legitimacy. While optimizing your site for local SERP’s, include title labels and meta portrayals for “keyword + your city/state/country. It empowers Google to show your site unmistakably for local query items and raise the volume of organic and natural traffic to the site from particular locations.

Keep the Language Preference in Mind

When you boost your website for local SERP’s, it becomes compulsory that you can keep the terminology preference of the general population (living in those territories) at heart. For example- if you are optimizing your website for a local area, write content in American English and enhance it perfectly for the neighborhood audience. Always remember that your website is viewed by all sorts of individuals. So, keep carefully the content language composition simple so far as possible. In cases like this, your Google considers your site content to be exceptionally helpful for the focused on a group of the targeted audience and show it or its pages in a local query.

Local Business Schema

By using Schema, you can certainly categorize the main important data on your site. In spite of the fact that Google is sufficiently shrewd to play out its obligations all alone yet its algorithm needs to drudge a ton to prohibit the most valid sites and website pages for the local query. Google’s work becomes easier if you add the relevant data to your site, such as phone number, metropolitan areas, etc. Adding scheme to pages is one such practice. It is determined by several factors, such as usage of the right web templates and the CMS with that you are functioning your website.

Add Google My Business to Your Website

Google My business is the genuine buddy of every one of those SEO experts who enhance sites for local SEO. To add this instrument to your site, simply follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. Make a claim for local listing of your website,

2. Complete the confirmation process for your accounts,

3. Give the exact business subtle elements,

4. Links to your site,

5. Top quality pictures of your business.

6. When you finish this page, accumulate reviews from customers and set criteria for the local listing of your site or its pages. Google will show your site/its pages in local query items according to its settings.

Make Logins at Regular Intervals

Google has made it clear that it can terminate those accounts that do not have any activity for six months or even more. In this manner, you ought to log in your Google My Business account consistently. It will help your site to keep up its sound position in local listings.

Citations

The citation aspect is one of the main factors when you maximize your website for local SERP’s. It’s because Google employs a specific group of directories and list sites to acquire the info and put it to use to send your website. When your website exists on the Google My Business, but unavailable anywhere else on the Global Internet, so, Google may have a slim sense whether your website really is out there or not. So, get citations without the fail. It can help your website to get ranking well in local SERP’s prominently with low and high-performing keywords and key phrases under your market.

Final Words

Local SEO can be an important part of today’s online marketing of websites. It can help entrepreneurs to increase the presence of websites in specific locations and develop their local business by leaps and bounds. Just follow the above-mentioned tips to get the required results while optimizing your website for local SERP’s.