Leverage local SEO and influencers to boost your business's position in SERPs
If you’re a small business looking to get noticed on the organic search landscape with a limited budget, you’ll need to pick your battles wisely and arm yourself with a realistic and informed approach. Here are some useful things for small businesses and entrepreneurs to consider:
1. If you are a local business, focus your organic search efforts there first.
Traffic from local visitors is intentful and often more likely to convert – so it should not be overlooked. Also, the good news is that you’ll often find it much easier to dominate the organic SERPs for local search queries than you will do for broad, non-geotargeted queries. Google estimates that over 20% of all search has a local intent, so it’s worth pouncing on the opportunity.
2. From an SEO perspective, many claim that 2016 is the ‘year of the influencer’.
Influencer partnerships…
In your mission to compete with the big guns, are you underutilizing these small business branding hacks?
When you’re trying to boost your online visibility, it’s hard to know what tools to use, what methods you should be targeting and how to effectively measure results, especially when you’re already consumed with the day-to-day operations of your small business. You’re also unlikely to have an infinite budget to allocate toward this. That, combined with the confusing nature of SEO, with loads of companies promising to get you to rank but few actually being able to deliver, can leave many small business professionals wondering what direction they should take with their small business SEO. Here are some common mistakes:
Not Being Specific About Your Market
It may sound counterintuitive when it comes to SEO, but it pays to tap into a niche.
Logically, you might think that ranking for as many different keywords as possible would…
Local SEO is key for small businesses, these tips will help you optimize it
Local SEO or Search Engine Optimization can pave the way for smaller online businesses to grow at the expense of their larger competitors. An effective SEO strategy helps online businesses to create a strong online presence that keeps the profit pouring in. Even if a website has an appealing design, attention-grabbing titles, and offer quality products or services, it cannot remain afloat for long without an effective SEO strategy.
SEO is invaluable for online businesses to boost their online presence, attract maximum number of visitors, and accomplish sales levels that go right through the roof.
Here we will reveal 10 local SEO tips that every entrepreneur should follow in 2015 to take their online business to the next level.
1. Comply with Google Pigeon
Google Pigeon is a local search engine…
Best practice tips to give your landing pages better regional reach
The Internet has given us greater power than ever before to reach out to people wherever they are in the world. There’s one problem with that though – sometimes your core group of customers are located virtually on your doorstep, and unless you take steps to connect with these, much of your online marketing efforts may be going to waste.
Who needs regionalised landing pages?
If you’re selling a range of identical products through your website to people right across the country (or even the world) from a central warehouse or depot, you probably don’t need a regionalised landing page. But if your website is used as a means of promoting your bricks and mortar presence, or a service you provide in specific geographic areas, then regionalised landing pages should be…
How do consumers search for local products and services?
Google and IPOS research shows American shoppers are searching on their mobiles for local store information, including opening hours, address and directions. This has implications for Advertisers to ensure the right information is available!
4 in 5 consumers are using search engines to find local information, and 18% of local smartphone searches result in a purchase within a day.
The infographic highlights 4 important tactics for retailers to embrace:
1. Ensure Ads include your address and directions, across all devices.
2. Tailor copy to take account of local searching.
3. Build an attribution model for local searches.
4. Use radius bidding and local bid adjustments.
Download the full Infographic to find out more information from this American research on Local consumer search behaviour.…
A Google update affecting local searches
Value/Importance: [rating=5] (for local marketers)
Recommended link: SearchEngineLand announcement
Well, Pigeon would seem a logical follow-on from Google’s Hummingbird update. There seems to be an avian connection and it could change the search “pecking order” (sorry)…
Note that while Hummingbird, like Panda and Panda and Penguin, were terms coined by Google, this isn’t an official term. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Journal has introduced the term to explain it on the Search Engine Land article above since Google haven’t given a defined name yet.
What do marketers need to know about Google Pigeon?
This algorithm update will only be relevant if your business targets local searches for a product or service in a location, for example through a store or office
It’s a major change which Google told search Engine Land, links:
“deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds…
Google MyBusiness replaces Google Places for local businesses and provides a new Google+ admin page service for all businesses
Value/Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link:
Announced on 12th June 2014, this has been touted as a major change, with an in-depth review by Search Engine Land for example. But we have rated it as relatively low in value and importance for marketers since it should’t be overhyped - it doesn’t involve new options for marketing, rather it is a new labelling to be aware of. It’s an attempt by Google at providing a more unified business offering from Google. It’s a good move since it aims to reduce the confusion between Google+ for Business and Google Places which it replaces.
What you need to know / do
1. If you or your clients are looking to register a local business within Google, e.g. to be visible in Google Maps, you now need to go to…
An in-depth tutorial to optimizing your business for localized search
Google’s campaign to deliver more relevant search results to users has led them down the path to personalization and localization. We’re not just talking about their country-specific search engines, we’re talking local cities and municipalities.
With the growing number of users on mobile and other portable devices, localized search results are in high demand.
There is a group that’s affected by this move towards localization. Brands with multiple locations, that generally rank on Google.com but are not necessarily targeting specific local areas in their campaigns, are at a disadvantage. This has particularly been the case since mid 2012 when Google's Venice update gave prominence to local business in the search results through maps and Google Places listings.
So, why is it better for you to target individual local areas even if you’re a brand with multiple locations?
Local Branding – At the end of…
By
February 11, 2014
Taking the example of using rich snippets for hotels
In my experience, many local businesses miss out on the opportunity of SEO since they don't focus their efforts in the use and implementation of structured data.
Rich snippets on SERPs attract the attention of users and this means that the CTR is improved than the ones of your competitors.
In this guide I will take the example of Hotels to show how structured data can be used. Let's take an example. Here are 2 cases, decide which one would grab your attention.
Case 1
Case 2
We should note, that at least for now, the appearance of rich snippets on SERPs…
A 5 step checklist for reviewing your local SEO Campaign
Thanks to Google's algorithmic changes, many small to medium-sized businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to make their mark on the search engines. Big brands have big budgets, and can pay SEO agencies big monthly fees to optimise their website for competitive keyphrases. But smaller businesses are getting left behind; watching their rankings slip and their conversion rate tumble.
But smaller business shouldn’t be competing on the same level as these big players; not right away at least. The first step in any search engine optimisation campaign should see these businesses reaching out to the audience that is most likely to buy from them.
And that is the audience on their doorstep.
The importance of local SEO
The customer base in your local area is perhaps the most important tool in your marketing arsenal, and one that every business should be tapping into. By employing a…
