SEO is a powerful weapon for promoting junk removal services. Companies that rely on paid search advertising, such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads, need to spend a lot of resources to appear on the first page.

SEO, however, only needs a routine check-in and a little updating to maintain a company’s position on Google’s first page of search results. Of course, you need to invest in SEO. But the results last long when compared to PPC ads.

In this post, we give you seven compelling reasons why you should go for SEO for promoting your junk removal company.

1. SEO Delivers Results for a Long Time

PPC ads are designed to drive traffic for a short period. They are primarily focused on driving people to your website within a short time frame. This type of advertising has an “End Date” when the campaign ends. On the other hand, SEO has a much longer lifespan and can provide benefits that last for years.

The amount of time, money, and resources spent on paid advertising is not worth the short-term benefits compared to SEO.

Also, do remember that advertising is a tricky game. With limited budgets, it is imperative to spend wisely and get the most out of every dollar spent to promote your junk removal services.

2. SEO is Cost-effective

The common perception is that SEO is an expensive and complicated process. Many people believe that the only way to rank high on Google and other search engines is to pay a company like Google and Bing to advertise their site. However, this isn’t the case at all. In fact, SEO is often less expensive than the PPC model.

When a company spends money on paid advertising, they are gambling (in a good way) that their ads will get clicked enough times to make the expense worth it. In contrast, by investing in SEO, a company can rank its website higher in organic search results without paying for any ad space.

3. SEO Gives You Free Traffic

Increasingly, companies realize that SEO can provide a cheaper and more reliable way to generate traffic than relying solely on expensive PPC campaigns. This is because SEO leads to more organic (and thus free) traffic. Paid ads may yield better initial results, but they also require much more upkeep (read money) to maintain their effectiveness.

There is no denying the fact that many businesses spend their advertising dollars on paid advertising methods such as PPC. However, the high cost of these ads combined with the decrease in effectiveness over time can make it difficult for businesses to keep up with their competitors (who invest in SEO).

4. SEO Instills Trust

Paid advertising methods such as PPC put ads in front of customers looking for specific keywords. It has been proven to be less trustworthy than organic SEO. Because we live in a world saturated with ads, it’s easy for customers to lose sight of what they’re seeking.

Also, paid advertising doesn’t always offer the most accurate representation of a business, and it can be difficult to distinguish from other ads. On the other hand, Search Engine Result Pages are considered genuine recommendations.

Not to mention that humans tend to trust recommendations more than a straightforward ad.

5. SEO Gives you Great ROI

In a competitive market, junk removal companies often need to find new and innovative ways to help promote their services. One way of doing so is through SEO that relies on natural ranking factors such as backlinks and social media presence.

The ROI for SEO can be greater than advertising methods such as PPC because it is not limited by the number of clicks, impressions, etc.

Since SEO relies on organic traffic, it can provide high-quality leads that are highly targeted. These factors make SEO an ideal medium for generating a phenomenal ROI.

6. SEO Can Position You as a Market Leader

Content marketing is a powerful strategy that can help businesses stand out in today’s competitive marketplace. Junk removal is an industry where relevant content can position you as a leader.

Say that your company has a blog post with information about “How to Dispose of Junk and the Environmental Impact of Doing so.” In that case, you can also include calls-to-action on your post to encourage people to contact you for more info about how they can get rid of their junk.

On the other hand, the PPC model does not provide much value to the audience but only shoves ads after ads down the throat.

7. SEO Drives Targeted Traffic

Lead quality is always a hot topic in the digital world. It fires up marketers’ imaginations to think about how they can use online to score high-quality, relevant leads. One way they can do this is by focusing on the needs of their target market. And SEO allows you to do it, but not PPC ads.

By addressing the problems of your target audience, a junk disposal company can attract audiences who are more likely to be interested in your services.

Please understand that SEO takes time and effort, but it can provide a never-ending stream of potential customers. PPC ads can also be a great way to drive traffic, but often, the quality of traffic isn’t as high as that generated by SEO.

The post Why SEO (Not PPC) is the Best Choice for Junk Removal Companies appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post Why SEO (Not PPC) is the Best Choice for Junk Removal Companies appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Garage door companies have a lot of options when it comes to advertising their business. They can buy a billboard on a busy stretch or put up flyers around town. But there’s another avenue that many have overlooked: Internet Marketing.

Even though it’s been around for decades, SEO is still one of the most effective ways to catch potential customers’ attention online. With optimized keywords, images, and videos, you can increase your chances of being found by potential clients.

This post will give you eight golden tips to increase your garage door company sales.

1. Optimize Your Google My Business Page

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that helps companies find and rank their business on Google search results. A well-optimized GMB page can help your garage door company increase its visibility on the internet, which, in turn, increases your business’s chances of being found by new customers.

With just a few clicks, you can create a profile for your business on GMB. Accounts are free, and it only takes about 15 minutes to set up.

Take a look at the following aspects while optimizing your profile:

• • Business name
  • Address
  • Hours of Operation
  • Photos & Videos
  • Reviews

2. Use Long-tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are the keywords with long phrases. Garage door companies should include long-tail keywords in their SEO campaign.

If you are using outdated, widely used words that everyone else is competing with, you’ll unlikely get any meaningful traffic. What you want are long-tail keywords — words that are specific enough to garner a decent number of clicks.

Take a look at the following examples to get an idea:

• • “Unlock my garage door”
  • “Replace garage door springs”
  • “Garage door repairs in Westchester County”
  • “How much does it cost to replace garage door springs?”
  • Can I install a garage door opener myself?
  • Do I need a permit to install a garage door opener?
  • How do I replace my garage door torsion spring?

Because these are specific queries, you are most likely to get high-quality leads.

3. Use Location Pages

As a garage door company, your company’s success depends on your visibility across different locations. Location pages are meant to target a business with more than one location.

One should optimize these pages with the company name and target location. With the vast majority of internet searches happening locally, it’s essential to make sure your garage door company shows up when prospective customers search for you by city or by zip code.

In many cases, location pages will rank higher than a generic webpage. This is because a location page has more authoritative information about that area.

4. Claim and Optimize Business Listings

Many factors play into the success of a garage door company. A critical factor in this is how visible you are on the internet. Although most local companies get addressed by word of mouth, having a broad online presence is crucial for running one.

If you have claimed and optimized the local listings on Google, Yelp, and other similar platforms, you will rank higher.

Also, the number of reviews/ratings a business has accumulated on these listings is important. For instance, a garage door company with ten reviews might rank higher than a business with five reviews.

5. Curate Localized Content

An average homeowner is likely to get bombarded with ads from several garage door companies, each claiming to have the best prices, warranties, and services.

Your company should use localized content to stand out. Localizing your content refers to tailoring it to the tastes and preferences of your audience by making sure they get the information in their dialect, culture, and preferred formats.

For example, a garage door company could create an article about how it has landed a new job in an area and tell the audience how it can help out those who need the service.

6. Earn Local Backlinks

When it comes to improving your rankings, backlinks are the most critical factor. Backlinks lead to your site from other sites, and without them, you will have difficulty attracting traffic. Google ranks pages with backlinks higher because they are considered more reputable.

These backlinks can come from press releases, or other external sources such as high-ranking sites. The more backlinks a site has, the higher its ranking.

7. Use Social Media

People are always on the go. When they have a moment to spare, they log onto their social media profiles.

Why not take advantage of this by posting something that will get attention? Your company can use social media to get links and mentions that can lead to higher rankings on search engines.

You can ramp up your social media strategy by making the posts more interactive, encouraging customers to post their favorite photos of the company’s work, etc.

8. Get Online Reviews

Search engines use customer reviews to determine rankings. Reviews affect SEO because they show Google the importance of the website and how popular it is among users. The more reviews, the closer it will rank to the top of SERPs.

Reviews provide an overview of your services, give insight into their quality, and show whether your company is trustworthy. However, be wary of negative reviews.

If customers are unhappy with your garage door installation/repair services, they will leave negative reviews, impacting the ranking on search engines.

The post 8 Tips to Increase Sales for Your Garage Door Company Using SEO appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post 8 Tips to Increase Sales for Your Garage Door Company Using SEO appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The Google search engine offers you hundreds of pages as a response to any query. Most users do not look beyond the first two pages of SERPs. Garage door company owners are experimenting with different digital marketing tactics to improve their local rankings on the SERPs.

This article will discuss 7 proven SEO techniques for better rankings on the SERPs.

1. An Up-to-date Google My Business Profile

 A well-maintained Google My Business profile for your garage door company can boost your local rankings on SERPs. A GMB profile of your garage door company can lead your potential prospects to your business website. They could avail of your services.

Let’s look at some tips on how to maintain a GMB profile to rank better on SERPs.

• • Provide useful business information such as business hours, NAP, and location details.
  • Post valuable pictures of your products and services.
  • Attend to the queries and reviews posted by visitors and your customers.

A GMB profile can boost your customer engagement and market reputation as the leading garage door company.

 2. Keyword Research and Application

 Keywords are phrases and words that your prospects might use while searching for a garage door company on a search engine. Understanding these keywords and using them to your advantage will help your business rank better on the local SERPs.

Short-tail keywords are usually generic words such as ‘Garage Door.’ Long-tail keywords are specific phrases related to a business, such as ‘Local Garage Door Companies.’

Let’s look at some of the tools available to research and manage keyword strategy.

• • Google Search Console is an excellent tool to find trending keywords for garage door companies in your area.
  • Google Keyword Planner is a free tool to manage keyword strategy for your garage door company.

 3. Take Advantage of Social Media Platforms

 Social media platforms are a powerful yet underutilized means to boost the market rankings of a business on Local SERPs. You can invest in Facebook Ad campaigns to promote your garage door business.

Social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram can accelerate your growth as a brand in the market. Make a Facebook business page for your garage door company to connect with millions of potential prospects.

A successful Ad campaign will create buzz and attract necessary audience attention to your brand. You can mention your social media handles under your Google My Business listing to drive more organic visitors to your business website.

Google will rank your garage door business website higher on the local SERPs due to your popularity on Social media platforms and mentions.

 4. Acquire High-traffic Backlinks and Citations

 Google search engine algorithm ranks websites through quality backlinks and citations. High-quality backlinks can popularize your garage door company among your target audience. The presence of high-quality external links makes your business website an authority in the garage door market.

So let’s look at some of the tips to acquire high-quality backlinks and citations for your garage door website. 

• • Guest blogging on high-traffic websites is the easiest way to acquire quality backlinks.
  • Using YouTube influencers to create content for your garage door company can get you a quality video link.

 Google will rank your website higher if it has more backlinks and mentions from authority websites.

 5. Internal Linking is as Important as External Linking

 Yes, internal linking is just as important as external backlinks. Internal linking engages your website visitors and converts them into your potential customers. A website with more on-page internal links ranks better than websites with only external links.

Let’s look at some of the internal linking tools for garage door websites to rank better on local SERPs.

• • Link whisper is a tool to create engaging internal links to increase customer engagement.
  • Interlinks Manager is a platform to manage all the internal links on your garage door website.

Internal linking boosts what backlinks offer to your garage door company. Hence, use it as well to rank better on local SERPs.

6. Optimize Your Business Website

 An easy-to-navigate business website engages more visitors than a dull and dormant one. Website optimization gives enhanced user experience to both visitors and customers. As a garage door company, website optimization will allow you to convert potential prospects into actual organic customers of your business.

Let’s look at some of the tips to optimize your garage door business website.

• • Have an easy-to-use user interface for your website to drive more target audiences.
  • Create relevant and engaging on-site content to engage more visitors.
  • Optimize your website’s page load speed by caching the high-traffic pages.
  • Have a review section on-site. Address genuine customer reviews and queries.

 Google will rank your garage door website better than your market competitors if you optimize your business website.

 7. Images and Videos are Important Assets

 Images and videos have a higher impact on user search intent than mere words. Use this advice as leverage to rank better on local SERPs. Upload high-quality photos such as different options for garage doors on your business website. It will influence the buying intent of your visitors.

Make sure you tag business-relevant pictures, videos, and animations properly in the ‘alt text’ field. Search engine algorithm might not see your images, but it indeed can read the alt text. Websites with pictures and animations tend to rank higher on the local SERPs.

Make sure you post business-relevant pictures under Google My Business listing to rank better for your garage door company.

The post 7 Advanced SEO Techniques to Follow for Your Garage Door Company Website appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post 7 Advanced SEO Techniques to Follow for Your Garage Door Company Website appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

We will discuss seven common website design mistakes that affect your junk removal website and their solutions.

 7 Common Web Design Mistakes That affect a Junk Removal Website

1. Platform-Dependent Website

 Platform-dependent websites are now a thing of the past. Mobile-friendly websites are currently trending and performing better in the market. Most internet users nowadays have access to mobile devices.

Making a platform-dependent website has three significant issues such as,

• Google will rank your website lower for not being a mobile-friendly website.
• Your business will miss out on access to a larger section of your target audience in the market.
• It will negatively impact customer engagement, brand reputation, and sales.

 Hence, make a cross-platform and robust junk removal website. It will allow you to target and convert a large portion of the audience. It will edge out your market rivals regarding sales and conversion rates.

 2. Poor Website Navigation

 Poor website navigation can result in losing your potential prospects big time. Everyone who visits your website should know their way around it. If your website navigation is complicated, then it will annoy your visitors. Poor website navigation can impact three things,

• A lower lead conversion rate is the least of your problems if your junk removal website has poor navigation.
• Website downtime will increase, and on-site activities will decrease due to lower customer engagement.
• Google will rank your website lower on the local SERPs due to visitors’ poor reviews about your site navigation.

 Hence, try to simplify your website navigation. Make your junk removal website from your target customer’s POV. It will allow your website to drive engagement and increase on-site conversions.

 3. Poor User Experience

 User experience is the most critical thing for every business owner. Users visit your website to know more about your product and services. Your website should provide them with an experience to be your actual customers.

Let’s look at some of the tips for a better user experience on your junk removal website.

• Navigational ease is a must. Your website visitors should be able to explore your junk removal website with little to no difficulties at all.
• A dedicated review and query section will allow your visitors to have a pleasant user experience on your website.
• Send them a pop-up about their reason to visit after they enter your website, or curate popular suggestions for them to choose from.

 4. Poor Website Structure and Speed

 Many business owners and amateur digital marketers neglect the responsiveness and intuitiveness of a business website. Poor website structure and load speed have a negative impact on your on-site SEO as well as Local SERPs rankings.

Poor website structure can crash your current market standing as a brand. Make sure you optimize your website structure and architecture to perform better in the market. An optimized website is a responsive and intuitive website.

We live in a dynamic society, so people want to access information within the first three seconds of their query. Keeping your website load speed under 3 seconds can do wonders for your brand reputation and local SERPs rankings. Hence, cache your website pages and lower your redirects to better your page load speed.

 5. Outdated Front-end Designs

 Outdated and irrelevant front-end website designs can scare off your potential prospects. Junk removal websites should have the appeal of the same. It will negatively impact on your website’s audience drive. It could spread misinformation about your brand and hamper its reputation in the market.

Here are some of the tips to better your junk removal website’s appeal to your target customers.

• Keep your front-end designs clean and informative for your visitors.
• Test your front-end designs with close acquaintances for review before applying on your business website.
• Make sure you keep the readability of your visitors and the scannability of Google in mind while designing your website.

 6. Not Using Chatbots or AI

 Businesses are increasingly turning towards automation and machine learning. Website visitors want to find more about your product and services from your website right at that instant. Not using chatbots or a dedicated team of customer care individuals can cost you a lot of potential customers.

So what are the solutions?

• Use AI-based chatbots to track your website visitors’ user behavior and buying patterns.
• Use a machine learning environment to handle raw data and customer profile information on your junk removal website.

 7. Absence of an On-page Review Section

 Websites with no reviews section do not drive enough visitors. Reviews and queries are important for a junk removal website. When visitors look to avail of your services, they want to know the experiences of your past clients.

Many website visitors want to find out more about your products and services on-site. Hence, the review section is vital for your website visitors and your staff.

What are some benefits of a dedicated on-site reviews section for a junk removal website?

• A dedicated reviews and query section will authenticate your brand as a leading junk removal company in the market.
• Google will rank your website higher on the local SERPs.
• Websites with a dedicated reviews section are proven to perform better in terms of customer engagement, brand reputations, and market rankings.

The post Common Web Design Mistakes That Affect a Junk Removal Website appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post Common Web Design Mistakes That Affect a Junk Removal Website appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting high-ranking in search engines such as Google and Bing. It works well for all businesses and even niche industries like garage door manufacturing.

SEO is a crucial part of making money online, and is the primary method used to get leads, or people who have an interest in your product or service. Let’s take a look at important SEO KPIs in the niche.

1. Search Rankings

One of the first things you should note is search rankings for your keyword profile. Keyword rankings form a foundation for your website to perform well on searches. The better your keywords rank, the more effective your SEO is. This is especially true for a niche like a garage door company.

There are many things you need to do to ensure you are maximizing the potential of your site. Your web pages need to have high-quality content and the right keyword density for each page to rank high in search results. It’s also important to keep up-to-date with all of Google’s changes and updates.

2. Organic Traffic

Another critical KPI for businesses is organic traffic. Organic traffic is a count of people who visit your website organically. Meaning they did not click paid ads or other platforms. Rather they got to know your website through organic methods like social media or word of mouth. The logic is simple – the more people are interested in your website, the more chances you have to sell products.

The importance of having high organic traffic can’t be stressed enough. When you’re in the top 3 organic search results, you’ll receive over 40% more clicks than your competitors. This means you’ll be making more money from every single customer. That’s why having high organic traffic is crucial to any online business.

3. Backlink Profile

Backlinks have been a time-tested part of the SEO experience. When a website links back to your website, it is referred to as a backlink. Search engines usually assign rankings based on how high authority your backlink profile is. This means that you need to focus on building a powerful backlink profile for your website.

You can use your backlinks to help your website rank for many keywords. Google looks at a variety of factors when evaluating backlinks. These include whether a page is trustworthy, relevant to the topic being discussed, and how many other pages link to it. Backlinks also tell other sites about your authority on a specific subject.

4. Organic CTR

CTR is a good way to gauge your website’s success and whether or not it’s successful at converting people into customers. If your goal is to drive traffic to your site, then CTR should be high. But as we said, it’s also a key performance indicator (KPI) for your marketing efforts. The higher the CTR, the more money you’ll make by sending people to your site.

A new report published by SEMRush found that the top-performing keywords have a higher organic click-through rate. This means that if you were to run a campaign targeting these keywords, you are more likely to see a conversion. You can also find the most searched terms by analyzing your competitors’ backlinks. Inspect the links they’re using to get to their page.

5. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate measures the percentage of site visitors who leave your website within the first few seconds after landing. Bounces are essential “clicks” that never lead to any action. A high bounce rate indicates that your website isn’t doing its job. It’s an important statistic to keep an eye on when it comes to SEO. Bounce rate is an important KPI as search engines keep track of it for ranking.

It is key to your success to ensure that your website’s bounce rate is low. It’s a good idea to make sure that your content and design elements aren’t the cause of a higher bounce rate. If a user’s experience on your website is bad enough, they might just “bounce.” They would rather leave than stay on your site and read your content.

6. Content Length

When people think about SEO rankings, the number one metric that comes to mind is content length. The assumption is that there will be more search results if there is more content. However, the reality is more nuanced than this. The answer is not quite so simple. It is important to be flexible with the content length depending on the type of content. A Facebook post doesn’t need to be super long. On the other hand, a blog post should offer value to your readers.

If you’re looking to grow your organic traffic, the best tip you can get is to write longer posts. The reality is that a lot of websites are writing short-length content. In fact, on average, content on websites is around 2000 words. This can lead to improved rankings and better traffic numbers for a website.

7. Page Loading Speed

Page loading speed has gained importance over a while. Today, loading speed is an important ranking signal for a website. The top results for any searches are usually the quickest loading websites in a niche. This is critical to the success of your business website.

Consider the fact that almost 30% of people will leave your website if the page load is slower than 3 seconds. You’ll quickly understand the importance of ensuring that your website is optimized for speed. Even if you don’t care about conversion rate, user experience, or brand value, it’s important to ensure that your site is accessible and usable.

The post Which SEO KPIs should You measure for your Garage Door Company Website? appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post Which SEO KPIs should You measure for your Garage Door Company Website? appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Guest blogging is one of the more traditional SEO techniques in the market. Basically, you are creating guest blogs to be published on a high-authority third-party website of your industry. Find a leading brand in the junk removal industry and try to post on their website. You will see the results yourself.

In this article, we will learn about seven benefits of guest blogging for a junk removal website.

 7 Benefits of Guest Posting For a Junk Removal Website

1. Extensive and Organic Traffic Exposure

 Gust blogging attracts organic crowds. Irrespective of whether you put a backlink on your junk removal website or not, more people will be driven to your business website. Creating quality content for your guest blogging is essential.

The audience wants to indulge in industry-relevant content. The more relevant content you create, the more crowds will be driven to your business website. Guest blogging allows you to access a much larger section of your target audience in the junk removal industry.

Once your guest post goes live on the internet, expect traffic flow to your website. More traffic to your junk removal website means more customer engagements and sales.

 2. Online Reputation and Authority Improvement

 Business owners are experimenting with different digital marketing tactics to make a mark in their respective markets. The junk removal industry has an open and competitive market.

Guest blogging can help you make a name for your business in the market. It will give your brand a clear cut edge over your market competitors. Guest blogging on high-authority sites will authenticate your brand as a leader in the junk removal market. Your audience will trust your brand name to avail of your services.

Make sure the content you choose to post on high-authority sites is high-quality, relevant, and has value to your potential prospects. Hence, guest blogging boosts your online reputation in the market.

 3. Generate Organic Leads and Higher Conversion Rate

 Organic leads and lead conversion rates are priorities for a junk removal website. Guest blogging enables your business website to drive organic crowds to your website. The more time your website visitors spend on-site, higher the chance they get converted as your actual customer.

Guest posting for more popular junk removal sites will allow you to have a better lead conversion rate. Your target audience will find your website more interesting if you post high-quality and relevant content on high-traffic websites.

Hence, Make sure your business website has relevant and actionable content to engage your visitors. The more customer engagement your website will have, the better lead conversion rate your junk removal website will produce.

 4. Boosts Brand Visibility

 Guest blogging boosts your junk removal business’s brand presence in the market. Brand visibility is something every business owner is trying to improve. When you post quality content on a high-authority site, people will automatically check your business website to gather more information about your products and services.

Writing guest blogs on popular junk removal websites will solidify your brand’s name as an expert in the industry. People will talk about your brand and its services. Your business website will garner the necessary buzz and attention from your target audience and beyond. Google will rank your junk removal sites higher up on the local SERPs.

 5. High-quality Backlinks and Citations

 Guest blogging is the easiest way to acquire high-quality backlinks and references. Guest blogging allows you to showcase your content to your business industry’s much larger target audience.

 Business owners are looking to monetize their websites. Running a website takes time, patience, and a lot of money. So business owners depend on their sales numbers to compensate and make profits. It is only possible if your junk removal website will rank on the first two SERPs of a search engine.

Backlinks or references can boost your current local rankings on a SERP. The more backlinks and references your junk removal website will have from high-traffic sites, the better SERP rankings it will have.

 6. Business Expansion

If you are a popular junk removal website, then guest posting will expand your business to places. Business owners are finding it hard to move their businesses to different cities due to lack of popularity and fear of failure.

Guest posting on high-traffic sites will popularize your junk removal business website. The more people you will reach, the easier it will be to expand your business. Guest posting will boost your local ranking and reputation.

Higher local SERP rankings and market reputation will make it a walk in the park for you to move your business to places. Hence, make sure to produce high-quality and industry-relevant content for your guest blogging.

 7. Boosts Social Media Influence of Your Brand

 Guest blogging boosts your social media influence. Social media platforms are powerful yet underutilized tools to promote a business. Guest blogging allows your brand to collaborate with social media influencers to create content.

Social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram have millions of active prospects you can target. Guest blogging allows you to share quality backlinks through collaborations or direct messages. Social media influencers can skyrocket your brand value and sales in no time.

Hence, it is vital to acquire high-quality backlinks from high-authority junk removal websites. It will enable you to use social media platforms to their potential as marketing tools for your business website.

The post Importance of Guest Posting for Junk Removal Sites appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post Importance of Guest Posting for Junk Removal Sites appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

There are certain mistakes that business owners make with their Google My Business profile. These mistakes can often lead to loss of leads, customers, and sometimes, even the GMB profile itself.

Mistakes such as closed business, wrong information, and unanswered reviews can prove to be too costly for your Google My Business Profile as it badly affects businesses.

In this article, I’ve identified seven common mistakes that business owners make with their Google My Business Profile. Read on to find out to avoid making these same mistakes.

1. Closed Businesses

Often, it is common to see closed businesses unmarked as ‘closed’. If your business shuts down, endeavor to mark that business as permanently closed especially if it existed online. Although you may no longer need the listing, the inability to mark your closed business as permanently closed could result in terrible user experiences.

For example, if you often buy groceries from a store in Kansas City and you get there one day to find out they’ve shut down without notice, you would be upset. Firstly because you wasted your time, and also because you would be disappointed at the thought of being unable to make your purchase at that time.

The same goes for your online business. If a potential client tries to visit you and discovers that you are closed, they will likely become upset about wasting their time.

When your business is closed, try as much as possible to make it known in your Google My Business Listing Profile. It presents your business as trustworthy and has the interests of potential clients at heart.

2. Wrong Information

Wrong information displayed online about your business is worse than having no information at all. Having a situation whereby your working hours are not updated and customers arrive at your location only to discover that you have closed will get them upset.

For instance, I once had to go to a logistics company to pick up a delivery package only to get there and discover that they were closed. I checked for their working hours and I realized that they were closed when they were supposed to be open. I was very upset because I had to go back the following day to get my package.

I told the sender not to make use of their services again and recommended their competitors. I also gave them a negative review online.

It is important to input any slight business change that might be relevant to your customers into your Google My Business profile, even if you moved about an inch away from your former location.

3. Inability To Include Photos

It is a common sight to see that photos are neglected on Google My Business profiles. Some businesses in Kansas City only include the street view while others sometimes include one or two pictures that were posted by a well-meaning customer. This is overly not recommended for your Google My Business profile because apart from presenting your profile as unattended, it can lead Google to pull in a picture from the wrong news article or even Facebook page.

It is recommended that you use about four to seven exterior photos without staff and another four to seven interior photos with the staff.

Pictures with people in them always look better for business than empty streets and storefronts or lobbies. It also gives your customer the feeling of comfort and transparency.

Utilize photos, show off the traits that make your business stand out from other businesses, and allow people to know that you have real people working at your business place. Take photos at different angles and different times of the day to see the one you prefer the most. You can also ask for the contribution of your staff members and friends to help you pick out the best ones.

Finally, if you want the best photos, hire a professional in Kansas City.

4. Unanswered Reviews

This is one major area that business owners neglect the most. It is important to reply to your business reviews, be it positive or negative. Answering reviews leads to customer engagement.

A research carried out by Bain and Company showed that engaged customers spend between 20% and 40% more than other customers.

Not replying to their reviews shows potential customers that you do not care about them but only about money. Always reply to all your reviews and if it is negative, ensure to ask how you can improve or help them.

5. Unclaimed Listings

Failure to claim your Google My Business Profile Listing will lead to skepticism of your ability to manage that profile. You will have access to suggest edits on your phone number, address, and website URL. You might even be able to upload photos but only from a customer and not you as the business owner.

Unclaimed listings will also prevent you from replying to customer reviews and prevent you from creating google posts. A user will also be able to suggest an edit to your profile and say that the business does not exist which might make Google delete your listing.

Other companies might also claim your listing by editing your information and inputting theirs and Google will not be able to inform you of any change. This can damage your business.

To claim your Google My Business profile listing easily, go to the knowledge panel and click on ‘own this business and follow the steps you see.

6. Wrong Map Pins

This feature is often misused. Sometimes, map pins end up in the middle of a parking lot or at the end of a field, this discourages potential customers. People want to be directed to the right spot and if they are unable to discover your location, they can assume that your business doesn’t exist and go somewhere else.

7. Wrong Location

Google now allows GMB profile users to edit their location features. To ascertain that your GMB profile shows the correct location, simply perform a Google search. You can also inform customers of your exact and specific location like a grocery shop in Kansas City to make it easy for them to locate you.

Finally,

You need to conduct an audit on your listing if you have Google My Business. Look out for any of the issues discussed above that might be affecting your business and make corrections.

These key ingredients will determine how your business functions and if your customers are happy to patronize you. It can also help you boost sales if you carry out proper procedures.

The post 7 Common Mistakes People Do With Their Google My Business Profile appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

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Local Search Engine Optimization is the strategy used in boosting your business’s presence in local search to draw in additional clients.

Lots of guides explain how to perform local SEO from the beginning to the end on your website. But these guides can sometimes prove to be tasking since SEO is intricate itself.

So, in this article, I’ll keep things simple and show you eight tips to improve your local SEO rankings in Kansas City. In summary, they include:

• Optimize local landing pages
• Conduct local keyword research
• Obtain local citations and links
• Reclaim lost links
• Keep your site healthy
• Get reviews
• Claim your Google Business Profile
• Feature on local list posts

1. Claim Your Google Business Profile

This is for business owners who have unclaimed Google Business Profile. This is local listing information about your business that is available online. These steps should help you;

• Go to Google My Business
• On the Google My Business page, click on “Manage now”.
• Then log in to your “Google Account”.
• Once you’ve logged in, search for the name of your business.

Results will pop up, do ensure that you choose the correct business. If your business does not show up when you search for your business name, click on the option to add your business and obey the instructions.

• Once chosen, click on “Manage now”.

Note: When you search for your business name, you might be asked to review your business and confirm before you manage.

What Optimizations Should You Make After Claiming Your Google Business Profile?

After claiming your Google Business Profile in Kansas City, here are five important optimizations you should make to improve your local SEO;

● Choose The Right Business Type

Google separates businesses into service-area, storefront, and hybrid businesses.

If you run a business that serves customers at the business address only, let’s take for example; a salon, ensure to set only your address and leave the service area empty.  If you run a business that is into home delivery services, ensure you clear the address and set your service areas instead. If your business serves both ensure you add both.

● Add Your Website

You must add your business’s website address on your Google Business Profile. This will help provide customers and clients with more information on what they need to know about your business.

● Add Your Business Hours

It is always important to list your accurate business hours to avoid confusing your customers.  Also, remember to include holidays so that customers can know if you open during the holiday periods.

● Choose The Category That’s Right For Your Business

You have lots of business category options. Some of them are similar, however, take your time to go through the options and choose the one that fits your business the most.

● Add Photos

According to Google, businesses with photos have an increased number of requests by about 42% and more website clicks by about 35%. Do make sure to add photos of your business as they help improve your local SEO.

2. Optimize Local Landing Pages

If you find out that people often look online for the particular product or service you offer, you need to develop specific landing pages for them.

This makes it easier for customers to see your products and services and also improves your Local SEO ranking.

When optimizing landing pages, include only the keywords that matter to searchers and avoid keyword stuffing. Also, include any important information about the services you offer on your landing pages.

3. Reclaim Lost Links

One major known Google ranking factor is ‘backlinks’, but they can prove very difficult to build.

You can perform this action by reclaiming the links to the pages on your site that are no longer in existence.

You can do that by following these steps;

• Fill in your domain in Site Explorer
• Click on the Best by links report
• Include a “404 not found” HTTP filter
• You can then redirect those URLs to their new locations.

4. Get Featured On Local Lists Posts

No matter how obscure a product or service is, you can get “best of” lists for it.

It is important for your business to get featured on lists like this because they also get you backlinks. Backlinks also help you rank higher in Google.

5. Perform Local Keyword Research

You should understand how local customers search for the services your business offers. If you understand your customers better, then you are more likely to understand how this is done. It is however still crucial to perform keyword research so that you can expand your scope and reach.

6. Get Local Citations And Links

Local citations are statements about your address, business name, and phone number online. In a study carried out by Moz in 2018, local citations were selected as the fifth most significant factor for local queries.

Although business owners see them as less important, they are still worth getting because not only do they help people find your business, they also help you rank.

7. Keep Your Site Healthy

An unhealthy site can result in lots of SEO issues. Google’s inability to find, understand, crawl, and index your content will give you lots of problems.

Ensure your site is healthy. There are lots of online tools available for you to perform this task.

8. Get Reviews

According to Bright Local’s study carried out in 2020, reviews are said to be the second most important map ranking factor. Google also says that “high-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your visibility.”

This can increase the likelihood of a customer leaving a review, one of such ways is to provide them with satisfactory services.

In Essence

The most important aspect of local SEO is acknowledging, optimizing, and attracting positive reviews for your Google Business Profile. This will help you gain more exposure from Google’s search results. To rank higher in Google’s organic results in Kansas City, you need to focus more on traditional SEO which involves all that has been discussed earlier on in this article.

The post 8 Tips to Improve Local Rankings Using Local SEO appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

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In this article, you will see the reason why local SEO is important for small business owners and why new marketing strategies like local SEO have taken over the market, reducing the need for business owners to keep using the defunct and traditional style of marketing.

Is Local SEO Important For Small Businesses?

Yes! Local SEO in Kansas City is important for small businesses because it helps small business owners to create user-friendly, fast, and robust websites that are responsive and easily navigated on mobile, and can also rank higher on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), which will, in turn, bring potential customers that are likely to purchase to their website.

For example, when you open Google Chrome on your phone and type “best jewelry shop” into the search bar, what do you see?

The results are not necessarily the best jewelry shops in the world but are most likely local jewelry shops in your city or locality that are close to where you are at the moment. That’s the power and benefits of local SEO.

How Can Small Businesses Improve Using Local SEO?

You can improve your business using local SEO by:

1. Setting Up Google My Business Profile

You can submit your business information to Google Maps and Google Search by creating a Google My Business profile. In addition to that, having a Google My Business profile enables you to be in touch with customers through Google Posts, make updates about your working hours, and even monitor reviews on Google.

2. Listing the Business in Online Local Directories

You can set up local business listings in major online business directories and search engines like Bing Places, Google My Business, Facebook, etc, to make it easier for search engines to note that your business data is correct and that your business is legal.

Note: Keep your business data consistent and accurate across all platforms to avoid being penalized by Google.

3. Being Consistent With Responding to Reviews

Creating time to respond to online reviews will show your customers that you care about them and it can be a good signal for ranking in local search. Even though getting more reviews may take time and effort, be ready to respond to every one of them once they start coming, regardless of being positive or negative.

4. Creating Consistent and Accurate Local Citations

Local citations like a local business listing are places where your business details like address, name, and phone number are stated online. Ensure that your business information is accurate and used consistently no matter where you are adding them on the web because it will help search engines to verify and trust your data.

Importance of Local SEO For Small Business Owners

Almost half of all queries done on Google today are local searches, and when a searcher performs a normal daily search, there’s a higher probability that Google will show nearby local businesses.

What is the importance of that to small businesses? Well, according to data from Google, from 2017 to 2019, the searches that included the phrase “near me” increased by more than 800%. In a bid to meet the needs of searchers, Google began to show results on search result pages according to the locality and geography of the searcher.

This means that if your business or office is situated close to where a user is doing a search, then your business is more likely to be found on the first page of search results.

In addition to improved visibility on SERPs, here are other things that local SEO can do for your business:

1. Bring Your Business Closer to Local Customers

More than 73% of people who search online for a business visit a store within their location. So, if your business always shows up in Google maps or local search results, then your chances of making new sales and getting recurring customers are high.

2. Bring More Quality Website Traffic

Local search can help to block searchers who might not contact you or make a purchase after searching. It is not because search engines are intentionally blocking businesses from potential clients, but because they want to show relevant results to these searchers based on their intent and geography.

So, someone who is 60 miles away from your business location might not see your shop website show up in search, but someone who’s a mile away will, because he’s within your locality and is more likely to walk into your shop to make a purchase or use your services.

3. Reach Potential Customers Who are Ready to Make a Purchase

According to data from Google, 80% of local searches done with a smartphone end with the searcher making a purchase or paying for a service. This is because local SEO brings relevant businesses to the front of potential customers at the exact time they are searching, making them more likely to buy or even seek additional information.

4. Bring Cost-Efficient Marketing Option

Even though it takes time and effort to manage business data submitted to online directories, you can use free tools like ‘Facebook’ and ‘Google My Business’ to set up local business listings throughout the web, which makes local SEO in Kansas City a preferable option for online advertisements.

Final Words

Utilize local SEO services in Kansas City, by using them to boost and improve your business before your competitors catch up.

If you don’t know how to make use of local SEO, there are a lot of articles about that online where you can get knowledge from, or you can hire a local SEO agency in Kansas City with industry insight and expertise to evaluate your site, analyze your company goals and local online presence, and then develop a strategy that you can use to generate leads and increase sales locally.

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Are you a local business owner in Kansas City who wants to ensure that his business website ranks on Google for its search keyword? If your answer to this question is yes, then this article is for you.

Let’s look at the first point on our list of local SEO checklists that you can use to optimize your website.

1. Create a Google Business Profile

Registering your business on Google by creating a “Google Business” profile does not take time and is one of the easiest tasks you can carry out to increase your business visibility in Google’s local search results.

When you give Google your business address while setting up your profile, they will send a card that contains a PIN which you can use to verify your business address to the address you supplied.

When that is done and after some days, you should see your business address on the Google map that Google displays when searchers in your area search for services similar to yours.

If your business has offices in different locations of Kansas City, remember to register them separately in Google Business as well (you can bulk upload them if the office locations are many).

Note: You must supply all the necessary information that Google requires when setting up your Google Business profile including opening hours, services, business category, products, etc. The more information Google has about your business, the more likely you are to rank on the first page of local search results.

Also, when entering your business information, Google will give you a list completion score. Endeavor to get the score up to 100% to get the full benefits.

2. Use the Right Keywords For Your Products and Services

It’s important to take note of the products and services’ descriptions on your website and ensure that it’s similar to or exactly what searchers are searching for in your locality.

For example, there’s no need for you to keep referring to ‘bikes’ on your website when local searchers are searching for ‘motorcycles’ in Kansas City.

To avoid making these errors, use a keyword research tool like SEMrush to find out the most searched phrases for businesses like yours, and also how difficult it is to rank them locally.

This data can help you to identify the particular keyword which is a phrase that stands a chance of doing well for you in search results while describing your services as well. Once you get this phrase, you can use it to optimize your website content.

3. Optimize Your Website For Mobile

The majority of searches done on search engines now are done with mobile devices, and according to data from Hubspot, “61% of people who search with mobile are likely to contact a local business if their site is mobile-friendly.”

Also, Google ranks websites that do well on mobile too. If your site is not optimized for mobile, you might lose traffic when it comes to local SEO. So, ensure that your site is responsive on smartphones and loads swiftly on mobile devices.

To check this, you can run your website on “Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool” or use “Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tool” to check your site’s performance on mobile devices.

4. Attach Your Location in Strategic Areas On Your Site

You should ensure that your website’s home page and other vital pages that contain information about your product or service reference your business office location.

You can do this in four strategic places:

1. Title tag
2. Headings
3. Body copy
4. Meta description
5. Relevant places in the URL.

It’s essential to note that each of these pages should have a specific copy on it because Google hates duplicate content.

5. Create Quality Content

Websites that contain informative and well-researched articles on topics that searchers are interested in always do well in search results, because the articles are always rich in keywords, making them match with varieties of other search queries.

Also, when you have quality content on your website, other website owners will create backlinks to it which will improve its ranking on search results.

6. Get Online Reviews

It’s crucial to encourage your customers to leave a review about your product or service. “Google Place IDs” is a great tool that you can use to direct your satisfied customers to a page where they can write a review.

These reviews will help to improve your ranking and increase the possibility of potential customers visiting your business location. Also, the stars that will appear when a customer writes a review will help your business to stand out on Google’s map results.

7. Use Backlinks

Backlinks (links from other websites to yours) that include your location in anchor text can help improve your website’s visibility in search results. This is because Google sees them as ‘votes’ for your website, and usually rewards sites that have other sites linking to them by ranking them higher in search results.

8. Submit Your Website to Local Directories

Submitting your website to quality local directories can greatly improve your site rank in search results. One of the benefits of doing this is that when Google is done indexing the directory entries and it turns out that the directory is highly valued, it may push the directory entry to a high position in search.

This transcends to getting maximum visibility for your local business through search results from other sites even when you are struggling to rank a particular URL on your website.

Note: Endeavor to use consistent contact details when submitting your business contact details to online directories because search engines always look for consistent NAP citations (name, address, and phone number), and when it notices different contact information, it will reduce your visibility in search results.

9. Get Local Online Coverage

Going to local news sites to get coverage for your content or business is also a way to improve your visibility in search results because many news sites can provide a backlink that will bring more traffic to your site.

10. Use Schema’s Geographic Mark-up Code

Adding schema’s (a collaboration between Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex) code to your website will allow you to provide these search engines with the information they need to display more information about your website and understand your web content better, so they can provide a relevant search result.

In Summary

All the points listed in this checklist can greatly improve your website ranking on the search results page when implemented well and correctly. Use them on your local business website in Kansas City to generate leads that can improve your business and increase sales.

The post 10-Point Local SEO Checklist to Optimize Your Website appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

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Optimizing your Google My Business profile in Kansas City is one major way to get increased success and influence in your local market. To put it simply, every business needs a Google My Business listing. This gives a great deal of information to local consumers and Google, offering your business a great deal of local search presence in Kansas City.

When creating your Google My Business Profile, the details you provide in your Google My Business profile are utilized in several ways by the search engine, from crowding the highly noticeable knowledge panel which emerges on the right side of the search results and fills out the local pack to crowding Google Maps, providing voice search results and aiding with Google app search results.

Optimizing your Google My Business Profile is very important. There are various techniques you can utilize to enable your Google My Business profile to get more leads. Below are eight strategies;

1. Ensure The NAP On Your Google My Business Profile Is Correct.

NAP is an acronym for the Name, Address, and Phone number for your business, getting these details right is crucial to optimizing your Google My Business Profile in Kansas City.

This might come across as trivial but your business could have changed over time, moved from place to place resulting in an address change, you might have lost the previous contact details which led you to get a new one, you might have even had to change your business name for one reason or the other.

Whatever the case might be, you need to ensure that all your citations for your online business are uniform with the ones you include as part of your Google My Business Profile.

Inconsistency with these details would portray your business in a bad light to your customers and prospective clients, making your business appear unattended to.

2. Ensure You Choose The Right Category And Subcategory For Your Google My Business Profile

The category and subcategory of your Google My Business profile is an important part of Search Engine Optimization and goes a long way in affecting how many leads your business gets, so you must get it right.

For instance, if you sell women’s clothing, you might choose ‘women’s clothing store’ as your category so that anyone looking for women’s clothing can discover your business in local searches.

The subcategory is equally important especially if your business sells more than one good or offers more than one kind of service. For example, if you have a women’s clothing store but also sell children’s clothing, “women’s clothing” will be your category, while “children’s clothing” will be your subcategory.

Choosing the correct category and subcategory often helps you in outranking your competitors.

3. Make Sure Your Business Description Is Compelling

Google allows you a seven hundred and fifty character space to describe your business, so you need to utilize it properly.

When writing the description for your profile, avoid including any form of a promotional statement as Google rules against that. However, try your best to inform people about your products and services, ensure you make them see what’s unique about you, about what you do, and about what you sell, the goods you offer, or the services you render.

Including a few details about your mission and business history, is also a good idea.

A compelling description will not only captivate your customers but will also bring in more leads for your business.

4. Use Photos And Pictures

Google allows lots of options to include photos in your profile.

You can choose whichever photos to use, either interior or exterior shots of your business, including 360-degree views. The photos you choose are very crucial for your Google My Business Profile because strong images are known to act as a spotlight for people.

According to Google, “businesses with photos receive forty-two percent more requests for driving directions to their locations from Google users, and thirty-five percent more clicks to their websites than businesses whose profiles lack photos.”

Nonetheless, do not overcrowd your profile with photos and images. Standard practice is about three images each of your interior, your exterior, your team, and the products you sell, or the services you offer.

5. Monitor Your Reviews And Respond To Them.

The reviews that customers see on your page are very important. Customers always want to go through your reviews before purchasing any goods or services and they trust these reviews sometimes even better than word of mouth from friends and family.

Do not wait for customers to write reviews, rather, be proactive about requesting for them especially if you are convinced that you’ve satisfied a customer and they are happy with your product or service.

You also need to monitor and respond to these reviews on time, for example, you can put in place a policy for thanking the customers who leave positive reviews and asking those who leave negative reviews how you can help them.

6. Fill Out Your Products And Services

One of the most visible ways to gain more leads is through the products section.

Even if your business only offers services and doesn’t sell products, you will still need to fill this out because of its visibility.

Google helps in ranging your product in a carousel-like design which will make the page more attractive and eye-catching.

You are also able to categorize your page, so use it to your own advantage.

7. Publish Posts Regularly.

This does two things; feeds the important keywords and phrases, drives up engagement.  Posts published within your GMB profile pages are essential mini blogs that give consumers and customers vital information about your business.

Good posts will increase your SEO rankings, improve your visibility, and drive more leads.

8. Ask And Answer Questions

Google offers this feature for GMB profiles. Answering customer questions may be the motivation for a customer deciding if they want to purchase your goods or service. However, you need to optimize this late because not only can anybody ask a question, anybody can also answer. This means if you’re inattentive, your customers might get the wrong answers or inaccurate information from somewhere elsewhere who might know nothing about business.

To avoid this, ensure you check this section of your GMB profile from time to time and answer the questions asked.

The post 8 Tips to Optimize Your Google My Business Profile To Get More Leads appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

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Have you always wanted to know the benefits of local SEO services to your business? Or have you always wondered what businesses who optimized their site for local SEO stand to benefit? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then this article is for you.

In this article, you will see what local SEO is, and the numerous benefits it can bring to your business.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a type of SEO that aids the growth of small and medium-sized businesses. It is a technique that can help your business to rank higher on search engines.

A local SEO campaign can help you target the audience in your locality and turn them into potential customers.

For example: if you own a car repair shop and a website tailored for your business, whenever people in your locality search for “car repair shops near me”, your business site will show up in the search results page if it is optimized for local SEO.

Benefits of Local SEO

Some of the advantages of local SEO to your business are as follows:

1. Improved Website Traffic

Every business thrives on traffic including the local ones. Whether you run a big firm or a car repair shop down the street, you will get leads consistently if your business has a site that is optimized for local SEO.

Optimizing your website for local SEO in Kansas City will keep your focus on local potential customers who will visit your website and also come physically to your business office to meet you. Targeting people within your locality will redirect traffic to your website which will lead to an increase in sales.

2. Good Conversion Rates

One of the numerous benefits of optimizing your website for local SEO is that it will improve your conversion rate and generate sales for you by driving potential customers to your site.

Posing as an expert in your locality when local customers are ready to buy can greatly improve the chances of your website becoming where they always go whenever they want to patronize the services you render or buy a product you sell.

3. Less Cost for Ads

Since local businesses target a local audience, they use more advertising channels like local TV advertisements, banners, etc, which costs a lot of money. But you can save more just by optimizing your website for local SEO.

It is a known fact that over 80% of searchers who use smartphones select the ‘near me’ option when looking for a particular business or service. So you can reduce your ad costs just by making sure that your site is optimized for local SEO.

4. Consistent Growth in Business

Continuous business growth is one of the benefits of optimizing your site for local SEO because it can help you to generate traffic to your website while also improving search engine results and increasing sales as well.

More potential customers transcend to more sales which will result in tremendous business growth. If you want to improve your business and generate more traffic and sales, spending time and money on local SEO initiatives is a good place to start.

5. Website Optimization for Mobile

Optimizing your site to be mobile-friendly is one of the ways you can increase sales and generate traffic to your site because mobile devices are easier to use and it is used for the majority of online purchases.

With that in mind, it is essential for business owners to optimize their websites to become mobile-friendly and responsive, even to tablets as well. The main aim of site optimization is to ease its navigation process, and once a user is satisfied with your site’s performance, then he is more likely to take an action by purchasing your product or paying for your services.

6. Gain More Online Local Reviews

According to research done by Bright Local, 87% of searchers check online reviews before they patronize local businesses either by purchasing a product or paying for a service. If you offer a quality service or sell a quality product, your customers will love to give good reviews which will help to bring more clients.

But it cannot be done if your business website is not optimized for local SEO. By optimizing your site for local SEO, you can get more honest customer reviews, and responding to customers’ feedback provided by them will help your website rank higher on search engines because Google views it as a sign of a good customer experience.

7. Stay Ahead of Competitors

If you have local SEO in Kansas City, you will stay ahead of your competitors who still rely on traditional methods. For example, various businesses are selling the same product, but one makes use of local SEO while others don’t. Without a doubt, searchers will always go for the business that ranks higher on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP)  because buyers would always love to explore the product they are buying fully.

And since search engines are where they do all their search, they will pick the product that appears first on the search result page without any guess. Therefore, implementing local SEO on your business website will give you a long-term edge that will make you stand out and stay ahead of your business competitors.

8. Lasting Rankings

One advantage of local SEO over old marketing is that you will get a search engine ranking that will last longer instead of the conventional traditional marketing strategy where you waste a lot of money weekly trying to increase sales.

Just optimize your business website for local SEO once and keep tweaking the keywords and dynamic parts at intervals and you will keep reaping the numerous benefits continuously.

9. Improved Visibility

When you bring your business online and optimize your business website for local SEO, it will show up once a searcher within your locality enters a keyword related to your business in the Google search button to search. This will greatly improve your visibility in local search results and Google maps.

Conclusion

Regardless of your type of business, local SEO can help your business to gain more visibility in your locality. As a business owner, you can experiment and engage your potential clients by providing them with quality offers and taking full advantage of their reviews to improve and generate traffic and sales for your business.

Go ahead and optimize your site with local SEO tips in Kansas City so you can enjoy all the above-listed benefits.

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Been Promised by Your SEO Company of Blue Skies and Rainbows Only to Get a Rank Report showing the First Position for “(Your Business Category) that is licensed & insured and gives their services away for FREE”

I know. That was a little bit of an over exaggeration, but I used to work for a large Media/SEO company and they would focus on “long tailed” keywords that nobody EVER searched for or it is was a searched term it was the LEAST PROFITABLE service or product they provided.  To make it worse, as I’m sure you may have noticed, all the local search engines started taking over in the results to give the “little guys” less of an opportunity to show up on the “1st Page of Google.”  Everybody and their dog will call and promise the “1st page of Google” but they never accomplish it or they put you on YP.com, SuperPages.com, Thumbtack, Porch or some other “get me the lowest” price search engine.  As I’m sure you are aware Google is always changing up their algorithm for organic rankings, and it has made it harder and more expensive for small businesses (as well as SEO’s) to show up when people are doing the most profitable searches.

Why Not Focus on Google My Business as Much as We Do Facebook?

That is a question we asked ourselves as the cost for Facebook advertising continued to rise in terms of Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS). I’m not saying you shouldn’t be spending money on Facebook.  What I am saying is you should be smart with your advertising dollars on Facebook and look at what you can do in addition to any advertising you are doing that will get you higher ROAS. Ok, back to the topic question.  As I had noticed for years that small businesses had a better opportunity to show up at the top of Google in the organic “maps” section, I wanted to make this my focus as helping small and medium size business owners is something I care highly about.  From there my team and I started documenting what we were doing in the different profiles and monitoring results.  I also noticed there were times that I couldn’t understand why a certain business what showing up and another wasn’t.  Have you seen and thought that to yourself as well?  Anyway, I’m fortunate to be connected to some of the best SEO‘s in the world in some MasterMind groups, and they alway had some tricks or things they would do to make those types of listings show up without anyone noticing or understanding.

Having a Hard Time Figuring Out How To Get Your GMB page to Rank for Your Main Category?

If the answer to this question is YES, then you have come to the right place.  We will GUARANTEE your position for your main category in the city you are located or we will REFUND 100% of what you paid. The pricing varies based on the population of your city, not your category.  The amount of money a Google My Business profile for the top local businesses ranked in the top 3 organically (in the maps) is a significant percentage of their business revenue as 78% of Mobile Searches result in an offline purchase.  Furthermore 72% of Consumers who perform a local search visit a store within 5 miles of their physical location.  Based on the percentage of people that “Google it,” why wouldn’t you be focusing on Google My Business.

Get Real Results, and Stop Chasing Traditional Organic Rankings

If you are tired of getting promised Blue Skies and Rainbows, and want to get REAL RESULTS as a local business, focus on Google My Business.  Tie it into all your marketing pieces and make sure to post on it as you post on other social media platforms.

P.S. – If you are a local business serving customers at your location or at theirs, you need to be focusing on Google My Business.  It is Free to set-up and enter the information needed, and manage it as well.  However, there are specific strategies that should be used to help in getting the proper rankings.  Our GMB management software gives business owners and marketing managers insights and guidelines on what they should be doing to help increase the visibility of the page.  It also gives you more useful data that what is given in your GMB profile in terms of seeing how you are improving or digressing over a specific period of time.  You can sign up with a 30 Day FREE trial here.

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The current COVID-19 pandemic has everyone paying more attention to the air they breathe. Basic practices like washing hands, wearing masks and sanitizing surfaces are all important, but they don’t do anything about the air flowing through small businesses. Bipolar ionizers are like hand sanitizer for the air since they provide protection against airborne particles such as viruses and mold spores. These devices can thus help your customers breathe a little easier.

How it Works

Each person generates about 100,000 airborne particles per cubic foot, even when they aren’t moving. This figure increases exponentially when they begin moving, whether it’s to sit down, stand up or walk. Worse still is the number of airborne particles generated by rubbing two surfaces together, especially sweeping.

As a result, each cubic foot of indoor air typically contains more than 18 million particles. Many of these particles are much smaller than a grain of sand, including dust, skin scales and vapor droplets. These particles may contain pathogens like bacteria and viruses, which can cause disease.

Bipolar ionizers create free-floating ions and release them into the air. They have a positive or negative electrical charge that converts the electrically neutral hydroxide ion into charged hydroxyl ions. These ions are highly reactive and bond to the free hydrogen pathogens need to survive, thus rendering them inactive. Bipolar ionizers have already been clinically proven to be effective against the highly contagious norovirus, and research is now underway to investigate their effect against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

Research

Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), industry leader in Indoor Air Quality, and Aviation Clean Air jointly conducted a laboratory study on the effect of bipolar ionizers against the 229E strain of SARS-CoV-2. This study was completed in March 2020, and the results were published in June. It’s the first of its kind, but researchers will be conducting similar studies in the near future.

The test simulated the ionization conditions of a commercial aircraft’s fuselage. It showed that 84.2 percent of the viruses were inactive after 10 minutes, based on viral titrations. 92.6 percent of the viruses were inactive after 15 minutes, and 99.4 percent were inactive after 30 minutes.

Benefits

Bipolar ionizers provide a strong defense against airborne contaminants, including pathogens and allergens. Once the ions attach themselves to a particle with the opposite polarity, they also attract other nearby particles with that polarity. This collection of particles continues to grow until it’s large enough to be blocked by the building’s HVAC filters. As a result, particles are filtered from the air that would otherwise be too small, thus reducing the concentration of airborne contaminants.

Bipolar ionizers outperform other systems such as filters, photocatalytic oxidation and ultraviolet (UV) systems for all categories of contaminants. Bipolar ionizers typically have no moving parts, so they’re completely maintenance free. They’re also self-cleaning in most cases.

Summary

COVID-19 means that we can’t be too careful about the air we breathe, especially if you’re trying to keep your small business going. This ongoing crisis should serve as a wake-up call about the importance of maintaining indoor air quality. While we may have viewed this practice as a luxury in the past, we now need to treat it as essential.

Sources

https://blog.sfgate.com/storystudio/2020/06/18/ionizer-is-like-hand-sanitizer-for-the-air-in-homes-and-small-businesses/

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200610005784/en/Global-Plasma-Solutions-Virtually-Eliminates-Static-SARS-CoV-2

https://www.plasma-air.com/

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New Google My Business Reporting from G Map Pros

Do you ever get into your Google My Business account and when looking at the Insights say, “I wish I knew what this meant for my business.”?  At G Map Pros we give you analytics and data that comes from the Google My Business API, but we deliver it to you in a way that you can see measurable analytics to know what it can actually mean to your business. What this video as Kyle goes through the normal reporting you get in your Google My Business account vs what you see with G Map Pros reporting.

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If you can measure something than you can improve on it, right? This applies to your web page SEO tracking as well. There are several aspects of SEO that you can measure and by doing so will help you improve when trying to meet your goals.

Goals are important in themselves. Whether it is your goals or your clients business goals, it is an important element to establish for success. When building for a client they could have different goals than other clients. Make sure you understand these goals so you can properly assess your SEO tracking approach.

Establishing Client Goals for SEO Tracking

When working with a business it is important to create and understand the goals of the business client. Some good questions to ask your client are:

• Can you give us a brief history of your company?
• What is the monetary value of a newly qualified lead?
• What are your most profitable products/services (in order)?

Make sure that when establishing these goals that they are measurable. This is why we ask about the monetary value of a lead and the most profitable products. It is also important to be specific in your goals. Broad and vague goals are never followed through like a specific goal. For example, instead of having a goal stating “I want new followers,” be more specific like “I want 500 new followers in the next 30 days.”

Engagement Metrics

There are several elements that you should be measuring when understanding data while SEO tracking. It is important to understand these elements and how viewers engage within your pages.

Your conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of unique visits. This can be applied to anything from a sale to an email set up. Knowing this information can help in defining your return on investment (ROI).

The time on page element describes how long a viewer spends on your page. This can be effective in judging how your content rates to viewers. For example, if you have a 1000-2000 word article and the viewers only stay on the page for 6 seconds then they’re clearly not absorbing all of the information you have to offer. But at the same time there are pages like the Contact page that wouldn’t expect a long time on page.

Pages per visit is an important metric if your goal is to have your visitor see multiple pages on your site before leaving. If your page is independent and doesn’t relate to other pages than its not bad to have a low metric.

Bounce rate is when a visitor clicks on your page but leaves immediately without actually looking at any of your content. This metric isn’t used alone to determine your page success. If you had a brick and mortar business the visitor may have just been searching for an address or call number so they could visit in person.

A better metric to use to analyze your site is Scroll Depth. This shows how far the visitor actually scrolled down your page. Did they reach the important content or leave before reading it. This is effective in judging the lay out or success of your page.

Analyzing Traffic

Ranking is important for SEO but its not enough to be at the top of a Google SERP. Your business still needs to get clicks and have organic traffic to your page. Google Analytics is a great tool You can use to use information for SEO tracking.

Google Analytics allows you to observe and track an insane amount of data. If you don’t know what you’re looking for it could be a bit overwhelming. We will cover some of the more basic and important data types.

Organic traffic to your page can be sorted by channel. By isolating the traffic channels you can tell where the traffic is coming from or explain a rapid fluctuation. For example, if you run an add campaign and the campaign ends, you may get a drastic change to the amount of traffic to your site.

You can also break down your site and analyze the performance of each page as opposed to just an overall site statistic.

Your Click-Through-Rate shows the percentage of people that clicked onto your page from a search result. This can be effective in determine the performance of your title information and meta descriptions.

Evaluating SEO Tracking Opportunities

Besides Google Analytics, there are many other useful tracking tools available out there. By Understanding this data and how your site is structured you can begin to use that data to find some good SEO tracking opportunities.

With Google Search Console you can detect website errors, opportunities and user engagement. It is a free tool so visit the link to sign up.

Lighthouse Audit is another Google tool. You can use Lighthouse to measure web performance and accessibility.This will help you understand how a site is performing and what kind of updates you can make to your site.

By Evaluating your different pages of your site you can improve the overall perceived quality of your site. This could mean updating or revamping an old page to be more up-to-date or relevant or evening removing old pages that don’t get visits anymore. This would overall help your SEO.

SEO tracking isn’t a one size fits all. Many campaigns you start will be less successful than others. Some won’t be successful at all. But keep at it. Use the knowledge you now have to complete trial and errors until you determine what is successful. Keep an eye out for those trends and utilize tools like Google Analytics.

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In order for us to understand how to get your page visible to viewers we need to understand how search engines work. The biggest piece of the SEO puzzle is figurign out how to get your site seen and show up in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Search engines have 3 primary functions:

1. Crawl- Scour the web for content.
2. Index- Store and organize found content.
3. Rank- Provide the best pieces of content that answer the search query.

Search Engine Crawling

 There are plenty of content sources out on the web. These can be web pages, PDF files, images and videos. The search engine will send out a group of robots, Sometimes called crawlers or spiders, to scour the websites out there for new and updated content.

These crawlers will start with a few pages then branch out by following links on those pages to find URLs to new pages. They create a massive database that is used for when a user starts a search of a specific topic.

Search Engine Indexing

The index is the organization of the massive database that the search engine has developed through crawling. By organizing the data into indexes it cuts down the time it would take to finish a search significantly.

The crawlers keep the database up-to-date to maintain the reliability of the index. There are many factors that come into creating the index, such as design structures and data structures but that is information we do not need to cover.

Search Engine Ranking

After finding the sites with information most relevant to the search query the engine orders the results to be displayed on the SERP. This is known as ranking. Overall, the higher in the SERP the website is ranked, the more relevant it is to the query searched by the user.

Though there are several different search engines out there including Bing, Yahoo and others, the majority of developers focus on Google. Google is used by the vast majority of people when searching for something on the web. This could be web searches, images or even Google Maps searches. More than 90% of searches are made using Google. Even Youtube is a product of Google.

Crawling: Make Sure Search Engines Can Find Your Pages

Ensuring that the search engine crawlers can even find your site is a critical first step of SEO. One way to find out if the crawlers can find your pages is by going to search and using “site:domainname.com”. This will display which of your web pages will even be accessible when crawling.

Some pages can be hidden from the crawler robots and can not be found. There are several reasons this may happen. Some reasons your site can not be found by crawlers are:

• Your site is too new and hasn’t been crawled yet.
• Your site has no external links from other websites.
• Your sites navigation is improperly structured.
• Your site could be penalized by Google for spammy actions.

Sometimes the search engine is unable to find some of your sites important content or URLs. If your site requires a log in to access certain information then the search robot will not be able to access that page.

Some developers rely on a search algorithm and think by adding a search bar that any user would be able to find what they need. This not only hinders the users experience on your web page but also limits the crawlers attempting to navigate your site. If there aren’t links or an easily structures site architecture than the crawlers will not be able to find all of your content.

Indexing: How Search Engines Store Your Pages

Just because your site can now be crawled doesn’t mean it can be indexed. After a crawler finds a page the search engine would open it like a browser would, then searches through the information on the page to figure out where to store the information. The way this information is stored is the index.

Pages are searched and cached in different frequencies based on the popularity of the site and how often the site updates or publishes posts. For example, nytimes.com will be crawled much more frequently then say a local business website for a towing company or restaurant.

Pages can also be removed from an index. Several reasons can cause this to happen. For example, if your site has a noindex meta tag added or if the site requires a password to reach a URL your site could be removed from the index.

Ranking: How Search Engines Rank Your URL

The process of listing search results of a query by most relevant to least relevant is known as ranking. This is how the search engine, like Google, ensures the searcher finds the best information for what they’re searching for.

Search engines use an algorithm to sort the most relevant information to be presented to the user. These algorithms are constantly updated but are to make the search engines more effective in delivering results. Google updates their algorithm every day but the updates are usually tweaks here and there until a larger update is created.

If your site has taken a dive due to an update or you are trying to keep up-to-date on the algorithm you can check out Google’s Quality Guideline or Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

These algorithms are effective now but used to be rudimentary in the past. This caused pages to over spam their sites with keywords or make them bold in order to rank higher on Google. This doesn’t work anymore and is frowned upon. More on keyword use here.

Links and SEO

Backlinks or “inbound links” are links on a page that lead to your website or vice versa. Internal links are links on your page that lead to another one of your pages. The more natural backlinks your site has from other websites acts like “word of mouth” and creates rapport for your site.

Google has a part of its algorithm called PageRank which uses backlinks and internal links to rank the authority and relevance of your site. Bottom line, the more natural backlinks exist to your site the better your site will rank.

Content and SEO

Links are very helpful but are meaningless if they lead to an irrelevant or empty URL. Content can be anything from text on a page, images, or videos. The search engine searches the content on your page to determine its relevance to the present search query.

Search engines are also focused on the user and their satisfaction. Because of this the search engine will search for words that are relevant to their search. This includes “alt text” in images and videos or any other content available on the page.

Engagement Metrics: Click Data

Another part of SEO is the actual data of how users engage your site. Some believe high engagement is caused by good SEO and some believe good engagement causes good SEO. It is clear that how your users engage your site will improve your SEO.

Several elements factor into User Engagement:

• Clicks (visits from a search)
• Amount of time the user spends on your page before leaving
• Bounce rate (percentage of visits where users only viewed on page on your site before leaving)
• Pogo-Sticking (clicking on an organic result then quickly bouncing back to the SERP to click on another result)

Since user engagement can make a ranking effect it is important to create your page to attract a user and keep them engaged in your site.

Local Business and SEO

If the user is searching for a local business, some search engines like Google have their own proprietary index for those searches. Google’s feature for these indexes is Google My Business. You can learn more on Google My Business and optimizing your business listing here.

Google uses 3 main factors when utilizing local searches:

• Relevance
• Distance
• Prominence

Relevance is how well the business the user is searching for matches the search query. To make sure your Google My Business listing is relevant in searches make sure your information is filled out completely and accurately.

The distance factor pertains to your geo-distance to the surrounding businesses being searched. Google places emphasis on your location with location services with Google Maps.

Prominence factor is Google wanting to reward businesses in the real world. This includes how the business performs online and offline as well as some other factors.

Now more than ever, search influences are being influenced by real world successes and applications. This could be user reviews or links etc.

Next we are going to focus on Keyword Research.

If you are looking for more information on setting up Google My Business check out Importance of Google My Business by S & S Business Consultants.

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Besides creating quality content, building links is crucial to SEO tracking success. By linking other credible pages and having them link to your pages builds authority with the search engines. For the majority of the time credible pages will link credible pages while spammy pages will link spammy pages.

What are Links?

 Inbound links, or back links, are the reputation of the internet. When another page uses an inbound link directing the reader to one of your web pages they are basically saying, “check out this author, they know what they’re talking about.” It acts almost like a word of mouth and will help build your brand. At the same time by doing this yourself you are also showing your readers that another author could further help their investigation.

Internal links work similarly but direct readers to another page on the same domain, for example, different pages on your website. As long as you use internal links in a natural way and not a spammy way, the search engine will interpret that linked page as important and help your SEO tracking.

Link Profile

 Your pages link profile in an analysis of your inbound links. This includes the number of links you have, the quality of those links and the diversity of those links.

You should always try to maintain a healthy link profile. Some people learn about links and figure out how to manipulate them to try to boost their rankings. This is against Google’s Rules and Regulations and Google can de-index your page. By maintaining organic link follows and developing real readers who are interested will benefit your pages in the long run.

Editorial links are placed by another page that wants to link your page to their page. Earning these links from other users is great for establishing authority on search engines. This is also why its important to create better content than what has already been created.

The source of editorial links also matters to SEO tracking. If the page that is linking to your page is relevant to the same topics of your pages than it would be more beneficial than having an irrelevant site linking your page.

Some Things to Avoid

 Avoid a spammy profile. Filling your content with unnatural links might sound like a good idea to get search engines to boost your rankings but it will actually do the opposite. Google will penalize spammy link profiles.

Avoid purchased links. Though Google cant actually tell if links are purchased or traded they have ways of suspecting purchased links. This includes trading good or services for links.

Link exchanges are allowed but shouldn’t be used in mass amounts. A link exchange is when you share someone else’ link on your page in exchange for them sharing your link on their page. This can be beneficial but if over used, Google will penalize your page.

Building High Quality Back links

 Links should always be organic, build over time and follow the search engines algorithms. Building links can come from many different sources or methods. For example, if you have a partner you consistently work with you can offer to write up a testimonial for them. They can display this testimonial on their page with a back link to your page.

By writing a blog you have an opportunity to create new, unique content on a consistent basis. Blogs can also create discussions and earn links from other blogs. This is one of the few methods recommended by Google.

Creating unique content will assist in building a following for your pages. These organic editorial link opportunities are crucial in success of your SEO. Creating highly detailed, unique content is not an easy task but it is well worth it. Some goals of this content is to elicit strong emotion, be location specific, support something new, or address a timely need or issue.

Creating such a specific piece of content will interest readers. It could make them want to share it with friends or colleagues. These back links will also build trust in the community.

Local Business and Community

 As a local business it is smart to get involved with the community. Building relationships with your local community will help build trust in your brand. This could be holding a competition or giveaway, posting jobs or offering internships, and hosting events or seminars.

Building real world relationships can go a long way in building your own online presence and SEO tracking. You could even figure out ways in the real world to work with another business which you could use to link each other online. For more about the Importance of Google My Business visit our other article by G Map Pros.

Some Tips For Effective Link Building

Keep your content unique and memorable. This creates authenticity to your readers. You also want to be personal and genuine with your content.

Being newsworthy is also a bonus. It could be a simple aspect like offering a giveaway or presenting a new product. This contributes to branding and helps build your presence online.

Final Notes

Spam is a universal issue. Whether its in building back links or using keywords, it is a negative way to effect your pages SEO. Create content that you would want to read, not content that would just effect your SEO.

Next important aspect is tracking and analyzing data pertaining to your pages. Google Analytics is a effective tool in utilizing this data. More in another article.

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The Importance of GMB posts has been covered and now that you have an understanding of keywords and how to find them, it is time to use them. But SEO on web pages is more than just schema and Meta tags. Time to get writing and creating awesome content that actually answers users questions.

Keyword Usage

Lets take those keywords you’ve found and want to use and prepare them for use in a page. A general outline to use when setting up keywords is:

• Group your keywords into similar groups and intent. This way you can create pages for a section of keywords and not a new page for every keyword.
• If you haven’t already, evaluate the SERP data of your keywords. This will help you determine the type of content you need to create. (Are the SERPs image/video heavy? Hows the page formatted? Is it long form or short posts?)
• Ask yourself “how could I contribute uniquely to the keyword to make my content stand out among the current ranked content?”

Also avoid keyword stuffing. Some believe that if you use your keyword excessively that it will help your page rank. While this may have been helpful in the past, Google’s algorithms are much more advanced now. When they crawl your page, the robots want to make sure your content doesn’t sound like it is written by a robot. Make sure you use natural phrases and sentences when using keywords to make sure the page flows naturally to the reader.

Avoid Low Value Tactics

Content should not be created to aide your sites ranking alone. The purpose of content is to add value to the reader and answer questions that they’re searching for.

Avoid posting thin content. Thin content is when you have multiple pages that convey similar information about a topic that could be linked together. For example, if you were selling athletic shoes you might be tempted to create a page for each shoe when it would be better to group them. You could have a page for basketball shoes while having another for baseball cleats. By creating individual pages for each shoe you would be creating thinner, less informative content.

Content you create should also be unique. There is no penalty from Google for copying content but they will filter duplicate content from search results giving precedence to the original or higher valued version. This includes making minor changes to someones content and posting as your own.

Auto-generated content is also frowned upon by search engines. It creates low value content and is usually used to try to increase rankings and does not help users. It is common to see auto generated content and seeing that it is hard to read since its written by a program and not a human.

Higher Value Tactics

The purpose of creating content is to inform users of specific information they are searching for. It isn’t enough to just duplicate or use common information. Make it your goal to create better content than is already out there. With better content, not only will Google reward you in ranking, but it will create much more organic traffic than if it were not better.

Make proper use of your Headers. An H1 header is reserved for the title of your content page. It is important to have a great title that not only grabs readers attention, but utilizes your keywords to make it dominate. Other headers range from H2 to H6. These move down in importance in the article. For example, the topics of your page may use H2 headers while the Conclusion section at the bottom would use an H3 or lower.

Using internal links is another important factor in creating great web page SEO. BY linking your other pages to the current page you help the search engines find all of your web content. Some pages require a navigational menu to pass between pages and may not be as easily accessible to the crawlers. To avoid this make sure to use links directly on the page.

Using too many internal links isn’t always a good idea though. If there are a lot of internal links then they begin competing for SEO equity and can lose value. An easy way to avoid this is to only use links when you mean it and it links to a relevant and important page.

Using Images

Using the right format for images is crucial to image optimization. Image use is the biggest cause of slow web speeds. If your image uses animation it is best to use a GIF format. If you do not need high resolution use a JPG and if you do need high resolution use a PNG format.

Make sure to use Alt text in your images. Alt text uses words to describe an image on your page. Crawlers check your alt text to value to relevance of your image for search results. Still make sure your text reads naturally and isnt spammed with keywords.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are HTML tags that describe the page. Like Titles they are also nested in the head tag. Your meta tag should be between 150-300 characters long. Google’s search engine will cut off your description on the SERP around 155 characters.

Your meta description should also be relevant to the page. You want to make sure you describe the main goal or purpose of the page without giving away too much information that the searcher doesn’t have to click the page.

Conclusion

 Optimizing your web page is crucial to effective SEO but it is still important to maintain relevance. Create awesome content for your readers and establish web page SEO dominance at the same time. Ahead we will learn about Link Building.

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Moving forward in or SEO guide we will discuss keywords. Using keywords is important to both creating great content and satisfying the search engines. When designing your page you want to use SEO keywords strategically to target within your sites content.

Keywords are great for answering questions about your audience. Questions like:

• What are people searching for?
• How many are searching for it?
• In what format do they want that information?

By answering these questions you can gear your keywords more effectively to your audience and find the most effective way to reach them. Once you understand your audience you will be able to strategize your SEO approach.

Asking Questions

Before you can help build a business through SEO you have to learn and understand the business as well as it’s target audience. There are several questions you need to answer when trying to figure out a target audience.

• What types of the business’ product are people searching for?
• Who is searching for these products?
• When are these people searching for these products? (Is there a seasonal fluctuation?)
• How are these people searching for this product? (What words do they use? What questions do they ask? Are they using mobile or desktop?)
• Why are people searching for this product?
• Where are potential customers located? (Locally? Nationally? Internationally?)

This is a planning step that is often left neglected. But by remembering to utilize this step you can make your content much more targeted and effective.

What Terms are People Using When Searching?

Finding Terms or Keywords

You may have your own way of describing something but how are the potential customers searching for that same thing? Are they using technical terms or are they searching using a more natural tone and some slang? Understanding this will make the difference between a successful click or not even being visible.

Starting off you will have some obvious keywords ideas you want to use that describe the product or business you are working with. These words are great starting words but use them as starting words and research from there. Use a SEO keywords search tool and find out how those words and similar words perform on search engines already. Like mentioned earlier, your audience may describe things differently than you would. Also by using a search tool you may find some variations that you hadn’t already thought of.

It is also important to understand search volumes of keywords. Some keywords may have a high search volume which would mean high competition and the opposite for low search volume keywords. The higher the search volume of a keyword the more work would be required to achieve high ranking. If your competition is bigger companies, they usually hold the top 10 spots and could take years to beat their ranks. This also means it may be more effective to target less popular, highly specific keywords called long-tail keywords.

Another mentioning point is websites do not rank for keywords, they’re pages do. So use some variation. You could have some pages that focus on high competition words while others focus on low competition words. By keeping circulation between your pages the visitors can easily transition between your pages and further explore.

Long-Tail SEO Keywords

Besides having high competition on popular keywords, you also have to account for ambiguous intent. Some of these keywords are just so broad that they do not match what a potential customer is actually looking for. That is where long-tail keywords come in. By being more specific you will get less views but those views will have higher potential to convert.

Search Volume Strategy

Make sure you check out what keywords your direct competitors are using. You may have a list of keywords that you would like to use but it may be a better idea to use the ones that they aren’t. The other option is to use the keywords they are using and aim to scoop up their missed opportunities. It all depends on the situation.

Sometimes certain keywords are effected by season. For example, any Christmas themed keywords like “Christmas box” would peak later in the year from October to December. You can utilize this to bring holiday traffic to your SEO.

Then there are regional keywords. Not only do they have different dialects in different regions but they have different locales that you could target.

SEO Searchers Intent

Google bases its ranking on intent of the search and every query has one. There are 5 major categories of intent.

In Informational queries the user is searching for information. This could be a name or fact about somebody or even some historical information to complete a school paper.

Navigational queries are used to find a specific location of where something is located. For example, a search to find the homepage of NFL or even Facebook.

With Transaction queries the searcher is looking to make a purchase. This could be a plane or train ticket and searching for the best ticket to fit the user’s needs.

Using commercial investigation is when the user is comparing products or businesses of their interest. For example, a gamer may be looking fro a new console and would search the differences between a Playstation 4 and an Xbox One.

Finally, Local queries are for finding a local business such as a coffee cafe or restaurant.

Google has closely watched and analyzed the trillions of searches made on its search engine and will display the most common results. But there is also a locale aspect presented in it. For example, if you searched for “flower dress” you may see a shopping carousel of flower dress products but you will also see nearby shopping locations that may provide this product.

SEO Keywords Value

There are many accessible tools available to research the value of a keyword. One of these tools is Google Keyword Planner. Google Keyword Planner is the most common starting place for SEO beginners. It’s one downfall is it lumps keywords together into large keyword search buckets creating restrictions.

Google Trends is another tool that helps find seasonal fluctuations in keywords.

Google Correlate is a tool that allows you to see queries whose frequency follows a similar keyword to your keyword.

Conclusion

Now that you have a basic understanding of keywords it is time to use them and optimize your web pages. SEO is a learning process all the way but following one concept at a time is the way to successful SEO.

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The post SEO Keywords and Research appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Today we are beginning a SEO guide to help business owner understand what SEO is and how it benefits their business. Over the course of the next few posts we will cover a range of topics in this SEO guide including:

• Keyword Research
• How Search Engines work
• Web Page SEO
• Analyzing and Tracking SEO
• Building links

 What Is SEO?

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing both quality and quantity of website traffic. This is beneficial to businesses because by increasing your local search rank in search engines you can appear first in front of more potential customers or clients. The primary results of effective SEO is organic traffic to your site.

SEO is about more than just search engines. By understanding your target market and how they search can greatly improve how your website ranks on your local search engine. Using proper keywords that would reflect how users would search for your business is just one way SEO actually works.

How Do Search Engines Work?

By scouring the web and analyzing billions of pieces of data and content, a search engine does it’s best to deliver results that best reflect your search query. Basically, search engines are machines that help find answers.

There are massive types of content created and published on the web. Some of these include PDF files, Images (png or jpeg), video and actual web pages. Search engines “crawl” through and “index” these contents and this creates “ranking” for your local search engines. We will cover more on these terms here on this SEO guide.

Organic Search Results

 Organic search results come directly from searching on the web, not paid advertising. These results are directly influenced by SEO and how effective a site is optimized.

An example of non-organic results would be an advertised result shown at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These results are from businesses paying to promote their site in specific search results.

Google offers some extra features on SERPs that are still organic. For example, there are Snippets (a promoted organic result that appears in an answer box) and related questions boxes. Though they may look like they’re paid ads they remain organic and influenced by SEO.

Why Is SEO Important?

Over the past couple years, paid advertising and social media advertising have grown to be very effective but search engine results still remain the top generator of online traffic.

One of the benefits of SEO is that when properly set up and ranking is built, your website can generate more traffic over time. Meanwhile, using social media and paid advertising means more funding is needed to consistently pay for these ads and only last while the ad is running.

Proper SEO also has a click through advantage. When a viewer searches on the web they are more inclined to actually click through and read more about the information that they are searching for. Social media and paid advertising has a much lower click through rate as their ads are of opportunity. A viewer might be interested for a second but its not information they were actually searching for.

By properly setting up your website for SEO you can assist the search engines in effectively “indexing” your page and increasing your ranking on SERPs.

Representing Your Local Business

Google has a huge feature on their search engine called Google My Business (GMB). With GMB your business can have its own listing in local search engines that better represent your business. Whether you have a storefront or a service that requires you to travel to your client, you have this amazing option available to your business.

Some guidelines and requirements for using GMB are:

• Your business must contain a physical address, even if its your home address, and you must be able to see or discuss business with customers face-to-face.
• You must accurately represent your company information including your business name, location, contact information, website information and more.

As a respective business owner this shouldn’t be difficult as all of this information should be easily available to you. Clarity and honest representation is also a way to build trust with potential customers.

You do not want to over stuff your GMB listing with false information or keywords that you think would help your SEO. It will not. Do not use PO boxes or false addresses for your business. Finally do not abuse the review system on your GMB listing. Google reviews these Google My Business listings and can flag or remove information that you have posted.

More information on Google My Business check out this GMB post by S & S Business Consultants.

Understanding Your Business Goals

By communicating with your client you can identify and pinpoint exactly what their goals are. This information will allow you to identify what areas of SEO you should focus on, where conversions rates matter etc.

Some clients goals could be:

• Sales
• More calls
• Email sign-ups
• Downloads

By focusing on its specific goals you can use our SEO guide to help your client reach and achieve these goals. SEO accomplishes more than just visitation numbers. By learning and utilizing it properly you can directly effect many aspects of business goals.

Moving forward we are going to learn how to be more data driven and effective in your SEO efforts. In the next post of our SEO Guide we are going to discuss how search engines work.

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The post Beginners SEO Guide appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Google My Business Posts are mainly used to help local businesses connect with customers in their area. Businesses use these posts to display relevant information about the business, their products, special announcements and offers directly on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If a user searches for your business directly, the active posts will be displayed in the same area as your GMB listing’s contact and location information. We are going to cover how to optimize your GMB posts.

Most posts stay active for 7 days unless the business takes it down before that. Event Posts will stay active for the duration of the event dates. The Posts feature is completely FREE and easy to manage so make surer you utilize this feature to help grow your business.

There are several factors that can effect your success of using GMB posts. Below we are going to cover some we find important.

Using the Right Images

Images are a great way to attract more attention to your posts. You want to make sure the images you’re using are both relevant and captivating. The best size to use is 750 x 750 px. You are able to use as small as 250 x 250 px but if aything smaller than that the image wont be accepted.

If your image is being used to promote a product or special such as food you want to use a more closer focused, crystal clear image. Also make sure the image subject is weighted to the center in case of any cutoffs.

Headlines and Titles

Your headline is the most important element when creating your post. It is the first thing that your viewer sees when looking at your post so it needs to be bold and enticing. The headline has to make your viewer want to click on the post eager to read on.

Your headline needs to show your reader what you are offering and why people should care. This is relevant because all headlines and titles are competing for placement on the SERPs. Your character amount for your headline is limited so make sure your headline is concise.

Headlines are not easy to come up with. A good technique is to try to come up with 20 different titles for a specific post and pick which one stands out the most. Again, make sure that headline is an attention grabber.

Descriptions and Details

Like the headline, you want to ensure your descriptions are clear and concise. Your description in total should be at least 150- 300 characters long but you need to convey the important information within the first 80. In the thumbnail view of the post is where your description will be cutoff. Finally, make sure your descriptions are SEO conscious.

Making your description concise yet descriptive is key in optimizing your GMB posts.

Call- To- Action

A Call- To- Action (CTA) is a line of text or a button that tells the viewer to do something in order to continue reading or explore the site further. They can be used to drive the viewer to a conversion page where they can contact you directly, buy a product, request a quote or anything else you want them to do. It is also a tool to increase your site’s click through rate. Your goal is for your viewers to spend more time exploring your site as this will increase your SEO presence and overall help the visibility of your site.

It is best to be clear and concise here as well. You want to avoid commercial slang or any kind of promotional slang and be direct with your viewer. This can avoid confusion and keep your potential customer engaged in what your business offers.

Click Tracking

Your CTA button’s URL is what Google Analytics uses to get information about the viewer who visited your post. This all happens on the back-end of your GMB post. Google posts do not directly integrate with Google Analytics so it is difficult to log information deeper than views and clicks.

Using UTM codes you can better analyze and see which post campaigns have been more successful than other creating trends for you to see and capitalize on.

Google’s Campaign URL Builder is your first step in click tracking.

With this information set up your more capable of seeing who clicked on your site and which of them actually converted on your site.

Scheduling

Consistently posting relevant information is important to your success using GMB posts. It is best practice to build a plan for the type of content you are posting and how often.

As mentioned above, event posts will stay active for the duration of the event. But other post types like product promotion or offer posts only stay active for 7 days so its important to make sure your creating new posts and continuing to keep something displayed on your GMB listing.

Using scheduling is a good way to ensure your posts continue and can set up when they get posted. There are a few third party tools that you can use to schedule your posts for your GMB.

OneUp is a scheduling software that can be used in Google My Business as well as the primary social media platforms. Though it isn’t free, it is a great tool to keep posts scheduled and consistent.

Conclusion

Overall these elements are all important to writing posts for your GMB listing. The major aspect of this formula being SEO- friendly writing that will assist your business listing placement. Optimizing your GMB posts is extremely beneficial to your businesses growth and success.

Trial and error is a major aspect of success so be sure you have your Google Analytics properly set up and are using the information to rate your post engagement. Learn more about the types of GMB posts here.

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The post Optimize your GMB Posts appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Many businesses are still missing out on a great feature within their Google My Business (GMB) listings. Posting on your GMB listing has many benefits and can help build your business and gain more customers and clients. Learn about the different types of GMB posts and how to win over your clients.

There are 5 different types of posts and we are going through each of them and explaining their many benefits and uses. The 5 types of posts are:

• Whats New Posts
• Event Posts
• Offer Posts
• Welcome Offer Posts
• Product Posts

Whats New Posts

With a Whats New post you can showcase any new business updates, new team members, blog posts, any reviews or testimonials and anything else happening at your business. All of these updates can help bring attention to your business. It is also huge in building trust with your customers and clients.

A Whats New post is allotted up to 1500 characters when writing your posts. It also offers opportunity to utilize images or videos. Both images and videos are extremely important when creating posts. Your posts are more likely to grab a viewers attention and keep them on your listing when they see an image or video. Suggested size of your images or videos is 1200 x 900 px and max file size of a video is 100 MB.

A Call to Action (CTA), is a line of text or image that prompts your visitors to click and perform a specific action. A Whats New post offers several CTA opportunities for your listing including:

• Book
• Learn More
• Order Online
• Buy
• Sign Up
• Call Now (use the primary number of your GMB listing)
• Add a Button Optional (If you don’t want to add a link)

New posts will stay active for 7 days and will be displayed above any existing posts that have yet to expire. After 7 days your posts do not disappear. Instead they show up under post navigation on mobile searches and under the “View All” if on a desktop. Most of these types of GMB posts follow similar guidelines but some are unique.

In the Knowledge Panel of the listing your visitors can find a thumbnail preview of the post before clicking to see the entire post. There are a limited number of characters available for thumbnail text and this could be cut by using a CTA such as “Learn More.”

Events Posts

If your business is involved in, attending, supporting or hosting an event you can promote that event using an event post. It could be any sort of worthy event whether it is in store, a charity, or part of your local neighborhood. This is the better of the types of GMB Posts for when your business is holding an event.

In your event post you can use up to 58 characters to create a title. If you use all 58 characters allotted your title will be cut off in the thumbnail view of the post. When your title or CTA in the thumbnail get cut off you will see a “. . .” displaying the cut off. The thumbnail can be effected by CTA buttons, text and dates.

Like the What’s New post, Event posts can also use images and video. The same dimension recommendations and video sizes apply. If you use the built in photo editor make sure your optimizing the dimensions of the image or video otherwise the editor will display an unsightly black background behind the upload.

Event title also work like What’s New titles and allow 58 characters. When writing the body or description your allotted 1500 characters. Some businesses like to create short and sweet posts while some like to use the full available space.

Using Start/End dates you can select the appropriate dates for the event. Though you don’t have to include an end date on your event, if you create a new post it will still take precedent over your never ending event post pushing it down on the display hierarchy. Along with dates you can add times for your events. Like dates, they have a start and an end time and can be displayed down to the minute.

Event posts also offer CTA buttons. All & CTA buttons that are available in the What’s New posts are available for event posts.

Events in the business profile are not connected to Google Event Posts. These events come from other third party sources like Eventbrite or even your own website and marked up using Event Shema or structred data markup. You can take advantage of this by creating an event on your business website and make an event post on your GMB with exact details and link it to the schema markup on your website.

Offers Posts

Offer posts allow you to promote sales, offerings, or discounts currently offered by your business. These posts include a bright yellow tag (visible on both mobile and desktop) that are very attention grabbing.

Images and videos work just like above and are recommended to make your offer more compelling to your viewers. Your title and details sections of the post also operate the same way as previously mentioned posts. Your allotted 58 characters for your title and 1500 characters for your details section.

Coupons are an optional addition for Offers posts. Not only making your post more enticing and exclusive, coupons can help you track the exact conversions your business is getting through your GMB listing.

Another optional feature of Offer posts is a “link to redeem offer” button. This works as your CTA of the post. This adds a URL to a landing page that provides your searchers with additional information about your offer including how they can redeem the offer. If this option is used it will be displayed as a “Redeem Online” button.

If creating an offer posting for a client its strongly recommended to add the Terms and Conditions feature. It can be as simple as “See website and contact us for rules and regulations.” You want to make sure the viewers are quickly able to be informed.

Welcome Offer Posts

Released in June 2019, Welcome Offer posts were introduced to convert followers to customers. This offer is only available to viewers who opt to follow your business on the Google Maps app. Since its only displayed on the maps app your business needs to download the app in order to create this type of post. Unlike the regular Offers post, there is no yellow tag.

The Welcome Offer types of GMB posts follow the same criteria as the regular offers post for the title, details, start/end dates, images and videos and terms and conditions.

A new feature of these posts is adding a website. By adding a URL you can create a link to a landing page that includes more information on the offer and if its redeemable online. Unlike the Offer posts, there is no “Redeem Online” button.

Product Posts

Product posts provide the opportunity to promote and highlight specific items that your business offers or sells. These posts have their own navigation heading in mobile searches.

Instead of a post title you have a Product name. The name does work just like the title with a 58 character max. Besides that change your other options are the same. The post can stille include images or videos, descriptions and CTA options. An optional feature is the price description. You can have an exact amount, a min to max slider or opt to exclude a price of the product.

What’s the Best Post Type?

Each post type has its specific uses so one isn’t better than the other. All types of GMB Posts have the potential to show up as Post Mentions in the local finder results. This can help your overall click through rates and turn into increased business.

Its time to utilize posts in your GMB listing. Go make your brand stand out in search results and increase engagement with your listing. Learn more about post optimization on another article by G Map Pros here.

The post Types of GMB Posts & Features appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

The post Types of GMB Posts & Features appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

Google My Business is one of the most powerful SEO strategies a business can use to improve their local search rankings. It is also a great way to connect online with potential customers and clients. Since its beginning, Google has worked hard to provide new features to help local businesses. One of the more recent of these features id the use of GMB posts.

Posts on your GMB listing in the business’ Knowledge Panel. When a visitor clicks on the post it expands into a larger box to grab the users attention and increase your click through rate.

Some tips when creating a post that will overall help your GMB listing performance:

• Keep your posts clean and concise. 80-100 word posts are whats recommended, but if you use the full 300 words keep in mind that not all of the description will be displayed.
• Make sure to keep keywords and important information towards the beginning of the paragraph. This helps with Search Engine Optimization.
• Stick to images without text in them in case the image gets cutoff.
• 750 x 750 px is the recommended size for images and cant be smaller than 250 x 250 px.
• Make sure the landing page you’re sending your customers to is relevant to the post and meets the potential customer’s expectations.

 The knowledge panel of your listing takes up a lot of the page when users search for your business. Use this as an opportunity to create great, engaging posts that grab your viewer’s attention.

Your GMB post speaks directly to your viewer so make sure your message is worthwhile. Do not waste your post space with hashtags as this doesn’t help your listing’s SEO, and looks spammy to the viewer. Instead focus on good information that would be valuable to the reader.

Scheduling and Timing

Timing and scheduling are important when it comes to posting. By creating a scheduling plan you can ensure you are consistently adding content to your listing.

The timing is relevant for other posts like events or upcoming promotions. If for example, you’re having a Veteran’s Day sale, it would be a good idea to publish your post a week before the promotion to make sure you get plenty of attention before the promotion occurs.

Get Creative with Images

 If you have a design team, get them involved on creating content for your posts. Use your teams to create an eye grabbing product image. Out wow the competition by making your contact more than just a typical camera taken image. Set up proper areas to take great images, utilize proper lighting and use image editing software if you need to.

If you do not have a design team Google is there to help. Google’s Small Thanks with Google helps small businesses use reviews to create design materials you can download and use on your GMB posts and even social media.

Even though your posts aren’t active after 7 days, they will still be visible in a carousel format where viewers still see your awesome images.

Content Selection

Along with your images, your content is also important. Sometimes it is hard to come up with ideas for what types of content to post. Some quick ideas to get you started:

• Highlight one of your favorite employees and what makes them stand out.
• Mention upcoming trade shows or events your business is participating in.
• Highlight a new product or a product that has a special offer.
• Run a contest or giveaway and promote it in a post.

The possibilities are endless. The biggest component is staying relevant to your brand and building your business. Content can be awesome but if it is off the wall than it wouldn’t benefit you or your business.

Track Your Posts

Your GMB Dashboard is a good starting point to track to activity of your posts but its also a good idea to use custom URLs with Google Analytics to track deeper information and find trends between the types of posts you publish. Some types of posts or keywords could perform better than other and information like this is important in connecting with your users.

Tracking your posts can help you with finding how customers search for your business, actions they’ve taken on your page, where customers view your business as well as other information like how many views you have on photos.

Conclusion

All of these factors can help your business be more successful and benefit your SEO. Be sure to create great quality content and images to really grab your viewers attention. Always take advantage of the tools that are available to you. Always learn more about the importance of GMB.

The post Win Over Your Customers with GMB Posts appeared first on Kansas City Local SEO, Google My Business Optimization Services.

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As a local business, maximizing your exposure on your local search engine is your top priority. Registering your business on Google My Business (GMB) should be your first step. By building a business profile with Google My Business your potential customers can discover a plethora of information without even visiting your site. This includes your business name, contact information, location as well as photos and reviews.

Google has also added many features your business page should take advantage of that help grab viewer’s attention and help boost your rank in local search results. If you haven’t yet created a GMB profile for your business you can do so here- https://www.google.com/business.

Make Sure Your Profile is Complete

Google will ask for some valuable basic information about your business including your business name, phone numbers, address and map location. This information is important as it helps potential clients and customers find your business.

One thing to be aware of is that other users can “suggest” an edit to the information of your business so make sure your information is accurate. Google does send notifications to inform the profile owners of any changes or updates. By consistently checking on your profile and its updates you can ensure that your business information stays correct. These updates can be checked under the “Google Updates” tab then “Review Updates.”

Google also encourages viewers that know about your business to answers questions about your business. These responses are shown on your business page and many business owners get concerned that this could have a negative impact on their business. Google’s philosophy is that answered questions and reviews help build community, trust and a more complete profile.

Either way it is important to consistently monitor and maintain your business profile just to be safe. Once your business profile is listed and verified you want to begin optimizing your Google My Business.

Google My Business Posts

Posts in GMB are similar to small ads or even social media posts that appear in your business listing. Businesses use them to add personality or relevant information to their business profile. To quote Google themselves:

“With Posts, you can share timely, relevant updates right on Google Search and Maps to help your business stand out to potential customers. And by including custom calls-to-action directly on your business listing, you can choose how to connect with your customers.”

Common uses for GMB posts include:

– Sharing daily or weekly specials and promotions.

– Promote upcoming events.

– Showcasing top or popular products or services.

– Sharing an awesome blog or link to another site.

Posts “go dark” after 7 days so timing and consistent posting is important. A good way to ensure you remember to maintain your posting is paying attention to Google’s reminders. Also remember posts show up prominently on mobile searches so make sure your posts are maintained to make sure your site stands out.

Google’s Booking Button

If your business relies on your customers making appointments or uses a scheduling software customers can now book directly from your Google My Business listing. This adds a convenience factor so potential customers do not have to even leave the page to another site. Be sure to take advantage of this integrated GMB feature, it’ll make it simpler to gain new customers or clients.

Google My Business Messaging

Customers and potential customers can now send text messages to your business when using a mobile search on chrome. This is a great way to interact with your customers with important information or answering questions.

To use this feature go to the “Messaging” tab on your GMB dashboard. Here you can set up a contact number to receive these messages and even an automated response for your potential customer. If you prefer to keep your personal phone information and business separate you can use Google’s Allo app. This app will use the same phone information used in your GMB profile except send the messages to an app instead of your direct phone number.

Google My Business Online Reviews

Google encourages business owners to ask their customers or clients for online reviews. Online reviews can help build trust with potential clients, and impact click through rates and search engine ranking.

Google does have its own guidelines for posting reviews and requesting customers to leave an online review. Whatever you do, do not bribe in exchange for a review. It is not only against Google’s guidelines but against laws of reviews in general. You can review Google’s guidelines here, Google’s guidelines for Google My Business reviews.

Photos and Videos

Adding photos and videos are a great way to build your brand and even show some behind the scenes action of your business. Take this as an opportunity to share images and videos of your employees in action or products directly pertaining to your business. You shouldn’t use stock photos or videos you would use for marketing or promotions. Google can also remove videos if the video isn’t relevant to the business location.

When using videos keep them short and sweet. A 30- second video length is recommended as human attention span is relatively short. Google does state that videos can take up to 24 hours to display but most will show up after a few minutes.

Google does have some general Google My Business Video Guidelines to follow. These include video duration, file size and video resolutions.

Business Descriptions

Business owners can now include a business description on their Google My Business listing. By using up to 750 characters owners can now describe what they offer, some business history or any other helpful information for viewers. Keep in mind only the first 250 characters will show up before getting cut-off in the knowledge panel.

Like everything else, Google provides us with Google Business Description Guidelines. Make sure you review these rules because Google does review business descriptions. On mobile devices the descriptions appear in the About tab while on desktop the descriptions appear in the Knowledge Panel.

Menus/ Services

If your business provides services such as spa and wellness services or salon services such as hair or nails you can utilize the Services list in Google My Business. This feature allows businesses to categorize and list out all of their provided services (or food items) along with the prices of each.

This feature is only available for food and drink, health, beauty, and other services businesses that do not have a third party “menu” link. You can use this feature by finding the Info tab on your GMB dashboard and click the “Services” section.

Get the Most Out of Your Business

The more engagement and interaction you have with your Google My Business listing the better your chances of ranking higher on your local search engines and organic rankings. Google is constantly adding and updating features to GMB. Be sure to utilize these opportunities and features to continue to optimize your Google My Business listing.

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