Local SEO

Let’s face it: SEO marketing is complex. Thousands of small businesses like you are trying to figure out why they’re not showing up in Google search results. After all, everyone wants to rank on the first page of Google.

Read more

When it comes to promoting your business, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important ways to drive traffic to your website. Most people think of SEO marketing as just a matter of stuffing keywords into their web pages, but it has become much more than that. As Google and other search engines keep updating their algorithms, the process of optimizing a website design for organic traffic has evolved into something more complex.

While SEO marketing can seem daunting, it’s actually not difficult to do once you know what to look for. However, it also doesn’t have shortcuts and requires time and experience to do well. Luckily, there are plenty of SEO tools out there to help you optimize your website. We’ve organized a few of these tools in this post to help.

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research is probably the part of SEO marketing that most people are familiar with. It involves finding the right search words and phrases that your customers are entering, as well as making sure your company can rank well for that search. Having a grasp on keyword research will not only help you better understand your customers, but it will also give you a better view of your audience as a whole.

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a handy feature within your Google Ads account and is completely free to use.

With this tool, you can plug in keywords that you think your audience is searching for. Google will then tell you how often that term is searched on average each month, how much competition is surrounding that keyword, and how much your competition is paying to place ads for that term. It will also give you a list of related keywords that you may want to look into as well.

One of the best aspects of Keyword Planner is that the information is coming straight from Google, so you know it’s going to be accurate. You also have the ability to narrow your results by location to better optimize your research. So if your local business wants to know how often people are searching for “emergency plumbing repair” within the Harrisburg/Lancaster/York area, it’s only a few clicks away. Plus, who doesn’t love a free tool?

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs has several useful tools, a few of which we’ll discuss later in this post, but for now we’re looking at one in particular—the Keyword Explorer.

The Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is a great tool for taking a deep dive into keyword data. While numbers and analytics can be overwhelming at times, Ahrefs has its dashboard organized in a way that any local business owner is easily able to understand. Not only do you get to see the search volume of keywords, but you can also see what questions people are asking, the average cost per click for advertising, related keywords, and the top search engine results.

With its latest update, Ahrefs has also included search results for more than just Google. Now you can look at how often people are searching terms within Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and even Amazon! This can be a great tool for businesses that work with consumer products that may be sold or advertised on these sites directly.

Unfortunately, all of this data does not come free. One of the downsides to this tool is that it is not cheap; Ahrefs’ least expensive plan starts at $99 per month. If you want to be able to take a deep dive into reports, you’ll want their “standard” plan, which will run you $179 per month. That being said, Ahrefs is one of the most powerful and useful SEO tools on the market and may be well worth the investment.

SEMrush

The next SEO tool we love is SEMrush. Like the other tools we’ve mentioned, SEMrush gives you a report of the search volume for the month, related keywords, and how much competitors are paying for ads. What makes SEMrush stand out from some of the other tools is its capability to show live results of the ads your competitors are using. This makes it easy for you to capitalize on an ad that you see is doing well and have a fasterturnaround on your own ads.

SEMrush is a paid tool that has its starter plan at $99 a month. This plan also includes access to the expansive array of other tools that SEMrush offers, which we will talk more about a little later. It’s these other tools, combined with its SEO capabilities that make SEMrush so powerful.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public (ATP) is another tool for finding what your target audience is searching for. By simply typing in your term, you’ll get back every conceivable question people are asking on search engines. This is especially useful when you’re trying to come up with blog ideas for your content marketing.

The good news is that ATP is free for you to use up until a certain point. The bad news is that you only get a limited number of free reports each day before you have to pay for a pro plan ($99 a month). The ATP tool also does not give you search volume, so it’s difficult to know which questions are the more dominant ones that your audience is asking.

Site Audit Tools

Now that you know what keywords you want to track and rank, you need a method for tracking your website’s overall ranking. At EZMarketing, we use several tools to track how a website is ranking for target keywords, what technical issues may be harming those rankings, and what opportunities exist for future improvement. Keep reading for a few of the more popular options.

Ahrefs

We’ll start by coming back to Ahrefs. Their site auditing analysis tool gives great insights for any website and doesn’t require any integration with your website coding. That means you can run this audit on your competitors too and see the following:

• What keywords they are ranking for
• How well they’re ranking
• What pages are getting the most traffic
• What other websites are linking back to them

This is just a snapshot of what Ahrefs gives you, but you can also drill down into each section for more data.

Ahrefs also has a Google Chrome extension that you can download to run this information as you surf the internet, which is incredibly valuable for assessing your competitors on the fly.

SEMrush

We mentioned earlier that SEMrush’s array of assets makes it a very powerful tool when it comes to analyzing SEO marketing. Their site auditing tool is probably one of SEMrush’s most powerful capabilities. We recommend connecting your Google Analytics and Search Console accounts, which will get you the most accurate data possible. Once you have it set up, you’ll know exactly what technical SEO issues your website has.

Here’s a snapshot of what the audit looks like:

This shows all of the areas that you can address to help your website rank better. We also utilize SEMrush’s Position Tracking tool to monitor how a website is ranking for the target keywords that we’ve outlined and deemed most important.

With this tool, we can see how rankings compare to competitors’ and what estimated traffic we can expect from organic results.

Yoast SEO

If you have a WordPress website, Yoast is a helpful plugin you can use for site auditing. Arguably, it’s the number one onsite SEO plugin available. The plugin will analyze each individual page compared to a target keyword you specify and provide recommendations for optimizing that page. Everything from needing more keyword density, to technical issues like alt text for images, meta tags, and meta description, will be analyzed by Yoast.

Google Analytics

If your website doesn’t have analytics installed then you’re missing out on one of the most important free analysis tools available—Google Analytics. This tool is very easy to incorporate into your website and puts all your key website metrics at your fingertips. And if you’re concerned about not knowing how to use it, there is an entire academy to teach you.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is another free tool that every website should use. With GSC, you can see what search terms people are actually using to find your site and how well you’re ranking for those searches. GSC is also great for site auditing because you can see how well your pages are performing in search, and which ones are getting people to click through to your website.

Backlink Audit Tools

Analyzing your backlink profile is a commonly overlooked aspect of SEO. You may not know it, but backlinks can have a huge impact on how prominent your website is in searches. If you have spammy backlinks, Google will even penalize your ranking. So even if you’ve heard of link-building as an SEO tactic, there is so much more involved. We’ve put together a list of backlink audit tools to help you with this process.

Ahrefs

Once again, we’re back to looking at Ahrefs. The backlink data within Ahrefs will show new links your website has gained, as well as which links have been lost, and any that are broken. While all of this is useful, we find that the most helpful aspect of Ahrefs is its link intersect tool. The link intersect tool allows you to compare the backlinks of your website to your competitors; the tool then tells you what websites are linked to your competitor and not to you. This gives you a great starting point of who to reach out to improve your backlink profile.

SEMrush

Going back to SEMrush, we have the Backlink Audit tool. This lets you analyze your new links, broken links, and gives you a task list of what they call “toxic” backlinks.

As we mentioned before, these bad links could be harming your ranking authority. Identifying them allows you to go back and disavow them in a search console (i.e. tell Google you don’t want these links to count toward your ranking).

Google Search Console

Another useful tool for backlink auditing is GSC. In GSC, you can examine what pages are getting the most backlinks and what external websites have given you the most backlinks. It’s also where you can submit your disavow list, telling Google to ignore harmful links that someone else has created to your site.

Mobile-Friendly Testing

In a world that’s constantly becoming more and more mobile, optimizing mobile SEO for your website is a necessity. Think about it—how often do you view websites only on a desktop computer, and not on your phone? The answer is probably not too many. As more and more web traffic comes from smartphones, both your users and search engines expect your website to work well on mobile devices. You’re doing yourself and your business a huge disservice if your website isn’t mobile friendly.

If you’re using any of the tools above to optimize your website, you are already heading in the right direction for your mobile site. We recommend the following when it comes to keeping your mobile SEO marketing in top notch shape:

• Use Responsive Web Design: People are looking at your website not just from their smartphones, but also from tablets, notebooks, and many other sizes of devices. Designing your mobile site to be responsive to these various sizes will make for a better user experience.
• Avoid Using Flash or Pop-Ups: Flash plugins may not work on your customers’ phones, so sticking to HTML5 is likely the better route. Also, pop-ups (no matter how popular they are), can be difficult and frustrating to use on mobile sites. Assume most people are going to have trouble clicking on small links, so having buttons be larger will make things easier to navigate.
• Make Sure Your Web Speed is Up to Par: Most web designers already know they should compress images and optimize them for web viewing, but this is especially important for mobile users. Google will rank websites based off of page speed, so make sure you minify code, reduce redirects, and take other steps to clean up your mobile site.

Site Speed Tools

As we just mentioned, your site speed has a dramatic effect on your SEO marketing efforts. Basically, the slower your site is and the more frustrated the user is, the less Google will trust your website. As a result, Google will penalize your website and drop your page in rankings. These are just a few of the tools we recommend to help you minimize those efforts:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: This is a free Google tool to help you find and resolve issues that are hurting your site speed. This tool will analyze the content of your web page and generate suggested improvements to increase its speed.
• Pingdom Speed Test: Pingdom is another free tool you can use to analyze your website for what could be slowing your speed. If your site is too big, slow, Pingdom makes it easy for both novices and experts to utilize its tool for bettering website performance.

Google Mobile-Friendly Test

Once you’ve taken the steps to make your website mobile friendly, we recommend testing out your website for mobile responsiveness. Google has created a helpful website tool called Mobile-Friendly Test, which scans your website and gives feedback on how to improve it. It’s a simple and free tool to help you check if all of your hard work paid off.

Here at EZMarketing, we understand how overwhelming all of this content can be. We’ve only mentioned a few of the many tools you can use to help your SEO marketing, but if you’re overwhelmed, feel free to reach out to our SEO company. We’ll gladly help you in your SEO services and get your business found on search engines!

Read more

Your Google My Business listing is one of the best features available to you to help increase your presence in local search, and it gives you the ability to control how Google presents your business’s information. In the 3rd video of our series, learn about Google’s little-known Websites tool and how to use it to achieve the best results.

Read more

Google My Business (GMB) is one of the most powerful ways for local businesses to promote themselves and get found online. Unfortunately, too many businesses aren’t taking advantage of all that Google’s free tool has to offer.

Read more

An optimized Google My Business (GMB) profile is critical if you want people to find your local business online. A verified and complete profile lets Google know that you’re a legitimate business and makes it much more likely that they’ll list your business in relevant local searches.

When they first started, local Google listings for businesses were little more than your name, address, and phone number. Since then, GMB has expanded into a robust tool to build your local business’s online presence. Here are a few unexpected things you can do with Google My Business optimization that you might not know about.

1. Share Content with Google Posts

Google My Business Posts are a new feature that allows you to publish events, offers, and news directly to your business listing on Google Search and Google Maps. Posts will show up in the Knowledge Panel when someone searches for your business, as shown below.

They look similar to social media posts and can include photos, videos, and a call to action button that links back to your website. When a user clicks on a post, it expands into a larger, attention-grabbing box with a news feed of your latest posts. Each Google Post will display in Search and Map results for up to 7 days.

Google Posts are a great way to help your business stand out. You can use them to promote current sales and specials, announce new products/services, draw more people to events, or just share valuable content (like blog posts). Not only does this help you gain more exposure, it can help boost your SEO marketing by promoting your content and drawing more organic traffic to your website. Finally, Posts improve your customer experience by providing relevant, timely information to anyone searching for your business.

What’s the best Google Post image size?

The minimum image size for a Google post is 400×300 pixels. To make sure the image displays well on higher-resolution screens, we recommend a larger 1200×900 image, which maintains same 4:3 ratio.

Within the Knowledge Panel, the image displays at a 16:9 ratio. The tricky part is: Google automatically crops this image, and it seems to change based on the content of the image. In the first example below, Google only cropped off the bottom of the image. But when we added a full-color image and moved the text, they cropped off some of the top as well.

 Example 1:

Example 2:

Our best recommendation for Google My Business optimization is to make your Google post images 1200×900 pixels (4:3 ratio), but make sure they look good when cropped to 1200×675 (16:9 ratio). Also, try to keep text or key elements away from the top and bottom edges of the image to keep it from getting cut off.

2. Book appointments directly from your listing

Google is making it easier than ever for your customers to do business with you by allowing you to book appointments directly from your listing. There are two ways to do this, depending on your business type.

For some business categories like hotels and restaurants, Google actually connects directly with your third-party booking services. If eligible, you’ll see a Bookings tab on your Google My Business dashboard. Select from one of Google’s supported scheduling providers, and you can add an eye-catching Book Now button to your listing.

If you don’t have the Bookings tab, you can still use an Appointment URL (found on the Info tab) to help customers take action directly. This is a great option if you use any type of online service to help you schedule appointments. At the very least, you can link to your normal contact page to make it just a little easier for interested prospects to contact your business.

3. Allow users to message you directly

Live chat is exploding in popularity as a way for businesses to engage with prospects and offer customer service. By adding a texting-enabled phone number to your listing, you can allow people to message your business directly.

Simply make sure that the phone number can receive SMS messages, and have someone ready to answer messages promptly during business hours. Customers will see your average response time, so speedy replies are a must. To help out, you can add an automatic welcome message that works 24/7.

While messaging on GMB may not make sense for everyone, it could be a great option if you have limited customer service staff to answer live phone calls.

4. Add a business description

This one might not seem unexpected, but it’s actually a recent change for Google My Business listings.  Earlier versions allowed you to write your own description, but Google soon disabled the function, likely due to businesses posting spammy or keyword-stuffed descriptions.

Google does still review these descriptions, so make sure you’re posting relevant information and following their guidelines, or Google may remove your information. Descriptions are limited to 750 characters, and only the first 250 show in the Knowledge panel, so try to front-load your most important information. You also can’t include any links in the description.

Note that Google may automatically write short descriptions and snippets about your business that you can’t edit. Business descriptions are also unavailable for the hotel category – Google automatically populates your Hotel Details. Unfortunately, Google will not change any of these descriptions unless they reflect incorrect or misleading information.

5. Upload video to your listing

One of the best ways to optimize Google My Business listings is to include visuals. Businesses with photos actually receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more click-throughs to their websites than businesses without photos.

Now, Google is giving you even more options to include engaging visual content by supporting video. You can upload videos up to 30 seconds long to your listing. Just make sure they are 720p quality or higher and less than 100 MB in size.

Videos are a great way to show, not tell people about your business and your work. Post videos that tell prospects what your business is all about, and explain your products, or show off your successful work.

6. Users can change your listing

Sometimes the most unexpected things about your Google My Business listing are the changes you don’t make. Other users make them for you.

Google believes in the power and validity of crowd-sourced information, so they allow users to do things like upload pictures, answer questions, update incorrect information and, of course, review your business.

Most of the time, this a good thing, since user-generated content adds richness and validity to your profile. It even allows your loyal customers to help promote and advocate for your business. However, it does mean that spammers and yes, even your competitors could edit your listing.

Often, these changes go live without any review or approval from you. In theory, you should receive a notification whenever someone suggests a change, but as this article from Moz points out, that’s not always the case. The best thing you can do is regularly monitor your listing and look for any Google Updates on your GMB dashboard.

7. Check your Google My Business dashboard within search results

Finally, speaking of regular monitoring, Google wants to make it as easy as possible for business owners to review their listings and keep them up-to-date. They’re testing a feature that will show you a Google My Business dashboard, right within your search results.

As long as you’re logged in to a Google account that has admin access to your GMB listing, simply do a Google search for your business name. At the top of the search results page, you’ll see an abbreviated dashboard that lets you easily make edits and updates, as well as see your latest analytics and insights. This dashboard is only visible to you; your customers will just see the Knowledge Panel on the side, as usual.

If you are having trouble or simply do not have the time to put into creating and maintaining your GMB account, then check out our Google My Business listing services we offer. We are more than happy to help you with Google My Business optimization.

If you want to learn more about Local SEO services, check out these related articles, or try our quick scanning tool to find out how your local listings stand up. Our SEO company in Lancaster, PA can support all your digital marketing efforts.

>>Local SEO: What it Is and How it Works

>>7 Local SEO Strategies

Read more

Local search visibility can be improved by optimizing your local SEO, which includes syncing accurate business information with the many directories and sites out there that lists those businesses. Furthermore, it’s about working to increase your online visibility, particularly as it concerns local SEO marketing.

Aside from having your business info (name, address, phone number) displayed on a directory listing, reputation management and ongoing maintenance of your business info is crucial to establishing you as a credible business in the eyes of search engines.

Listing accuracy is vitally important. Inaccurate listings not only harm the business they’re for (if they’re active), but they can damage the trust Google has worked so diligently to foster between users and the search engine.

Moz Local’s George Freitag summed up listing accuracy nicely when he said:

Listing accuracy is Google’s method for determining whether Google can trust a local business result.

To obtain listing accuracy, Google relies on a number of places to find your information including phone directories and phone books, directories for specific sites, review websites, news websites, government websites, and more; and each time one of these locations mentions your business info, it increases Google’s confidence in the information you’ve provided.

Similarly, when a site or directory lists a variation of the details you’ve provided about your business—such as the wrong address or phone number, or an address/business name listed in a different format or variation—it decreases Google’s confidence in the validity of the business information, making it less likely to show your business in local results.

And why? Because Google wants to maintain the trust between its search engine and the users, since if too many users are dialing the wrong business number or trying to find businesses that don’t actually exist, people are less likely to trust Google’s results.

What’s worse is that if enough online sites provide contradictory information to what you’ve given for your business, that inaccurate information could override the details you’ve listed, forcing Google to trust these other sources more than your business. In the case of store hours or address, this can be a huge detriment to your business.

A breakdown of what you need to do to improve your local SEO visibility:

• Create your Google “My Business” listing.
• Find all of the variations and instances of your NAP (name, address, and phone number).
• Fix all instances of your NAP to reflect the correct business info you’ve provided in your Google My Business listing.

The real problem, as you can imagine, is finding every instance of your NAP and correcting it. This actually amounts to a tremendous amount of work, both searching for and correcting any aberrant mentions of your business. You might not have the know-how or time to do this work yourself, which is where a primary data provider comes in. We’ll talk about those after we get into your NAP.

Understanding the importance of your NAP and how it affects local SEO results

Providing your NAP by creating a Google “My Business” listing should be your first step, way before you dive into any kind of directory, review site, or phone book.

Before you start listing your information on other sites (citations), you need to find any and all existing NAP variations on the web and correct them for accuracy. Building local citations before you correct the NAP variations could create conflicting data for Google who may not trust that your business is legitimate, and may neglect to include it in local SEO marketing results.

Your business’ name, address, and phone number are important for a number of obvious reasons, from helping people get in touch with you and actually visiting your brick-and-mortar location, to making it easier for your audience to identify your brand.

For example, if your business is The Amazing Hotdog Factory, but you find variations for The Hotdog Factory, The Amazing Hotdog, and Amazing Factory of Hotdogs, people won’t know what to call your business, and Google will feel the same way.

To start searching for NAP variations, go to Google and start searching for your company name, your phone number, and parts of your address to see where your business info might be appearing. You can also do site: searches through Google, looking through specific sites for mentions of your NAP. If a website has a search function, you can also use that to search for duplicate/NAP variations.

Sound like a lot of work? It can be, but you also have the option to hire a third-party primary data provider capable of doing the work for you, and then some.

What a “Primary Data Provider” can do for your local  search results

A primary data provider is someone you can go to and they will do the hard work of correcting your listing accuracy for you. Most providers have an extensive network of directories and listings they can search for mentions of your business info and then correct any inaccuracies should they come up.

The benefit to this is helping you establish that confidence in Google to trust the information you’ve provided. Once Google trusts your info, it feels confident enough to plug in your business info into local SEO results. Before you ask if that’s all it takes to fix the problem and cause you to appear more in relevant local SEO results, remember: sites change all of the time, and new ones are being created daily. Ensuring all citations—mentions of your NAP located on the web—remain consistent, a primary data provider will regularly check all sites in their network to maintain accuracy.

While they take care of the work of managing citation accuracy, a primary data provider may also put your business info on other sites you haven’t already appeared on, which is a benefit of the provider’s existing network. All of these extra sites that list the correct name, address, and phone number further increase Google’s confidence in your business’ legitimacy and it has a greater chance of appearing higher in local search results.

Optimizing local SEO contributes to better brand visibility and reputation

Another part of local SEO marketing is reputation management. This involves managing feedback, reviews, or comments left about your business or products on review sites such as Yelp or Angie’s List, as well as social media sites where your audience might be able to reach you. Reviews are often visible in local SEO results, and if you have reviews, comments, or questions not being addressed, it can be damaging for your business.

Local SEO marketing is sometimes neglected by businesses who think they can just rank well in Google and be seen by their target customer, but because Google actually differentiates global and local results, it can be a huge mistake to neglect this part of your optimization efforts. If you’re struggling to rank well in local results or can’t manage to correct all of the many NAP variations for your business, we also specialize in dealing with local SEO and business directory listings. Talk with our website design and SEO agency now.

 

 

Read more