Top Ranking Parameters for Local SEO according to Google

Top Ranking Parameters for Local SEO according to GoogleAs per Google, the world’s most popular search engine, almost 67% of those using smartphones, will be inclined to buying from businesses which have synced online data with users’ to potential customers’ location. In this digital age or era, exploiting traditional promotional methods will not suffice when it comes to publicizing your trade. You’ll need to bolster your business’s online presence and work out a robust and target-oriented local SEO strategy to tap your niche segment that is increasingly using local search.

To put it simply, your business website has a much better chance of ranking high enough on Google My Business SERPs and consequently being found by prospects if you focus on three key aspects of your trade. These three focus areas related to your business are ‘prominence’, ‘distance’, and ‘relevance’. If you take care of these facets in your Google My Business profile, you could be one of the potential contenders for securing the top three positions in Google’s 3-pack local SEO search results.

However, you’ll first need to design a GMB profile (if you haven’t already) in order to make the most of your listing. There’s no disputing the fact that nowadays, majority of medium and small-scale firms have to do anything and everything possible for featuring in local search so as to stay in business. So, it follows that if you earn your livelihood from a business that relies heavily on local customers and prospects, you’ll need to thrash out a local SEO action-plan for guaranteeing chances of figuring in local search.

  1. Staying relevant on the checklist for local SEO

Talking about relevance, you should always try to develop your GMB account in a way that makes it consistent with what your prospects or potential customers are looking for. For creating a relevant Google My Business profile, go through the following steps:-

  • Ensure that you choose appropriate primary and secondary categories-If you’re a dentist or orthodontist, then make sure you profile your listing under the categories ‘dentist’, ‘orthodontist’ as well as ‘specialized dental services’, ‘dental implants’, and so on. The more specific your listings, the greater is the likelihood of your site ranking high enough in local SEO search result pages.
  • Describe your practice/nature of business-You can describe or elucidate your business without having to worry about the same getting verbose-Google accepts 1000+ words narratives. Make the most of the available space, tempering your content with relevant main keyword and LSI keywords.
  • Maintain NAP consistency-NAP stands for name, address, and phone number(S). Ensure that you key in the correct name, contact number or numbers, and address details of your trade, regardless of whether you’re operating from a single or multiple locations. At the same time, see to it that your NAP is consistent throughout the online realm.
  1. Prominence is all about making your venture stand out from the crowd

Prominence is all about making your business stand out when it comes to local search. There are specific ways and means in which you make your GMB profile one of a kind. Follow these tips:

  • Images and illustrations-Upload multiple images on your profile-the more the merrier.
  • Reviews and feedbacks-The idea here is to maximize reviews and feedbacks not only on your GMB profile but also on other automated social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  • Capitalize on your brickand-mortar business front– Bolstering your presence in the meatspace will rub off on the business’s online existence.
  1. Distance: Techniques for location-oriented searches

Though Google prefers businesses that are situated nearest to the user or searcher’s location, there’s hardly anything you can do about the same. Yet you can make your practice or trade sound relevant and prominent by developing location-based profiles. For instance, if you’re a divorce lawyer based in Houston, you can use the keyword, “divorce lawyer Houston”.

If you want to more about local SEO, visit www.localseojacksonville.biz or call 904-425-9679.

Twitter: New Features Hint at Snapchat App Influence

Twitter: New Features Hint at Snapchat App InfluenceTwitter is, by all means, one of the most popular to-date social media apps that have taken the consumer market by storm, with millions of users and thousands or more signing up and using it’s service regularly. Twitter, however, much like other major social media sites has had its share of challenges in generating new users and popularity, given Facebook’s heavy advance on the consumer market, often taking other social media users by the ‘herds’.

Over the past year, Twitter has innovated several of its own unique, strategies in the form of features – most recently, the “Stories” feature which essentially grabs and compiles (or “stitches”) all your Tweets from the same day and presents it to your followers in a unique, organized, and thoughtful way.

However, Twitter’s most recent feature is perhaps likened to that of Snapchat’s, which allows it’s users to send temporary, “self-dissolving” pictures or video feed to its followers. Though, unique to its cause, it (supposedly) will also allow the original Sender to be notified whether or not recipients have viewed, ‘screenshot’, or shared their image or video. Though in all fairness, it can be considerably difficult, given today’s technologically advanced users to track ‘per say’ whether anyone has truly screenshot the image, or in the case of a video re-recorded it. After all, for every new “anonymous”, private, or self-deleting form of media there appears to be at least 5 to 10 different new programs that likewise are designed to, ironically enough anonymously capture the content.

Now, whether this new image/video feature by Twitter is truly a knockoff so to speak of previous Snapchat technology is difficult to say for certain. However, more often than not, social media sites, apps, and technology, in general, seem to often ‘hijack’ one another’s ideas. But, most people might simply consider this a form of innovative thinking, rather than actual theft or a lack of originality.

Image Credit: Mizter_x94

6 Tips for Local SEO That You Can Advantage of

6 Tips for Local SEO That You Can Advantage ofThough the SEO landscape has come a long way and evolved tremendously over the years, its significance in the world of websites hasn’t diminished at all. SEO remains as relevant today as it was during the days when Google was steadily progressing to become the world’s most admired search engine. Google, in order to maintain its top position in the search engines’ listing, updated its ranking algorithms several times in a year.

The world’s top search engine still releases algorithmic updates for ranking countless websites secured on its servers, only the parameters have undergone change, a sea change in fact. For instance, updates to Penguin or Panda are more geared towards sites that are smartphone-friendly. More than 60% of those who log into sites (for completing a purchase or seeking relevant info) do so from portable digital devices, mostly smartphones.

Another factor worth noting is that the updates accord significant weightage to sites that are promoted by taking advantage of a local SEO strategy. If you have a business website, especially an e-commerce site whose SEO marketing technique doesn’t incorporate local or regional demographic, then chances of your site not garnering a good rank or even getting delisted from Google’s servers are quite high. So what tips should you follow to have an effective local SEO plan in order to attract niche clients for your business?

1. Register your site with Google My Business

The very first and foremost local SEO tip that you should make the most of is to register your business with Google My Business. You may have a state-of-the-art site that you claim to be user-friendly but it could be that the same is not visible to many individuals as it is not displayed prominently. Once you subscribe to Google My Business, your site’s name, business address and hours, reviews, and nearness to user’s location will be visible on the SERP (search engine ranking page) whenever a user makes a Google search of your firm.

Just go to the Google My Business to complete the registration or listing process.

2. It pays to have an interactive and smartphone-friendly site

Are you aware that majority of your present clients may have logged into your web-based outlet via their handheld PDAs, like smartphones and tabs? It is also very likely almost all your future customers will get in touch with you after visiting your site from their portable devices. If users or prospects face issues downloading and/or navigating through your portal on their mobile digital gadgets, they’ll not waste time in moving on to competitors’ sites.

So, if you haven’t yet structured your local SEO site to make it smartphone-friendly, then it’s high time you did.

3. Make local SEO listing consistently across the web board

In order to make your presence felt throughout the web world, you can choose to register with local indexing sites, besides Google. But before you proceed to enlist your business with such listing sites, you’d need to ensure that the NAP (name, address, and phone number) info is always provided. Additionally, make sure that this info is correct and identical in all the listings including but not limited to:-

  • Angie’s list
  • TripAdvisor
  • BBB (Better Business Bureau)
  • Bing
  • Yahoo
  • Foursquare
  • Yelp
  • Local commerce guilds and federations
  • Chambers of Commerce
  • Telephone directories, white pages, and yellow pages

4. Benefit from testimonials and feedbacks about your service

It has become the norm for businesses, both small and big to maintain separate profiles for the different social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. Customers, shoppers, and buyers of products and services are prone to offering a review or feedback on such automated social media sites at the drop of a hat. Refashion your local SEO in a way so that customers are encouraged to write a positive review about your product or service.

5. Target local ad extensions

Make the most of Google AdWords in order to publicize your business in the locality or neighborhood you’re located. Once you subscribe to Google AdWords, users will be able to know more about your business’s location that’ll give them the confidence to get in touch with you via a ‘call button’.

6. Develop content that’s relevant and location-based

Develop content that is original, meaningful, and relevant to your business. Also, make sure that the content is orientated towards the locals, and is tempered with names of streets, local news, events, and happenings.

Expanding Your Social Media Presence For SEO

Expanding Your Social Media Presence For SEOSocial media and social networking is how business is done nowadays. Without a presence, without acumen in how to do things, you’re going to be so far back of the pack that you might as well not even exist.

It’s not a philosophical issue, but one of the reality of today’s marketing. Without a social media presence you’re not going to get far especially if you’re selling your services and goods.
Clients are always looking for the best fort he lowest cost. That’s it in an nutshell. If no one knows you exist, you could have the next best thing to sliced bread and it wouldn’t do you any good.

It’s a nightmare if you don’t know how to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest. You’ll need to hire a social media marketer and they can cost a fortune. These experts charge a lot and for good reason, they usually get results, but the field is chock full of scammers and other criminals who promise to make you a viral sensation overnight but all they do is take your money and either don’t do a thing or do a superficial showcase of their own ill gotten links, trades, shares, that makes Google boil with anger and will get your site penalized or beaten so far into the ground reputation-wise that it would take a miracle to pull you back.

You can study up on how to do social media marketing but by the time you get the course or instructions, the information inside is so old it’s no longer effective. The pros aren’t going to display their secrets, no, they’re going to hog them to themselves because they know there’s no shortage of ne’er-do-wells just waiting to take their place and squeeze them out of the market.

So how does one battle these obstacles? By first realizing that it takes patience. It takes planning and follow up. You’re going to get people to pay attention to you and then your business. Make sure your website or blog is up to snuff. Meaning, it’s professional, with proper spelling, well tagged and relevant pics, good to great copywriting, a sitemap, NAP (Name Address Phone) in prominent placement and engaging presence so that people will show up, convert, and retain. That’s it. That’s your goal and a few simple steps can get you on your way.

First of all, get yourself your personal and business accounts on these social media networks. Once that’s done, become friends with those in need of your services and products. If you’re a pet grooming service then look for people in your area who have pets. Look for the fan clubs of those pets too. Share their pictures and videos and validate them for their posts and contributions. People will grow toward you and when you speak, they’ll listen. Don’t spam them, don’t overwhelm them, just keep conversations natural and never, ever get into a fight or debate.
Soon, you’ll see your influence grow. You’ll be in contact with people who are organically interested in what you do. When that person shows off the horrible haircut their prized poodle got, you dive right in and let it be known that your company would never allow such a thing to happen and how you will offer to fix the problem for free. The person will almost faint. A free doggie do? Others will notice the generous offer and when you’re done and the job is spectacular, you have a legitimate claim to fame that you can milk for years to come. Opportunities like this are what make or break you. Let’s say a comparative photo shows what the poodle looked like ‘before’ and ‘after’ with your URL at the bottom of it. It’s going to be posted on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the rest for a long, long time, ever driving more traffic to your social media pages, websites, and blogs.
See how simple it is? It take patience, it takes some good old fashion good communication and showing off what you do best.