Why NAP Consistency Is Important For My Small Business?

Importance of NAP ConsistencyAccurate location-based Name, Address, and Phone Number of any business is defined as NAP consistency. They need to be the same everywhere from local directories, websites, social media profiles, and business listings. Local SEO is one of the most important factors determining how your business ranks on search engines. Additionally, never ignore the homepage URL and ensure it remains consistent everywhere.

NAP consistency is seen as the foundation of local SEO strategy. You need to consider it as table stakes or the minimum requirement for ranking in local search engines. Any inconsistency or not having proper citations across the web should immediately be fixed.

What Is Meant BY Local Citations?
Any mention of your business’s name or contact information on the Internet is a local citation. These are considered critical Local Pack Ranking factors. Such citations are primarily from directories, social media, business association pages, and chamber of commerce mentions. Citations don’t have to be linked back to a website to provide search engines with a positive signal for your business. Consistency in your data across business listings becomes a crucial signal for Bing and Google to classify your business as legitimate.

You need to start listing a small business on significant websites such as Bing Places, Apple Maps Connect, and Google My Business. After having a consistent profile on these platforms, you should focus on building additional citations on the social media platforms and local directories.

Importance of NAP Consistency
Google believes its users are essential, and its goal is to offer the most relevant and helpful information to them. Google’s algorithms are developed to sort data on the Internet. Search engines use different ranking signals to determine the best results based on queries received from their users.

When ranking a website in the top search engine results, several factors are considered. Businesses providing local business result citations are among the most critical signals for Bing and Google to determine if such information is authentic and accurate. Local business citations with severe inconsistencies are often considered negative or search engine set of ranking signals. Consistency in Name, Address, and Phone Number data across the Internet helps you rank higher as they are considered accurate information for the users.

A similar concept can be applied to people searching for information about any small business. For instance, if a user tries to contact a business and gets an inconsistent listing having an old number or multiple old addresses would give a bad experience. Searchers might believe that a company that doesn’t bother updating its contact information isn’t trustworthy to offer them genuine products or services. Estimates suggest that 73% of users lose trust in a brand if their business listing has inaccurate data. A business that keeps its directory listings updated is the one staying at the top.

How Much Consistency In NAP Is Required?
Consistency doesn’t mean that all NAP citations need to have each space, character, dash, and space the same everywhere. For instance, the formatting of your phone number doesn’t need to be the same in each citation. Similarly, the format of your suite number doesn’t need to be the same but ensure they are there in each listing.

Hence, the takeaway from such developments requires you to do your best to maintain consistency across NAP and URL across your online listings but not be stressed about slight variations that search engines can quickly figure out. Thus, it’s essential to do whatever is best for your potential customers and ensure they can easily find you and abides by a consistent format across each listing as much as possible.

Another example of this condition is that a local search engine ranking isn’t impacted if a citation mentions “Avenue” as “Ave” or any suite number is formatted differently or missing in a particular listing.

If you think you have done everything correctly and your NAP is consistently abiding by the prescribed standards, but your business listing still isn’t at the top, it’s time to consult a professional. Local SEO Jacksonville is a company that assists small businesses in Jacksonville, FL, to rank better in the search results. Their team has both the expertise and experience of promoting businesses to rank better for your targeted products and services.

Significance Of Local SEO For Small Businesses

Benefits of Local SEO for Small BusinessesMost small businesses, especially those that are multi-located come across a predicament while competing with the big national and international level brands. It is mainly related to a limited budget. Due to this reason, local SEO is a terrific marketing weapon. It allows small businesses to compete with bigger brands in a constant battle for survival in the competitive market. The local SEO gives the small business credibility in the market. It is also crucial for mobile searches. Here are some ways of bettering the local SEO.

1. Have accurate business info on Google: When you are looking to get your small business to appear in local searches or on Google Maps, you are needed to create a listing with GMB or Google My Business. You will have to provide up-to-date information about your organization here. Make sure that you are submitting all the required data, verification of business location, adding photographs, entering the current working hours, and managing the reviews properly.

2. Embed the website with Google Maps: For this purpose, you need to utilize the Google Maps Embed API. You can place a panorama that contains an interactive map or a street view on your website. The entire process is completed by using straightforward HTTP requests.

3. Use good on-page SEO: When you are looking to dominate the local searches for your small business, the on-page SEO must be precise. There are two factors involved in on-page SEO. These two factors are the products and services you are offering and the location of your business. It shows to Google the products and services you are providing and the place where you can find them. There are certain key elements involved in the on-page SEO that you need to focus on such as, title tags, meta tags, NAP info, header tags, page content, and photos.

4. Have reviews on the website: When you are looking to achieve local ranking, you will need reviews. The review count and the actual score are factored within the local search ranking for Google. A higher number of reviews showing positive ratings are more likely to raise the local ranking of your small business. Having positive reviews also helps in getting your business to stand out to the prospective clientele that is close to arriving at the final decision.

Keep in mind that you are going to have some negative reviews as well. Ensure that you are not leaving out any of them unaddressed. You must reply with honesty, courteousness, and as per the Google guidelines. The question now is how do you get the clients to give reviews about your services? Well, you may create links that lead to review websites. You can also develop a business card for providing all the review site info. Or, you can even ask satisfied clients to write reviews about the products and services you provide.

5. Have local citations: The local citations provide a mention of your small business’s website info and NAP info on the internet. Google considers the citations to be a way of establishing the relevancy and authority of your small business. In other words, these local citations help the organization in developing prominence and relevance in the eyes of Google. The best websites you can use for citation are Yahoo.com, GMB, Opentable.com, Apple Maps, Yelp.com, Facebook, bbb.org, and Here.com. These local citations are not only helpful for the local SEO but they can provide awareness about the organization via different sites. These sites are considered to be reliable by many people.

Remember, all the local search results are achieved through relevance, distance, and prominence of your business. All these factors work in tandem to help you in finding the best fit for the local search. For achieving this goal, you need to utilize the power of search engines. You can leverage a bigger customer base by using them as it is a common way of running a small business. Any local SEO company can be quite useful for these multi-location small businesses, especially for gathering more customers and developing their sales. When you are looking to develop sales in Jacksonville, FL area, you can get in touch with the professionals at Local SEO Jacksonville for reliable service.

Do I Need To Hire An SEO Expert?

Do I Need To Hire An SEO Expert?SEO is the short form of Search Engine Optimizer or Search Engine Optimization. One of the big decisions a business has to contemplate is hiring the services of an SEO expert as it can lead to an improvement in the website and can save time as well. But a wrong choice can lead to damage to your website and can cost you in terms of reputation as well. However, there are several SEO agencies out there that provide useful services to different website owners.

Services provided by an SEO expert

Advertising by using Google does not have any impact on the website ranking in search results. Google doesn’t accept payments for ranking websites. You do not need any money to rank in the organic search results either. If you are running a small local company you can complete most of the SEO work by yourself. If you believe that you need help from pros read on for selecting the right SEO agency. Some of the significant services provided by the SEO agencies include,

  • Technical advice about the site development.
  • Review of the content on the website and its structure.
  • Content development.
  • Keyword research.
  • Management of the online business development program.
  • SEO training.
  • Expert advice in niche markets and geographics.

Selecting an SEO agency or a Search Engine Optimizer

In case you are thinking about hiring the services of an SEO expert, it is a good idea to get started immediately. A good time to do this will be when you are thinking about re-designing your website or while planning a new one. This way you and the expert can make sure that the website is designed to be friendly for the search engines bottom up. A high-quality SEO expert can improve the existing website. Here are some considerations while selecting an SEO expert for your website.

Interview the prospect: Some pertinent question you can ask the prospect are,

  • Do you take into consideration the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
  • Can you produce examples of prior work or share your success stories?
  • Do you offer other marketing services to complement the SEO business?
  • What results can you expect?
  • What is your experience in the area?
  • What are the significant SEO techniques you will use?

Check their business references: You can talk to the prior clients of the SEO agency to find out whether they were satisfied with the services provided by this agency, whether they are easy to work with, and did they provide positive results?

Ask for search and technical audits: Ask the experts to perform an audit of your website and report what is required to be done. You might have to pay for this work. You may provide read-only access on Search Console for this purpose. The pros should be able to provide realistic estimates about the work involved and possibilities of improvement. If they say they can guarantee first place in SERPs, go look for another expert.

Be committed to making the changes: You have to be devoted to making the changes recommended by the experts. It takes a lot of time and effort for making the changes recommended by the pro. If you are not serious about making these changes, it is not worthwhile taking the trouble to hire a professional. Finally, decide who you wish to hire.

While selecting the SEO it might be a good idea to perform some research about the industry. One of the better ways of doing it is by using Google. You need to be careful while selecting the agency because many firms follow practices that are not ethical. If your business operates from Jacksonville, FL you can get in touch with reliable experts, Local SEO Jacksonville Company for estimates and advice.

Signs Indicating Your Business Needs Local SEO

Signs Indicating Your Business Needs Local SEOWhen your business has a certain physical location then it is likely that you are already aware of the significance of achieving and maintaining visibility in the eyes of local search engines. Almost half of the searches on the internet are intended to be a local search. They use search queries such as [keyword][city][state] for finding out about the products and services specific to the locations where you are running your business. In most cases, these searchers are ready to spend money. If they cannot find your locations listed on the first page of SERPs they are likely to turn to your competitors. Let’s see some signs you can observe when a business needs the services of professional local SEO services.

1. All locations of the business are listed on a single page of your site: This is a common oversight that can cripple the visibility of your business. For optimizing every location effectively you will need a specific webpage that gives you the capability to target important locations and keywords in the Meta description and HTML title. This is impossible with a single landing page mentioning all the locations.

2. Illogical site structure: Don’t make it difficult for the users otherwise they will find the information they need elsewhere. The location pages have to be structured with a logical hierarchy for the search engine to understand how every page can fit into a section of content. Although it depends on the number of locations you have, here is a typical structure for the content: domain-URL/locations/state/city/store. Independent pages can also give you an indexable content area required for adequately describing unique services offered by that location.

3. No deep links to the locations: While you are updating the listings on Google My Business or any other map feed, you need to give deep links that will take the searcher directly to the location details they are looking for instead of leaving them on a high-level page or a Home page where they will be left stranded having to further search for the best alternative. In most cases, the local searchers are looking for a phone number, address, or other services that are specific to a location. Do not make it even more difficult for them.

4. Lack of knowledge about the amount of traffic coming to the site by using local search: Sometimes you are struggling to monitor the performance of your local landing pages. This is the right time to talk to pros that can get into the local analytics and give you a report mentioning the action-to-be taken items. The two sources of data viz. organic local traffic and maps can provide valuable insight into your local search campaign. They need to be tracked and reported to have granular insight into the current performance of every location.

5. Being unaware of the business citations needing work: One of the significant aspects of local SEO that is overlooked many times or avoided is the management of citations. A citation is the mention of NAP information of your business with or without a link that is present on the local-based sites or directories across the internet. Some of the common examples of the influential sites that keep the listing data are Yellow Pages, Yelp, Merchant Circle, and Facebook.

First, decide whether you are in the need to take the plunge and optimize the local search for making your business grow. In the beginning, you can start by assessing where your company stands at the moment and develop a list of tasks according to priority to decide the areas where a direct impact has to be made quickly. If you are looking to investigate the local search services available in Jacksonville, you can place a call to Local SEO Jacksonville Company.

What Is Local SEO And Why It’s Mandatory In 2019

SEO Jacksonville - What Is Local SEO And Why It's Mandatory In 2019In a nutshell, local SEO is a branch of search engine optimization that focuses on optimizing a website in such a way that it’s easier to be found in local search results. You can also call it a process emphasizing the optimization efforts of local brick-and-mortar businesses, instead of just online businesses.

Unfortunately still ignored by many business owners, local SEO is essential nowadays, considering that most searches made on Google are now made using a mobile device. Besides this, stats confirm that half of the people who did a local search on their phone actually went to the physical store they needed information about within one day, while a staggering 97 percent of consumers searched online for a local business in 2017.

Looks like “x business near me” is one of the most powerful search queries of the moment.

Who needs local SEO?

There are several categories of clients who can make great use of local SEO, among them being lawyers and law firms, doctors and medical practices, as well as plumbers. Basically, the types of services you need in case of an emergency.

Then, there are restaurants. This type of business achieves a lot from local SEO, as a potential customer can immediately check reviews from other clients, see the opening hours and address, then leads them to the business in the least amount of time.

Ok, but is it for everybody?

No, not at all. The reality is that some types of businesses just don’t need local SEO. E-commerce shops, authors, or any other business that doesn’t share local information are definitely not good candidates for some local SEO services.

How is local SEO done?

At first, it might look difficult, but the truth is that local SEO is not that different from organic SEO, since it also implies keyword research, creating quality content, obtaining links and, obviously, taking care of on-page SEO. Basically, the main difference is that it just has a local focus.

All of the above-mentioned elements are essential for a local website, in order to outperform the competition in SERPs. And when it comes to optimizing for the so-called ‘near me search’, you need to do them with the local customer in mind.

We’re talking about using keyword variations that have a conversational tone and focus, able to achieve huge search volumes, creating content with a local focus, and, obviously, get some high-quality links, from – for example – NAP sites, local directory websites, industry-related local sites or even local newspaper sites.

Again, the core idea is the same to organic SEO, but this time, you’re optimizing just for users in a specific area. And your mission is to help them find the business they need, preferably one as close as possible to them.

Do I need local SEO?

If you have a local business and want to attract as many clients as possible, yes, you absolutely need it. Sure, you can also live without this as well, but why miss on such a great opportunity?

Gone are the days when people were searching for local businesses from desktop devices. Everybody as a smartphone with Internet access and whenever they need a local service, they’re a few screen taps away from finding it. And stats claim that they end up going to that location within the next hour. Let that sink in for a moment.

So, are you looking forward to starting using local SEO for your brick-and-mortar business? If the answer is positive, start with a competitive SEO package, able to satisfy any business owner and deliver results. SEO Jacksonville has exactly what you need, promising to deliver results-based work, so your business can be taken to the next level.

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Do Not Ignore Social Media Marketing For SEO

Do Not Ignore Social Media Marketing For SEOIt doesn’t take a genius nowadays to realize that social media is of utmost importance in building up one’s website traffic. Just focusing on keywords and links isn’t going to do it and that is why social media marketing is now one of the most important parts of SEO.

Why is social media so important? It’s because social media is the juggernaut by which the internet rolls. Social media has grown to such astronomical size, entire industries are now shaped and supported by it. The sheer number of people online is in the billions and will continue to grow. They rely on social media for googeneral communications as well as shopping, education, and courtships. There’s no area of our lives that social media isn’t attached to. That being said, knowing how to operate social media to your advantage to boost your SEO means a lot of work.

It’s going to take lots of effort to exploit the goodies offered via social media. It means not only signing up for each venue but having an active participation with thousands of other people. You need to target social media sites that contain the keywords to your site. There are several free and pay for tools for analyzing keywords and that is quite helpful. You can bet your top competitors are using these tools as well as ‘boots on the ground’ tactics.

You’ll not have to socialize 24/7 but you will have to spend some time daily if possible or your efforts will be totally useless. You’ll have to find Facebook pages that cater to your niche of business. There you will have to not bully your way in or spam these pages to death, but you’ll have to be a valuable member of that community. This can be fun with fun if you’re really passionate about your line of business. Let’s say for example you’re a plumber with a business in Hogjaw, Tennessee. Well, you’re looking for customers in not only that area but nearby areas. You would target plumbing sites and pages and especially pages with the town of Hogjaw, Tennessee in them. You’ll have your own social media pages up and running with links to your site and contact info. Location too as this helps with ‘Local SEO‘. On these associated sites, you’ll be a good member. Helping out when you can and being a general ‘great person’. Other members will appreciate you for your good nature and expertise. These people will share and like your content and put up links to your site adding to your linkbuilding goals. Linkbuilding is still a vital process for SEO.

Actually, applying your social media skills will bring you a multifold of positive results. The most value comes from organic traffic that not only converts into sales but also retains the surfers for regular business. As people get to know you via social media they will continue to discuss you and your business. Just continue to be a helpful neighbor and you can’t help but go up in the social media communities, but your site will rise to the top of the search engines. Mind you, your social media personal business page has to have as much info about your business as possible. It might get ten times the traffic your main website gets, however, it will be sending you a continued stream of organic traffic which is what you want because your social media page will be considered ‘authority’ and that kind of site is of greatest value to Google. Your main site might not be in authority yet, but your social media page is and getting a link from any relevant authority site is a great ROI.

So as you can see, SEO nowadays needs social media and you do too.