Is Google My Business Good Enough for Local SEO?

Optimizing Your Google My Business Page for Local SEOGoogle earns majority of its revenues from advertisements-of the US$ 110.9 billion it made in 2017, ads alone contributed US$ 95.4 (or 86%). No wonder, Google is the most popular search engine in the world, processing 1.2 trillion searches globally every year. That very statistic is a burning instance of the search engine’s earnest attempts to keep all its users happy.
In order to enhance the visibility of your business across the net, Google continues to introduce cutting-edge tools and techniques periodically. Google My business for instance, is one such tool that strives to bolster local SEO so as to help businesses to become more visible in their immediate surroundings. But can ‘Google My Business’ help achieve your business goals?

What exactly is Google My Business?

The Google My Business tool not only lets you display your business across all the search engine’s platforms and interfaces but also enables you to control the manner in which the same is visible. Registering for the app (via App Store or Google Play) is easy as you simply have to fill in a few mandatory details for gaining access to several versatile features.

Benefits of listing your business with Google My Business

1. Sweeping visibility

Since innumerable third-party portals bank on Google for obtaining relevant info, you can bet your firm’s visibility will significantly perk up. Once you’re listed on Google My Business, the likelihood of your site showing up on third-party website will increase manifold. Also, business categorization will lead to users landing at your site via local SEO search.

2. Steady NAP consistency

If you key in the correct name, address, and phone number (NAP consistency) of your business while signing up for Google My Business, you can take it for granted that Google will show exactly the same info. Also, make sure that you enter the actual operation hours so that your customers can contact you or vice-versa.

3. Analytics data helps fine-tune visibility

You’ll have the added advantage of reviewing your business performance by exploiting specific metrics such as Google Analytics. By using Google Analytics, you’ll be able to determine the traffic volume, total number of users, and so on. The interface ‘insights’ will let you find out the proportion of users who found you through organic searches and paid searches.

4. Impress customers with stunning visual content

Since attention-spans of users nowadays are extremely short, you can make an indelible first-time impression on your prospective customers and/or users by uploading eye-catching footages and snapshots. Google My Business offers you the opportunity of uploading of exhibiting your online storefront apart from videos and photographs.

5. Online bookings

In case you are a dentist or a veterinarian, listing with Google My Business will allow your patients to make appointments directly from your site. The advantage of booking online is a win-win situation-you’re assured of a visit (read consultation fee) and your customers is spared from the hassle of having to wait in a queue at the chamber for an appointment.

6. Intuitive blog posts

Needless to say, you’ll have to compete with many other businesses or professionals for the same number of customers. So, how do you make your business stand out from the crowd? Of course, by posting creative and original blogs describing your product or service as well as through promotional and seasonal offers. And Google My Business is definitely your best web-based platform for showcasing your business.

7. Interactive reviews

Google My Business provides you with the incentive of establishing an intimate rapport with your customers by responding to their feedbacks. You’ll surely be able to take your business to the next level if you pay heed to your users’ feedbacks.

The drawbacks

Perhaps the only downside of exploiting Google My Business is that you’ll have to put in a lot of effort to maintain the goodwill of your brand. However, there is no online business management tool that allows you to publicize your business effortlessly.

If you want to make the most of your Google My Business listing, log in at www.localseojacksonville.biz or dial 904-425-9679.

Boost Your Site’s Performance in 5 Easy Steps

How to boost your site's performanceThis spring, don’t focus just on cleaning your house, as your website also needs some attention. And be sure that you will be amazed by the results!

The good part is that cleaning your website doesn’t require that much effort as making your entire place shine. It takes just a few simple moves and your SEO spring cleaning will be done, boosting the site’s search performance.

We’ve put together a list of 6 tips, easy to apply and with some serious effects. Without much further ado, let’s see how you should tidy up that website!

Start with an inspection

First thing first, begin by collecting all the data you need. Use a crawler and identify all types of metadata and site errors, as well as the status of each page, to figure out which areas need attention.

One of our favorite tools for this is Screaming Frog, as it offers very detailed information, but it’s up to you to decide which one works best for your website.

Get rid of low-performing pages

Google Analytics can reveal which one of your pages is doing good, so why not take a look through all of them? You will surely find out that there are some of them that don’t bring the desired results, so it’s not worth keeping them anymore.

Specifically, we’re talking about those pages supposed to be targeting valuable keywords, but aren’t attracting enough natural search traffic. If you put enough SEO efforts in them, but still don’t obtain what you want, it’s time to call it quits and clear the clutter.

Eliminate all the duplicate metas

Another very easy thing you can do in order to boost your site’s performance is to look at each title tag and meta description and make sure it’s unique. Sure, this can be a bit time consuming, especially if you have a lot of pages, but it’s definitely a rewarding job.

Titles are still one of the most important on-page SEO elements, so it’s mandatory for them to be unique and not surpass 65 characters. As for meta descriptions, although they’re not a ranking factor, they can seriously affect CTR rates from the search results. Then can reach over 300 characters, but for the best results, include your major keywords in the first 155, which are shown in SERPs.

Break all those redirect chains

In time, a lot of your pages will become obsolete, leading to chains of 301 redirects. Or, if you prefer, one URL will redirect to another, redirecting to another, then to another, and so on. But what wants this?

Such chains require a lot of server requests to execute, not to mention that they slow down page loading times. The good news is that your crawler can produce a report of these chains, so why not replace them with a redirect from the first URLs to the last ones?

As you can see, just a bit of spring cleaning can have some excellent effects on your website. If you just don’t have the time to do it, you can ask Local SEO Jacksonville Company to help you! With the most competitive SEO packages, able to satisfy any small business owner in the area, they will make sure that your business stays at the top of the search results.