Local Seo Tactics And Digital Marketing Strategies

How To Survive As Local Business For Over 20 Years By Embracing New Marketing Strategies You know Bob Brennan as the co-host to Local SEO Tactics.  What many don't know is Bob's history as a successful brick-and-mortar business owner over the last 20+ years.  For episode 30 of Local SEO Tactics, Jesse interviews Bob Brennan, discussing what it takes to survive as a business for over 20 years, and how continuing to seek out and embrace new marketing technologies can help grow your small business. What You’ll Learn Insights into what it takes to persevere in small business with an ever changing marketing landscape How inbound or "pull" marketing is so much more powerful and outbound or "push marketing Contrasting the traditional marketing techniques like direct mail, versus newer digital methods Focusing on SEO and digital marketing costs substantially less than cold calling, direct mail, and appointment setting Business owners need to shift their marketing to become a "service based business" Using digital ma

Understand When The Google Map Pack Shows Up and How To Get Your Website Ranked In The Map Pack We're all familiar with the Google Map Pack, right?  Google map pack is the general term used to describe the location based results you see on a Google search results page, where it lists local businesses and identifies their location on a map with little place marker icons.  Well, if you want your business to get in front of new customers, you need to be ranking in the Google map pack!  In this episode we'll talk about how to determine which keywords will trigger that map pack to show up (not all will).  We'll also dig into how you can optimize your website for the keywords that trigger the map pack, to make sure you are showing up here for local searches! What You’ll Learn You need to be in the Google map pack if you want to be found for local search results on Google The Google map pack is group of businesses that appear in a box at the top of the search results page The map pack does not show up for every sea

Discover The Easy But Hidden Way To Engage With More Customers And Get Ahead Of Your Competition We've noticed a shift happening - customers are contacting businesses more and more with instant messaging, SMS text messages, and emails, and less with phone calls than they used to.  This is great, but it comes with a catch!  It's super easy to know when your phone is ringing...but how do you know if you have a new message on Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, or any other 3rd party messaging platform?  Don't let these customer inquiries slip through the cracks!  In this weeks episode we share some tips and tricks to quickly engage with these customers, and win the sales that your competition is missing out on!     What You’ll Learn There is a rise in the ratio of non-phone call communications for customer contact from websites Phone calls remain the most popular method of contacting local companies for service requests Often times businesses are slower to reply to emails than they are in handling

How To Approach Local SEO and Increase Rankings If Your Business Has Multiple Locations If your business has multiple locations, you need a slightly different approach to your local SEO strategy.  There are a few simple but highly effective concepts you can deploy to maximize your exposure and increase your Google rankings for all locations.  In this episode we'll break down the subtle differences that are needed when you feature multiple locations on your website, in order to get every location ranked and dominate in your local market! What You’ll Learn How to setup pages on your website to rank and dominate for each location you have Setting up one website with a page for each location is better than having separate websites for each location Make sure you have a Google My Business (GMB) listing for each business location Create an individual page on your website for each business location you have Link to these individual location pages from the respective GMB listing for each page Create a main "Location

Bing SEO Using Bing Webmaster Tools and Bing Places To Increase Your Local Rankings and Exposure Bing SEO!  It's something that most businesses ignore, and you can use that to your advantage!  Research shows that up to 33% of the US population uses Bing on a monthly basis, with over 5 billion searches on the Bing network each month.  Bing has some great SEO tools, just like Google, including Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing Places, and Bing Connected Pages.  We'll break down how to use these tools and get your business listed in Bing, to tap into the hidden audience you may be missing out on! It's super easy to get your business setup on Bing Places Bing Places is the Bing equivalent to Google My Business (GMB) Yahoo pulls Bing Places business listings into the Yahoo Local search results AOL pulls Bing Places business listings into the AOL local search results Over 5 billion monthly searches on the Bing search network each month in the US Up to 33% of the US market is being served by Bing, via Bing, Yahoo, and AOL

Focus On Local SEO To Rank Higher In Google For Locally Based Searches What is local SEO? How does local SEO work? How do you use local SEO marketing to rank locally in Google for the searches you want? In this episode we'll answer these questions and run down the most important things you should be doing to get found locally in Google, and Bing. Learn what you need to do on your website, plus the importance of social media profiles and review portals as it relates to your local presence. We'll round up some tips from previous episodes, plus talk about some new tactics too! YOU'LL LEARN If you're trying to get found locally, you need to setup your Google My Business (GMB) You need to be appearing in the top 3 results within the GMB for searches Getting reviews on your GMB will help with your local search rankings Google Posts (within GMB) expire after 7 days, so post weekly to stay visible Choosing the primary category for your GMB is very important Take advantage of the Business Description in the GMB and f

How To Use Google My Business Descriptions, Services, Attributes, and More Google My Business (GMB) is an extremely important part of SEO and the digital marketing strategy for any local business wishing to get found online.  In this weeks episode, we'll review some recent changes and updates to GMB, plus some important areas you'll want to take advantage of.  Find out how to continually optimize your listing, increase exposure, and stay up-to-date on any new GMB updates in the future! YOU'LL LEARN New features that are available to use in your Google My Business listing What you should do with the Google My Business description area How using the Google My Business description can benefit your SEO and exposure Overview of the new Services feature within your GMB listing How to match up your website structure with your GMB Services Best practices for Section names, Service titles, and Item Descriptions When you should or should not show your pricing in the GMB Services area Google has removed all anonymous r

These Are The Pages You Need To Include On Your Website What are the most important pages you need do have on your website - one of the most common questions we get asked! In this episode we'll break down the main pages that every local business should be including, and answer this question. These are the critical pages for Google bot and your customers, and you need to design them for both to have success. Here's what working for us right now and we hope it helps you, too! YOU'LL LEARN What are the critical and essential web pages that you need to have on your website Your homepage is the most important page on your website Using your primary Google My Business category on your homepage How to properly display your address and nearby cities you serve on your homepage Creating niche pages for the products and services you provide Including your secondary Google My Business categories in your niche pages Designing your pages for both your customers and Google to navigate and find Using an About Us page to sen

Apps For Website Change Monitoring, Change Detection, and Alerts Nowadays, there are many great website change detector apps to help monitor website changes and give you instant alerts to said changes! Ever have the pleasure of receiving a message from your customer, telling you your website is down? Or that you have an error on the page preventing them to buy or contact you? It's fun, right? No matter how great things seem to be going, errors can happen in an instant! We'll break down some of the free and low cost apps we use for change monitoring and to keep us instantly informed! Plus - learn how to use these same apps to spy on what your competition is doing! YOU'LL LEARN How to automatically monitor your website for downtime Get automatic alerts if your website goes offline, and when it comes back online Monitor your website for hacking and hijacking issues How to make sure your website does not have plugins causing on-page issues Ensure any content embedded into your website is always active Monitor sp

How To Take Better Photos For Your Website - Part 2 Matt Addington shares tips and tricks for taking your own photos for your website, with your smartphone, in part 2 of this interview. We'll also cover how to edit photos, great tools for editing built into your phone, and how to use photos on your website in the best way for maximum engagement and conversion. Matt shares some great tips that will make anyone better at taking photos, telling stories, and ultimately developing better content for your website! YOU'LL LEARN How to take great photos for your business with your smartphone What are the best angles to take photos with your iPhone How to zoom in on ordinary things to take dramatic photos Getting your camera to a place that you or others normally take for granted Don't let the background be a distraction ("when in doubt, leave it out") What is the HDR camera setting on your phone all about How using the touch focus feature on your phone can help take better photos Using built in editing features righ

How To Take Better Photos For Your Website - Part 1 One area of your website that can have a huge impact on user experience is the photos (or videos) that you have on your web pages. Interesting and engaging photos can draw customers in, enhance your image, and tell the story of your brand. We've got Matt Addington – photography wizard – in to talk about this. In part 1 of this two part episode, Matt shares some tips and tricks on how to take better photos for your website, to help make your pages stand out from the crowd and resonate with your customers! YOU'LL LEARN Techniques on how to take better photos with your smartphone Why images, photos, and video are more important than ever for your brand identity How to stand out with photos taken from a unique perspective How photos and videos can be used to tell a story and be more engaging Focus on a simple and tight image and remove background clutter for powerful images Use multiple images on your page to tell a story, instead of one all inclusive photo Gre

Introduction To The GMB Offer Posts and How To Craft A Great Offer Google has released a new feature within Google My Business (GMB) called Offer Posts. The new GMB offer posts are very similar to the traditional posts, but you can use them to post sales, discounts, promotions, or other special offers.  The new offer posts have some unique features like staring date and ending date, promo codes, and more! We'll break down the features, and go over some best practices to leverage this new feature to help you improve SEO, gain rankings, and get more sales! YOU'LL LEARN What is the "posts" feature in your Google My Business listing What is the new GMB offer posts feature How is an offer post different than a traditional post Where you'll find the GMB offer posts feature in your GMB listing How often you should put out new GMB posts How many words you can use in a GMB post What types of offer posts are having the best conversion rates How to construct a good offer within GMB offer posts How you can use keywords

Avoid Over Optimizing Your Website To Maintain High Search Rankings Yes, it is possible to over optimize your website.  Too much of a good thing can get you in trouble with Google, and impact your search rankings in a big way. In this episode we answer the question "what is over optimization", and break down some of the tactics and strategies you can use identify and avoid over optimizing your website. YOU'LL LEARN How is it possible to over optimize your website? What it means to be over optimized on your website What is keyword stuffing How keyword stuffing can lead to website over optimization Developing your web pages for "user intent" and not just focusing on keywords How to fix and reformat an over optimized web page Mixing in keyword variations on your page to make it SEO friendly and user friendly Methods of reviewing your page to determine if it's too focused on specific keywords Google knows if you are writing your pages for rankings and not for humans to read Quality content and clear communicatio

Rank Higher in the Google Map Pack By Using GMB Categories as Keywords On Your Website Google My Business, also known as GMB, is a crucial part of any SEO strategy in today's world. In order to maximize the relationship between your GMB listing and your website, you need to take advantage of the Google My Business categories. These categories are very important on the SERP (search engine results page), and using these categories like you would a keyword is a great way to increase your exposure, bump your web rankings, and show up in the map pack! YOU'LL LEARN How to bring synergy between your website and your Google My Business listing Get your GMB listing to show in the Google Map Pack more often Choosing the primary category in your GMB listing is critical to your success Checking to see which categories are relevant for your business in GMB Using your primary GMB category as a keyword on your homepage Using variations on GMB categories versus exact match Avoiding over-optimization and over usage of the ca

Use An XML Sitemap Generator To Create and Auto Update Your Website Sitemaps Want your pages to show up in Google?  Then you better have a sitemap on your website! A sitemap, or more specifically, an XML sitemap, is like a roadmap or a table of contents for all of the important pages, posts, and images on your website.  Having an XML sitemap will tell Google, and other search engines, which pages are on your website - so they can know to include them in their search results. In this episode we'll cover the basics of sitemaps, how to create them, and why you need one! YOU'LL LEARN What is a Sitemap for your website What is an XML sitemap What is an HTML sitemap Why you need both HTML and XML sitemaps Easy plugins for WordPress to generate an XML sitemap How to choose what content to include in your sitemap How sitemaps tell Google you have new pages or images on your website How to generate sitemaps on non-WordPress websites Selecting sitemap generators that auto-update Thanks for Listening! View the show no

Use Google Search Console To Submit Your Website To Google and Report On Google Search Performance Google Search Console (also known as Google Webmaster Tools pre-2015) is a free service, provided by Google, that lets you peek into some great information about your website. If you're not using this right now - you should be! You can use it to submit your site to Google, report on how many people are finding your website from Google, where your pages are ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). Plus, you can view how many people visit on mobile devices versus desktop computers. Check it out! YOU'LL LEARN What is Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) How to get your website into the Google Index faster using Google Search Console, so you can show up on search results ASAP What does Google Search Console do for you How often should you be reviewing Google Search Console Instructions on how to setup your Google Search Console account How to add your website(s) to the console for tracking

How To Decide If You Should Refocus Your Homepage Or Make A New Page To Attack Keywords In this weeks episode, we dive into a question that was submitted by Patrick, who listens to the Local SEO Tactics podcast.  Patrick was wondering if he should modify his homepage to attack a new keyword target, or if he should create a new page to go after that keyword instead. We'll break down the options and talk about the various situations in which you may choose path over the other. YOU'LL LEARN Which page carries the most weight on your website How Google serves up web pages, not websites, in search results Deciding if you should change your home page or create a new page when going after a new keyword target for your website When you should avoid refocusing your keyword targets on your homepage When it's okay to refocus your keyword targeting on your homepage When you should create a new page to attack a new keyword focus When you should refocus your keyword targeting on an existing page versus creating a new page

Use Online Reputation Management To Drive More Traffic and Improve Your SEO! Online reviews are very important, not only for helping to build trust with potential customers, but also as it relates to the overall SEO of your website. From Google, Facebook, and Yelp, to Angies List, the BBB, and many more…customers can leave their feedback an a number of places today. As a local service business, you need to take control of these review portals, so you can not only view and manage the customer reviews, but also to leverage them and take advantage of the praises in your marketing strategy! YOU'LL LEARN Overview of automated review capturing systems At what point should you consider using an automated review capturing system How to get more customers to leave you a positive review How to remove the barriers for customers to leave a review for your business How asking for feedback instead of a review will increase your review rates How to get your customers onto the "leave a review" screen within Google (and othe

Learn How To Use Improved Call Handling Strategies To Charge More For Your Services! As a local service business, it can be annoying when you get price shopper phone calls.  However, the reality is that we are ALL price shoppers! Don't shy away from giving price quotes and estimates over the phone, because that is what customers really want. In this episode we'll cover some of the best tactics and strategies we've uncovered to handle price shoppers, and convert them into great customers while your competition turns them away! YOU'LL LEARN Best practices for new customer call handling to convert more prospects into new customers How to quickly instill confidence in new callers and win them over Tactics to identify "price shoppers" and quickly convey your value Leveraging a call handling script to funnel customers into your sales process Why price checking your competition is so important How to use text message follow up's to convert more prospects into customers The 3 R's - Referrals, Reviews, and Repeat bus

Use Call Tracking Software To Gain Insights and Increase Customer Conversions A key component to any marketing strategy is trackability. One area that is often overlooked by local businesses is tracking the number of phone calls that come in.  This is a huge mistake!  However, it is pretty easy to solve with a call tracking software solution. We'll break down the features and benefits of a good call tracking solution, and share the best practices that we've compiled over the years - both from using this technology ourselves, and with the hundreds of clients we've worked with. It's surprisingly affordable, and the benefits are numerous! YOU'LL LEARN Why you should use call tracking software What is call tracking software How to use call tracking and recording to measure your results How to establish a baseline of leads you're currently getting How to obtain a phone number for any area code Using tracking phone numbers to measure marketing campaigns Using tracking phone numbers to test market in specific citie