7 STEPS to IMPROVE YOUR SEARCH RANKINGS

Every business needs more customers and a steady stream of new ones, too. So, whether you are a brick and mortar store with, one or more locations, or, an online business - driving traffic to you is one of the most important tasks for your business.

There are some key steps to making sure that you are keeping your rankings as high as possible in searches for your business. You should review these steps regularly to assure you are doing everything you can to get as much traffic as possible. Checking these steps regularly will give you a strong ongoing marketing strategy and a better chance to keep your business name and record in front of more customers versus your competition who will not take the time to review these steps:

1)      Keyword Check and Research – Which keywords do customers use to find you? If you are a plumber in Dallas, then ‘Dallas plumber’ will be an important term for you on your web site. If you offer ‘industrial plumbing’ and ‘residential plumbing’ service then both terms will be important. You may want to add a zip code or two along with the service name you offer, like ‘plumber 75201, 75214’ as a key search term. When planning your keyword placement on any website or other site that mentions your business, like directory listings, you should mention as many cities or zip codes as space allows on that listing. The key is to know what words your prospects are using to find businesses like yours.

2)      Optimize Your Web Site – By creating a reasonable amount of high quality content that users are searching for, you will make your site more relevant for both users and search engine results. Customizing your meta title with keywords allow you to have a good match for whatever content is shared on Social Media sites which will be of interest and also relevant for readers. Your location with city and state should also be listed prominently on your first page and contact pages, along with your phone number. Usually abbreviated NAP, for name - address - phone, these factors are vitally important in search results. Whenever and wherever they are on the web, they need to be absolutely and exactly the same for the best search results. Do not use a P.O. Box. Google needs to have a street address to rank you high. Again, consistency in all posting is the key.

Very important: Optimize your website for mobile device usage like smart phones and tablets. More than ½ of all searches are done on mobile devices. If your site doesn’t show well, users won’t stay and they will go to your competition whose site does show well on their mobile device.

3)    Claim Your Business on Google Maps, Google My Business and Google + - Google Maps and Google My Business are your free tools to claim. If you do not claim them someone else could. Google has also said that at some time in the future, if you have not claimed them, they will delete your presence from all searches. Your Google My Business info shows contact information like NAP and how it shows search results and in Google Maps to be found more easily by potential customers. Other information about your business that you can add includes your operating address and other contact information. Google+ pages allow your customers to leave reviews and otherwise communicate with you by this Social Media type as well as give you more exposure. Social interaction with your business adds to social proof and can help you with customer reviews and updates for others potential customers to read.

4)    Create/Claim Your Local Directory Listings - Directories can help you with rankings and give potential customers an idea of your service by reading what past customers have already experienced. These can be local or review directories, you’ll want to create and/or claim your listings on as many directories as possible. There are dozens of them. Here is a list of the some of the more popular Directories:

Google, Bing, Yahoo, Manta, Yelp, Yellow Pages, City Search, FourSquare, Local.com, Superpages

Each listing will represent a “CITATION.” Citations are a mention of your business and website from another site. They are a critical important component used by Google and other search engines for ranking results. When possible place your website URL in these listings as backlinks to your web site. Google loves backlinks. You can check this site, www.getlisted.org to determine where you are listed now and verify that the NAP and other information about your business is correct. Claimed and unclaimed listings will show and give you an idea of how much more you need do to help your business.

5)    Ask Your Customers for Reviews - Caution: Do not buy reviews from services like Fiverr.com. Google has become very adept at knowing which reviews are real and which ones are fake. When you use fake reviews, you will be penalized in search results and with enough violations you could be gone from Google search results for good. To get good reviews that will help you, ask your customers to leave a genuine review on directories like Yelp and your Google+ page. Make it easy for reviewers to say ‘yes’ and to do it. One bad review can cost you dearly, so you want as many good reviews as you can get to counter act any harmful ones.

6)    Optimize Your Social Media Pages - It is important that, just like your web site and directory listings, your Social Media profiles have the same NAP and your URL of the home web site. Make sure that your Facebook page is a fan page or local business page and not a personal page. You can still link your Fan page from your personal page, but you need a separate Facebook Fan Page. Encourage your friends and customers to check into your Fan Page and comment as much as possible to help you show up high in Facebook searches. If you haven’t created/claimed a Facebook fan page for your business, then Facebook probably has a holding place for your business until you do claim it. This is automatically created by Facebook once your Fan Page is searched for without being found.  Also, make sure you do not have a duplicate page with the same name on Facebook. You can mix the two and keep the one you want while saving all the ‘likes’ and ‘check-ins’ from both pages.

7)    Analyze and Monitor Your Results – Just like a road map, there are tools to help you know where you are when you are analyzing and monitoring your efforts and results for better search engine rankings. Doing this is an ongoing task. Rules change all the time. Competition changes all the time, too. Sometimes, the changes can come quickly and can be quite substantial. Start with Google Analytics. These show you not just how many visitors, but where they came from and even what browser they use. This is a free tool with a Google account and can give you an excellent snapshot of where you are. There are also paid for sites that can give you other types of information. Moz is one a good reputation. Monitoring should be done at least once a week to assure past efforts are paying off and that outside factors are not affecting what you have already done. If they do become a factor, then weekly monitoring will catch the change quickly so that new changes in your efforts can be made with minimum harm. 

Summary - If you have added the changes above, you should start to notice higher rankings, more calls, leads, customers and revenue in a few short weeks. And with consistent monitoring, you should be ahead of most, if not all, of your competition. 

 

Addendum. – There are more advanced steps to further assist in your search rankings. PPC or Pay Per Click, Social Media Advertising, Videos, YouTube Channels, and other additional Strategic Marketing Methods can help. For more information, contact us for a free consultation.  

5 Ways to Use Google to Your Advantage

Here's an article that I just penned today. It's a fairly easy read. If you need any marketing materials created including writing like this for your SM Content, let me know.

5 Ways to Use Google to Your Advantage
12/01/2015
By Mike Slabaugh 

It’s happened before.

It’ll happen again.

Google changed their rules and upset your apple cart.

Their world, their rules. Results change. Where you ranked yesterday has disappeared.

Now, you need to learn new rules, take time to understand, assign more resources, perhaps including personnel - and, on and on. Sometimes you wonder whether it’s even worth doing.

Well, everything changes. Technology changes at a superfast rate.

Keep reading to know what to do about it.

A Little Google History

In 2015, Google changes made 2 lasting impressions on the Internet community. In April, they announced that they would start honoring those web sites which were mobile friendly with a higher ranking than those which are not. Then, in August, they changed the format of the search results page. This ‘Snack-Pack’ change made more room for ad space on the page by changing the 7-pack of organic search results by 57% less, by now having only a 3-pack of organic results highlighted for users to see. So, if you were ranked in the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th position, you were Googled – for worse.

There were other changes, too. The point being that knowing about them and keep up with them is a challenge - at best. It doesn’t matter that changes happen all the time. That will continue. So, to take full advantage and have Google work for you, you have to know about the changes and what to do about them. Or, you need to have someone else do it for you.

Any change Google makes, even small ones, will make the best marketers ask, “What will this change do to my rankings?” If your business depends on your search results and high rankings - Google changes can give you some stress.

The challenge of accepting changes and learning how to take advantage of them ahead of your competition is where you need to be. But, how do you do that? Your other duties take time away from learning all you need to know.

Here’s where someone - like me - can help you and your business. A full 1/3 of my time is spent doing research into what works, what doesn’t work and why both are important for you to know about. Knowing what’s important after changes will help you, my client,   be more effective in time, money and results. Our expertise is in keeping up with these changes and working out through additional research and our industry contacts how to take advantage of the ‘new world’ after the changes.

Here are 5 Ways to Use Google to Your Advantage

Idea #1: “What to Do When Google’s Next Change Affects Your Ranking?”

First of all, you probably won’t know about it until it has already happened.

What would you do if one of your social media pages disappeared, or your business no longer shows up on Page 1? What would you do then? No, really. What would you do?”
Potential answer: Learn more. Potential answer #2: Call us.

Idea #2: Understand that Google Does What is Good for Google
Google’s mission is: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.  Let me add, “. . . while making a profit.” to that mission.

They do not guarantee that you will be found on any search result. That’s right. Even after hours, days or months of hard work and effort, you are not guaranteed any result. So, learning to work on their court and within their rules will definitely be an advantage for you.

Idea #3: If You Don’t Play with Google, Your Competition Can and Will

Whether or not you want to business with them is up to you. They are still the largest search engine – by far. You need to decide to show up with them or not. And, understand what can happen to you either way you decide.

They have gotten very good at what they do. Better than anyone else. That’s why they are the biggest and best. They do have rules, however. And those who know the rules and follow them are the ones with the best results. Those guys are called ‘white hats.’

Idea #4: Understand How to Use Their Tools

If you, or, the person doing the work for you, understands and knows the tools, then good results can be yours, no matter how many changes have been made. Like most things the fundamentals do not change. Having your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) consistent in all listings, postings and pages is a no brainer to understand. It all helps you have a good search result. It’s basic, but still has to be done. The other fundamentals won’t change much either. That’s why they are fundamental.
Understanding the basics and how the newest changes affect them, if at all, is our job to quickly know, understand and communicate to our clients so after ANY CHANGE, you get the best results possible.

Idea #5: Continue to Serve Your Prospects and Customers First

What’s the most important thing to you? Prospects and Customers. Or, it should be.

Users are looking for information. Knowing what that information is will place you at the top of the results. All you need to know is the terms they are searching for and use those on your web pages, Social Media pages, listing directories and anywhere else you show up on the Internet. This is called relevancy and Google is getting better and better at doing it with each search made.
Giving the searcher the information they want will eventually make them become your customer. What are their interests and needs? What will they receive once they own your product or service? How can you find this out? Ask your current customer base.

Understanding What to Do Now

By now, you should have decided if you want to dedicate your time, effort and energy to learning more about Google and how their recent changes have affected you and your business.

Another alternative is to talk to us and find out if you are the type of company that we would like to work with and if you’d like to work with us.

To learn more about that possibility, contact us now and we can talk more about it.

Slabaugh.mike@gmail.com

Mike.Slabaugh1 on Skype