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.
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