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5 Tips for Thriving in Online Local Search

Posted on by Jerad Hill

As businesses it is important that we show up in search engine results when somebody is searching for products or services that we provide. Failing to rank well in search means that traffic is going to your competition. Over the last few years, search engines have began moving toward providing better local results based on our location. Organic search engine results continue to move down the first page results as local and maps listings fill in the top of the page.

With this move toward localized search results it is important that you optimize your website to rank well in local search. The process for doing so is a bit different than the process for ranking well in organic or paid search results. To help you get started, I have put together my top 5 list for thriving in online local search.

1. Have Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) Information On Your Website: Google has very little information to go off of to verify you are actually in the location you say you are and they do everything they can to verify it. Make sure that your business name, address and phone number is consistent across your entire website. Even old pages need to be updated. If you moved, make sure there is no trace of that old address. If you have multiple phone numbers, choose one to list on the website and stick with it. If you just moved into a new location, do what you can to get the old business removed from that location. Ask that old business to remove the address from their website.

2. Update Directory and Review Site Listings: There are countless websites out there that list businesses information. Many of them get the information from your phone company. Make sure that the information these websites are listing is accurate. Most of these sites allow you to login and update your information. You can select business categories and usually list your website address. It helps to get into these profiles and make sure your information is accurate and consistent across all profiles. Make sure your address and phone number is entered in the same format. Here are a few of the popular sites to check: Google Places, Bing Local, Yelp.Com, CitySearch, Yellowpages.com, Superpages, Best of the Web. Don’t worry about spending any money with these sites for the time being. It is just important that your NAP info is accurate and consistent. Base your address off of how the US Postal Service (USPS Address Checker Tool) has it listed and your phone number off of how the phone company has it listed.

3. Keep Listings Updated: If you list your company on a website or social network, keep that information up to date. It’s almost comical how often I come across a company’s Facebook page or Yelp profile that has incorrect location or contact information. The search engines use algorithms to check for and rank information accuracy which means that if there is too much inconsistency in results for your business, it won’t add up and Google won’t include you.

4. Encourage Customers to Review Your Business: A recent survey by Dimensional Research, a market research firm focused on technology, found that 90% of customers who could recall having read online reviews were influenced by positive reviews in their purchase decision. Similarly, 86% said that reading negative reviews had influenced their decision. It is more important than ever to have your customers opinions published on the web. To help encourage customers to leave reviews you can post a notice at your business, mention it at the end of your email signature or on your website, or include it at the bottom of your invoice or packing slip. The more people see your requests for reviews the more they will recognize your desire to have their feedback.

5. Google Maps Tips: If information has changed at all, there may be inconsistent information in Google Maps. Even if your address information is correct, the map pin could be off. If you have not claimed your Google Local listing, which is currently merging with Google Plus business pages, make sure you do this. Claim your listing and/or page and assure it is filled out completely with information that matches what is listed on your website. Assure that for each business category you choose on your listing there is information on your website. Google is checking to make sure you service each category you list. Google now allows for up to 10 categories so you can get as specific as you need to.

Pro Tip: Many entrepreneurs such as myself have a few hats that we wear. Not only am I a Website Designer, I am also a Wedding Photographer. It is important that you choose to use your address and phone number on the website and business name you are focusing on getting to rank in local search. I have found it nearly impossible to rank for both Hill Media Group and Jerad Hill Studios using the same phone number and address. Even using different phone numbers is not enough anymore. Don’t confuse the search engines by your business NAP information linked to multiple business names and websites. Choose one and optimize that business name using the tips above. If you want your other businesses to rank well in local search you will need to find a way to have a unique address and phone number for those businesses that are valid.

If this all sounds a bit complicated or time consuming, you most likely feel like the rest of us. Though the search engines are getting more intelligent, so are spammers. Search engines continually have to step up their game in order to provide the best content to their users. Because of that, we too must step up our game and make sure we make it as easy as possible for the search engines to verify and rank our business information.

The above steps should get you started in the right direction. Optimizing a website for any form of search whether that be local or organic search is time consuming. If you choose to outsource this job to a company that “specializes” in Search Engine Optimization, make sure you do some research on that company first. There are many SEO companies out there that take your money and make a mess out of your online data. You are probably already getting calls from SEO companies promising to help you rank #1. I suggest you avoid those companies. The best SEO companies out there are not cold calling for new business.

My recommendation is to bite off small chunks at a time. Start by checking and verifying your information is correct on your own website, then move to directory and review sites. Within a few weeks you should have a handle on it and be on your way to Thriving In Online Local Search.

The Importance of Monitoring Your Website Traffic

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Measuring success is everything in business. Whether you are blogging for fun or for profit, monitoring your website traffic is very important. Paying attention to the traffic my websites receive helps me determine what to write and whether or not what I am writing is worth my time. If I was not paying attention to how my content was being accessed I would not know if it was being effective or not.

There are many tools that you can use to measure the success of content on your website. The most common is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is an excellent free tool that will give you great insight into the traffic your website is receiving. It gives you a breakdown of where your traffic came from, why it came there, how long it stayed, and how quickly it left to go somewhere else. Google Analytics provides a good overview of your website’s traffic. There are many things that I feel are important that it is lacking, but it is a free service and it does a great job considering it is free. I run Google Analytics on all of my websites and my clients sites as well.

The important thing that Google Analytics does not do is help you figure out how well your content is converting based on the keywords you hoped people would use to find it. When you write an article, you hope that somebody will find it by doing a Google search that will result in your website showing up for them to click on. Usually people are searching for something that results in them landing on a page other than your homepage. Unless their search is very specific or they search for you by name, they will most likely end up on an article or blog page. If you sell products, they may end up on a product page. Wouldn’t it be great to know if they were finding what they were looking for? The search engines are getting smarter at making sure the search results users see are relevant to the keywords they used to search, but the search engines are not perfect. There are many tools you can use to get more detailed information. SEOmoz and Kissmetrics are just two of the many services available. Both provide different information and have a monthly cost. When it comes to good information, it will usually come at a cost. Though there are paid alternatives to Google Analytics I have yet to find one that I think offers enough added value to justify the cost. There are other services such as the aforementioned that provide specialized data to help you on your course to generating more traffic, leads or sales.

My wife has a blog where she posts from time to time about her life, our family and projects she does in our home. Most of her blogs get about 30-40 unique visits per month. After she started showing an interest in Pinterest I decided to install a Pinterest widget on her website that would allow people to Pin items from her website. I encourage her to use imagery to showcase her projects on her website. One of her projects that she did was a wood sign. She did a step-by-step tutorial with photos and posted it to her blog. Somebody pinned it to Pinterest and it has been consistently receiving 600-800 unique visits per day. This one post makes up for 89% of her monthly site traffic. She had no idea this was happening until I looked at the Google Analytics report for her website and noticed the spike in traffic due to this post. It is quite apparent that people enjoy her projects and that sharing them on Pinterest is a good channel for her content to be shared. Now I am encouraging her to take on new projects and then showcase how to do them on her website. We have also been talking about how to look for projects she can do that people are looking for that don’t seem to have a good source of information for online. This will help her get an edge and stand out in search.

Every web professional has different thoughts on the best way to measure your websites traffic and decided where to go from there. Every year I attend at least two conferences where speakers discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The problem is that you can have all of your website and it’s content optimized but if the content you have is not actively being searched for, it will not matter what you do. Your website needs to contain information that people actually want to consume and that is how you get new eyes flocking to your website all day.

The first step is knowing. If you do not have some sort of tracking system installed on your website to give you at the very least a snapshot of daily activity, you need to get that taken care of. It is easy to install Google Analytics tracking code into your website. If your website runs on WordPress, Joomla or some other content management system, it is as easy as installing a free plugin that allows you to enter your Google Analytics account. Tracking will begin immediately and you will have something to look at later that day. After a few days, you will know what is popular on your website. You might be surprised at what people are coming to your website to see, I know my wife was when I told her about her blogs traffic. Many times my clients are surprised as well.

Having the data gives you a way to measure success and gives you a better idea of what to do next. With out this you are flying blind.

If you need help getting tracking software installed on your website, head over to the Hill Media Group website. Someone from my team can help you start to understand the traffic that your website is getting. Just this month we started working with one of our clients closely to deeply analyze his website’s traffic so we can find new ways to increase traffic based on what people are doing to find content similar to what his website offers.

5 Small Business SEO Tips for Higher Search Engine Ranking

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long process of organizing content, building links, and researching. Because most people have no idea what SEO really is, companies have found ways to charge for it with out really providing much end result. The best option is for you to do it yourself or work with someone local who can do it for you. I would like to give you 5 tips that will help you build better content for your website to help it rank better in the search engines.

Though SEO can get very technical, the point of this article is to keep it simple to empower those of you who can handle some of the work yourself. Some of the tips may be harder than others. I suggest that you start off with what you believe you can handle and get help for the rest. For most small business, these tips should drastically improve your rankings if you are currently buried under your competition.

1. Optimize the Page Titles

The page title is the text that you see at the top of your browser when you a viewing a page. This is also the text that is automatically entered as the title of your bookmark when you bookmark a webpage. Search engines work in a linear fashion. The read down the page through the code as if it was a sheet of paper with text on it. Search engines rely less on Meta-Tag keywords these days and more on the content of your website. For some of you, this may require actually getting into the code of your website. If you are using a content management system (CMS), this will be easier for you to accomplish as many CMS platforms allow you to create your own page titles.

Your goal for creating optimized page titles is to use keywords that people would use to search for your content. Use the title of this blog for example: “5 Small Business SEO Tips for Higher Search Engine Ranking” My goal is to reach searching for keywords such as “small business seo” or “small business seo tips.” As a matter of fact, why don’t you do me a favor and let me know how you found this blog post in the comments section below. Your title should be 60 characters or less. You want as much of that title to show up in the search engines. As you can see in the image below, when a title is to long, the search engines will truncate it. Looks like I need to revise my own page titles. Remember to make sure that your page titles are inviting. It is easy to cram to many keywords into a page title. Your page title will end up sounding confusing and non-inviting.

You may even want to go back and rethink the titles of the current pages your website consists of. What is the main reason people would be landing on that page. You would be surprised how many websites have a page title of “Home” for their homepage. Your homepage title is your most important title and you should spend the most time working on that one.

2. Optimize the META-tags

The META-tags are hard of the HTML header that is unseen when you are viewing a website. These tags hand feed the search engines content to display about your website when people search for it. The importance of META-tags has changed over the years as search engines have became much smarter.

Your META-Description is the most important of these META-tags. This instructs the search engines what to display when someone comes across your website in a search as you can see in the image above. Your description should be no more than 160 characters and should contain keywords as well. Your description should have some of the same keywords as your page title. This sounds counterintuitive, but its the way the search engines like it.

Your description should be inviting, just as your page title. This is your chance in the search engines to draw the viewer into your website. It is a challenge to do this while using keywords, but it’s important.

META-keywords are helpful but not as important nowadays. In the past, you could list any keyword and the search engines would pick it up. This made it easy to spoof the search engines and draw traffic to your website even if the content did not match up. It is good to list some keywords in the META-tags of your website, but make sure they match the content of that page.

Link: Learn more about META elements in HTML.

3. Create More Internal Links

A website’s menu is a great way to direct traffic to specific locations of your website but it’s even better when you link to other pages in your content as well. When you reference something that is located elsewhere on your website, link to it. For example: Last week I wrote a blog to help Brides make better decisions when booking their wedding photographer. The best way to link to other content is to link to it directly in your content. Many websites will post a link URL, but that does not instruct the search engines as to why that URL link is relevant to the rest of the text.

If I was to say, “Check out the article I wrote to help Brides make better decisions when booking their wedding photographer: https://blog.jeradhill.com/wedding-photographers-a-brides-guide-to-booking-one,” I would miss out on the chance to match the text mentioned in this article with the page title of the article I want to link to. I don’t use exactly the same words as the title of the other article, but I use as many of the same keywords as possible. In this article’s title, my main keyword phrase is: “booking a wedding photographer.” When I link to that page, I want to use some variation of that keyword phrase.

Example: Last week I wrote an article to help Brides with booking a wedding photographer. Notice which part of that sentence is the link, “help Brides with booking a wedding photographer.” That covers all of my keyword phrase.

I understand that it is much easier to do this on a blog or informational style website. If your website is for your business and does not contain any blogs or articles you can still do this. On the front page of your website where you list your main services and/or products you can link to the pages that contain more information on those topics.

4. Use Keywords in Everything!

I have already instructed you on the importance of using keywords in your page titles and META-tags, now I would like to talk about your website’s content. Search engines spend more time matching then they used to. If a keyword is in your page title it will check your META-tags and the content of that page. This means that the product page, blog entry, about page and even your contact page needs to be carefully thought out when adding content to them. There are several ways to make sure that the search engines are paying attention to the keywords in your content.

Notice that each of the five tips are bold and larger in size. There are a few ways to accomplish this but the best way is to use Header Tags. If you simply use a larger font size just as you would in a Word Document then you are cheating yourself. Search engines will look for Header Tags to see if they contain keywords. In most cases you would not put something in header tags that was not important. Header Tags can also be links to other web pages.

Link: Learn more about using header tags in your website.

When you are getting ready to write content to put into a web page there are a few things you should do first.

  • Figure out what the main keywords are for your page. These are the keywords you want people to use to find your website.
  • Research those keywords to make sure that they are not to difficult to achieve front page ranking.
  • If they are difficult to achieve front page ranking, use longer keywords (sometimes called: Keyword Phrases).

Once you have decided on these keywords you can start writing the content for your page. You should use the keywords in your page’s content often, but not so often that it starts to sound weird. There is a lot of speculation as to how often you should use your keywords. This is called “keyword density.” I would suggest using a tool to help you with this. If your website is powered by a CMS then I suggest using Scribe to help with this. Scribe makes it easy to analyze your page to make sure you are accomplishing what I have listed above. It also gives you suggestions on how to incorporate more keywords into your content. Check out Scribe. If your website is not working on a CMS, Google Webmaster Tools is a good start.

5. Making it all Work, and Follow Up.

Good SEO practice takes time just as anything else in life that has worth. If your website is rather small then it will be easy for you to get your SEO in order and it will require much less follow up. If your website has a lot of content and is continuously evolving, this will be a more difficult job.

Before coming across tools to help me with the process I used to visit the higher ranked websites and read their content. I would analyze it myself to see what terms they were using and how they were writing their content. Today there are tools that do this for you but you can still look at what your competition is doing to find out what works. If you are only managing one website, you should be able to do this with out any fancy tools.

It is important to follow up on what you have done. Check back and see how things have changed. Did you move up in ranking or down? Continue to make changes until you have reached the best ranking possible. There will be a point when your website will reach it’s best possible ranking on it’s own and this is why I decided to toss in a bonus tip.

Bonus Tip: Inbound Linking

So what happens when you are 50 others all have your page titles, meta and content optimized? There has to be another way to gauge relevance of a website? That way is inbound linking. When another website links to your website that is called an inbound link. There are ways to find out who is linking to you using Google Webmaster Tools. Here are a few ideas on how you can increase inbound links:

  • Blog: Write content that others would want to link to.
  • Business: Have your suppliers link to your website.
  • Find a website that writes/blogs about your industry and ask them if they would be interested in interviewing you and/or including your business in a blog article. (Ask for a link to your website.)
  • Get mentioned in online trade publications and newspapers.
  • Write and submit press releases when you launch new products or services.

These are just a few ideas, there are many more. In the future I will write a blog entry about creating inbound links. At the time of writing this blog entry, JeradHill.Com has over 65,000 inbound links. Google Webmaster Tools can help you figure out who is linking to you. As you continue to gain more inbound links you can see which pages are getting those links as in the image below from my Google Webmaster Tools account.

If you have a tip you would like to share we would love to hear it. Post it in my comments section or contact me directly.

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