500+ Citation Sites for 100 US Cities [Updated 2022]Building and cleaning up local business citations is an essential, ‘table stakes’ task for any business that wants to rank well in local search. It’s easy to find out which citations have the highest authority, but authority isn’t everything. Local and industry relevance is also very important, but finding these types of citations is time-consuming and repetitive. To help make the process of finding business listings in USA cities easier, we’ve taken the time to heavily research the market and compile an exhaustive list of local business listing sites for 100 of the largest cities in the USA. Find the top local citation sites for US citiesWe also have a list of niche business listings covering dozens of different business categories, spanning the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. That resource helps SEOs and local businesses to identify citation sites that are relevant to their industry, whether that is finance, autos, plumbing, web design, or florists, and so on. In this list, we’ve identified citation sites that are suitable for all industries, spanning 100 of the largest cities in the US based on population size. How did we find 500+ citation sites?Using a variety of sources, including our own citation databases, manual research, and existing online resources, we have compiled this list and manually reviewed each site. However, we’ve only included sites that:
All citation sites are listed under their relevant city section and each listing contains the following information:
*Domain Authority was recorded using Moz’s Link Explorer tool, which fluctuates over time. DA scores were correct as of January 2020. How do I find the city I want?Please use this index of categories to jump down to the city you are interested in – just click on the name. Help us to keep this list up to dateWe know that there will be some sites we didn’t pick up on. We really welcome your feedback on this list, so please send us updates or suggestions for new sites and we’ll add them ASAP. Suggest a new site now! Please Note: Citation sites listed here aren’t necessarily ones we can submit to using Citation Builder. Click here for more information. More citation resources:
Find citations for the top 100 cities in the USAvia BrightLocal https://ift.tt/5w3tOuW Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/
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In many ways, doing local SEO for lawyers is similar to other industries. 97% percent of Google and other search engine users look for local businesses online, and these businesses include law firms or individual practitioners. However, it is also different from local SEO for other industries because law tends to be a highly specialized practice. For instance, while a personal injury attorney has a basic knowledge of taxation from law school, you’d rather engage with a tax lawyer if you’re trying to determine how much tax you’ll pay for real estate you’ve inherited from a grandparent. So, how can you make sure that your client’s law firm appears somewhere at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)? Well, you need a robust local SEO strategy. Such a strategy will help your client’s law firms rank higher in the local SERPs where more potential clients can see it. Below are seven local SEO tips that will help a law firm’s website climb up the rankings so they appear higher up in local search: 1. Managing a Practitioner and Business GBPOptimizing your client’s Google Business Profile (GBP) is an excellent start to implementing local SEO for lawyers. This profile improves the discoverability of your client’s business. GBP also helps improve client engagement and allows your client to reach a broader audience through maps and location searches. Moreover, creating a Google Business Profile helps you manage your client’s law firm’s online reputation by responding to reviews. Enabling GBP features like the messaging can also make it easier for prospective customers to get in touch with your client’s business. You’ll see SEO results through increased impressions on Google Maps and rich Google search results. Source: Google When optimizing your client’s Google Business Profile listing, ensure you add the correct business category. You should also avoid keyword stuffing in the description and title. For example, if your client’s law firm specializes in granting services on taxes and family business, you must optimize your listing title and description with relevant keywords like ‘family law’ or ‘tax law’. This allows your client’s law firm website to appear in the organic search results when people search for those specific or related terms To maintain good local SEO rankings and reach a local audience, you also need to provide accurate and up-to-date NAP (name, address, and phone number) information about your client’s law firm. 2. Get More ReviewsReview signals make up 17 percent of Google’s local search ranking factors. Therefore, you must collect as many customer reviews as possible to improve your client’s local SEO campaign. And it’s not just about the quantity. You’ll need positive reviews that are more in-depth (two to three sentences long) to rank above competitor law firms. Client reviews are helpful in various ways. For starters, reviews help Google place your client’s Google Business Profile listing higher in local search results. Why? Because Google wants to serve quality results. If a business has dozens of positive reviews, it means they are doing something right. Therefore, Google will prioritize that business over one that doesn’t have any customer reviews. So, if you want your client’s law firms to show up higher in local searches, collect more positive reviews. After all, higher local rankings could result in more qualified traffic and leads. Second, customer reviews help pull more clients. Think about it, when scrolling through local searches, are you more likely to go with an establishment that has more positive reviews or one with few/no reviews? You’ll go with the former, right? The same thing applies to prospective customers looking for local law firms. Therefore, more positive customer reviews will provide much-needed social proof to pull prospective customers to your client’s law firm. You can get more reviews for your client’s listing by enabling reviews on their Google Business Profile. You should also encourage existing clients of the law firm to leave reviews. Source: Google reviews Responding to good and bad reviews is also essential. It makes existing customers feel appreciated and recognized. It also increases client engagement and shows that your client’s business cares about its customers. 3. Add Legal FAQs to Your SiteGoogle is always looking for relevant content to provide helpful answers for users. The same goes for local search results. You can add relevant legal FAQs to your website as part of your content website ideas. While there’s no silver bullet when it comes to FAQs, these are general best practices to help you get started:
FAQs allow you to optimize the client’s content with additional keywords. You can create FAQs that target local keywords for better search engine optimization results. Take this question, for example; How much does a personal injury attorney in New York charge? That question helps you target a local, potentially lucrative long-tail keyword “personal injury lawyer in New York.” The phrase could help drive tons of qualified traffic to your client’s law firm website. FAQs can also help you secure featured snippets. That means your client’s site will occupy “position zero” of the first search engine results page, where it can generate even more clicks. However, you will need to indicate that a certain piece of content on your website answers a specific question. That’s where schema markup comes into play. 4. Use Schema MarkupSchema markup is a code that tells search engines exactly what your web pages are about. With schema, you can optimize for rich results by providing explicit information through structured data that crawlers pick on to show in prominent SERP positions. These rich results increase brand exposure and can improve click-through rate (CTR) by 58%. For FAQs, adding schema markup to your code will help Google identify your content as an answer to a common user question. For instance, NoLo uses the schema markup below in its HTML code: When you search for ‘how do courts choose jurors’, LegalZoom’s content is second on the search results: In addition, you can use the local business schema to help Google identify and show information about your client’s business in the local pack easily. For example, it will display hours of operation, address, phone numbers, and ratings. You can also include an action schema such as ‘Book an appointment’ or ‘Book a free consultation’ to make it easier for prospects to contact your client’s law firm. Since some of the information presented in rich results comes from Google Business Profile listings, be sure to claim your client’s listing and set it up correctly. 5. Optimize for Multiple-lawyer FirmsIf your client’s firm has multiple lawyers, create a separate page for each lawyer. Make sure these pages contain vital local search engine optimization elements like reviews and local business data such as NAP. What if you want to rank multiple personal injury lawyers on the same page? Well, here’s what you can do to make sure they all get their fair share of the limelight:
Optimize the firm’s pages with unique content and relevant keywords. However, if you’re not careful about your strategy, the firm’s lawyer pages might end up competing for the same local search terms. This could be counterproductive as prospective clients may be unclear about which page or person to contact. Therefore, be sure to target specific keywords for every lawyer based on their practice. For example, you could optimize a separate page within the law firm’s website for ‘car accident lawyer’ and another for ‘corporate lawyer’ or ‘immigration lawyer’. 6. Citation SignalsCitations mention your client’s business name, address, phone number, and website on other websites. They act as a reference to your client’s business on the web. Even if the influence of citation signals on local search results has waned in recent years, they still play an important role in your SEO strategy. When local searchers look for a particular term related to your client’s legal practice, local citations can help you show up more often in the search results. Citations don’t have to contain a link — although they often do. However, they need to match with other data points listed on the website for maximum effectiveness. For example, your client’s NAP citations must match with the indexed page on their website. The number of citations you have signals to Google that your client’s law firm is legitimate and trustworthy. It also gets their business in front of more potential clients searching for legal services online. You can sign up for a free account with Brightlocal to quickly build citations. Source: BrightLocal High-quality and relevant citations will drive more organic traffic to your client’s website and increase overall search engine rankings. 7. Tap Into Legal DirectoriesLegal directories can help you build authority and trust. They act as a citation distribution source for your client’s legal practice and local business data. They’re also a significant source of backlinks. Pro tip: You can also write guest posts and publish them on other industry-related blogs or publications. Doing this can help you gain exposure and backlinks for your client’s website. Get listed on relevant directories to get clients in your local area. Directories use geolocation technology to ensure prospective clients can easily find you when looking for a lawyer in your area. There are many local directories where potential clients can search for local lawyers who practice the type of law they need help with. Some examples include Justia, Nolo, HG.org, Avvo, FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, and Lawyers.com. Image: FindLaw These sites let you create free profiles with links to your client’s website. They also have premium options to help your client’s law firm get more exposure and attention. Complete your client’s profile with information about their firm, including photos and videos. Final ThoughtsThe local SEO for lawyers tactics discussed above can be one of the best things for your client’s law firm. With so many law firms using local SEO strategies, you need to stay ahead of the curve by implementing these strategies. Start by building an optimized Google Business Profile listing. Then collect more Google reviews, build an FAQ section on their website, utilize schema markup, go after citations, and utilize law firm directories. If your client’s law firm has multiple lawyers, optimize the website to ensure every lawyer gets enough attention. With this law firm’s local SEO guide at your disposal, we’re confident you’ll help your client’s website rank higher on Google’s local search results and even gain a spot in the local pack. More importantly, you’ll help them drive more qualified leads. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/PbwnL2m Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ Working with local businesses already requires a great deal of very specific local SEO skills, but when it comes to Service Area Businesses (i.e. businesses that work in a service area and visit you at your home rather than a working from a physical location) things get even more specific. Service Area Businesses, such as locksmiths, exterminators, plumbers, and the like, have very different local marketing requirements to other local businesses. In many cases, they’ll want to refrain from displaying their addresses, and instead, they’ll need to specify the service areas they can cover. Unfortunately, not all citation sites have that flexibility, which can make it harder to build citations for Service Area Businesses. We’ve taken the hard work out of this for you and put together the ultimate lists of citations sites that you can hide your address and/or specify a service area on. If you’re working with Service Area Businesses in the USA, the UK, Canada or Australia, we’ve got you covered.
Please Note: Citation sites listed here aren’t necessarily ones we can submit to using Citation Builder. Click here for more information. Need a refresher on local citations? via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/B2jzUhG Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ We’ve all heard the saying that first impressions count, and this is just as true online as it is in real life. Internet users are inherently visual creatures, with approximately 50% of the surface of the human brain devoted to processing visual information. Images and visuals are much more powerful and easier to understand than just text, as well as being easier to recall. You can find all the data behind this here . Given the human propensity to form impressions and take in information via a visual format, images are tremendously influential and key to your business looking good online. As businesses and individuals, we’re all very used to curating the images on our website and on our social media channels in view of what we think they say about us both professionally and personally. But what of our Google My Business profiles? If you’re guilty of thinking of your profile purely in terms of reviews and local search position, you may have overlooked the need to keep a tight rein on your GMB photos. Ask yourself, for example, how do your existing and potential customers use photos to form an opinion of your business? And does this help them decide to engage with your services, or choose one of your competitors? Google is pretty clear on its stance on the importance of images in GMB, telling us that :
Google is increasingly visual in terms of how it uses AI to ‘understand’ the content of images (read our guide to visual search to learn more). In order to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by having great images, you’ll need to understand what opportunities to add images to GMB exist, who they can be added by, how they can be added, and what types of images work best. Let’s begin! Google’s Guidelines For ImagesIt’s always good to go straight to the horse’s mouth so we can understand Google’s terms of service for the photos that appear in GMB. This is currently the ‘hub URL’ for photos in Google My Business profiles: https://support.google.com/business/topic/6130059 I’d recommend reading through all of the articles in this section—but some of the most important guidelines for photos are as follows:
Keep all of these in mind—these are the guidelines you can use if you need to get user images removed, and of course, these are the guidelines you as a business owner will need to adhere to when uploading your own images. User-generated ImagesUsers can also upload their images to your business profile (*gulp*)! Again, Google is very clear on the guidelines for UGC , which include the following:
Google has a pretty huge list of prohibited and restricted content , so have a good read to make sure that the images you add adhere to these policies and that the images that users have added do the same. Businesses need to be aware that they are not in total control of their images on GMB—sometimes even a user photo can be used to populate a cover photo if the business has not actively managed and monitored their profile: Why would I want a user to add images?Let’s start with Google. Google wants users to add images, and Google wants business owners to encourage users to add images. How do we know this? We know this because Google prompts us to do so with emails, and with notifications on our phones. Example of an email from Google to alert a business that new photos have been added by users Google’s Local Guide program incentivizes the upload of photos to Google Maps I’d imagine that Google encourages photo uploads to keep people engaged with their product(s) and to provide a richer experience for people using Google’s platforms such as search and maps. As businesses, we’re used to thinking and acting in terms of keeping both Google AND our customers and potential customers happy. So, in this case, encouraging users to add photos of our location, at our location *could* be construed as a clear engagement signal by Google. Plus, it’ll mean that we have more photos for customers and potential customers to browse, hopefully driving them towards using our location or service over an alternative. What’s NOT to like? (Spoiler alert—plenty, but we’ll get to that later). How to Encourage Users to Add Photos at Your LocationOf course, some types of locations are going to be easier than others, and encouraging user uploaded photos isn’t going to be viable for each and every niche / vertical. Here are a few ideas for getting photos: Make OpportunitiesWhenever you can, build photo opportunities into the servicescape: Provide a Photo-worthy ExperienceI’ve made a couple of high-cost purchases where an element of ‘showpersonship’ (if that’s a word) was built into the experience. For example, when I picked up a new car, the ‘unveiling’ was photographed and a video made of it, and the footage and images were emailed to me along with the other details from the garage: Help Customers Get the *Best* PhotosYes, selfies are a thing and people are used to taking them—but imagine you’re working in a bar or restaurant and you see a family group or a celebration and one of them has to duck out of the photos because *someone* has to take the photo? Why not offer to help, and help them get that perfect shot. If you’re offering a service where having images of that experience is an important part of the offering—because it might be a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience (think white water rafting, surfing lessons, a wedding)—you might also think about having a dedicated photographer that can take photos of your customers. Simply *Ask*The most straightforward tactics are so often overlooked. Simply by asking customers, either through posters or flyers at your location, digitally via email, or by actually having a face-to-face interaction (shock horror), you’ll be off to a good start with encouraging those photo uploads. How to Remove User-generated ImagesHappy and engaged customers uploading photos is great, but user-generated content can also suck: And aside from being poor quality, it could also be very inappropriate: When a photo is added by a user using the ‘photo update’ feature in Google Maps this can appear directly in your business profile If a user-added image in some way contravenes Google’s terms of service for user images you can flag it like this: Click “Report a problem” And then be clear about why you’re reporting the image: Once you have submitted your report Google should get that removed. If they don’t, you’ll need to contact GMB support. You can monitor user-uploaded images in your GMB dashboard, choose ‘photos’ then select the ‘by customer’ tab and order by date: Where do photos appear?Business uploaded photos and user photos can appear in many places (across devices) including:
What photos does a business need to add?Google has a great guide to the types of business-specific photos that can and should be added to a business profile. These include:
In the guide, Google recommends uploading at least 3 of each type, plus gives tips on how and why each type is recommended. If you haven’t already read this Google guide go read it now! Businesses can also add 360-degree photos and videos – videos must follow Google’s video guidelines and 360-degree photos need to adhere to these guidelines . Selecting your Google My Business images can be difficult as you want to showcase your brand in the best possible light—which can mean straying too far across the ‘corporate’ line for a local business. You want to have a great selection of professional images, of course, but steer clear of anything that seems too professional and overly polished as it can actually be off-putting and make your brand seem somehow less trustworthy. Instead, focus on professional yet approachable, realistic but not staged images. A smiley team photo, for example, is a nice alternative to a LinkedIn-style shirt and tie portrait picture. With a little practice and experimentation with good lighting and props, you should be able to produce decent quality images in-house without too much expensive equipment required. Google’s aim with images is to give local search users a real feel for the business and its products and services so please avoid the use of stock photos! What is the best Google My Business image size?You’ve likely had to dedicate quite a lot of time, effort, and perhaps even cash to get to this stage. You’ve undoubtedly had to hunt through your archives to find enough images to satisfy Google’s category recommendations. You may well have come up short and realized that you don’t have images of certain members of staff, particular products, or the interior and exterior of your office. If that’s the case, you might have been forced to purchase a decent camera, lights, and tripod, or outsource the job. If you’ve gone for option two, a professional photographer rarely comes cheap. The last thing you want now is for all of that energy to be wasted by uploading images that are incorrectly sized. Get this bit wrong and your pictures may appear distorted, could be too big or too small, too grainy due to a low resolution, or enormous because the resolution is too high. You could also find that you spend an unnecessary amount of time uploading, editing, deleting, and re-uploading images to try and get them to look right if you begin with the wrong resolution or image size. So, what size do Google My Business photos need to be? Google My Business Image DimensionsThe Recommended RatioThe ratio is the relation of height to width. Google recommends a 1:1 ratio where the width and height of the image are equal. Photos display differently across devices and platforms—so you’ll need to actively monitor how your images look. Choose an image that has a center focus and will ‘make sense’ whether it’s shown as a square or as a rectangle. The Recommended Image SizeIdeally, your Google My Business photos should be 720 px tall by 720 px wide. This size allows for the optimal display of the image on all device types. Use these dimensions as the standard for all images you upload and you’ll also maintain consistency across your photo albums. This gives your Google My Business profile a polished, professional appearance. The Minimum Image SizeGoogle’s minimum size limit for images is 250 px tall by 250 px wide. Format Selection (File Type)Google My Business accepts both JPEG and PNG file types. Your images should be saved as one of these two formats before you upload. Your photo editor will very likely provide you with this option when saving your file. You may find that your business logo has been supplied to you in a PNG format, whereas JPEG will likely cover everything else. Google Posts ImagesGoogle recommends 720px by 720px. However I’ve always used a 1200px wide by 900px tall image, and I make a Canva Post template for each of the businesses that I work with using their brand guidelines. Top Tip: Use my Canva template guide for GMB Posts to make it easy to create great-looking Posts! Whatever image size you choose, I’d recommend monitoring how these look across devices and platforms. Google ProductsI usually add images for products at 1200px by 900 px. It’s worth noting that images for Google Products need to comply with Google’s Shopping Ads policy —if you have an issue getting products approved in GMB it might be because your product images don’t comply: How do I, as a business, upload images?Images can be added via the Google My Business dashboard, the new NMX SERP interface, and the soon-to-be-defunct GMB app. If you have a number of locations and you have bulk verified those listings you can upload images via bulk upload – you can find the full step-by-step instructions here. How do I know how well my photos are performing?GMB insights currently includes data on ‘photo views’: Along with an indication of how your metrics compare with other similar businesses. Photo views, as a metric, are currently absent from the new profile performance report but could be added at a later date. You can also bulk download photo insights for your location or group of locations via the GMB dashboard: You can choose the time frame: If you do this regularly you’ll be able to compare and contrast the following data points:
Influencing Which Images Show in ResultsWhen you upload images to your Google My Business profile, they will be labeled with ‘from the owner’ to distinguish them from images uploaded by customers. This does not mean, however, that your own images will automatically get preferential treatment and be displayed most prominently in your Google My Business profile. Given the importance of imagery for brand building, you’ll naturally want to wield tight control over which images are most visible to local search users. Google doesn’t specifically give you control over this aspect of your profile, and makes it clear that it won’t necessarily be your cover photo that appears in your business listing in the SERP or the results in the map pack: You’ll need to specify the image you’d like Google to use as your cover photo, and then you need to monitor how your profile photo appears across devices, platforms, and locations. In some instances, Google uses image search to populate the profile photo—read more about that here . If Google is using GMB photos to populate your cover photo in the business profile, and you still can’t get Google to show the image you’ve selected, then Sterling Sky offers these handy tips :
When your business appears in the local finder, Google will ideally be looking for an image in your GMB that they can use alongside your listing, justifying its inclusion in those search results. For this reason, it’s a great idea to make sure you have images that Google could use alongside searches for your most popular products and services. For example: Note here that in photos 1 and 2 Google is having a little trouble distinguishing between a sloth, a meerkat, and a lemur! In the business profile when viewed on a mobile, you’ll see a scrolling pack of images like this: These photos are algorithmically chosen by Google—the featured images could be uploaded by the business or by the user. According to aircam.ai: “ If a business owner shares high quality, local, recent photos the likelihood of Google showing your photos over user-generated photos skyrockets.” How often should I add or remove photos?Schedule Regular UploadsAs you get into a routine of sourcing images to populate your Google My Business, you’ll find that you naturally start to notice opportunities during the course of a typical day. A restaurateur might get into the habit of taking a picture of the daily special, for example, an interior designer might share an image before and after a room makeover, or a car dealer might upload photos of a happy customer driving away. Make sure that you have images that reflect how your business looks through the seasons, and make sure you keep your images updated to reflect any changes to your services, how you deliver your products and services, new team members, and any other relevant changes. Go All Marie Kondo on Your Image PortfolioDon’t be shy about removing images as and when they become outdated. For example, if you make over your guest rooms and the older photos no longer reflect the look and feel, or if you change up your product and service provision. Or, if you originally offered surfing lessons and no longer do so, you might like to remove those from your images, since they won’t be reflecting your current business offering. Other Helpful TipsShould I geotag my photos?TL;DR – No No, it’s not required. If you are desperate to geotag the images you *could* go ahead, but not until you have done absolutely EVERYTHING else you can do on your GMB with regard to optimizing for ranking and conversions. This is an interesting take on geotagging by Tim Kahlert . Are there any tools that can help me?We’re not all awesome photographers, and even though smartphones make it totally possible to take a very reasonable photo or video it might be that we—as business owners and marketers—need to turn to apps and tools to help us. Apps like LocalPics enable you to send new photos to your Google My Business account from a mobile device. LocalPics is designed to meet the specific needs of Google My Business users. With no log-in required and a text reminder service, LocalPics makes it quick and easy to push new images straight to your profile. This not only cuts down on the time needed to keep an influx of fresh images flowing to your account, it can also help to tick the ‘authentic’ and ‘genuine’ boxes that Google insists on. Aircam.ai is new to the market and manages the process of capturing photos for multi-location businesses. It uses Google’s Cloud Vision API to understand what Google will *see* in the images that their photographer captures for the business, allowing business owners to choose the right shots for their potential customers AND Google. Canva is a great tool that you can use to resize your photos and change up the design. There are both free and paid versions to choose between. The ‘Try the API’ function in Google’s Cloud Vision API allows you to upload one of your images to take a look at how Google classifies your image according to its millions of predefined categories. We’d love to hear what you thinkDo you have any tips for taking great photos? What are your favorite image editing apps? Share your thoughts and recommendations with us in the comments. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/KH9zpCr Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ We’ve just added a new feature to Get Reviews so you can stay closer to customer feedback when running review generation campaigns. Now, when you run a Get Reviews campaign, you’ll have the option to receive email notifications about the Net Promoter Score (NPS) customers give. React Quickly to Negative FeedbackReceiving negative feedback is never nice, but what you do next can make all the difference. Our research shows that 80% of consumers would be ‘likely’ or ‘highly likely’ to leave a review if they initially had a negative experience that was turned into a positive experience. We also know that speed of response can make or break customer satisfaction; 46% of customers expect companies to respond faster than four hours. With NPS Notifications, you can get instantly notified whenever a customer gives a negative NPS from your Get Reviews campaign. Plus, if you’ve chosen to collect additional feedback, you’ll see that alongside their score. Importantly, you’ll see each customers’ contact information so you can follow up to resolve the issue. Stay on Top of All Your FeedbackNPS Notifications aren’t only useful for dealing with negative feedback. We have a variety of options to ensure you’re getting the right information to the right people when you want it:
NPS Notifications is now ready to use. Simply head to a location, click through to Get Reviews and enable it for your next campaign. If you want to learn more about NPS Notifications, we’ve added more information in our Help Center: How to create a Get Reviews campaign within Reputation Manager If you’re not using Get Reviews yet, then here’s your chance to get started. You already have credits bundled into your plan, so there’s no extra cost to give it a try. If you’re not a BrightLocal subscriber yet, you can try Get Reviews and all our tools with a 14-day free trial. Watch the video to learn more. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/L8jbIKo Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ As a strategy for driving traffic to websites, SEO is nothing new. Yet there are more uses for it than just that. Done well, SEO enables businesses to best reach target customers and accompany them along their journeys. As marketing initiatives, SEO and customer experience (CX) need to be interlinked. We’ve put together this guide to using SEO to help you align them and ensure your customer experience hits the mark. What is an optimal customer experience like?In a world of multiplying consumer choice, the importance of customer loyalty continues to grow. How can savvy businesses step up their customer experience game and set themselves apart? SEO efforts must be in service of empowering customers and enhancing their experience at every touchpoint. Why? Because Google prioritizes websites that deliver intuitive and appealing user experiences. (Here are some other ways to build back customer loyalty). What is the correlation between SEO and a better customer experience?On-page SEO can boost your client’s Google rankings. But it won’t matter unless you make it easier for customers to find you and get their questions answered. When your CSAT score (customer satisfaction score) falls, bounce rates go up, and any high SERP rankings will soon drop. Ways To Use SEO For a Better Customer ExperienceTo stand a chance of emerging on top of SERPs, marketers need to deliver a streamlined CX that powers and is powered by SEO best practices. Produce Content that will Guide the Customers to the Right SolutionsYes, high-quality content is king. Yet, your client’s customers can spot search engine manipulation a mile off. Content that cannot answer queries will receive short shrift. You can use analytics tools to create a fresh flow of content focused on search intent and direct customers to the solutions they need. Customer journey mapping helps marketers curate content that resonates at each stage of the shopping experience. Consider how you format and categorize content into headings and subheadings to improve scannability and help customers focus on the client’s offering. Enhance Site Speed to Help Create a Positive User Experience (UX)Having a fast and responsive site is a significant factor in the algorithmic search rankings. No surprise there. Not even the best content and SEO strategy can save sales if a slow-loading website means quicksilver customers can’t get anywhere in a hurry. The solution is clean code. Remove unnecessary redirects, use caching, and pay attention to web hosting. Test with Google PageSpeed and shoot for loading speeds of two seconds or less to keep the bounce rate low and customers happy. Aim for a More Mobile-friendly User InterfaceThe number of unique mobile internet users and searches we undertake from our devices is soaring. For this reason, mobile-friendliness is just as important as page speed. Like Etsy, you can make your client’s site mobile-friendly by avoiding flash elements and minimal horizontal scrolling. Users shouldn’t expect to zoom out and pinch in. Instead, responsive design automatically adapts to the device screen size they’re using. Local businesses can perform web app testing on any apps to identify local issues that might be affecting growth. Strategize the Use of InterlinksSite architecture is also intrinsic to helping customers discover content. Building visible links to other pages on the site will redirect users to less-popular content, driving views and reducing bounce rates. Contextual and intelligent internal linking is the key to successful on-page SEO because it helps search engine spiders rate the importance of particular pages, including updated web pages. Google prefers pages with a good dose of internal links; the trick is fitting them into relevant content naturally. User-friendly site architecture can help customers find your client’s products, for example, a business phone system, boosting click-through rate, and conversions. Meanwhile, marketers can reap the rewards of higher rankings for SERPs. Make sure you get rid of any broken links that could frustrate users and detract from the holistic user experience. Promote Customer ReviewsConsumers trust the personal recommendations of fellow shoppers over corporate advertising speak. So, proactively collecting customer reviews is crucial to generating user engagement and capturing attention. Marketers can be assertive in asking for authentic customer feedback, as long as a business ticks all the customer experience boxes. Give customers a day or two before approaching with short and simple survey forms. A quick pop-up asking for a review will do. It doesn’t hurt to sweeten the deal with promotions or discounts (provided you check the review site’s guidelines on this first), nor following up with a reminder or two. Respond graciously to reviews, good and bad (see: how to respond to negative reviews). Businesses can amass enough positive reviews and a healthy average to feature in Google’s rich snippets. Featured snippets are preview text, which shows up in SERPs below individual results. Because Google wants to highlight what it deems the most relevant and useful pages, and people prefer to click on results that provide more information, rich snippets have a higher click-through rate. To gain one, embed the structured data in the site. Beyond the insights on how to take your customer experience to the next level, customer reviews attract Google’s attention and can boost your client’s SEO. Get Updated with the Latest Social SignalsIf used correctly, social media can be a profitable channel, where providing the best customer experience is taking care of your client’s SEO. Just as customers look favorably at businesses that seek feedback, they’re leaving it on social media and using these platforms to engage with brands. Integrate keyword-rich hashtags to posts to get more eyeballs on your client’s products and services. Keeping up-to-date social media profiles also helps brands rank highly in search results and brings more visibility and traffic to content. Content that hits all the right notes reigns on social media, so share it to grow your audience. Include blogs with good backlinks, diversify your output, and deploy the right visuals. Content that speaks to their pain points will elevate brand awareness. Develop a More Organized Knowledge BaseA comprehensive knowledge base enables self-service, shortens shopping journeys, and can be a cornerstone of great SEO. Categorize documents in a way that allows for instant problem-solving. As with all content, keep it readable and crisp, using anchor links in longer articles. Simple, informative how-to titles rarely miss. Also, a logically organized knowledge base signals that your client cares about optimizing UX. Optimize Customer Experience for Local BusinessesFor brick-and-mortar businesses, serving local communities is their bread and butter. Yet, local SERPs should be a key area of focus for local and ecommerce businesses trying to improve online rankings. Online customer experiences can also complement physical stores. Besides listing their name, address, and contact details on their website or landing pages, businesses serving multiple locations should create separate product pages for each area. That way, they’ll appear in long-tail SERPS for specific locations. Businesses can establish a robust local SEO presence by forming co-marketing partnerships with non-rival companies that have overlapping target audiences. Swap content and online mentions for each other to start off. If you tap into partnerships in more depth, an affiliate network script can help businesses build a network that generates sustainable profits. Ultimately, a proper local SEO strategy helps customers discover accurate information when they need it and drives more foot traffic to local businesses. Act OrganicallyStrong SEO will ensure your client’s site ranks near the top of the search engines. But you won’t stand a chance of achieving your marketing goals if you restrict your thinking to churning out backlinks and keyword-stuffed content. Given the technical complexities of SEO, it’s easy to miss the wood for the trees sometimes. And, while no one can predict the algorithms’ next moves, nothing levels up the customer experience like a marketing calculus that gives ample attention to both SEO and CX. Follow our guide to using SEO for better CX, and customers that stick around longer and contribute higher lifetime value surely await. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/3FKgd7t Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ It’s a big day here at Brightlocal! We have three new updates to Local Search Rank Checker. 1. Local Search Rank Checker is now called Local Rank TrackerIt’s probably best we tackle this one first so it’s easier for you to follow this launch post! Local Search Rank Checker is a name we chose over 10 years ago, and since then we’ve outgrown it. ‘Checker’ suggests it checks rankings once, or on an ad hoc basis, but that’s not how our customers use it. They use it to track rankings over time so they can measure the impact of their local SEO efforts. This new name makes it easier to understand what the product does and the value it brings. This name change is reflected in the BrightLocal platform, on our website, and in our supporting content. So if you’re looking for guides in the Help Center, you’ll now find these listed under Local Rank Tracker. Now that’s out of the way, we can get to the good stuff. 2. Introducing Average Google PositionWe’ve added a brand new metric into ‘Local Rank Tracker’ called ‘Average Google Position’–a single metric to understand ranking performance at a glance. As the name suggests, it measures the average position of all your ranking keywords across Google organic results (on both desktop and mobile) and Google local results. Find out more: Learn how we calculate Average Google Position We know that local marketers are short on time, and measuring ranking performance often means looking at different data points. Average Google Position makes this process quick and simple. Bringing greater context to ranking movementIf you’re monitoring rankings on a weekly or monthly basis without Average Google Position, you likely measure how many keywords moved up or down. But that often removes vital context. For example, if your report showed that four keywords increased but eight decreased, you might conclude that there’s been a drop in search visibility. But what if those five keywords jumped up between 10-15 positions, while the keywords that decreased only lost 1 or 2 places? Then that’s a whole different story. Average Google Position indicates whether ranking fluctuations are actually resulting in more or less search visibility. Easily compare search visibility across organic and local rankingsWe know that two different Google algorithms drive local search visibility:
Because organic and local are different, you need a way to easily understand what’s behind changes to your Average Google Position: organic, local or both. On top of aggregating all your ranking data, we also allow you to segment it based on organic desktop, organic mobile and map results. We don’t see Average Google Position as a replacement for all other ranking metrics. Understanding local ranking performance requires more than a single metric. But we do believe it will reduce the time it takes to understand the impact of your SEO efforts and help you identify when it’s time to dive deeper into your ranking data. We also see it as a useful metric for communicating progress with clients. However, we also realize it might not be something that you want to include in your client reporting right away. So if you don’t want to share it with clients, you can easily hide it from your external reports with a single click. 3. Faster, more accurate ranking dataThe final update to Local Rank Tracker might be under the hood, but it’s no less important. Let’s set the scene: Local Rank Tracker runs over 320,000 reports every month. Those reports contain a total of 3.8 million keywords. In most cases, these keywords are tracked across five search engines. Throw competitor tracking into the mix and that’s a lot of ranking data to process every single month. We work hard to ensure our rank processing systems are several steps ahead of our growth, but every once and a while we need to take a bigger leap forward. We’ve done with this most recent improvement to our rank processing. This isn’t just to match our growth—we’ve done this to give you faster and more accurate ranking reports now. On top of turbo-boosting rank processing, we’ve improved systems that help us maintain ongoing data accuracy. Google has a knack of changing the markup on their SERPs, which can sometimes impede our ability to pull data accurately. While we always react promptly to rectify the curveballs Google throws at us, we felt we needed a more robust way of detecting changes and alerting the necessary teams. This improvement has also gone live and is already significantly reducing the chances of inaccurate data from making its way into Local Rank Tracker reports. That’s all for now, but we’ll be back soon to tell you about more updates and improvements to the BrightLocal platform. For now, head over to your Local Rank Tracker reports to discover your Average Google Position. And please let us know what you think in the comments. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/H49iFJg Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ We’re bringing together the greatest minds in local SEO for a full day of info-packed talks, Q&As, and panels on a variety of local marketing topics. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/WnxkNl5 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of searches conducted on mobile devices. According to recent studies, 64% of all searches are now conducted on mobile devices and I’m sure this number will continue to grow. With the majority of viable consumers having access to smartphones, it’s more important than ever for local businesses to optimize their websites for mobile. Not only is it important from a search engine optimization standpoint, but making a website mobile-friendly also provides a better user experience for your client’s customers. In this guide, we will discuss all aspects of mobile optimization, from making your clients’ websites mobile-friendly for search engines, to improving the user experience. We’ll also cover some common mistakes to avoid and provide tips for optimizing sites for local SEO. Let’s get started! Why Local Businesses Need Mobile OptimizationMobile optimization is the process of making a client’s website easy to use on mobile devices. This includes everything from making sure the website loads quickly on a mobile connection to ensuring that the content is easy to read and navigate on a small screen. Optimizing a website for mobile helps improve its search engine rankings, which is crucial since search is by far the main driver of traffic to business websites. Plus, it also makes it more likely that people will actually use the site when they find it. Take Reliable Couriers as an example. They are located in various cities, so they need their site to be optimized for local keywords with location-specific pages and local backlinks. That way, if anyone uses the search term reliable courier services near me , their business will show up high in the SERPs, driving targeted prospects at scale. Organic traffic from search engines can lead to more conversions. If you’re not optimizing your client’s sites for mobile, they may be losing out on potential customers. Here are a few key reasons why local businesses need to focus on mobile optimization:
Mobile SEO Guide for Local BusinessesIn order to impress Google’s search algorithm, the website needs to be optimized for mobile. If clients don’t have a mobile-friendly website, then chances are Google will stop ranking them on search results. Follow these 8 tips to ensure all of your client sites meet Google’s expectations for mobile web design: 1. Check if the Website is Mobile-friendlyThe first step is to check if the website is already mobile-friendly. You can do this by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Simply enter the website’s URL, and Google will analyze the site and tell you if it passes its test by giving you a giant green tick. If your site doesn’t pass, don’t worry! There are plenty of things you can do to improve it. Luckily, in 2022 most web page builders create pages to look good no matter where they’re viewed. Take your time to research and find products such as a landing page platform that best fits your needs for your mobile visitors. Plus, every serious web design company today builds websites to be mobile-friendly as standard — often following “mobile-first” design principles. However, if you outsource this task, make sure that previous sites in their portfolio look good on mobile before hiring anyone to create a site on your behalf. If you build your clients’ websites for them or are updating an existing site, check the help section of the website builder to see how to enable a responsive design for the site. In many cases, replacing the theme or template with a responsive one is the easiest way to achieve this. There are a lot of options to create a code-free website nowadays. However, when using a drag and drop website builder, you need to ensure they provide an optimal viewing experience for desktop, mobile, and tablets. Creating a new website is a cost-efficient way to gain an online presence for a small business. Many online resources offer high-quality assets such as vector graphics , videos, and photos. Don’t forget to optimize the icons and images you use on websites for mobile. Make sure they’re the right dimensions, that the file size isn’t too large, and they look good on every device. Luckily, many content management systems, like WordPress, offer built-in responsive images — a feature where your website automatically delivers smaller photos to users using mobile browsers. 2. Improve Your Site’s Load Time With Google PageSpeed InsightsOne essential factor in mobile optimization is your page loading speed. A website’s load time is the amount of time it takes for web pages to fully display when someone visits a site. The faster pages load, the better experience the users will have, and slow load times are the number one reason why visitors exit a site. Plus, Google rewards fast-loading sites with a rankings boost. In fact, page speed is a ranking factor on both desktop and mobile searches. You can check the website’s page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights . Just enter the URL and Google will analyze the site’s speed, give you a score from 0 to 100, and some suggestions on how to improve it. Check the opportunities section at the end of the report for information. A good rule of thumb is for a website to load in less than three seconds. If it doesn’t, you run the risk of people exiting the client’s website before it can fully load. This will lead to a high bounce rate which Google takes as a bad sign and may consider the website low quality. Even though 4G is fast and 5G is on the way, it’s still important to reduce the size of the mobile version of your site to facilitate fast mobile loading. You can also set up “accelerated mobile pages” for your website to load even faster using AMP. 3. Use Responsive DesignResponsive design is when a website automatically adjusts to fit the screen it’s being viewed on, whether that’s a desktop computer, a tablet, or a mobile phone. It used to be that you would build a separate mobile version of a website that would be accessed by going to “m.yoursite.com.” However, this is no longer necessary as modern responsive design powered by CSS3 takes care of it for you. Offering a single responsive design saves you time, money, and resources which means you can offer a better rate to prospective clients. It also keeps their website usable and looking good no matter what device people use to view it. A poorly optimized mobile web page can hide content, add an unnecessary horizontal navigation bar, and display text that’s too small to read. Responsive design is more user-friendly, and it’s also better for SEO as you only have to maintain one website rather than two. When building out your client’s web pages, you don’t have to worry about things being stretched or squashed on different devices. 4. Focus on the User ExperienceAnother important factor in mobile optimization is user experience. Google wants to make sure that people who use their search engine have a positive experience and can find what they’re looking for easily. A number one priority should be to make sure the website is accessible. This means people with disabilities should be able to use it without any problems. You can do this by using proper alt text for images, adding transcripts to videos , and using easy-to-read fonts. Accessibility also means that you are optimized for languages other than English. Having a Spanish option for your website can help you reach more potential customers because Spanish is the second most common language spoken in the United States. Try adding some pictures of the client’s business to their website to connect with potential customers. Adding photo effects with a tool like Picsart can help you create a better customer experience on mobile and optimize your pictures. When you include calls to action (CTAs) on the website, make sure they are clear and not overused. A CTA is a button or link that tells users what you want them to do next. For example, if you want them to buy a product, your CTA would say “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart.” Make sure the CTAs are visible and easy to find so people know what actions they can take on the client’s site. The design of the website should be created to be thumb-friendly. Most people use their thumbs to control their phones, so people should be able to navigate the website easily with their thumbs. The buttons and links should be big enough to press without having to zoom in. This can be a problem on websites that are not mobile-friendly as they often have small buttons that are hard to press. Another thing to keep in mind is font size. Make sure the text on the website is large enough to read. Ideally, customers shouldn’t have to zoom in on anything. 5. Be Careful of AdvertisementsWhen optimizing a website for mobile, you need to be careful of advertisements. Google does not like it when websites have intrusive ads that interrupt the user experience. This means you should avoid pop-ups, auto-playing videos, and anything else that might be considered annoying. If your client wants to have ads on their website, make sure they don’t obstruct the content of the webpage. Before selecting an ad partner, check their reviews before onboarding onto their service. Many providers are Google Certified Publishing Partners , which means they have been vetted by Google. Not to mention, if you showcase smart ads that allow retargeting, customers need to agree to cookies and the storage of personal data. Local businesses should be careful of zero-party data and what they are collecting. Online companies need to adhere to strict regulations around customer data, including (General Data Protection Regulation in Europe), CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), and CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation). Google is also planning to phase out third-party cookies support by 2023. Companies will find it harder to acquire customer data from third parties or analyze user behaviors to collect them. In order to run effective marketing campaigns in the future, you will need to rely on customers willingly handing it over. 6. Use Local Keyword OptimizationLocal businesses aren’t competing for the same high competition keywords as the dominating companies are. If you can rank number one for a keyword with a significant search volume, that’s great! However, if for example, you’re a lawn care company in Wisconsin and those views are coming from a state on the other side of the country or overseas, that will not benefit you. Instead, the objective is to rank for ‘Lawn care Wisconsin’ rather than just ‘Lawn care,’ which should be much easier. One way to identify local keywords is to think about what people might type into Google when looking for a local business. For example, if someone is looking for a pizza place, they might type in “pizza near me,” “pizza delivery,” or “pizza [your city].” Another way to find local keywords is to use Google’s Keyword Planner . This tool lets you see how many people search for a particular keyword in a specific location. 7. Move the Navigation Bar on MobileThe navigation bar or menu is one of the most important elements of any website. It allows people to move around and find the information they’re looking for. The navigation bar is usually at the top of the page on a desktop. However, on a mobile device, the navigation bar can be moved to the bottom of the screen. This is because it’s easier to reach the bottom of the screen than the top. Most people hold their phones with one hand and use their thumb to navigate. This can make it difficult to reach the top of the page. By moving the navigation bar to the bottom, you’re making it easier for people to use your website. In fact, Apple has recently made this change to their Safari browser. Make sure the buttons on the navigation bar are large enough to be pressed with a thumb. You should also consider using icons instead of text to make the buttons easier to understand. 8. Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions for MobileSince the title tags and meta description show up in search results, they need to be attention-grabbing. SEO meta descriptions, in particular, need to be optimized for mobile instead of desktop. As we mentioned earlier, 64% of searches happen on mobile devices, so that’s where your focus should be. One way to do this is to keep the titles short and to the point (maximum 60 characters). Try to include the focus keyword, but keep the title easy to read for a general audience. The meta description also needs to be readable on a small screen. Write punchy meta descriptions that hook the user quickly; Google will only display the first 160 characters. ConclusionOptimizing a website for mobile is essential for local businesses to succeed in the future. With more and more people using their phones to search the internet, it’s important to make sure their website is easy to use on a small screen. If you want to optimize a client’s website for mobile, follow the tips in this article. From optimizing the title and meta description to making sure your navigation bar is easy to use, these tips will help you create a perfect website for mobile users. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/iTOq5XF Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ |
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April 2023
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