“Humor is subjective,” is something we’ve all heard. What’s funny to you might not be funny to someone else, sure. But subjectivity only refers to the effect of comedy, not the construction of it. There are ways to inject humor into your marketing strategy that are almost certain to make people laugh. If you’ve determined that your local business needs humor to make it stick in the minds of its target audience, then you need to know where to start and what to do next. In this article I will present four different approaches to help inject humor into your local marketing: You might be wondering, “what do these terms mean?” And more importantly, how can they be used to make your local marketing campaign stand out from the competition? Providing you’ve taken the relevant data into account (and determined whether or not this kind of approach will appeal to your best-fit user personas), humor can be a great route to go down. So, without further ado, I present the four primary approaches. The Irreverent ApproachTo be irreverent you need to, to put it simply, be a little ‘weird’ and a bit edgy. The all-knowing wisdom provider known as Google defines ‘irreverent’ as: ‘Showing a lack of respect for people or things that are generally taken seriously.’ Your first thought when hearing this may be, “When would it make sense for a business to disrespect the people they are trying to woo?” In an age where nine out of ten customers research a business before buying from them, that’s the very last thing a business would want to do, right? Well, being irreverent with your marketing’s humor can work if it’s done right. Look no further than the Twitter account of US-based fast food chain, Wendy’s. Their Twitter account presents itself as if it’s moderated by someone with zero professional scruples. But the important thing is, it makes people laugh and makes them remember the brand. Of course, whether you can use this approach depends hugely on your target audience. If you are looking to engage younger audiences, and your products are not inherently “serious” (think YMYL websites), you can afford to have a little fun. In short: if you are selling burgers, irreverent humor can work. Pharmaceuticals, less so. Source: Twitter But despite the seemingly dismissive and immature attitude of Wendy’s’ Twitter, it gets excellent engagement from users (many of whom actually appreciate their irreverent humor) and millions of people eat at their establishments every day. It’s a prime example of how such irreverent humor can actually be long-lasting and financially beneficial for a business. So, how did Wendy’s do it? Simple — it’s all about the attitude. Even though their Twitter posts and other marketing gimmicks may appear to be immature and even rude, it’s also clearly all done from a place of jest. Now I’m not necessarily jumping in at the deep end and going full Wendy’s but, ultimately, this kind of irreverent approach could inspire you to take more risks with your humor and thus stand out from the competition. Just make sure that you get the tone right, and remember this approach will depend greatly on: a) your target audience As I’ve discussed, irreverent marketing works well with some groups, and less well with others. Try not to make light of a serious subject, but you can have some fun with products that your target audience knows and loves. When it comes to local advertising, businesses have a real advantage in using this approach: your customers share knowledge of your area, town, or city. Gently poking fun at local landmarks, customs, or jokes can be a great way to show your customers that you are engaged in the local community and that you’re a true local. The Meme ApproachThe ‘meme approach’ is a highly overlooked marketing strategy by most businesses, even though there are several big brands that have used it to great effect. Memes are silly, of course, but they can have a pretty serious effect on your brand image if used correctly. What is a meme? According to Dictionary.com, a meme is: ‘a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.’ Here’s a classic meme, albeit one that is showing its age: Source: Wikipedia Today, memes come in all shapes and sizes, so you can easily find one that speaks to your audience. Because of this, memes can also be highly effective in local marketing, but in order to market memes successfully, you need to appeal to their target audience and understand their context. This will require an intelligent comprehension of the modern cultural landscape. Let’s take a look at Netflix as an example because, while they may not be local, as a company they really understand how to use memes to position themselves as a contemporary brand. Their approach may not seem like a traditional outreach marketing strategy, but using memes as part of your overall marketing strategy can pay off when executed right. Source: Twitter Netflix’s meme knowledge and how they’ve used it to market their content is plentiful, but perhaps the shining example of their viral marketing style was what happened with the Sandra Bullock film, Bird Box. Memes centering on the apocalyptic plot of the film began popping up on social media in December 2018. The impact of these promotional memes skyrocketed the film’s success, and even the Bird Box meme went on to have a life of its own in the ensuing months with the advent of the controversial ‘Bird Box Challenge’, where people blindfolded themselves like in the movie and then went about their daily business. Additionally, rather than clamp down on overseas viewers and shared accounts, Netflix actually does the opposite – openly acknowledging the use of shared accounts and “Netflix VPNs” which circumvent content restrictions. The company’s use of memes on social media has such high engagement rates that it’s become a thing of legend, which other brands have sought to replicate. If you want to market with memes, you have to understand them. Every meme has a joke at the center of it, and every instance of the said meme is a variation of that joke. Every meme is different, and to successfully promote your business with them, you need to know how they’re different. You also need to isolate how the meme you’ve chosen relates to your brand. Know the brand, know the memes, and mix and match to find the best coupling. Local businesses can adapt existing memes to reflect their geographical location. In fact, for local advertising, it is pretty easy to find a trending meme, and with a little creativity adapt it for local customers. In some ways, using memes in local advertising is easier than in national-level campaigns, because you know exactly who you are talking to, and the in-jokes that apply to your area. The Meta ApproachIf you are of sound mind, then you are aware that what you are reading right now is an article. Most articles hide behind the fourth wall of objectivity for the purpose of laying out information and facts in an orderly, educated, and formal manner that never goes off-topic in order to deconstruct itself. Marketing exercises this same approach most of the time. We tend to present the product directly and lay out the details and features in an informational fashion without calling attention to any promos as specific advertising. If you choose to use a humorous approach in your local marketing strategy, flipping the script and using the meta advertising strategy may be the ticket to attracting your targeted customer base. A commercial that acknowledges itself as a commercial is a refreshing flourish of “truth in advertising” that’s been a growing trend in marketing circles over the latter half of the last decade. One company that has taken full advantage of the lucrative potential of self-awareness is the UK-based Hosting Data, which specializes in building online identities for UK citizens. Its founder, Alex Williams, uses the informative and informal tone of his personality to fuel his company’s self-referential local marketing strategy. What better way to sell the idea of selling yourself online than to sell yourself online using a tinge of dry, British humor (if you’re British, that is)? That’s exactly what Williams does with his humorous meta approach to his business. For local businesses, using a meta approach means one thing: being self-aware of where you are based. If you are based in a small town, make your customers aware of the pride you take in being a small-town company. If you are from a large city, it can pay to integrate your location not only into your social media content but even your logo or brand name. People love to buy local, as long as they feel that doing so is a way of boosting pride in their local community. The Satirical ApproachSatire is neither for the small-minded nor the closed-minded. People can often miss the point or misinterpret the intention. Most individuals with refined humoristic palates look upon such irrational reactions to satire with gleeful schadenfreude. The misunderstanding of satire has become an intellectual spectator sport where we scroll through social media sites, and read along with our jaws agape at comment threads where some individuals seem to think spam filters are found in the canned food sections of supermarkets. But in these kinds of feeds, we also might find an ad for one of your agency’s clients where they’ve used a cheeky play on words. That may sound irreverent, but satire requires a particular execution of irreverence. If your local business client wants to use satire in their marketing or content, they need a clear line of sight on who they’re targeting, and the humor must be spun in a refreshing and innovative manner. One example is the 2014 ‘Power of the Book Book Ad’ marketing campaign that was launched by the retail furniture company Ikea. This campaign took a satirical approach, targeted at another not-so-little-known company called Apple and their iPad technology. Through this approach, Ikea promoted the release of its catalog as if it were a sleek, top of the line, blockbuster product, just like something that would be released by tech giants Apple. Ikea took all the sincere elements of an Apple ad and turned them upside down in an ironically backhanded way. How do we know that this approach worked for Ikea? Simple — they keep doing it. A golden rule of marketing is that if something works and is giving you a good return on investment, keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore. A business that actually calculates its ROI has a 72% chance that it has an effective marketing strategy. But no one can accurately predict the final result, so you should always weigh the pros and cons of each considered approach before pulling the trigger on it. To use satire in a local marketing strategy, not only do you have to know your audience, you have to know your rivals. A good company knows where their bread is buttered, so take a look at the content being used by your local rivals. You can then (gently) satirize their content, which will simultaneously indicate that you don’t take your own brand too seriously whilst giving your local customers a good joke to share. The post Four Simple Ways to Inject Humor into Your Local Marketing appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/310McL8 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/
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With years of experience in both SEO and digital marketing, Steve Wiideman is a trusted pro in his field. In this article, he sheds light on the ins and outs of voice search and explains how you can optimize your website content for voice search. Contents:
What Is Voice Search?Voice Search refers to the technology behind searching the internet without the use of a keyboard, where an assistant (such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Assistant) replies to a query with an answer or action. This technology was built to encourage safer driving and provide general convenience over using a keyboard. As humans continue to untether themselves from handheld devices, technology companies push forward to bring in innovations for performing tasks using Virtual Assistant software. This software leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to make tasks faster and easier than ever. Tasks might include making phone calls, checking the weather, booking appointments, making purchases, playing music, interacting with smart home devices, and searching the internet. We obviously know which search engine powers Google Assistant, but what about the rest? As it turns out, Alexa currently uses Bing search results, as does Cortana (which is owned by Microsoft), and Siri uses Google for search, but Bing for images. Why Is Voice Search Important?Beyond the obvious safety reasons of not touching (or being distracted by) a smartphone while driving, boating, walking, or performing any other task, Voice Search is already starting to play an important role in how we access information and automate tasks without the need for portable handheld devices. Source: Think With Google Need to find a type of place? Ask “find me” and the service you need followed by “near me” (e.g. “Find me pizzerias near me”), and you’ll hear an answer that lists pizzerias near you. Need directions? Simply ask “Can I have directions to…?” and state the place you need a route for. As a business owner, a goal might be to have your listing appear as the first option suggested by a digital assistant. However, quantifying the need for resources to start optimizing for voice may require a business case or data. Here are a few important statistics to keep in your back pocket for this purpose:
Optimizing Your Website and Content for VoiceIn addition to the work already being performed to rank a page in Google’s organic results, such as following tips from Google and from your own experiments, there are three primary methods of making your website voice search-ready: Add speech to text API in the search barStart by replacing the magnifying glass icon in internal search boxes with a microphone icon, and adding a Web Speech API. Try this demonstration to see how the feature might work on your website. Add a short summary or list at the top of each pageAdding a short summary to the top of each page makes it easier for visitors to copy and paste the answer they were looking for, rather than forcing them to read the entire page or scroll to the bottom to see your summary or conclusion. Go the next step, and add a “Copy to Clipboard” icon next to your paragraph to make curation even easier. Keep these summaries under 375 characters, or your list items under 10 words for best results. Add schema (or structured) markup wherever possibleSchema markup can make it easier for search engines to classify content and media they find when crawling a page, all of which might be used to create Rich Results. In cases where there are few competitors, moving to the top of the results in search engines can happen quickly, so this is very valuable. Browse the schema.org library for ideas, and choose JSON-LD as the encoding method. When you’re ready to test, try the Structured Data Testing Tool to validate your code. Syndicating Short Summaries and ListsThis is the controversial segment of the page where we exploit the real method used by businesses to get that coveted Position Zero (Featured Snippets) in web search. It’s critical because Featured Snippets are used by in 75% of Google Assistant voice search results. The more competitive the industry, the more often spam techniques ( such as automated content syndication software) are used. I recommend staying away from any technique that feels unnatural or forcefully attempting to game search results. An example of a Featured Snippet (achieved through curation and syndication) would be for the query “how important are Yelp reviews”, where my company’s summary has been shared 34 times, with only a few of those curated instances coming from particularly trustworthy domains. The article itself offers shareable data, and unique content (as opposed to mere commentary or fluff), which has helped it to earn links and citations of its own over time. With our web pages curation-ready with short summaries and lists, it’s time to look off the website at ways to get the lists and short summaries syndicated to as many Googlebot-crawlable places as possible. The first place to start manually building links back to these pages is your own backyard, including your social media posts, image-sharing destinations (Pinterest, Reddit), video-sharing sites (YouTube, Vimeo), Q&A platforms like Quora, and using description fields in these destinations to drop in the content. Set up a Google Alert for the questions the page provides the solution to, making it easy to simply drop your answer in new pages, resulting in more credit to your answer. I call this method using ‘Featured Answer Points’. Claiming and Testing Google Actions and Alexa SkillsWhile a business can’t control voice search results creating Google Actions or Alexa Skills, it can protect the business name and product names, while giving users the opportunity to interact with the business in ways a website simply can’t offer. For example, you can ask Google or Alexa to “ask Tide how to remove stains” or to “ask Isaacs and Isaacs if they handle truck accident cases,” and these invocations will trigger answers set up by the businesses themselves, as opposed to the typical “I found something on the web” response we’re all used to hearing. Here is a link to help you get started with Actions on Google Assistant. For Alexa Skills, click here for their official guide. If you’re starting with Google (which you probably will), here’s a quick start guide:
Once set up, you can test and submit your action for review by the Google Action Team. Have some fun with questions and answers before moving on to more difficult actions, such as scheduling an appointment or making a purchase. Citations and Voice SearchAs local search engine optimization specialists know, there are primary pillars of Local SEO to achieve higher placement in Map Packs and Map Search results:
There’s a lot of speculation regarding the impact of citations (directory listings) on business visibility as it pertains to voice search. The reality is that effective optimization of citations in local-social directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and others can only help when assistants (such as Alexa) choose to use those directories instead of search engine results. There is as yet there no direct link between building citations and appearing in voice search results. SummaryVoice Search isn’t as complicated as it sounds, and with 27% of users sounding off commands to Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant, it’s no wonder businesses are searching for help to optimize for voice search in 2020. With a little effort on the website, webmasters can incorporate voice into their own internal search functions and offer short summaries at the top of content. If resources permit, the marketing team can syndicate lists and summaries to help achieve Featured Snippets, which are used in 75% of Google Assistant voice answers. A final step to addressing Voice Search would be to claim and test Actions and Skills from Google and Alexa to provide an amazing hands-free experience to patrons. These three areas of focus could give you the head start you need to flank the competition as voice search continues to grow and to become more important to overall inbound marketing efforts. The post Three Steps to Achieving Better Results in Voice Search appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/2P6DHbL Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ You’ve probably heard us say it a million times, “reviews are important!” — or some other variation of that same statement. But have you ever taken the time to look at our own review profiles? If you were to look now, you’d probably think “Yes, BrightLocal. Reviews are important and yours showcase healthy review generation, timely responses, and everything else you preach.” If you had looked a year ago, however, that would be a different story. In this case study, I’ll discuss how the BrightLocal team transformed our online review presence, gained hundreds of new reviews, and upped our star ratings across the board in a matter of mere months. The post How BrightLocal Supercharged Its Review Strategy appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/2CNzsPT Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ With more than a decade’s worth of experience in internet marketing, Ann Smarty is a real pro when it comes to the ins and outs of SEO and content. Here, she provides a guide to performing local keyword research. Would you like to boost your local website’s online visibility? A well-organized keyword research process is your first step. Keyword research is fundamental to any digital marketing strategy, for both global and local businesses. Why is keyword research important?Keyword research is important for the following reasons:
The anatomy of a local keywordWhen it comes to local keyword research, we usually have to deal with a three-part combination: Core term + Modifier + Location Knowing the basic structure of a keyword helps you better understand the process and the fundamental goal behind it. Core TermThis is what you do or sell, at its “core”. If you are promoting a local hair salon, your core terms are “hairdresser”, “haircut”, “hairstylist”, etc. If you are promoting a law firm, your core terms are “lawyer”, “law firm”, “attorney”… Well, you get the idea. ModifierThis is what makes your core term more specific, and hence less competitive. For example, these may be “best hairdressers near me” and “find a personal injury lawyer” (keyword modifiers are in italics). Location(s)These are the names of towns, states, counties, communities, your business is located in, e.g. “best hairdresser in Albany” and “find a personal injury lawyer in NY”. With that in mind, let’s figure out how to identify all the parts here. Step 1: Identify your core term(s)Obviously your own judgment, as a business owner, is your first resource here. What is it are you selling? And if you were in need of this product/service, how would you search for it? If you provide digital marketing services, include this question into your ‘new client’ questionnaire. To expand your own “seed” list, try searching Google and take note of what your competitors (or businesses in similar industries) put in their title tags. For example, here’s Google’s search result page for “hairdresser”: A few Google searches will help you come up with alternative core terms to optimize your home page for. Step 2: “Extend” your core terms with keyword modifiersThis is where you make your keywords “longer”. Simply put, keyword modifiers make your overall keyword strategy more diverse, as you get to discover:
There are a few powerful SEO tools that “extend” your core terms with keyword modifiers that are commonly searched together. These include Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Serpstat, and Kparser. When it comes to keyword research sections of these tools, I cannot honestly recommend one over the other here as I use them interchangeably. Here’s a good comparison of best-known keyword tools to help you make a choice. I do recommend signing up for as many free trials as possible when selecting your go-to tool, as all of those tools have different databases, so you are likely to discover more options when you run several of those. All of those tools have some type of “keyword difficulty” metric, developed to help you make more informed decisions when selecting a keyword phrase for your site. Keyword difficulty reflects the organic competitiveness of a search query. It is usually calculated based on the assumed “power” of top-ranking domains and pages. By filtering out keyword lists by keyword difficulty you can find less competitive terms: Ahrefs keyword list for “hairdresser” core term filtered by keyword difficulty. Your competitors are also a good source of SEO insights. By looking at your competitors’ keywords and search positions, you’ll be able to discover some neat keyword ideas to steal. Step 3: Organize your relevant keywords by search intentSearch intent reflects the user’s goal behind a search query. Fundamentally, there are three types of search intent:
Here’s a good tutorial on organizing your keyword list by search intent. You want to build some organic visibility for all of these queries, as not all customers come to your brand through searching for related products or services. They may land on your local guide, remember your brand, and then search for your brand name to finally buy something. The more diverse your organic discovery is (the more paths you build from search to your site), the bigger your customer base is going to be over time. Remember that your customer acquisition tactics are going to vary depending on search intent. More often than not:
This is why adding an “intent” column to your keyword list is such an important step. To organize your keywords, you can use a simple spreadsheet application, like Google Sheets, which can be dated (to turn into an actionable schedule) as well as integrated into your WordPress site through a plugin. To help you out further, there are intent optimization tools available, assisting you in matching your landing page to Google’s identified search intent. Text Optimizer is the semantic analysis tool that helps you:
When creating your initial keyword list, run Text Optimizer to identify which other terms should be included in your copy. The tool also allows you to identify core terms to expand your list even more. Step 4: Add your locations!Finally, this is the step where you localize your keyword list to get found more for local keywords. Depending on your search niche and each query search intent, those “localization tactics” can be different. For example, for informational queries in a legal niche, people are probably more likely to search for specific [state] legislation (for example, “NY law for alcohol”). On the other hand, they will probably search for [town/city lawyers] when they are actively searching for one. These searching behavior trends are identified mostly by common sense but you can also use the aforementioned tools (Ahrefs, SeEMrush, etc.) to make decisions based on search volume. There may also be county-specific, nearby-town-specific, etc. search queries, as well as names only locals know. Unless you live in that location, it may be hard to find all of those keyword-localization options, so take your time to search Google and check “Searches related to” results, as well as Google Knowledge Graph. Both of those will give you some clues as to where your target customers are likely to search next. To prioritize your locations, it is a good idea to use your on-site analytics. Most web analytics solutions show you locations your site is getting the most clicks from. Finteza, for example, breaks down those locations to a city- and town-level giving local businesses some priceless data: Finteza shows your best-performing cities in terms of attracting and engaging traffic. This helps you prioritize your SEO tactics. Conclusion and takeaways
The post How to Do Local Keyword Research Like a Pro appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/2CFKvL2 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ MerchantCircle is one of the more widely-known business listings directories out there, so it’s no surprise that everyone from restaurateurs to plumbers want their businesses listed there. Beyond that, it’s a valuable citation that helps improve your business’ local listing health. If you want to set up a MerchantCircle business listing, you’ll need to follow the below steps, which cover adding a new MerchantCircle listing and claiming an existing one. We’ve skipped over the paid options to ensure you can set up a MerchantCircle listing for free, but you’re welcome to select those options if you’re interested in MerchantCircle’s paid plans.
If there any any other online directories you’d like us to run through in a guide, let us know in the comments below! The post How to Add or Claim a MerchantCircle Business Listing appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/2ZYama5 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ We’re back with our second episode of ‘Adventures in Local Marketing’ and this time we’re talking spam, spam, and more SPAM, with Jason Brown. Jason is the leading expert on all the shady things that go down in local SEO, so we wanted to find out:
So grab your headphones and saddle up as we take a tour of the darker side of local marketing with the ‘Sheriff of Google’. Listen to the episodeSubscribe todayIf you like what you hear and want instant access to the latest episodes, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts:
Tell us what you thinkGot any feedback on this episode or a suggestion for a future guest? Drop a comment below. And if you’ve liked what you’ve heard so far, a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen would be really appreciated. The post Jason Brown on Becoming the Spammer’s Public Enemy #1 appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/3joCcnv Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ In this article, I’ll reveal the pros and cons of listing your business on nine of my favorite business listing sites for local businesses, as well as sharing tips for optimizing for better visibility. As shown by Moz’s Local Search Ranking Factors Study from 2018, citation signals appear to be one of the core elements in ranking success. By now, you should have mastered the art of optimizing for Google My Business, but what about alternative options to consider for better SEO and visibility? With free listings and directories available, you may want to create a business profile elsewhere, too. I’m not suggesting you create a business listing on every possible directory, after all, as someone in SEO you know the “quality over quantity” principle holds true. But there are numerous sites that are worth optimizing for as part of your foundational local SEO strategy. In general, it’s worth choosing the most relevant platforms where your target audience “lives” and setting up a profile there. So, without further ado, here are the top nine free directories for your consideration. Free Business Listing SitesYelpKnown as the “word of mouth” website, Yelp is the fourth most visited review site on the Internet. About 200 million people read reviews there monthly to make buying decisions. 75% of users come to Yelp via Google search, while 20% visit the website directly in search of product reviews to decide if they want to buy from a business. Studies show that just one additional star in a business’s Yelp rating can lead to a 9% increase in revenue. With those numbers in mind, it’s worth listing your business on Yelp for improved reputation and visibility. How to Create a Yelp ListingTo set up a local business listing at Yelp, go to the page for business owners and find and claim your client’s business there or add it yourself if it’s definitely not already set up — you’ll want to make sure you’re not creating duplicate listings, so check thoroughly before beginning the setup process. After that, you can verify the account via phone, text, or call. Before you can get to optimizing, it’s important to ensure the basics are completed: Fill in all the relevant information about your business, add high-quality, authentic photos, and remember to provide images with proper filenames, alt tags, and descriptions. How to Optimize for YelpTo start optimizing your Yelp profile, first think of keywords that are relevant to your client’s business and incorporate them into the business description. Focus on location-based and service-based ones and make sure to write at least 1,000 words of keyword-optimized content. As always, remember that keywords are there to guide search engines and potential customers — so avoid keyword stuffing and other spammy techniques. Next, it’s important to choose the right Yelp business category. On Yelp you’re allowed to choose up to three categories but make sure they are highly relevant. Otherwise, you could hurt, rather than help, your rankings. If you want to go the extra mile and gain more visibility on Yelp, embed a clickable Yelp badge on your website so visitors can go directly to the listing and read reviews there. As with any site where you can get customer reviews, it’s important to be responsive. Not only is it good business practice, but it will also show Yelp’s algorithm that your business is active and trusted. Another optimization factor to consider here is check-ins and check-in offers. Encourage customers to “check-in” to your business by creating a special offer. For example, a discount, a free glass of wine or a dessert, a chance to win a gift card, a brand accessory, and so on. The kind of offer that appeals to your client’s customer will vary based on the business type, but feel free to get creative here. Finally, depending on your industry, you should opt into the “request a quote” feature at Yelp, which helps to attract more people to click on your listing. As always, responses here count. Respond to quote requests that come in — address the sender by name, stay authentic, and respond promptly. To speed up the process, come up with a few customizable templates. And remember to flag spam messages and mark those you’ve replied to. Bing PlacesBing Places for Business works similarly to Google My Business — in fact, you can even sync up listings, as I’ll explain later on. Bing may hold just 2.45% of the search engine market, but that still comprises hundreds of millions of daily searches. Plus, Amazon’s Alexa uses Bing to source content for voice searches. Given that 76% of users perform local voice searches at least weekly and 46% look for info on local businesses with voice search daily, optimizing for Bing is still certainly worth considering. How to Create a Bing Places listingSetting up a Bing Places for Business profile is straightforward. Create an account or sign in with your Google account, importing your Google My Business listing to Bing. If you don’t want to import the information from GMB, simply claim or add a new Bing Places account. As usual, add all the relevant information about your local business, select the primary category for it, and enter contact information (NAP) for potential customers to find it. How to Optimize for Bing PlacesBing Places loves photos, so add as many photos as you can. Bing values high-quality images and allows up to 100 in the listing, so incorporate pictures of your business location, products, brand logo, happy customers, and anything else that might be helpful for customers to recognize you. Remember to optimize any pictures you upload with alt tags and file names. Secondly, attach social media accounts to your listing. Anywhere your customers might use to reach your local business is worth adding. Incorporating your social presence is your chance to not only influence rankings but also show your customers the personality behind your business. Finally, you need to accumulate reviews. As ever, you can perform review generation outreach by email. You can also add a CTA to the business description, asking people to rate their experience. BBB (aka Better Business Bureau)Adding a local business to BBB will signal to customers that they can trust it. As one of the best review sites on the web, any information submitted to BBB is moderated and reviewed before publishing. BBB makes a considerable effort to only allow reviews from verified customers. Plus, this online directory helps to increase customer loyalty and online visibility. The local SEO advantage of having a BBB listing is that it ranks well for brand searches. It’s worth noting that, despite some speculation, Google has denied using BBB as a search ranking factor. How to Create a BBB listingTo submit a local business to BBB, follow standard instructions: find and verify it there, or add a new listing if your business isn’t in the directory yet. For companies with multiple locations, you can create one listing that represents all locations or different listings for each separate area. Both options have pros and cons. How to Optimize for BBBBegin by adding all the relevant content you can: logo, business overview, and/or description, photos and videos, products and services, offers, and so on. As with the other directories on this list, choosing the right business category is vital. Finally, you can add links to your website and social media accounts. Angie’s ListAngie’s List is a directory that works best for local businesses operating in home repair, auto industry, health care, pet care, and professional services. It’s where consumers can find and review providers in their local communities, looking for those with the best customer service. How to Create an Angie’s List ProfileBy setting up a business profile at Angie’s, you can monitor and grow customer feedback and generate new leads by influencing users’ buying decisions with direct communication in reviews. Once added to Angie’s List, your listing needs further optimization for better visibility. Besides the general information about your client’s business (name, address, working hours, logo, services description, etc.), make sure to add pictures. Images of employees performing their work are a great option here. How to Optimize for Angie’s ListAngie’s List optimization is all about customer reviews. To get them, invite some loyal customers to leave their feedback at Angie’s, share the link to the listing on social media, or consider the “Request Reviews” option at Angie’s (You can use this to send review invitations to customers via email). With more than 65 million local business pages available, Facebook provides a great opportunity to improve online visibility, build and grow customer community, and get low-cost but high-reach local advertising. How to Create a Facebook Business PageSetting up a business page on Facebook, you might need to claim its unofficial page there, first. Sometimes, this social network generates business listings automatically based on the available info online. Just click “Is this your business?” button, claim this listing, and verify it by phone or with documents. In the case that there are no unofficial business listings of your business on Facebook, create a new one. How to Optimize for FacebookTo optimize your listing on Facebook, consider the following:
Though not technically a directory, according to social media statistics, 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business page there, so it can be a great opportunity for local businesses to get found online. Beyond that, 72% of users claim to have purchased a product after seeing it on Instagram. So, if you market to younger demographics (only 29% of Instagram users are over 35), this network may be worth your time. How to Optimize for InstagramTo get the most of your Instagram listing, try the following tips:
LinkedIn is not for global brands only. Listing your local business there, you’ll increase its exposure and credibility. (It’s especially relevant for finance-based companies.) Due to its professional nature, LinkedIn brings up to 80% of B2B social media leads to businesses. How to Create a Business Profile on LinkedInSetting up a business profile on LinkedIn is simple: go to the Work option from your profile and choose “Create a Company Page” there. How to Optimize for LinkedInFor better optimization, consider the most relevant business category and mention the company’s type and size. Choose a custom button to display so users could follow, find, or contact you. It’s important to pay particular attention to your description. Think of keywords representing your key offerings, and make sure to include them at the very beginning of the company’s tagline. Drive more traffic to your client’s website by adding a link to it in the longer-form “About” description. The more info you include to the profile, the more weekly views the LinkedIn page will get. Update it regularly to maintain visibility and help search engines recognize it. AlignableAlignable is a B2B network for local businesses. Although less well known than some of the sites mentioned above, as of right now, they have about 22,000 communities on the platform. Listing your client’s business there, you can help it get referrals from other small business owners. Alignable listings help you monitor competitors, connect with partners, and ask/answer questions to promote your products or services. More than that, it’s a great chance to get one more local SEO citation for a business. How to Create a Listing on AlignableThe process of setting up a business profile at Alignable is standard: sign up, add and verify a listing, and complete the profile for better visibility. How to Optimize for Alignable
Alignable encourages recommendations from customers, so monitor and respond to them for a better online reputation. Yellow PagesAccording to the Yellow Pages website, 60 million people still search for local businesses in their directory each month. So why not get listed there for free to attract a broader audience of potential customers and improve local SEO? How to Get Listed on Yellow PagesSign up for a new account (you can do that with Facebook or Google accounts too), and claim your business via the “Get Your Free Listing” section. How to Optimize for Yellow PagesAfter filling up all the necessary information and verifying your business listing at YP, make sure to optimize it accordingly: business categories, written description, list of products, logo, photos, website URL, and social media links — they all matter for better local search. And keep everything updated to make sure customers and search engines get relevant information. The correct categorization of your local business in Google has always been a top factor for high rankings. It impacts search results and the overall online presence for customers to find and know about a business. So, when building local business listings elsewhere, optimize them and double-check primary and secondary business categories there. Business listings such as Google My Business and others serve to improve your local SEO performance, influence online reputation, and send customers your way. So be sure to use them wisely to help search engines classify local businesses right. The post 9 Free Listing Sites to Get Found On (and How to Optimize for Them) appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/32GzFPo Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ When Kogneta’s Jordan Choo contacted us saying he’d created a brand-new free tool using our Reviews API (find out more about our APIs here), we just knew we had to share the results with you. Here, Jordan shares his exciting new tool designed to help you analyze your own reviews and mine competitor reviews for insights. Read on to find out how you can benefit from the Kogneta and BrightLocal Reviewalyzer… There’s no doubt that reviews should be a critical part of a business’s local marketing strategy, not only from an SEO perspective but from a reputation standpoint as well. This is perfectly illustrated in these online review statistics. With more and more businesses generating reviews on a yearly basis, how do you use not only your reviews but your competitors’, to successfully grow? Thanks to a new tool that I put together using BrightLocal’s handy Review API, you’re now able to mine your competitors’ reviews at scale and incorporate these findings into your SEO and overall marketing strategy. I’ve found it to be extremely useful in understanding not only what makes a competitor stand out from their positive reviews, but where they drop the ball by looking at their negative reviews. So without further ado, I am happy to introduce… BrightLocal and Kogneta’s ReviewalyzerYou can grab your version of the Reviewalyzer by making a copy of it here. How to Use the ToolWith the help of BrightLocal’s Reviews API, we’re able to use AppScript, which is a JavaScript-based language, to create a miniature app inside of Google Sheets to gather the reviews of multiple businesses in bulk. Below you can find a step-by-step process on how to get it running and how to leverage the tool for your own business. Add Your BrightLocal API CredentialsThe first thing that you’ll want to do is get your BrightLocal API credentials. You can find your API key and API secret by navigating to your Account Setting drop-down, and clicking on the API Access option. Once the API Access page loads, you’ll be presented with your API Key and API Secret as shown in the annotated screenshot below: Copy your API Key and API Secret into the Config tab in the BrightLocal and Kogneta’s Reviewalyzer. Your BrightLocal API key will go into cell C5 and your BrightLocal API Secret will go into cell C7 which is the annotated step 2 and step 3 in the screenshot below: Get Business DirectoriesNow that you’re ready to connect with BrightLocal, the next step is to pull in all of the business directories that you’re able to analyze reviews from. To do this, click on the BrightLocal Reviews dropdown and select the Get Directories option.
Enter Business InformationThe next step is to start entering the information for all of the businesses that you want to pull reviews for. If you don’t know offhand which competitors you should be analyzing, then I highly recommend using BrightLocal’s Local Search Audit which will provide you with some of your top competitors. Using the Businesses tab, fill in the information for each business that you want to pull reviews for in the white column (columns D to I). If I wanted to pull reviews on burger restaurants in New York City, it would look like this: Note that the directory column (column G) has a handy drop-down option where you can select from the directories that you pulled in the previous step from BrightLocal. Get ReviewsNow we can finally pull in the reviews. To do this click on the BrightLocal Reviews dropdown and select the Get Reviews option. The Job ID, Batch ID, and Status columns will then populate with some information. You’ll notice that the script will finish running but, the status column will be set to In Progress, there’s no need to worry as in a minute or two you’ll see that it changes to complete and the RAW – Reviews tab will be full of reviews. This is due to BrightLocal’s batch API, which you can read more about here. Once your status column is updated to complete, you can then navigate to the RAW – Reviews tab to see all of the reviews that BrightLocal’s API gathered. Analyze ReviewsThis is where the fun starts and we start analyzing the reviews to pull juicy insights from your competitors. If you haven’t noticed by now there is an Insights – Positive and Insights – Negative tab, these tabs take the reviews that you just pulled in and execute an n-gram analysis on them showing bi, tri, and quad grams. The Insights – Positive tab only looks at reviews that scored 5 or higher while the Insights – Negative tab only analyzes reviews that scored a 3 or lower. In the screenshot above, we can see the commonly used words and phrases in positive reviews by Shake Shack. A few common themes that we can see across these bi, tri, and quad grams are:
On the flip side, if we look at Shake Shack’s negative reviews we can see two common points of pain emerging:
How to Use the ResultsNow that you have these insights, the next step is to use them against your competitors and, in our case, this is Shake Shack. Here are a few ways that I would use these insights: In Web CopyUsing the insights from the negative reviews, you can add copy across your site that addresses the negative view that people have about your competitor by saying that it’s an issue that you don’t have. If we were McDonald’s or Burger King, we would use the reviews that reference Shake Shack’s wait time as ammunition to create callouts on our website saying there is less than a two-minute wait time for your food. In PPC AdsOne super sneaky way of using these reviews is to run a PPC conquesting campaign on your competitor and having one of your main headlines call out the competitor on common things mentioned in their negative reviews. Referring back to our Shake Shack example, our ad copy could say something such as “Tired of crowds when trying to enjoy your burger?” or “Get your burger in less than 30 seconds!” To Improve Business ProcessesA third, and likely most important, strategy that I recommend is to leverage the insights from the positive reviews to improve your own business. By understanding what people like about your competitor, you can incorporate that into part of your business. If we look at Shake Shack’s positive reviews of it being consistently clean and the meals being a good price, I would want to make sure we are cleaning our restaurant frequently enough and that our burgers are priced fairly. ConclusionThe above three strategies only scratch the surface of how you can use your competitors’ reviews against them and mine reviews for insights. If you have a unique way of using competitors’ reviews share them in the comments below! P.S. Want to find out how BrightLocal APIs can work for you? Get in touch with our Business Development team now. Or, if you’re doing something cool and innovative like Jordan with our APIs already, drop us a line and let us know! The post How to Mine for Competitor Insights Using BrightLocal’s Review API appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/3fW4zr7 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ Local Search Clinic: Managing Multiple GMB Listings with Niki Mosier and Noah Learner Coming Soon7/19/2020 In this Local Search Clinic, Two Octobers’ Niki Mosier and Noah Learner unite to answer your questions on managing multiple GMB listings. Got problems only the pros can answer? Looking for tips to boost your online search presence? Or just want to chat with fellow local SEOs? Join us each week for an hour of expert insights with new topics each week. Read on to find out how to get your questions answered! For any questions or issues registering for the webinar, please email us at [email protected]. Can’t see the button to register above? Click here to save your spot. How to register and ask your question1. Click the green ‘Save my spot!’ button at the top of this page. 2. Click ‘Email me a login link’ 3. Click ‘Confirm & sign in’ in the email from Crowdcast 4. Click ‘Ask a Question’ and submit your question using the popup (you can do this before or during the broadcast) See a question in the popup that you’d also like the answer to? Just click the arrow next to the question to ‘upvote’ it! The popular questions with the most upvotes will be answered first. P.S. Don’t forget to join our Twitter local SEO networking list! Simply follow the list and we’ll add you in. The post Local Search Clinic: Managing Multiple GMB Listings with Niki Mosier and Noah Learner – Coming Soon appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/2OHYrGA Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ It’s difficult to dispute that local search is more important than ever right now. There are countless stats that underpin this assertion, such as the fact that 46% of all Google searches are made with the intent of finding local information. It’s also impossible to deny that user-generated content (UGC) is quickly growing in importance against this backdrop, with an expanding body of data suggesting that it is a critical tool in the decision-making process. In this online landscape, Google Local Guides have taken on new relevance. Let’s quickly go back a step though before diving into Google Local Guides, as the role of user-generated content in the customer journey and online user’s psyche is extremely relevant to the Local Guides concept as a whole. According to research performed by Salesforce, user-generated content was already showing signs of its importance in 2016. It reported that pages with user-generated content enjoyed a range of performance benefits, including a 90% uplift in time spent on site, a 50% increase in engagement rates, a 73% improvement in email click-throughs and a 10% boost to conversions. Fast-forward four years and the BazaarVoice 2020 Shopper Experience Index definitively concludes that more and more brands are empowering their customers to “advocate and sell on their behalf”. Significantly, the Experience Index says that consumers now control product pages, with user-generated content replacing traditional image carousels. Consumer product ratings, reviews, images uploaded by consumers and question and answers all play a pivotal role in purchase decisions. It’s also important to remember that people trust people. Many consumers, especially the Millennial generation onwards, distrust advertising and brand-generated content. In fact, 84% of Millennials classify themselves as distrustful of traditional marketing. That leaves peers as the most trusted form of recommendation when it comes to everything from finding a restaurant and booking a hotel to finding a contractor or choosing a vet. The Experience Index backs this up, with its findings revealing that there is a 159% increase in revenue from visitors who engage with reviews. Scientific research also cites empirical evidence that reviews have a significant impact on online sales; in the travel industry for example, just a 10% increase in user reviews led to a more than 5% increase in bookings. Our own research has tracked this trend over the last decade. Year after year we find that the vast majority (over 8 in 10 people last year) read online reviews for a local business, while 89% of 35-54-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. UGC and Google Local GuidesSo, what does this have to do with Google Local Guides? The relevance and impact of UGC directly underpins the function of Google Local Guides. Google says that Guides are people who “who write reviews, share photos, answer questions, add or edit places and check facts on Google Maps”. These are all examples of user-generated content. The search engine claims that millions of people around the world rely on the information shared by Guides to decide where to go and what to do. This makes Google Local Guides important local influencers, able to help shape which local businesses are popular, thanks to the trust consumers naturally place in information shared by peers, rather than brands. The Local Guides program is most closely linked with Google Maps, with points and rewards for Guides all geared around the contributions made to Maps. Why Google Local Guides?Google describes its Local Guides as a community. Members of the community are local consumers who go out and rate local businesses, take photos, share their experiences, leave reviews, answer questions based on their direct knowledge of those businesses, add places not listed on Maps, and check facts. Participation is rewarded with points, badges, and perks. The rewards system tells us this work is meaningful to Google, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Guides act as an army of fact-checkers and researchers with boots on the ground around the world. Guides hit the streets specifically searching for, noting down, and uploading local business information in real-time. They are a hive mind for the search engine, helping it to ensure its Maps product is more accurate, more up-to-date and superior to rival offerings. It’s not a stretch to say that the work Guides do in their towns and cities around the world powers the whole Maps ecosystem. It should be noted here that the actions that Guides carry out aren’t restricted to those who register for the program. Even without signing up to be a Google Local Guide, you can perform many of the same functions. You can, for example, leave an unbiased review of a business on local search via Google Reviews. You can upload your own images of a local business, which will then show in local search and on that company’s Google My Business profile. You can also ask a question, suggest an edit on a local business listing and answer Google questions, such as whether a location is wheelchair accessible by clicking on the ‘share the latest info link’ in local search. The difference is that as a Google Local Guide, your contributions will be linked to gamification, meaning the more you share, the greater the points and rewards you’ll receive. How do I become a Google Local Guide?It’s very easy to join the Google Local Guides program. So easy in fact, you can sign up in a matter of minutes. Step 1Sign in to your Google account and then navigate to the Local Guides signup page. If you have location enabled on your device, you’ll see that your town will be pre-populated for you. If not, just add your location, confirm you’re over the age of 18, and agree to receive emails. Step 2You’re now signed up and can begin to make contributions to Google Maps. You’ll find a welcome video on your dashboard and an option to leave your first review. Just search for the place you wish to review and then click the ‘Contribute’ button to start earning points, badges, and rewards. Step 3Once you’ve added the name of the local business you wish to review, you’ll be asked a series of questions by Google, based on the type of business under review. If you’re reviewing a hotel, for example, you’ll be asked for an overall star rating and then information about the type of trip (business, vacation, solo, friends, family, etc.) you took. You’ll also be able to assign individual star ratings to rooms, location, and service, and upload images. Step 4You can also now begin to make contributions directly to Google Maps. Just go to Maps and you’ll be able to fact check and verify information that other users have submitted about businesses nearby to your location and make edits to incorrect information. If you turn on location history, Google will also give you suggestions for places to review and verify based on where you’ve been. How do I unlock Google Local Guide points and badges?As mentioned, Google Local Guides has a strong gamification aspect with each Guide rewarded for their contributions with points and badges. Those points and badges can be traded for rewards with Google partners. You’ll need to make contributions to Maps to begin earning points, and then increase your activity to earn badges. Contributions:
What perks and benefits are available to Google Local Guides?Each type of contribution you make via the Google Local Guides program (such as leaving a review, uploading a photo, answering a question, making edits or adding missing places), will earn you a certain number of points. If you review a local business, for example, you’ll earn 10 points. If your review is more in-depth and exceeds 200 characters, you’ll get 10 bonus points. Add a photo and earn another five points, and so on. Just as in a video game, the more points you get, the higher the level you achieve. Get to a certain level, and you’ll then get a badge. Make more contributions to earn more points and move through the levels, and you’ll also earn better badges. You’ll only receive a badge when you reach level four and above, which requires 250 points. Level 10 is the highest and requires 100,000 points. If your contributions are removed for violating Maps policies, the points earned will be deducted. Google frequently refers to the benefits that you can enjoy as a Google Local Guides participant. These are likely to be of the most interest to those who are enthusiastic Google users, with Google describing one of the core benefits as receiving early access to new Google features. It also says Google Local Guides can receive special perks from partners, but doesn’t elaborate on what those perks could be, or which partners they’ll come from. On this Reddit thread, some Guides report receiving freebies such as socks, money off Udemy courses, a free phone case and 1TB of free storage on Google for a period of two years. Others say they haven’t received any perks from partners. In that same thread, some Guides also suspect that those partner perks have been reined in to crack down on Maps fraud. This is a possibility given the local search community’s frustration with Local Guides who abuse and misuse the system to level up their points. Google does say that badges give the Guide recognition for their contribution so, for those who pride themselves on their local knowledge, the badge could be reward enough. Can being a Google Local Guide help with SEO?Bad news if you’ve signed up to be a Google Local Guide to give your local search presence a boost; the notion that you can make suggested edits to Google My Business profiles more easily as a Google Local Guides is a myth. All edits are checked before they make it into Maps or search results. So, while there are no SEO benefits to joining the platform, there could be plenty of downsides for local businesses. Many local search professionals report that some Guides are too focused on earning points, which means that rather than making valid contributions which are helpful for Maps users and fair to businesses, they’ll make pointless comments simply to add points to their profile for their ‘contribution’. I spoke to Steady Demand’s Ben Fisher, a Google My Business Product Expert about Google Local Guides in 2019 and he said:
Another local SEO expert, Greg Gifford of SearchLab, says Local Guides are actually an indicator of spam for many. He says, “I almost look at non-Guide reviews as more legitimate because they’re left by someone who truly wanted to leave a review, rather than by someone who was vomiting out reviews just to get a few more points in the system.” Google has policies in place to prevent Guides scamming the system to obtain false benefits for their own business. Its content policy stipulates that all contributions should be an accurate representation of the location while “inappropriate reviews” including fake and spam reviews can also be detected. If you do violate the policy, the offending content is removed and the points deducted from your profile. Google Local Guide reviews do tend to be given priority when it comes to reviews displayed in Google My Business, but that shouldn’t matter to you as a business owner, because Google does not permit you to review your own business. However, as of the date publication of this article, Google appears to be testing a new feature with which Local Guides of Level 5 or above are being asked to give feedback on which business reviews are “better”.
This may well be beneficial to your business if it allows you to vote for your favorite reviews and improve your review profile that way! ConclusionGoogle Local Guides perform an important duty for Google Maps, offering reviews, editing incorrect information, adding missing places, and sharing images and videos. This insight is useful for local consumers and the gamification of the system makes it a fun way for committed search users to get involved with Google products. That said, there is no SEO reward for signing up to the Google Local Guides program so it shouldn’t form a part of any local search strategy or be relied upon for perks such as preferential edits or better rankings. The post What is a Google Local Guide? How to Get Perks and Badges appeared first on BrightLocal. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/2ChZlHs Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ |
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