Find Your Audience and Grow Your Business: 7 Undeniable Benefits of Local SEO

In your community, 97% of people turn to the internet to learn more about a local business.

With an increase of ‘near me’ searches, if your small business isn’t optimized for these local searches, you’re missing out on a highly valuable market.

So how can you get discovered by audiences in your area? It’s time to adopt a local SEO strategy.

If you are ready to maximize your relevant reach and grow your small business, you need this marketing technique for success. Follow along to learn all about the benefits of local SEO and how this strategy can work for you.

What Is Local SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of setting your website and all of your content up to appeal to algorithms that search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have in place.

While general SEO focuses on acquiring high rank in niche-specific queries, local SEO pulls geographical location into the equation.

While many of the same principles apply, there will be a shift in keyword use and backlinking to gear towards local audiences and maximize impact in a smaller pool of competitors.

How Does Local SEO Work?

Each search engine has one mission: To produce the best results for a user query.

To do this, search engines use artificial intelligence to crawl, index, and rank all online content and filter out the best results. Your position on the results page relies on your website containing the necessary elements Google wants and leaving out penalizing elements.

Local SEO works to gain preference from these platforms with a more specific target. Instead of competing with the major companies in your market, you’ll be working to stand out in your community.

Techniques like including location-specific terms in keywords, and backlinking to local events pages will boost your presence in a more relevant area. This will increase your rank position when nearby searchers look for your product or services.

Benefits of Local SEO

Focusing your SEO on local markets takes your little fish status out of the big pond and plops you in a more realistically sized pool. Since most small businesses rely on local consumers to grow, the benefits of this approach are undeniable.

If you’ve been asking yourself “Should I use local SEO?”, then here are your reasons to start.

1. Improve Online Visibility

The first 5 results of Google collect 67.6% of user clicks. This is not including the paid ads featured on the top of the page.

If your business isn’t appearing in those top 5 positions, or even on the first page, chances are audiences don’t even know you exist.

The number one success factor in your business is customers, so you need to start putting yourself where they are. Using Local SEO techniques will help you crack into the top organic results and improve your chances of being found.

2. Build a Community

Businesses and consumers alike are sinking into the importance of building a community and keeping the local economy alive. When your business starts making efforts to link and connect with other local companies, you’ll see the effects online and off.

While having more reputable local backlinks is a great way to boost your rank, it also opens the door for supportive working relationships. Refer your customers to their relevant services and they’ll be inclined to do the same.

Your clientele will trust referrals more and often find it more efficient to visit businesses within their area to start with.

3. More Relevant Traffic

72% of local searches resulted in an in-person visit within 5 miles of the user.

When you target local consumers, your encouraging web visits from people who may actually come and visit you.

Using a broad SEO approach for a business that relies on local traffic opens you up to a lot of dead-end visits. Let’s say for example that you have posted a blog with helpful tips and tricks relating to your product or service. If you’ve neglected to use local targets, you’ll be landing hits from all over the world.

While having this broad reach feels great, the chances of an overseas hit becoming a paying customer are pretty slim.

4. Local Return Customers

As we mentioned before, customers are seeing more and more value in supporting the local economy. Beyond this, doing business in your area is often more convenient.

With local SEO you’ll have two key touchpoints for nearby customers. First, they’ll discover you and stop by. Your business then can provide them with an incredible experience and win them over as a loyal customer or client. Next, when they need these services again, your name will pop up at the top of the search and trigger their memory.

5. Build Trust and Authority

Consumers assume that high-ranking companies have been vetted by Google and are trustworthy businesses.

Gaining a prime spot on the results page will encourage your audience to trust your business and gain their respect. This high-position also portrays you as an authority for your niche and elevates your level of appeal.

6. Reduce Ad Costs

Organic traffic has taken over as the most valuable audience for businesses. While paying for ads may have been your only chance at high-visibility before, using local SEO will reduce your need for these measures.

Building your rank will allow you to use Google as a free advertisement for your business and gain more valuable clicks than a paid ad.

7. Increased Sales

An increase in relevant traffic leads to a boost in sales. With local customers prepared to buy, showing up as an authority in your area will increase your chances of being the landing spot for their purchase.

If local searchers aren’t quite ready to seal the deal yet, they will be encouraged by your proximity and optimal availability. Instead of finding businesses that are hours away or require them to blindly purchase online, they can visit you and get to know you as a local.

Time to Get Local

From increased visibility to a more trustworthy appearance, breaking into local SEO is a great option for your marketing efforts. Stop spending your time and money on unrealistic competitor markets and zone in on building meaningful impressions right where you need them.

Ready to maximize your business but need some help? Get in touch with us today to discover how our local SEO services can take your small business to the next level.

8 Search Engine Marketing Tips You Must Know

If you want your business to appear in the first few pages of a Google search, you need search engine marketing (SEM). This is different than SEO

SEM is one of the best ways to land new clients. You can have your business pop up on the first few pages of Google. This allows your business to stand out from your competitors. 

The better ads you create, the more likely you’ll rank on Google. People will find answers to their questions when it’s about your product and your business. 

But there’s more to SEM than you might think. You have to figure out what strategies to utilize that can help your business drive in more traffic. You need to know the best SEM tips. 

Here are 8 search engine marketing tips that can give your business a boost. 

1. Know Your Audience

One of the most important parts of your search engine marketing campaign is to know your audience. You need to know who they are and what kind of problems they have in order to effectively create ads. 

The more you know about your target market and why your product can help them, the more you can create ads that appeal to them. You can create ads that offer a solution to their problems. 

Knowing everything about your target market involves knowing where they live, what kind of problems they have, their interests, and how your product helps them solve a problem. 

This information can help you write ads that appeal to your target market.

2. Make It Persuasive

Another part of search engine marketing is making sure the copy you write is persuasive. 

You can’t expect consumers to visit your website just because you show your product in an ad. You have to make it appealing and persuasive. That means highlighting the features of your product. 

Being specific about the product you designed can help people. You want to show it in your body copy when you write search engine marketing ads. That way, when someone does a Google search relating to your product and they see it on top of the Google search, they will click it because it appeals to them or answers their question.  

3. Do Your Keyword Research

Keywords are critical if you want to have your ads be seen. You need to choose keywords that your market is using and (optimally) that your competitors aren’t using.

When you choose either short-tail or long-tail keywords and place them in your search engine marketing, Google will rank your ad higher. It’s more likely your ads or content will be seen by your market. 

However, it’s important to remember that you don’t want to assume you know the keywords people are using. You should do keyword research and determine the volume and competitiveness of the keywords you need for your ads.   

4. Consider Your Maximum Bid and Quality Score

Your maximum bid and the quality score of your ad will determine how it ranks on Google. In fact, Google looks at these two things to determine if your ad is better and more relevant to your target market beyond your competitors. 

They look at these metrics to see if it’s more relevant for your target market.  

5. Consider the Best Tools

When you embark on learning and mastering search engine marketing, you need to make sure you have the best tools with you. 

For example, you want to make sure you have tools that can help with keyword research, how much traffic your website is receiving, and how difficult the keyword you want ranks. 

You should also take a look at Google Trends, a free tool that helps you see what keyword is popular or unpopular. 

6. Have a Consistent Strategy 

A consistent strategy involves choosing an SEM strategy. You have to figure out if you are going to do organic or paid advertising. 

When you figure it out, you need to be consistent. For example, if you write ads on Google, you need to be consistent and figure out what’s working and what doesn’t work. 

You have to be willing to adjust in order to have the most success.  

7. Take a Peek at Your Competition

You should always see what your competition is doing. See how they are ranking on Google. What are they doing differently? 

When you have an idea of what your competition is doing, it gives you insight into your own marketing strategy. You can figure out a strategy that outperforms that on Google searches. 

8. Provide Quality Content

Another part of search engine marketing and ranking high on Google is making sure you provide quality content. 

This means writing content on your website that is informational and insightful for your target market. You want more valuable information than what your competitors have. 

Writing quality content means you understand what your market is looking for. You know how their interests are changing based on the popularity of keywords. 

When you understand your market and send them information that isn’t clickbait, but rather insightful and helpful, it will help you build a long-term relationship with your consumers.

Learn More About Search Engine Marketing 

Search engine marketing can help your business attract more leads. With the perfect strategy, you can attract more website visitors and show people how you can help them. 

With these tips, you can see how effective search engine marketing is for your business. The key is doing the research and seeing what works and what doesn’t work for you. 

If you want help with your search engine marketing strategy, you can contact us here

These Are the Different Types of SEO You Need to Know

Did you know that 71-92% of search engine users don’t click past the first page after making a query?

The statistic surprised us, too, but it’s undeniably true. If you want your business to be successful online, it’s essential that your page is on the first page of Google rankings.

But how can you make this happen? The answer lies in search engine optimization (SEO). Read on to learn the main types of SEO and how you can begin executing a comprehensive and effective optimization strategy!

On-Site SEO

Generally, there are two categories that an SEO strategy can fall under: on-site and off-site. On-page SEO is a term used to refer to manipulations that a site builder makes within their own website to make it more appealing to both consumers and crawlers. It’s the most direct way to get your page to rank and there’s no need to rely on external pages and off-site factors.

Conducting keyword research and finding high-volume keywords to put onto your site is arguably one of the most important aspects of on-site SEO. These keywords stand out to Google crawlers when they are inserted into descriptions, page information, and blog posts. Crawlers then believe that your page is relevant to the keywords that get the most searches in relation to your page and place you at the top of the search results for these terms.

However, this is not the only important aspect of on-page SEO. The relevance, semantics, and engagingness of the content that you include on your page are also critical. If site visitors aren’t engaged by your content, they’re likely to click away within 15 seconds of coming to your page. This looks fishy to search engine crawlers who then believe your page to be irrelevant and unreputable.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to certain on-page SEO strategies that are concerned with making your page run more efficiently. Improving the technical aspects of your website is an important way to make it more appealing to search engine spiders. This includes things like improving site speed, making the page easier to crawl, and updating system content regularly.

One of the most important parts of technical SEO is manipulating the HTML of your website. Include keywords and short, searchable phrases in the descriptions, headers, and alt/meta tags on your page. Additionally, make sure your blog posts have clickable titles that will keep people on your page.

Using SE indexing and appropriate URLs is also important. Sites that have been appropriately indexed are easier for Google crawlers to understand and index within the wider internet. As a result, they will believe your site to be credible and well-maintained, which makes it rise in the rankings.

Off-Site SEO

Off-page SEO refers to manipulations that you do on parts of the internet that aren’t your website to drive traffic to your page. You don’t change anything on your webpage, but instead are trying to get people on other parts of the net to visit it. The main goal of this is to build your credibility with consumers and make crawlers also view your site as reliable.

Most people associate off-site SEO with link building, and with good reason- establishing appropriate backlinks is one of the most important ways to optimize your webpage. A backlink is a link that you incorporate within a blog post that takes the reader to another relevant, reputable website that they may be interested in. These links are related to the content and have an anchor text of between 2-5 words.

When search engine crawlers see backlinks on your site, they immediately associate you with the page that your content links to. If you pay for quality link-building services, you’ll only be associated with pages that have been proven reputable. This will lead to you being indexed higher on Google because you’ll be viewed as on par with these already high-ranking pages.

Comprehensive Off-Page Strategies

However, executing a comprehensive off-page SEO strategy requires much more than simple backlinks. You also need to have inbound links to your website on other areas of the internet. This will drive traffic to your site and get you higher traffic. It also will make your page appear reputable since it has been found relevant and cited more often than your competitors.

There are a few ways that you can get inbound links, the first one being guest posting. You can purchase guest post packages from SEO experts, which essentially is you paying for another reliable site to use you as a backlink.

However, this isn’t always necessary. You can also link to your own website on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This is also a great way to make your social media pages more interesting to those who follow you. You can show relevant blog posts and services to people who are already interested in your business and they’ll follow the link to your page. It’s a win-win situation!

Building trust in your consumers is also a good off-page strategy. Positive reviews that mention you are categorized as good citations by crawlers, as are indirect mentions on other websites (including social media platforms). The more often your website name is shared, the more reputable you look.

Which SEO Marketing Techniques Are Right for You?

So, should you use on-site SEO for your business? Or would off-site SEO be better?

The answer to this is that you need both on-page and off-page SEO if you want to rank. Your competitors are using comprehensive strategies, and if you neglect one type of SEO, you’re sure to fall behind those who are investing in more well-rounded solutions. However, it’s also important that you ensure that you’re investing in white hat SEO rather than black hat alternatives.

White hat SEO refers to getting SEO content that has respect for your competitors and your industry as well as your client’s time. This means having relevant and engaging fresh content, natural keyword density, and links to and from relevant sources in your industry. This is in contrast to black hat SEO, which creates duplicate content, has keyword stuffing, and cloaks text and links that have been farmed from other sources.

Using black hat SEO could get you thrown to the bottom of Google rankings if you’re caught. Plus, duplicate content that’s been overstuffed to the brim with keywords just isn’t quality content.

So, to recap: you want white-hat SEO services that perform both on-site and off-site SEO.!

Get Started With Different Types of SEO

Now that you know the main types of SEO, it’s time to begin optimizing your website to its fullest potential.

Contact us with any lingering questions that you may have about SEO and how it can benefit your webpage. Our experts are happy to chat and come up with a comprehensive strategy to optimize your webpage, so we look forward to hearing from you soon!

3 Reasons to Care About Local Business Listings

3 Reasons to Care About Local Business Listings

Written by Lesley Goodaker, Digital Marketing Manager

Local SEO efforts directly correlate to your business’ reputation, rankings, and revenue. That’s why its vital to understand the purpose of local business listings and citations.

What is local search?

As the name might suggest, local SEO is intended to attract customers in concentrated areas such as a specific town or city. Greater search visibility for small businesses often means more foot traffic, more service opportunities, and ultimately, more revenue.

To this end, Local SEO is all about increasing search visibility for businesses that rely on face-to-face interactions with their customers. These can be brick-and-mortar businesses with physical office space, like a law or dental office, or businesses like electricians and construction companies that services specific geographic areas.

Much like traditional search optimization, local SEO is designed to improve your visibility on Google and other search engines. This is largely done by creating content using keywords that are relevant to searches your target audience is looking for.

Examples of a local search query include phrases such as “lawyers near me,” “dentist in Lexington,” and even, “best Lexington eye doctor.”

What is the role of business listings in local SEO?

Not that long ago, businesses had a plethora of options for publicizing their business locally through phone book listings, newspaper advertisements, mailers, and even telemarketing.

Unfortunately, as marketing has taken a turn towards digital channels, many of these mediums have become all but obsolete either due to cost alone or a general lack of disinterest on the part of consumers.

In this way, internet marketing has become as much of a necessity for the mom and pop shop down the street as it is for the likes of Starbucks and Aspen Dental.

With over 90% of consumers searching for local businesses online, local citations are quickly replacing traditional offline advertising. As a result, more businesses are turning to local business directories online for an accessible way to publish their business information.

Here are 3 important reasons your business should care about local directory listings.

1. Gain visibility.

Many online directories (including Google My Business) allow businesses to submit their information for publication for free. This is a cost-effective way to boost brand awareness and increase online visibility for brands that can’t or don’t want to turn to paid advertising.

That aside, published online listings offer businesses an automatic boost in search visibility. Though you won’t get to the first position result simply by submitting your business information, you will gain favor over businesses that have not submitted their own information for publication.

Building citations on sites like Google, Facebook, and within relevant online directories such as Angie’s List or Healthgrades ultimately gives your business more online visibility. This in turn helps your business to be found by the right people at the right time.

2. Control your brand.

A pleasant side effect of creating citations for your business is that you get more control over your brand. Submitting and/or claiming your online business listings allows you to determine how your business is displayed in the search results. Instead of merely pulling information about businesses from multiple sources (i.e. Facebook, websites, etc.), search engines will rely on the information presented in your verified listing.

3. Secure consumer trust.

It’s no secret that reviews are a vital part of your business’ reputation. Even so, digital reviews are increasingly referenced by consumers as a make or break factor in their buying decisions. This makes your business’ ability to receive and display reviews crucial to securing consumer trust.

Publishing/claiming your business listings on reputable review sites like Yelp or the Better Business Bureau makes it easy for existing customers to leave feedback and even easier for prospects to find this information. At the end of the day, word-of-mouth reviews will get out there so you may as well make the most of it!

Find a marketing agency to help with your local business listings.

The importance of local listings can’t be overstated.

Think about how often people, yourself included, search for businesses near them? Searching for local businesses online is becoming easier with each passing day, so the importance of having listings online is growing, as well.

If you own a local business, it is imperative that you are not only represented online but that your representation is accurate as well. This is growing even more important during the ongoing health crisis.

If you’re unsure where to begin, consider enlisting the help of a local marketing agency!

 

Modern SEO: Snake Oil vs Structure

Modern SEO: Snake Oil vs Structure [Plus, 5 Important Questions to Ask a SEO Agency]

Understanding SEO, even on a basic level, is helpful in recognizing scams and companies that are just out to make a quick buck. That’s why we take the time to educate you about the work we’re doing and to share ongoing reports on our progress.

Over the last 9+ years, we’ve analyzed a ton of data to know what works and what doesn’t work in SEO. From authority link building and content creation to contextual link building and guest posting, we keep your site growing to increase brand awareness and increase your ability to outrank your competitors. 

Do I Really Need SEO?

Have you ever questioned whether or not you need to invest in SEO or if you can simply hold off until your company grows? This is a common question that we have heard all too often when talking with business owners.

SEO is a legitimate strategy for driving traffic to your website, ultimately increasing leads and conversions. But, unlike paid advertising, SEO takes time to be implemented properly. There are no shortcuts, no cheap tricks, and no easy answers. As a result, we recommend starting SEO as soon as you are able to.

Obviously, as an SEO marketing company, we’re going to tell you the same thing that every other agency does: SEO takes time. It takes time to research your market and niche. It takes time to run analyses on your existing site. Most of all, it takes time to produce quality content.

And that’s just on our side of things. It can take as little as 2 to 6 months for search engines to recognize your website. But, it can take as long as 4 to 12 months to begin seeing results. 

So, how can you tell if your SEO services are working? Simple, hold them accountable and look for real structure. 

Snake Oil vs. Structure

As consumers, we’ve all been subjected to marketing hoaxes at one time or another. From quick-fix diets promising results in a week to MLM schemes disguised as the next million-dollar idea, we’re all familiar with these kinds of products and services. Being enticed by such offers is an inclination we’re all familiar with. The same can be said for SEO.

While we would love to tell you every agency has your best interest at heart, that’s just not the case. With so many individuals and agencies claiming (and subsequently failing) to take websites to the top of Google’s search results overnight, it’s easy to see how the industry as a whole can seem like a sham. This cycle of distrust can quickly disillusion any small business owner. 

Generally speaking, marketing agencies fall into one of two camps when it comes to SEO — those that follow best practices and deliver tangible results and those that make empty promises and advise you to just “trust” that their services are working. The most important thing to remember is that a reputable marketing agency will never guarantee a specific ranking on search engines. If they do, stay away. It is impossible to deliver on such a promise (even Google says so).

Bottom line: a reputable marketing agency will never tell you to just “trust” in the process. A quality SEO firm is going to show you what they’re doing and provide feedback for recommendations. 

Our Approach

At Harris & Ward, we employ a two-prong approach to achieve success with our clients. First, we identify areas you’re already doing well in and reinforce those with a safe, diversified, link building strategy. This will help build the foundation for the second part of our approach — competitive research. 

To ensure we’re growing your presence in the search results, we use advanced competitive research to find what’s missing from your site including high volume, low competition, valuable keywords. Once these are identified, we’ll do the heavy lifting to build out relevant, well-researched content designed to gradually increase your rankings in these new areas.

5 Important Questions to Ask an SEO Agency

While it may never seem like the “right” time to start SEO, a good rule of thumb is to pair these new services with a site launch or redesign. By doing this, you and your SEO team can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from top to bottom. But, how can you tell if you’ve found the right agency for the job? 

Easy! Treat the hiring process as you would for any other employee. At the end of the day, the agency you hire is going to be a crucial part of your team. Here are 5 questions to consider when hiring an SEO firm:

  1. Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some case studies?
  2. What is your experience with businesses in my niche?
  3. Do you offer other marketing services to supplement organic search business?
  4. What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
  5. How frequently can I expect to communicate with you? 

Though every relationship you enter into will always carry a certain risk, asking these crucial questions can help you understand which “camp” your prospects fall into and what you can expect from them. 

To learn more about Harris & Ward’s SEO services, contact us today!

 

3 Benefits of Working with a Certified SEO Agency

Google Analytics Explained [Plus, 3 Benefits of Working with a Certified SEO Agency]

Written by Lesley Goodaker, Digital Marketing Manager

The importance of Google’s marketing tools has grown tremendously over the last decade. Today, any business that wishes to grow its search engine rankings must make use of these tools — and for good reason.

Google Analytics is one of the many tools that Google provides to help business owners understand what visitors are doing on their website. Like, Google Ads, Analytics is an essential component of any business’s marketing toolkit.

What is Google Analytics?

Google has one of the most well-known analytics reporting platform for tracking web performance. Serving as a host for data collection, the platform can gather a wide range of data about your site and the visitors who use it. The best part — Google Analytics data is not presented as raw data but in the form of custom reports.

Using a tracking code, Google Analytics reports back to a central dashboard which provides a visual representation of site data in real-time (or by a specific date range). These are designed to make it easy to identify patterns and gain insights about your performance.

Why is it Important?

The insights you gain from Analytics reports can be a valuable tool for improving your site performance. Rather than operating on guesswork, you can set up goals with concrete objectives, including:

  • Identifying the pages that convert bestThis can be particularly beneficial to business owners looking for enhanced eCommerce, improvements on a contact form, or to improve bounce rate.
  • Understanding the origins of your site’s referral traffic. Referral traffic is Google’s method of reporting visits that come to your site from sources outside of its own network. This can be helpful in learning about your audience and their interests. 
  • Tracking the location of your site visitors. Using your users’ IP addresses, Analytics can help you identify where your traffic is coming from (geographically speaking). This can be a great asset for determining lead potential.
  • Determining how many new (and returning) users visit your site. Tracking your ratio of new to returning visitors can help you better understand the function of your site for customers. Are new users using your site to gather information about your services? Are returning customers using your site to contact you?

But, that’s just the start. To the untrained eye, the admin menu and functions can be overwhelming, As a result, many business owners simply choose to not set up Google Analytics. That’s exactly what you don’t want to do!

What if I Don’t Have the Time to Get Certified?

As a small business owner, it’s very likely you already have too many hats to wear. The last thing you want to do is invest your time (and money) in learning the ins and outs of a platform as cumbersome as Analytics.

So, how can a time-starved business owner still benefit from Google Analytics? Simple — enlist the support of an agency (like Harris & Ward) that is trained in the management of Google platforms. 

We are proud to offer search engine optimization services for small businesses that are backed by team members who are Google Analytics certified. Using the expertise of trained digital marketing experts, we take your site’s data and turn it into real results.

After all, the greatest value of Analytics is not in the data itself but in the actionable takeaways for your business. 

Benefits of Google Analytics Certification

While virtually every self-proclaimed marketer on the planet is using some form of Google Ads or Analytics, few of them are actually certified.

Google certification programs have long been an industry standard for gauging a marketer’s competence in different areas of digital marketing. However, with the wealth of information already available online, many people fail to see the point in certification.

Though analytics is easy enough to use for beginners, with proper attention, it stands to be a very powerful tool in the hands of knowledgeable users. That’s why we’ve compiled the 3 most compelling benefits of Google Analytics certification.

  1. Better business practices. During training, students learn the nuances of Analytics and how to best manage Google Analytics custom features and tools. While any marketer or business can access Analytics, SEO professionals that are certified by Google are held to a higher standard than others in the industry and operate according to Google’s best practices for account management.
  2. Ongoing education. To maintain status, individuals (or agencies) must retake their certification annually to ensure they are well-versed in the latest and greatest technology. As a result, certified marketers are being encouraged to practice continuing education in order to maintain their status. This ultimately ensures you are benefitting from the most contemporary SEO tools and services. 
  3. Improved strategy. Certified professionals must be well-versed in all features of Analytics including keyword research, competitor research, site performance, and much more. When you’ve learned how to properly set up and navigate an Analytics’ property, you’ll be well on your way to making better recommendations and business decisions on strategy implementation.

So, why wait? Contact us today to discuss how Google Analytics can benefit your business today!