Understanding how search engines rank websites and applying simple nontechnical SEO strategies will lead to increased traffic from qualified customers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique used to assure that customers searching for a product or service can easily find a company’s website on search engines such as Google. Just as a physical location is essential for brick-and-mortar stores, search engine rankings are essential in driving walk-in traffic to a website.

How potential or qualified customers find websites for a product or service

1. Direct traffic

A user finds a website by typing the web address directly into a browser or by clicking on a bookmark or an email link. These are typically customers that are familiar with the company and are maybe repeat visitors.

2. Referrals

Users are directed to websites by clicking on a link from another website. For example, linking from a Facebook page to a corporate website would produce referral traffic. Ideally, referrals will be qualified customers possessing a desire to buy products from the website they are referred to.

3. Search engines

Analyze web content and create a ranking of websites that most likely will correspond to keywords that a customer uses to search for information. For example, typing the keywords “search engine optimization” in a Google search will provide a list of websites that provide information or services dealing with SEO.

Generally, a company has more control over direct or referral traffic than over search engine traffic. In addition, direct and referral traffic is influenced more by an organization’s offline marketing. SEO seeks to provide a strategy for improving a website ranking resulting in increased traffic to that website.

Two types of search engine results that appear

1. Pay per click (PPC)

These results are usually prominently displayed on top or on the side of the search results. To attain these listings, companies enroll in services like Google Adwords to budget resources into certain keywords and pay a fee whenever a customer clicks on the link. A well-orchestrated PPC campaign is the quickest way to drive qualified traffic to a website.

2. Organic or natural results

These are the rank-ordered results provided below the PPC results. These results are attained on the merits of the website and are not purchased. However, since most customers will not look at several pages of search results, a high organic placement, preferably in the top three positions, is necessary to succeed in driving qualified traffic to a website.

How search engines rank websites

The criteria used to rank websites in search results vary by the search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the others) which are constantly evolving. Although these criteria are not publicized, general strategies applied consistently over time will increase website rankings. Despite promises offered by some SEO companies, attaining a high search engine ranking will not happen overnight.

Although the exact formulas are not widely publicized, search engines provide high ranks to websites that are relevant, important, trustworthy, authoritative, and popular. Any strategy that seeks to increase these five criteria, will ultimately improve your search engine optimization.

Five non-technical strategies for SEO

1. Improve relevance by writing better web copy

Writing better web copy that focuses on how a product meets customer needs will help to improve your search engine rankings. In addressing the needs of the customer, web copy will naturally be filled with rich keywords. Avoid writing copy specifically designed to increase web rankings. Ultimately a website needs to be written for customers and not web rankings.

2. Improve by increasing the number and quality of inbound links

Search engines look at both the number and the quality of those links when determining rankings. By registering with web directories like DMOZ or getting referral traffic from high traffic sites like Wikipedia, websites can improve site visibility and perceived importance. Companies can increase links to their site by regularly providing new and entertaining content. Providing content including videos, games, and other interactive features that people want to share with their friends is a great way to encourage other websites to link to yours.

3. Become trustworthy by being ethical

Questionable tactics like providing pages with long lists of keywords and little usable content will eventually lead to penalties by search engines. Encouraging trust among customers, just like in brick-and-mortar business, is important in increasing sales and search engine ranking. Provide customers with a contact page and give them the opportunity to comment on products and services received.

4. Become an authority by networking

Develop a reputation as an authority with a product or service by using networking sites such as LinkedIn or by creating blogs and topic relevant articles or whitepapers. Over time customers will begin to associate the company with being an expert on the products and services it offers. Not only will this perceived authority increase traffic to the website, but it will also ultimately increase search rankings.

5. Increase popularity by encouraging repeat visitors

Marketing is a long-term proposition aimed at meeting and satisfying customer need. Satisfying customer need will encourage repeat visitors and repeat visitors will increase traffic. By providing relevant, interactive content that is demanded by customers, the website will become more popular and ranking will increase over time.

When using nontechnical techniques, sound marketing principles will ultimately lead to increased web rankings. If you’re looking for technical SEO strategies you can use Google Webmaster Tools.

Got any strategies you would like to talk about? Share them in the comments.

Related reading

Companies rely on “reputation”, followers, and engagement. Social Chain opened marketers’ eyes to the murky world of follower deception.

The importance of online reviews is undeniable. Let’s talk about a few big ones in making online reviews one of the strongest weapons in your SEO arsenal.

This is something I’ve been mulling over for a while. I threw the question out to SEO Twitter, and was surprised and impressed by the volume of responses.

SEO expert Craig Campbell shares his experience on digital and flipping websites, pro tips, mistakes to avoid, conferences, and a lot more!

This week, Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify launched its brand new Shopify Fulfillment Network for US-based merchants. The new network uses Shopify’s machine learning-driven smart inventory allocation technology to determine the closest and most efficient fulfillment centers for your business. 

Why we should care

For SMBs being edged out by giants like Amazon, accessibility to an inventory fulfillment network — and the integrated technologies — could play a key role in helping small businesses stay competitive and allow them to grow.

According to Shopify, the new system does not require advanced technical skills. Thanks to this, the system can be used by busy digital marketers operating with limited resources to market products and drive e-commerce sales.

More on the news

• Shopify is working with fulfillment partners in Nevada, California, Texas, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
• Shopify also announced upgrades to its Shopify Plus experience.
• Shopify is also launching a new Shopify point-of-sale system.

Managing an online reputation is a 21st-century business responsibility that simply cannot be ignored, or even placed on the backburner for any amount of time.

The online world of consumerism runs 24/7. It doesn’t take holidays, time off, or even a two-minute break. Regardless of what business ideas you might have, managing an online reputation comes with the turf. Even for small businesses with relatively low brand awareness, developing a bulletproof system is crucial for every growth-minded organization.

Now, as a small-to-medium sized business (SMB), you are probably dedicating a good deal of your budget to sales, marketing, production, etc. In other words, you are spending money to simply get to a point where you have an online reputation. The prospect of managing it is probably some ways down your list.

The good news is you don’t need a giant budget to manage an online reputation. If you play your cards right, you can stay on top of this crucial task with pocket change. Here’s how.

Take advantage of cost-effective or free monitoring tools

In the early stages of managing an online reputation, it’s relatively easy to stay on top of things like brand mentions, reviews, social media interactions, etc. However, as business picks up and you begin to build a decent online presence, it’s going to get harder and harder to keep tabs.

As a general rule of online reputation management, it’s always best to have tools and processes in place before you actually need them. Obviously, you don’t need anything fancy (at least not yet). Start by setting up Google Alerts to get a notification every time your brand name is mentioned.

Another good (and free) tool to use is IFTTT.com. This helps you connect all of your apps and devices so any online activity related to your business is quickly brought to your attention, no matter where you are.

In terms of social media listening, the free Hootsuite plan is a fantastic place to start keeping tabs on your presence across major networks. In addition to monitoring your mentions, this tool helps you schedule content delivery and manage your online sentiment.

All three of these tools are fantastic in laying the groundwork for online reputation management. The sooner you get your processes established, the better off you will be as your business begins to scale.

Create an outreach system to gain high-value user content

Customer reviews are an integral part of online reputation management. Moreover, they are perhaps the most influential pieces of content when it comes to purchasing decisions. To give you an idea, a study from Invespcro found that nearly 90% of consumers trust online reviews from strangers as much as a personal recommendation.

Source: Invesp

With this in mind, one of the biggest components to building an online reputation is simply getting people to leave sentiment about your business. This is an interesting task. While it might not seem like it on the surface, the very concept of online reviews has evolved quite a bit over the years.

To give a brief history, online reviews first emerged around 1999 and early 2000s during the Clinton impeachment. They were then used for patients to review doctors. As time went on, online reviews became a popular form of user-generated content for all businesses and products.

Realizing just how powerful they were in swaying purchasing decisions, many businesses would try shady tactics like forging fake reviews or paying others to write them. As many of the big review platforms started to crack down on these practices, consumers also started to wise up. Nowadays, most online customers have a strong radar for made-up reviews and are not swayed by a simple star rating and a vague sentence – regardless of whether they are real or not.

So where does this leave you?

As you develop a strategy for gathering online sentiment, you need an outreach process that encourages top-to-bottom feedback. This involves getting the pros, cons, overview, advice to the company, etc.

Now, you are kind of between a rock and a hard place here. On one hand, you want to get super in-depth, detailed reviews. On the other, you don’t want to make the forms too complex that people don’t want to fill them out.

In terms of the review form itself, the key is to create simplistic questions that ideally spur open-ended answers like the ones given below.

• What were the pros?
• What were the cons?
• What advice would you give to us?
• What advice would you give to other consumers?

These are just a few to keep in mind.

When it comes to developing an outreach system, there are several key guidelines to live by

1. Don’t jump the gun 

Most of the time, you don’t want to follow up with a review request immediately after the purchase. Give it a day or two before you reach out.

2. Make it easy 

Always remember, customers, are doing you a big favor by leaving their feedback. You don’t want to make them jump through a bunch of hoops. Be sure the forms you build are easily-integrated with email, mobile, or whatever apps you use.

3. Make the best use of social media

Social media can be a gold mine for feedback and engagement. Try asking general questions and using hashtags to get responses out of your followers.

Source: Twitter

4. Make them visible

The purpose of reviews is to present an unfiltered, third-party opinion of your business. In addition to social media and the major review platforms, make it a point to showcase reviews on your website, both the good and the bad.

Source: Bizzabo.com

At the end of the day, your outreach strategy is the guiding force behind developing your online presence. Take your time here and find the formula that works best.

Develop a plan for negative feedback

Getting negative online feedback is simply part of life in today’s business world, there is no getting around it. Dealing with negative feedback is a lot like washing dishes; no one particularly likes it, but you have to clean up the mess before it accumulates and gets out of hand.

Now, dealing with negative feedback isn’t always apples-to-apples.

For starters, as you look into customer review platforms, you need to take extra precaution to understand how it filters out fake or biased reviews. Fortunately, review technology has come a long way. Many of the bigger platforms have methods of pinpointing when companies try to sidestep the process. The last thing you want is for a competitor to sabotage you.

In the case you get some genuinely poor feedback, you need to have a plan to approach it. First and foremost, do not respond right away. Give it some time to marinate. You never want to respond immediately while emotions are high. Wait at least 12 hours to respond, and no longer than two to three days.

When it comes to responding, there are a few key points to remember

1. Thank them for taking the time to leave a review.
2. Accept responsibility.
3. Respond rationally while staying true to your brand voice.
4. Be concise in your response.
5. Don’t throw yourself under the bus too far.
6. Try to take the conversation offline.

Here is an excellent example of how to respond to a bad review

Source: Broadly

A bad review, while it may seem harsh at first, can actually be a good thing. Ultimately, the way you handle negative reviews says a lot more about your company than the review itself. Additionally, Google recently confirmed that responding to reviews impacts local SEO.

If you approach the situation carefully, you can turn a negative into a long-standing positive.

Know when it’s time to hire someone

As a small business grows, the task of managing an online reputation will obviously become more tedious. If you are carrying out these duties as an owner, you need to know where to draw the line and decide when it’s time to hire someone.

Developing a small business requires much, much more than keeping up with an online reputation. If you are finding that your time commitment here is overshadowing other important jobs, it’s probably time to step back and hand over the job to someone else.

Generally speaking, if you are spending more than one or two hours per day covering the duties involved with managing an online reputation, consider bringing someone on – at least part-time.

As you are likely on a small budget, it can be tough to justify this overhead. However, keep in mind that growing an online reputation never truly ends. Having someone solely dedicated to this task is an investment that will save you time, money, and headaches in the future.

Over to you

Online reputation management is a job you need to take very seriously, no matter how big or small your business is.

SMBs currently exist at an interesting point in time. They are growing their business when online sentiment plays a critical role in sales. Developing a robust plan and protocol for managing an online reputation early on is an integral part of long term success. Fortunately, doing so with a little-to-no budget is easier than ever.

Manish Dudharejia is the President and Founder of E2M Solutions Inc.

Related reading

The importance of online reviews is undeniable. Let’s talk about a few big ones in making online reviews one of the strongest weapons in your SEO arsenal.

This is something I’ve been mulling over for a while. I threw the question out to SEO Twitter, and was surprised and impressed by the volume of responses.

SEO expert Craig Campbell shares his experience on digital and flipping websites, pro tips, mistakes to avoid, conferences, and a lot more!

It’s important to think about the search intent of potential customers. Explore user intent and learn to use this complex system to improve website ranking.

SEOs are always scouring the internet and exhausting their networks trying to find new ways to optimize websites for Google and other search engines. Whether they are tips to improve page speed or new keywords to target, the work of an SEO seems to be never-ending.

However, rather than chasing new visitors to increase your site traffic, the key to search performance could be found outside of search engine marketing altogether.

Quickly envision the process of successful conversion from a Google search:

• Step one: The user enters their query into Google.
• Step two: Google generates a SERP based on its perception of the type of content that that user is looking for.
• Step three: The user analyzes the metadata displayed on the SERP and selects the link that will most likely solve their needs.
• Step four: This is the make-or-break moment where the user decides whether or not to bounce or stay on the site to find the information or solution that they searched for.
• Step five: The new visitor quickly connects with and trusts the site they are on. They instantly found the information or product they were searching for or can easily navigate to it to fulfill a purchase or schedule a meeting.

Step four not only illustrates a pivotal moment for SEOs but for Google as well. If a search user consistently clicks through to sites that are slow to load, hard to navigate or entirely irrelevant to their needs, they’re going to switch to a different search engine. In short, Google wants to please its users by highly ranking sites that are friendly to its users’ want.

By shifting your mindset from, “how can I crack the Google algorithm?” to, “how can I delight Google and its users?”, you create a better focus on engagement rather than simply acquiring search volume. Essentially, your search success hinges upon your site’s UX. Two elements of UX are particularly relevant to SEO.

1. Give users an engaging experience

Place yourself in the shoes of searchers. What do you look for when you Google something? It’s probably these three things:

• Fast load speed
• Web design that is industry appropriate and stimulating
• Information that is presented clearly

So, while you study analytics for metrics like time on site and bounce rate, understand that the context of those metrics matters. Why are users sticking around? Is it because they’re truly engaged with your site or is because they’re having troubles finding what they’re searching for? You can utilize heatmapping services to gain a better understanding of how users are truly interacting with your site. Services like Full Story, Looker, Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Lucky Orange, and Optimizely. If you have a favorite comment it below.

Focusing on user experience can help increase traffic; According to a blog post in Think With Google, 1-800-Got-Junk decreased their load time by 28% and received a 19% increase in mobile sessions.

By establishing a strong first impression, you give yourself the best chance of a first-time conversion or, at least, a better chance for a return visit for users in the “shopping around” stage.

How can you make your site more engaging?

Based on your industry and the intent of the page, your design and layout should create an experience for users that feels immersive, natural and frictionless. This means that:

• Your call-outs are clear, but not too flashy.
• Your design (from colors and images to font choice) should command the user’s focus.
• Optimization of speed on desktop and mobile

Once you’ve gained the reader’s attention, seal the deal with engaging and relevant content.

2. Focus on the context of your content

Going through the work of finding relevant keywords and creating insightful and engaging content that looks great is only half of the battle. The other half of the SEO equation is search intent. Let’s say you’re an e-commerce brand creating a product page. It’s pretty clear what your CTA is – “Buy Now”. By focusing the design and copy of this page towards searchers that are in the ready-to-buy mode, you ensure that both Google and its users are happy to have your site at the top of SERPs.

Likewise, if you’re creating a more informative page that is focused on educating viewers on industry insights, news or FAQs, including salesy rhetoric will only set yourself up for failure once visitors are sent to a page that doesn’t support a quick purchase decision.

Create a lingo-free supportive copy that sells your company as a guide to their need. We used a book called BrandStory by Donald Miller to define our website copy. The idea is to create a story that makes your customer the Hero and makes you the guide towards solving their need. You want to create a story people want to be part of, think of Toms Shoes. You don’t have to be a bleeding heart to accomplish this, Just explain who you are and how you will meet the customer’s needs.

Making this type of connection with your customer is a big impact on your sales funnel. A recent study by the Harvard Business Review shows how emotional content can impact your bottom line. In fact, according to HBR a retailer even had a “50% increase in the rate of same-store-sales growth”.

Some great examples of quality “StoryBrand” content Include:

1. Soul Cycle
2. GoPro
3. Uber’s One Billion Ride
4. Mouth

These brands explain a story in which engages a user into becoming the “Hero” of the story. GoPro, for example, gives the customer the experience of recording their moments enjoying life, Making Gopro the “guide” to helping customers remember their adventures.

Even Google tested this on their retail call-to-action by consolidating their content and received an increase of organic traffic by 64%. Quality content is only part of the user experience but can create an impact on your business when it becomes “ego-less” and more about the customer.

The better your site performs in terms of relevancy and engagement, the happier the visitors are going to be. At the end of the day, Google is just looking to please its users too.

Search engine best practices are going to help place your site on Google’s radar. However, what’s going to set you apart from the rest of your competitors on SERPs is your commitment to delivering a high quality and hyper-relevant website to searchers. A newfound emphasis on your site’s UX can be the exact refresher your sites SEO needed.

Jonathan Alonso is Director of Digital Marketing at CNCMachines.Net. He can be found on Twitter at @jongeek.

Related reading

This is something I’ve been mulling over for a while. I threw the question out to SEO Twitter, and was surprised and impressed by the volume of responses.

SEO expert Craig Campbell shares his experience on digital and flipping websites, pro tips, mistakes to avoid, conferences, and a lot more!

It’s important to think about the search intent of potential customers. Explore user intent and learn to use this complex system to improve website ranking.

It’s challenging to cover every technical aspect of sites as hundreds of issues may need fixes. Six extremely beneficial areas with actionable tips covered.

Most marketers are familiar with the complexities of managing siloed data across different platforms, and many have their own internal workarounds for dealing with those challenges. But as our digital teams develop and the volume of data we manage swells with the expansion of our martech stacks, tricky workarounds simply don’t cut it anymore. That’s where Customer Data Platforms come in.

Customer data platforms (CDPs) unify customer data from across various sources to create one “source of truth” for your entire organization. Marketers using CDPs can ensure that regardless of who is speaking to the customer — sales, customer service, etc. — everyone has the same view of that customer. 

Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce

Earlier this week, announcements from Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce addressed the need for unified data and steps toward bringing this to their customers: On Monday, Adobe released Triggered Journeys in Adobe Campaign, and Oracle announced it will partner with Accenture and Capgemini to help its customers tackle CDPs. And on Tuesday, Salesforce announced it is expanding its Customer 360 platform to help customers unify their data with a single customer ID. 

Adobe Experience Platform updates

The enhancements to the Adobe Experience Platform include Adobe Real-time Customer Data Platform, which seeks to help marketers deliver consistent, personalized experiences by providing a centralized data hub for its customers. Adobe says its platform will its users bring together known and unknown customers to activate customer profiles and can be integrated with other martech through APIs.

“In speaking with customers, they’re very much challenged with understanding how to be customer experience- and customer journey-focused. Brands understand how vital it is to deliver unforgettable, exceptional customer-led experiences for every individual at scale, yet the ‘how’ is the challenge,” said Kristin Naragon, head of GTM strategy at Adobe Campaigns. “Our customers expressed a need of a way to continuously map engagement and marketing activities to individuals’ preferences and context – across all the devices they may use, and in real-time – which is precisely what we’re addressing with Triggered Journeys in Adobe Campaign.”  

Salesforce expands Customer 360

Salesforce is expanding its Customer 360 platform to help its customers connect Salesforce apps, integrate with different systems and create a single, unified customer profile for each individual customer. The new features are expected to help marketers bridge gaps in their data to and deliver personalized, integrated interactions with customers at scale. The new features include data unification, consent management, advanced audience segmentation and personalized cross-channel engagement.

Oracle’s partnership with Accenture and Capgemini

In order to help its customers address challenges around CDPs, Oracle announced that it is partnering with two Oracle PartnerNetwork members, Accenture and Capgemini. Through the partnerships, the companies plan to help organizations understand and map different data sources, business outcomes and KPIs.

“The customer journey has changed beyond recognition, making it much harder to gain a single source of customer truth,” said Jane Arnold Hommet, global partner executive for Oracle at Capgemini. “As our clients adapt to the evolving nature of customer interactions, they are looking for customer data strategies and data sources that go beyond marketing which can enable anyone within their teams to have quick and easy access to comprehensive insights and intelligence.”

Prioritizing for CDPs

All three marketing cloud vendors have noted that they will address CDPs this year, and with enhanced capabilities, they take steps towards unifying customer data in real-time —combining customer profiles updated in real-time with real-time access to the profile for users across an organization. But the crowded CDP field offers a variety of options, leaving some marketers unsure of where to turn for the solution. Many CDPs offer real-time profiles and access, prediction modeling, personalization tools and segmentation.

“There has been a lot of doubt and confusion about CDP as a category, and what factors are needed for an effective CDP,” said David Raab, principal at Raab Associates and founder of the CDP Institute. “Salesforce was the last hold-out that didn’t store profiles in its CDP (as opposed to assembling them on-the-fly by reading data from source systems). This adds needed clarity to the market, establishing the knowledge base for asking ‘which CDP is right for me?’”

Why we should care

The CDP market shows no signs of slowing down, and the scalable solutions could make a significant difference in your marketing efforts. Even for savvy marketers who are able to string together their siloed customer data, the further challenges of understanding elements like timing, content optimization persist. With some of the largest martech players entering the mar, marketers can expect more marketing-friendly capabilities across CDPs to drive continued growth in the market. If you’re not currently using a CDP to unify your customer data, it’s time to start looking for the best solution for your organization.

Every business should have a local SEO strategy if they don’t want to miss out on high-intent qualified leads and this is especially crucial for local businesses who need to target people in their city or region.

The priority of local businesses is to secure high ranking positions in a particular location. With that said, it’s important to note that the nature of SEO is not stable, it keeps on changing. So, it would be best if you think of actionable and effective ways to strengthen your local SEO and secure high rankings.

When done correctly, local SEO can help you generate more high-quality traffic, leads, and conversions. In addition to this, it can also help you compete with big brands and stay relevant in the competition.

This post will guide you with four effective tactics to strengthen your local SEO strategy. Let’s get started.

1. Optimize your “Google My Business” page

One of the obvious yet the most important tactics to strengthen your local SEO strategy is to optimize your Google My Business page.

Listing your business with Google My Business makes it easier for people to discover your business. Once listed, your business will show up on Google Maps when users search for businesses like yours.

This will also help your business to rank better in search engine results. Your business can also appear on the sidebar of Google search results pages when Google verifies your business as legitimate. You should follow the below tips to optimize your Google My Business page and strengthen your local SEO:

• Perform a hygiene check to your Google My Business listing.
• Make sure that you provide detailed, accurate, and up-to-date information about your business.
• Add your business’ logo, relevant images, exact location, payment methods, the services or products you offer, and hours of operation.
• Encourage your customers to add their feedback and ratings.
• Always be quick to respond to your customer reviews.

These tips and tricks will help you strengthen your local SEO and generate more high-quality leads for your business.

2. Optimize your local business listings

Local directories are one of the most common places where users search for local businesses. So, you should add your business listings to all popular directories in your niche.

These directories often rank high in Google search results for local search queries. Anyone who checks these directories can be redirected to your website or business if you optimize your listings. This will not only help you increase your organic search traffic but will also help you get qualified leads.

Update the name, address, and phone section

These are the most important elements of your Google My Business listings because these will provide your contact details to potential customers. It is crucial that all of your details are accurate and updated, otherwise, you might lose potential, high-intent customers.

Also, ensure that there are no misspellings and avoid using abbreviations or anything confusing. If there is any change in your contact details, update all of your listings accordingly.

Also, ensure that these details are consistent across all listings. Otherwise, people might get confused and won’t know which one to trust.

3. Optimize your website content for local keywords

You should optimize your website content with keywords that are relevant to your local customers too.

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to find relevant yet local keywords using the location filter. The tool can help you identify the most popular and relevant local keywords that you should target.

Once you have a list of local keywords, you should include them in your website content, meta descriptions, titles, and URLs.

However, you need to examine the competitiveness of your potential list of keywords before you use them. For this, you can use tools such as SpyFu to see if your competitors are also using these keywords. If the same keywords are strengthening your competitors’ local SEO, they might work well for you too.

However, a word of caution, never over-use keywords. That’s because keyword stuffing might make your website content seem spammy. Make sure that you evenly distribute your keywords throughout the content and add them in a way that they seem to fit in naturally.

For instance, Focus Booth, which is a famous photo booth in Toronto, uses their location-based keyword “Toronto photo booth” wherever possible.

As you can see in the screenshot below, they have mentioned the location of their business exactly at the center of their landing page. Similarly, their meta title also starts with the same local keyword.

Source: Focus Booth

4. Ask your happy customers to give positive online reviews

Positive reviews influence 68% of consumers to use your local business?

This suggests that positive reviews can help you attract new customers. So, go ahead and ask your happy customers to share positive feedback. You should also encourage them to give good ratings to your business online.

91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. So gaining positive reviews for your business online can help your brand appear as more trustworthy.

Always provide quality services to your customers. It will encourage them to become your brand advocates, write more positive reviews, and recommend your business to their friends and families.

Positive reviews can help you earn the trust of your target audience and drive more qualified leads. Here are some tips to motivate your customers to write good reviews for your business:

• Always make sure to ask for a review in person once a customer avails your services.
• You can also send them a text message or an email after the purchase, asking your customer to give a review.
• Always reply to customer reviews as soon as you read them. Thank your customers for positive reviews and encourage them to visit again.

If you receive a negative review, you should apologize for the discomfort and try to solve their problems politely and professionally. For instance, when you type “electricians in Seattle”, you can see a list of local businesses along with their ratings.

Source: Google

4. Create a mobile-responsive website

The use of mobiles is increasing significantly, and so is the number of mobile searches. The credit goes to the increasing accessibility and availability of high-speed internet.

According to Statista, the expected number of mobile users will reach 4.68 billion in 2019.

52.2% of all website traffic came from mobile devices in 2018. Also, this percentage is likely to increase further.

Source: Statista

That’s why you need to design and develop responsive websites to improve user experience on mobile devices.

Using a responsive website design can help you get an edge over your competitors and can also improve your local SEO. You should follow the below tricks to create a mobile-responsive website:

• Always optimize your images and videos to reduce page load time.
• Carefully plan your website layout and navigation menus. Make sure that it is easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.
• Improve page load speed. If your web page takes longer to load, it will be unable to hold a user’s attention.
• Add social media sharing buttons to your product pages and blog posts. Make sure that it is easy for visitors to share your content in their circles.

You can use tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to examine whether or not your website is mobile responsive. This tool can help you improve the mobile responsiveness of your site by providing you with valuable suggestions.

Source: Google

5. Strengthen your social media presence

Social media does have an impact on your presence in search engine results. Let’s discuss this in detail.

Establishing an excellent social media presence can help your brand to appear as more credible and trustworthy. Social media could also serve as a great source of backlinks and high-quality traffic.

You need to be very active on your social media handles. Proactively promoting your business on social media can help you increase your brand awareness and reach. This can help you attract more people to your brand, products, and/or services.

However, you should always post content that is relevant and useful to your audience. If they find your content valuable, they are more likely to follow you and visit your website. They can also share your content with their social networks.

Promoting your business on social media is an effective strategy to increase your brand’s visibility and traffic. It can also positively impact and strengthen your local SEO strategy in the long run.

Final thoughts

It is important to take time to develop an effective local SEO strategy. However, at the same time, it is also important to keep an eye on the recent SEO trends. That’s because the SEO industry is evolving fast.

You should always stay up-to-date about the latest SEO trends and capitalize on them to stay ahead in the competition.

Follow the actionable tactics we’ve discussed above to strengthen your local SEO strategy and rank higher in local searches.

Do you know of any other ways to improve your local SEO strategy? If so, please feel free to share them in the comments section.

Related reading

SEO expert Craig Campbell shares his experience on digital and flipping websites, pro tips, mistakes to avoid, conferences, and a lot more!

It’s important to think about the search intent of potential customers. Explore user intent and learn to use this complex system to improve website ranking.

It’s challenging to cover every technical aspect of sites as hundreds of issues may need fixes. Six extremely beneficial areas with actionable tips covered.

Google announced that podcasts will start showing up in SERPs. “Podcast SEO” is a great opportunity to build an audience through search traffic.

Spotify has expanded its ads capabilities with podcast listener targeting. Advertisers can reach Spotify Free podcast listeners, and in select markets, they’ll also be able to narrow their campaigns to certain podcast categories, such as “Comedy,” “Lifestyle & Health” and “Business & Technology.”

Spotify is investing heavily in podcasts. Earlier this year, Spotify spent a total of $400 million to acquire podcast companies Parcast, Gimlet and Anchor. On top of bringing those firms under its wing, the music streaming service has built up a respectable repertoire of exclusive series, including a multiyear deal with the Obamas.

Spotify has a new interface for paid subscribers with Music and Podcast sections.

Spotify has also begun rolling out a refreshed UI for paid subscribers. The update divides a user’s library into two main categories (music and podcasts) that reflects Spotify’s emphasis on podcasting as a potential revenue stream.

Why we should care. U.S. podcast ad revenue grew 53% in 2018, according to the IAB, and with 32% of Americans (age 12+) having listened to a podcast in the past month, according to Edison Research, marketers and platforms are seeing untapped potential. Spotify is looking to entrench itself early to become a leading platform in the sector.

Insufficient campaign conversion data has been a barrier to growth for podcast advertising. Marketers have attempted to overcome this by using direct response calls to action (such giving listeners a unique code or URL) or by launching campaigns aimed at awareness. Targeting at scale has also been limited. Spotify’s newest capabilities help begin to address those limitations.

Verizon Media has rolled out a new tool for its DSP users to offer more transparency into the programmatic ad platform. The tool, said Verizon Media, is designed to give advertisers a comprehensive view of the programmatic landscape — showing reach and cost analysis by channel (display, CTV, DOOH, audio, etc.), ad format and exchange. It also provides forecasting insights.

“With today’s announcement, we are continuing to take a leadership role, bringing our DSP customers granular omnichannel intelligence at the auction level, giving them everything they need to understand how and where to best allocate budgets,” said Verizon Media’s chief business officer Iván Markman.

Why we should care

Advertisers have long been calling for more transparency from programmatic platforms and exchanges. With this feature, media buyers see granular reach and cost analysis for each channel, format and exchange and then forecasts based on those insights to inform their campaign strategy, creative and targeting optimizations.

“Adding Verizon Media’s capability to our own transparency tools allows us to understand deeper bidding insights at the auction level, ensuring that we are accessing the inventory through the optimal path. This level of DSP supply path flexibility should be the expectation moving forward,” said Omnicom Media Group’s EVP of global partnerships Steve Katelman.

More on the news