by DG | Oct 19, 2018 | SEO, Digital Marketing, Online Marketing
You should always think local when starting a Search Engine Optimization strategy. It’s much easier to rank for longtail keywords that have less competition. The name of your city or neighbourhood added to those keywords can be an easy win so you can rank quickly. That’s the best strategy to get started so let’s dig into Local SEO.
Key factors
First things first. Be sure to sign up on Google My Business (GMB). This will be the centre of your local strategy for getting rankings on Google. There may be a listing for your business there already so you’ll need to claim it. Do a Google search for your company name and you may see a listing for your business on the right side hand side in the search results. If you have not claimed it already you will see a “Claim this listing” button that will allow you to do so. Once you have access to your listing you will be able to add all kinds of information about your business and this will get him placed on Google maps as well. Be sure to upload lots of pleasing, relevant images for your business. You can great insights about your business listing in there like how many people viewed you listing and took action etc.
Writing Posts on Google My Business
We highly recommend that you create a post on your GMB listing everyday for at least 2 months. I know this sounds like a lot of work but it’s worth it and they only allow 300 words and you can back it off after your see your listing get into the top 3 local results for your keywords. Don’t stop completely though or competitors will eventually catch up. Try to keep posting at least once a week. This of course depends on how competitive your category is so you may need to adjust accordingly.
Add local content to your website
Blogging is the most effective way to help your rankings in search engine results. Write some blog posts that are unique to your local area and align with your local business. Doing some good keyword research prior to writing is articles will go along way. By doing so you can find out what people actually search for when they’re looking for your type of business in your area. For instance if you are a roofing company people might search for “toronto roofing company” (720 searches per month) but there are more searches for “toronto roofers” (1900 searches per month) so you should definitely have the data beforehand so that you can get the most out of your efforts. You can use Google Keyword Planner to get this data. Another new favourite free tool for keyword research is Ubersuggest from SEO expert Neil Patel.
Get listed on directories
Leveraging online directories is an excellent way to improve your online visibility. Claim any listings you can on sites like Yelp and Yellow Pages and other similar ones. Make sure all your profiles have the exact same contact information about your business. This is very important. You’ll also have to monitor these listings as many of them except reviews about your business. You need to stay on top of this and respond to reviews good or bad. Your online reputation is really important so I need to take this seriously.
We have a great tool to help you monitor this – checkout the OCEANONE Reputation Manager. And, if you don’t have the time we also provide a fully managed Reputation Management Service.
Here’s an excellent video on how to respond to reviews…
SEO Best Practices
Finally, be sure that you are using SEO best practices throughout your website. Things like properly formatted URLs and keyword rich descriptive title tags as well as descriptive metadata are important to make sure that Google’s algorithms pick up the best possible information about your page. Of course, make sure that your contact information on the website matches exactly what you added to all those directories you just listed on.
These are just a few things you can do to improve your visibility for local searches but they are the most important. Make sure these on-page improvements are done before taking any other steps. Depending on how competitive your category is, this might be all that you need to do to get the results you want. Start there and see how goes. If it’s not enough to get you in the top three local results there are other strategies. It’s not that complicated but it can be very time consuming.
If you don’t have the time, we can help. We have a Free listing builder app to get you started with getting your listing synced up on Google My Business, Facebook and Twitter. Once you have that set up you can easily add one of our paid packages that make it very easy to get listed on the sites we have discussed here. Learn more about it it out here.
Download our list of “Top 100 Sites To Be Listed On“. Our Listing Distribution add-on lets you build accurate business listings on the four major data aggregators—Factual, Acxiom, Infogroup, and Neustar Localeze. These aggregators are referenced by over 300 websites.
When multiple sources have consistent business data, two outcomes occur:
- Google’s WebCrawler finds the same information in multiple places and adds more confidence to their business data
- Good backlinks are created with more referring sources to the business’ website creating better SEO.
Here’s an excellent video on the importance of have accurate listings online…
Also check out our recent post “Online Reputation Management Tips for Boosting your Local SEO” .
If you already have listing and you have experienced Fake Reviews you’ll want to check out “How to remove “Google reviews when you know they are fake“.
It’s also important to get as many backlinks as you can in order to generate organic traffic. If you need help with that or any other SEO tasks, checkout our SEO services page.
by DG | Mar 27, 2021 | Content Marketing, SEO
Updated: March 27, 2021
Good SEO involves many elements. There is the technical audit where you make sure there are no technical problems that prevent your site from ranking. Then there is the whole keyword research and optimization process which is the most important step and beyond the scope of this article. Don’t forget about backlinks of course.
Then there is the most powerful aspect of all and that is high-quality content. Stop thinking in terms of ‘SEO’, ‘blogging’ and ‘social media marketing’ as separate things and instead think about your SEO in terms of ‘content marketing’.
Think of SEO as a combination of all your marketing strategies – merge them together. You need to remove technical issues first. That is an absolute. Beyond that you need to use all the digital marketing strategies, keyword relevant blog posts, guest posts, social media posts, backlinks, videos and more to really succeed at getting ranked on high in Google searches.
Now “Good SEO” also means writing amazing posts and when you share them you have a better chance of getting more backlinks. That great content will keep people on your page longer – another Google ranking factor. Yes, Google notices how long visitors stay on your page.
Regardless of your strategy, there is no doubt that content is absolutely the most important asset when it comes to attracting traffic and impressing Google.
But just what is content marketing?
Content Marketing – What is it Exactly?
Content marketing is about creating content that will build a readership on your site and ensuring that people begin to hold you as an authority and trust what you have to say. While this is powerful and useful is in its own right, it’s actually only one part of what content marketing is about. At the same time, your excellent blog post articles will also help Google make sense of your site, its posts, and its content. This greatly aids organic search.
It means demonstrating your knowledge and point of view. Ultimately, you want people to seek you out as an authority. Once you get to that point, you’ll be considered an expert in your field and you’ll be able to greatly influence your audience – possibly influencing their buying behaviour. The content doesn’t just have to be posts on your blog. Content can be presented in Guest posts, Social media posts, Presentations, Infographics, Case Studies, White Papers/Reports, Ebooks, Email Newsletters, Webinars, Quizzes, Polls, Podcasts, Checklists, Photos and of course Videos.
DOWNLOAD Our Free Content Marketing Planner (In Google Sheets, click FILE > make copy). It has a daily, monthly and archive view as well as a brainstorming tab.
How to Build Trust and Authority with SEO
So what is the process behind reaching authority? The key is to think about the sites and blogs that have influenced you over the years – the ones you read regularly.
How do you think they did it? This isn’t about building trust with Google alone but rather with your readers so that they want to keep coming back. That means delivering value time after time in posts and content.
Each post that you create for your blog should provide highly useful and relevant information that is not fluffy but is actionable.
At the same time, users should be able to see that your site offers something unique compared to competition sites, something which isn’t available elsewhere. The differentiation between your sites and others is extremely important, especially in crowded niches. You can’t simply follow the pattern of other sites, you need to try and take your own perspectives.
There are hundreds of thousands of posts covering almost everything possible. Offering something different amongst this content mountain may seem like an impossible task but with the infinite opinions of people, you can always find a unique angle to take on even the most run-of-the-mill subjects.
Once you’ve conceptualized your posts, you should ask yourself: would you read the content?
You also need to be consistent and reliable and always live up to your brand ethos. Make sure you establish a mission statement and objectives and portray these through your content efforts to create a continuous self-branded stream of information.
Always work hard on reflecting your brand with design. Logos and website designs are extremely important. You must remain consistent throughout different forms of marketing on different platforms, including on different forms of social media.
When writing, always bear your reader in mind. This ties into the fact that Good SEO is about making things great for the reader. That way, people can actually get excited about you and will really get behind what you’re trying to do!
What’s Your SEO Goal?
The immediate goal should be to offer consistent value and to become a source that people start to trust. That way, when someone searches for the answer to a question, they might read your post and be impressed. That leads to more shares, more engagement and better SEO.
If you then repeatedly come up in search results, individuals who were impressed might recognize you and be more likely to click your listing over the rest. Then they might decide to look around the rest of your content after they’ve been impressed a few times. Eventually, you become their “go-to source” for answers in your niche. Well done: you just won at content marketing!
The key to content marketing is consistency and value. Always deliver good information that is manageable. By doing this, you’re working with Google to serve the user and Google are promoting you as they know you are delivering relevant and effective content. It makes sense from both an SEO and business perspective – you want to build trust, reputability and authority alongside a base of repeat users.
After investing a lot of time writing a blog post, you should certainly consider repurposing it. Maybe it would make a good video or slide presentation. Perhaps write a few related post a create an ebook that you can distribute or use for a lead magnet.
While the focus of this post is content marketing and how it relates to SEO there is certainly a lot more you can do. We’ll write more about that in future posts. If you need some free tools check out this list of free content creation tools by .
Needless to say, before you dive deep into content marketing, you need to make sure that you you have optimized your on-site SEO factors. The amazing @Neil Patel recently made that a little easier with his awesome SEO Analyzer which will show you what you need to fix in a few seconds. It provides your overall SEO score and your competitors score. You can check your site speed score, keywords and more. Plus you can download the report as a PDF so you can send it to your webmaster.
Here’s a great resource from Guru99 that has a list of the 20 Best Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Website Performance.
If you need help with SEO for your website, checkout our SEO services page.
Also check out our recent post “10 MUST-KNOW SEO TIPS TO BOOST YOUR SEARCH RANKINGS“
by DG | Sep 30, 2016 | Online Marketing, SEO
Last updated: Sept 30th 2016
Online marketing covers a range of possibilities. Some of your online marketing plans will make demands of your web design ambitions. Others will cover the potential of social media marketing. There are literally dozens and dozens of tips out there that are yours for the taking. Your responsibility, which some might call an unenviable one, is to choose amongst all the suggestions and concepts to find the ones that are right for you.
It’s not an unenviable task by any means. Although online marketing has become increasingly elaborate and complex over the past few years, it is by no means impossible. Whether you’re looking at online marketing plans in a broad sense, or if you’re considering your options with social media marketing specifically, you can find tips that are viable in your situation.
One thing is for certain: Great web design is really only the beginning.
The Future Of Online Marketing
The future of online marketing is actually quite exciting when you think about it. Social media marketing is getting bigger and bigger. The algorithms of search engines like Google and Bing are becoming increasingly smarter. While it’s true that these things are becoming a bit crowded with possibilities, it’s still a fairly straightforward matter to develop strong marketing tactics for your website and business. Website design is no less important now than it was ten years ago. It’s just that there are more things to consider as you build your website and prepare for it to go live.
As stated before, some online marketing tactics can be implemented as you’re designing and building your website. It’s just commonsense in this day and age to let your visitors share things from your page on their favorite social media sites. It’s a good idea to research your SEO (search engine optimization) possibilities ahead of time, and have content on your site ready to go on launch date that keeps your SEO options in mind. Is blogging something you’ll want to incorporate in your online marketing strategies? You’ll certainly want to keep that in mind.
The list goes on. The possibilities are not quite endless, but they’re certainly going to feel that way.
Essential Online Marketing Plans & Strategies
If you’re new to the world of online marketing or social media marketing, the following suggestions are worth keeping in mind as you research and learn. If you have an established website with a good social media presence, it never hurts to see if your online marketing strategies could use a little tweaking or enhancing:
- Look for social media outlets that are ideal to your marketing: Twitter is perfect for businesses that are keenly interested in establishing strong human connections. Facebook is an established social media entity that allows you to share content and interact with your audience. Those are just two possibilities. There are dozens and dozens of others out there. Pinterest has become extremely popular with companies that sell furniture, clothing, or jewelry. Instagram allows you to connect to followers who are eager to share their stories (and pictures) with the world. Are you starting to get the picture? Research your social media options. Find out which ones are going to generate the kind of attention you’re after. Don’t overextend yourself. Focus on four or five that have the strongest potential.
- Build a dedicated following: While building an audience, keep in mind that you want to build what is called a proprietary audience. This refers to an audience that is only going to be interested in what you have to say. Your content, offers, and level of personal interaction should be peerless.
- Don’t publish just because: Steady content on your website, your blog, and your social media outlets are certainly essential. However, strong online marketing or social media marketing emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity. Don’t publish just because you feel as though you need to. Publish because you have something genuinely compelling to share. That means you’re going to have to work hard to create that content.
- Look for outside help: If you can afford it, you may want to consider a social media manager or online marketing company. In the same way that an expert can help you with your web design, these individuals can help you focus your online marketing or social media marketing strategies.
- Prioritize: A good rule of thumb for many websites lists content, the user’s experience, social media, links for traffic, and basic search engine optimization on-page material as being the order in which you should focus your priorities.
- Value organic over non-organic: Avoid any opportunities to build your audience in non-organic ways. Buying Facebook likes is a small but important example of this. It won’t do you any favors in the long run.
Build Your Audience
Never forget that your audience is indeed out there. Even if you’re a smaller company, you can still compete with the bigger fish.
