12/08/2015
7 Steps to Improve Your Search Rankings
Every business needs more customers and a steady stream of new ones, too. So, whether you are a brick and mortar store with, one or more locations, or, an online business - driving traffic to you is one of the most important tasks for your business.
There are some key steps to making sure that you are keeping your rankings as high as possible in searches for your business. You should review these steps regularly to assure you are doing everything you can to get as much traffic as possible. Checking these steps regularly will give you a strong ongoing marketing strategy and a better chance to keep your business name and record in front of more customers versus your competition who will not take the time to review these steps.
1) Keyword Check and Research – Which keywords do customers use to find you? If you are a plumber in Dallas, then ‘Dallas plumber’ will be an important term for you on your web site. If you offer ‘industrial plumbing’ and ‘residential plumbing’ service then both terms will be important. You may want to add a zip code or two along with the service name you offer, like ‘plumber 75201, 75214’ as a key search term. When planning your keyword placement on any website or other site that mentions your business, like directory listings, you should mention as many cities or zip codes as space allows on that listing. The key is to know what words your prospects are using to find businesses like yours.
2) Optimize Your Web Site – By creating a reasonable amount of high quality content that users are searching for, you will make your site more relevant for both users and search engine results. Customizing your meta title with keywords allow you to have a good match for whatever content is shared on Social Media sites which will be of interest and also relevant for readers. Your location with city and state should also be listed prominently on your first page and contact pages, along with your phone number. Usually abbreviated NAP, for name - address - phone, these factors are vitally important in search results. Whenever and wherever they are on the web, they need to be absolutely and exactly the same for the best search results. Do not use a P.O. Box. Google needs to have a street address to rank you high. Again, consistency in all posting is the key.
Very important: Optimize your website for mobile device usage like smart phones and tablets. More than ½ of all searches are done on mobile devices. If your site doesn’t show well, users won’t stay and they will go to your competition whose site does show well on their mobile device.
3) Claim Your Business on Google Maps, Google My Business and Google + - Google Maps and Google My Business are your free tools to claim. If you do not claim them someone else could. Google has also said that at some time in the future, if you have not claimed them, they will delete your presence from all searches. Your Google My Business info shows contact information like NAP and how it shows search results and in Google Maps to be found more easily by potential customers. Other information about your business that you can add includes your operating address and other contact information. Google+ pages allow your customers to leave reviews and otherwise communicate with you by this Social Media type as well as give you more exposure. Social interaction with your business adds to social proof and can help you with customer reviews and updates for others potential customers to read.
4) Create/Claim Your Local Directory Listings - Directories can help you with rankings and give potential customers an idea of your service by reading what past customers have already experienced. These can be local or review directories, you’ll want to create and/or claim your listings on as many directories as possible. There are dozens of them. Here is a list of the some of the more popular Directories:
Google, Bing, Yahoo, Manta, Yelp, Yellow Pages, City Search, FourSquare, Local.com, Superpages
Each listing will represent a “CITATION.” Citations are a mention of your business and website from another site. They are a critical important component used by Google and other search engines for ranking results. When possible place your website URL in these listings as backlinks to your web site. Google loves backlinks. You can check this site, www.getlisted.org to determine where you are listed now and verify that the NAP and other information about your business is correct. Claimed and unclaimed listings will show and give you an idea of how much more you need do to help your business.
5) Ask Your Customers for Reviews - Caution: Do not buy reviews from services like Fiverr.com. Google has become very adept at knowing which reviews are real and which ones are fake. When you use fake reviews, you will be penalized in search results and with enough violations you could be gone from Google search results for good. To get good reviews that will help you, ask your customers to leave a genuine review on directories like Yelp and your Google+ page. Make it easy for reviewers to say ‘yes’ and to do it. One bad review can cost you dearly, so you want as many good reviews as you can get to counter act any harmful ones.
6) Optimize Your Social Media Pages - It is important that, just like your web site and directory listings, your Social Media profiles have the same NAP and your URL of the home web site. Make sure that your page is a fan page or local business page and not a personal page. You can still link your Fan page from your personal page, but you need a separate Facebook Fan Page. Encourage your friends and customers to check into your Fan Page and comment as much as possible to help you show up high in Facebook searches. If you haven’t created/claimed a Facebook fan page for your business, then Facebook probably has a holding place for your business until you do claim it. This is automatically created by Facebook once your Fan Page is searched for without being found. Also, make sure you do not have a duplicate page with the same name on Facebook. You can mix the two and keep the one you want while saving all the ‘likes’ and ‘check-ins’ from both pages.
7) Analyze and Monitor Your Results – Just like a road map, there are tools to help you know where you are when you are analyzing and monitoring your efforts and results for better search engine rankings. Doing this is an ongoing task. Rules change all the time. Competition changes all the time, too. Sometimes, the changes can come quickly and can be quite substantial. Start with Google Analytics. These show you not just how many visitors, but where they came from and even what browser they use. This is a free tool with a Google account and can give you an excellent snapshot of where you are. There are also paid for sites that can give you other types of information. Moz is one a good reputation. Monitoring should be done at least once a week to assure past efforts are paying off and that outside factors are not affecting what you have already done. If they do become a factor, then weekly monitoring will catch the change quickly so that new changes in your efforts can be made with minimum harm.
Summary - If you have added the changes above, you should start to notice higher rankings, more calls, leads, customers and revenue in a few short weeks. And with consistent monitoring, you should be ahead of most, if not all, of your competition.
Addendum. – There are more advanced steps to further assist in your search rankings. PPC or Pay Per Click, Social Media Advertising, Videos, YouTube Channels, and other additional Strategic Marketing Methods can help. For more information, contact us for a free consultation.
