One of the common things our clients want to know is how many people click through for their GMB listing to their website. Once you’ve properly optimized your GMB listing and are getting reviews, you should start seeing some traction. Whether it’s phone calls or website clicks, you’ll want to know what is going.
In this post I’m going to show you how to better track website click through’s and why you shouldn’t trust your GMB listings insights. Let’s begin!
At the very bottom, copy your new link which you will replace in the website url of your GMB listing info.
My link would be https://outcareyourcompetition.com/?utm_source=GMBPage.
That was easy, wasn’t it! Now you can better track how many visits are coming from your GMB listing.
Don’t Trust The GMB Listing Insights
Watch the video below where I explain why this is a better way to track those click-throughs. Basically, don’t trust what the insights of your GMB listing says.
Google reviews are a key way for clients to learn about your services and hear about other customer experiences first hand. You may have been looking at your business’ Google reviews recently and wondering ‘how can I get more reviews?’. If you have been wondering about getting more positive Google reviews for your business, let this blog be a word of warning: do not use a contest to get more reviews! Let me tell you why.
While contests can be a great way to foster excitement and attention for your business, you need to be very careful with what action you are asking your customers to take. On social media, feel free to ask them to like, share and comment in return for a prize. You can even ask your clients to share their favourite thing about your business, tag you in a photo, or use your unique hashtag. But do not use incentives or prizes to foster client reviews. Just don’t.
Recently, a law firm in the United States did just this. They hosted multiple contests and giveaways that asked clients to author a Google review in return for entries into the contest. Before it was found out that the firm was using incentives to get more reviews, they had around 100 Google reviews. And now? Just one review. That’s right, because the firm was found to be giving away zoo passes in return for writing a Google review, the majority of their existing reviews were removed by Google. The firm’s Facebook page also has a high number of reviews (around 1000 5-star reviews), most of which probably also come from incentive programs.
While Facebook doesn’t seem to have strict guidelines about this type of activity, Google certainly does. They currently have written guidelines stating that businesses should not use reviews for advertising, should not include promotional or commercial content in reviews, should not offer or accept money for reviews, and should not solicit reviews from clients in bulk. It seems as though Google takes these guidelines very seriously as they were recently revised, so be sure to adhere to them.
While it isn’t clear whether businesses are allowed to offer contests or prizes directed at an individual rather than a group also violates these guidelines, it is still wise to be careful. In the case of the US firm, Google felt that this situation represented bulk solicitation of reviews. Because of this, the reviews were removed.
The firm never claimed whether they were trying to maliciously trick the system, or simply making an honest marketing mistake, but either way their actions were penalized. This is a great opportunity for you to learn from their mistakes – but don’t let this scare you too much. While you most certainly should not use incentives to get reviews, don’t be shy in asking individual clients to review your business (just do not do so in bulk).
I know that it seems as if Google has the strictest regulation on running contest for reviews, but think twice before trying to do this on other sites such as Yelp. Believe it or not, Yelp has even stricter rules and will send consumer alerts to users who are viewing a business that has violated policy. This can seriously damage trust between your clients and your business – so again, just don’t do it!
No matter what you hear or read, local SEO is alive and well. It’s the reason you’re here reading this blog post. You obviously want to know how long local SEO and better search rankings will take.
You might be wondering how long is it going to take to see page 1 and top 5 search rankings. This is a common question I get asked during almost all of my calls and emails from potential clients. It’s understandable as you want to know when you can start seeing more traffic, leads and clients come your way.
The problem with trying to answer this question is that it’s too difficult to correctly predict. There are too many search rankings factors to do this.
With that said, I always give a potential client a rough estimate of when they can expect to see page 1 results. Once our SEO work begins and a few months go by, I can see how the search rankings are improving and give a better idea of when page 1 and top 5 results will occur by.
But first, I need to look at a few factors.
Search Ranking Factors At Play
There are so many search rankings factors, but when determining how long a potential clients website will need to rank on page 1 and the top 5, I look at:
what search terms you want to rank for
is your website well optimized for those search terms
how many websites/webpages rank ahead of you for those search terms (direct competitors and directories)
how many business listings does your business have and are they consistent
how many and what type of backlinks does your website have
There are 200+ search ranking factors, but these are the ones I look at when determining how long it will take to rank a website.
Trial Period
With every potential client, I always suggest a three month trial period of our services to show them what kind of results they can expect to see after 6 and 9 months. If after three months we don’t see much improvement, it’s not a good sign. If that’s the case, which it rarely is, I offer a partial refund for the three months.
It’s risk reversal. We have to perform and generate better search rankings in those first three months. If we haven’t, then I don’t feel comfortable receiving money for not doing our job.
New Websites Vs Existing Websites
With this three month trial period, you might be wondering if that is enough time to improve the search rankings to page 1 and the top 5. Rarely will this happen, unless you are already ranking somewhere on page 2 and have an existing website.
Existing websites are, for the most part, going to take less time to rank. Why? Because an existing website has been indexed by the search engines, has business listings and backlinks created along with quality SEO content on the site. It’s built up existing credibility with the search engines which is going to take a lot less time to rank than a new website.
A new website doesn’t have the credibility and thus, is going to take a longer time to get to the top of the list. In all cases, SEO is a long term investment. Once you rank higher, you stay there as long as you update your website.
SEO As An Investment
With traditional advertising or even pay per click (ppc), you always are paying money. That’s not the case with SEO. Depending on what industry you are in, once better search rankings are achieved, you only need a few new clients to pay the SEO services off. Even better if you offer a service where the lifetime value of a client is high.
With all potential clients though I do suggest running a ppc campaign in coordination with an SEO campaign. Yes, it will cost more but with a ppc campaign, you will get targeted traffic to the site right away. Then as the search rankings improve and they get more organic traffic, we can reduce the spending on the ppc campaign.
Running a ppc campaign will also tell us if the website is good at converting so you can generate new leads and clients. If not, then we will have to make some conversion adjustments.
I hope I’ve been able to provide a detailed enough answer to the question of how long will it take for my website to rank higher with local SEO. If I haven’t, please contact me today and I’ll be happy to answer any further questions you may have.
The page speed series of blog posts was geared towards desktops versions of websites and not mobile ones. This post will outline a few ways to improve the page speed of the responsive version of your website.
Before I list those reasons, test your responsive websites load speed. I have had some issues with that site but WebPageTest is also a great resource. Be sure to select an option beside “Test Location” that is either “Android Devices – Dulles, VA” or “Apple Devices – Dulles, VA” for mobile page speed tests.
How To Improve Mobile Page Speed
As online shopping and browsing becomes more and more popular, people use just about every device to participate, often including their cell phones. In our fast paced world, online browsers are impatient and may not use your website if it does not perform quickly, especially on their mobile phone. If you run a business or organization that experiences peak user times or “busy seasons”, having a fast mobile web page is even more critical in these times when more people will be using the page.
Experts say that three seconds is the maximum time that someone expects to wait for a mobile web page. Anything over that time may cause your clients to open competitor sites, spend less time on your page, and have a more negative image of your brand. So, how do you get that mobile page speed below three seconds and keep it there? Here are seven tips:
Look At Server Response Time
The server is a key element in mobile page speed, and the longer it waits to respond to requests from the browser, the longer your page viewer will wait to see the content on your page. The time your server takes to respond is called the “waiting time” or “time to first byte”, and experts recommend this to be no longer than 200 milliseconds after a request is made. The best ways to speed up this time are to improve your web server software or configuration (through coding), enhance CPU and memory resources through improving the web hosting service, or reduce the resources that your web pages use.
Avoid Redirects!
We have all experienced redirects. These are the automatic instructions that move a web page viewer to another location without them having to click anything. The most common type of redirect, a 301, moves visitors from an outdated webpage to a newly designed page. Redirects take up time, so if you do not need to use them, remove them from your web pages. Often redirects are even slower on mobile networks as they are less reliable than a desktop computer network connection. The best way to start is by using tools such as a redirect mapper to see how many redirects your web page contains.
Measure Round-Trip Times
The round trip time of data is the amount of time it takes to be both transmitted from your device to the target destination and returned back to your device. While this interval depends on many factors such as the connection source, physical distance, traffic amount, etc, it is important to regularly measure the round trip time in order to get a clear sense of average times for your page. The longer the round trip time is, again the longer your page viewer will have to wait. One of the best ways to reduce this time is to combine scripts in order to avoid repeated trips.
Load Upper Half Content First
On a mobile device, it makes sense to load the content at the top of the page first, as this is what the viewer will see first. If you code your pages so the server sends data to show the upper content first, your lower content will have slightly more time to load as the viewer browses the already loaded upper half. This gives the perception that the web page has fully loaded faster even if some of the lower content has not appeared yet.
Place JavaScript At The Bottom Of HTML Files
JavaScript is an important aspect of a web page for interactivity purposes, but it can be a big problem for load times as it does not allow parallel downloads. When this content is loaded, other downloads will not happen. To make your main page content load slightly faster, it is a good idea to put the JavaScript scripts at the bottom of the page. Another way to slightly improve speed is putting the Cascading Style Sheets at the top of the programming file. These sheets show how elements will be displayed, so it gives the appearance that the webpage is actually loading faster as the layout will be loaded first.
Optimize CSS And JS
The more data on your page, the longer the page will take to load. This is why it is so important to optimize and minimize everything on your page, but most of all Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript files. This includes getting rid of redundant or irrelevant data that has no effect on your page function, but will improve the speed.
Compress Files
This tip will both increase and decrease load time. When data is compressed, it must be decompressed in order to be displayed. This means that the data will transmit faster, but the extra decompression step may take up more time. The trade off here is usually worth it, but this is something to keep in mind as it reduces page weight which is especially important for mobile pages.
Try out the 7 tips above to see your mobile page speeds go from over three seconds to under in the blink of an eye! If you need additional help optimizing your web pages, contact us today.
It’s 2018 and voice search is on the rise. I’ve been reluctant to use it myself and blog about it. Early last year I did a few searches using Siri and the results were less than desirable.
But with the popularity of Google Home, Amazon Echo and many more home assistants hitting the market, the time has come to invest in voice search for local businesses. Since this blog focuses on local SEO, I’m going to discuss local SEO searches from the standpoint of using Siri. I hope to do the same using an Andriod device soon.
In this post I will explain why your businesses proximity and the diversification of your reviews is important to getting better Siri search results. Here we go!
Location Services
Having location services enabled on your phone isn’t about getting spied on. Location services help Siri and other apps determine your location so they can help you. In the case of a local search, Siri will display businesses close by. This is why your businesses proximity to the search is an important factor.
Business Proximity To The Searcher
I blogged about the Google My Business results and why location and proximity are important for higher rankings or to even show up at all. The same applies to local Siri searches. Take the example screenshots below of a few searches for auto glass shops, transmission repair and pizza places.
While looking at these screenshots, the first and main thing to note is that Siri is using the Apple Maps app on my phone. As far I know, Siri uses Apple Maps by default and there is no option to switch to Google Maps.
“Transmission repair”
“auto glass repair shop”
“pizza delivery place”
By looking at these screenshots you will see the proximity of all these businesses to my location. Once again Siri knows where I am as I have location services enabled. Most of the results are within 800 meters and 3.5 km’s from me.
So if you’re hoping to show up yet you’re on the other side of town and 10 km’s away, it’s not going to happen. Siri along with Google want to display the closest business to you. Not so much the best.
Diversify Your Reviews
Reviews go a long way and you should be focused on getting reviews for your business daily. We’ve been asking our clients to diversify the directories and sites that they ask for reviews on because it helps when potential clients do a brand search and see reviews on their Facebook, Yelp, and Yellow Pages listings on top of their Google reviews.
More reviews on directories like Yelp and Yellow Pages can help get higher search rankings within those directories as well. And nothing but positive things can happen when potential clients Google a business and see reviews from multiple websites. This builds trust and credibility.
Here’s a brand search for a client. Notice the reviews areas.
Obviously you can see the Yelp and Yellow Pages reviews. But Google is now displaying other reviews in the “Reviews from the web” in what is known as the businesses knowledge panel on the right hand side of the search results. This is where business contact details from the Google My Business page are seen. For this to happen, you must ensure your business listings are consistent and up to date.
Once again, look back up at the screenshots from my Siri searches. You will see the business listings provided have reviews from Yelp and YP.ca (Yellow Pages). It’s clear as day why you should be focusing on diversifying your reviews from a Siri search perspective.
So what can you to do to improve your rankings for Siri local searches?
How To Get Higher Voice Searches
It’s a really simple three step process. Once again you cannot control the proximity issue so you’ll be targeting people close to you. And you can get higher rankings from a local Siri search by following these tips:
1 – Head to the desktop backend of Apple Maps, find and claim your business listing. Fill out all your business information including linking to your Yelp, Facebook & Twitter pages.
2 – Head to Yelp for business owners, find and claim your Yelp listing if it hasn’t been. Fill out the information in full including adding some nice photos since Apple Maps is using those photos for their listings.
3 – Ask your clients to write reviews on your Yelp and Yellow Pages listings along with Facebook page. More reviews on multiple sites is better than more reviews on one site.
It’s 2018 and 
