It’s one thing to have a high ranking website. But it’s another thing getting people to click through to your website.
Not all people will click on your website if your the search result. You certainly hope they would. But there might be something turning them off.
Then it got me to thinking, why not write a blog post about this very subject!
Improve Meta Description
Over the last month I’ve had the good furtune to gain three more clients. As with all of my new clients, I start improving all on site SEO.
I will run each new clients website through the Hubspot Website Grader. What I find is that most of the webpages on their sites have no meta tags. So no page titles, descriptions or keywords they are targeting.
Having an image beside your website can build trust. People will know your the business owner before they enter your website.
I was having a conversation with my clients who provide Victoria Car Repair services, Victoria Transmission & Auto Care. Owner Adam Sullivan remarked at how cool he thought that looked.
Todd Mahovlich who is a realtor in Victoria also likes the idea.
How To See Your Results
Google webmaster tools allows you to see what your click through rate is for certain search terms.
Just head to your account and under “search traffic” and “search queries” you can see how many times your website appears for a search term and how many times it’s clicked on.
I hope that these two tips will help your increase your click through rates.
*Update – Google is no longer displaying images beside the search results. More information over at Search Engine Land and their post on authorship is dead.
Todays post will talk about getting your image to show up beside your website. The image to the right is for a new website I just started called Best In Victoria. It’s a way to help my current clients get more backlinks to their website while increasing their exposure.
A nifty idea I think. But enough about that plug!
During a recent search you may have noticed images showing besides website results in Google.
You may have also wondered how to get that image beside your website or blogs search result. Well I will show you how in this post.
Google Rel=Author
This is known as Google’s rel author. It’s a way to tie your Google + profile to your website or blog.
The biggest benefit I see for local businesses is improved click through rates. Seeing a business owners image before they view the website builds trust before they have visited your website.
Mark Traphagen posted on Google Plus a few studies from website owners. No matter what the increase % is, it will boost your click through rate.
I had a potential lead contact me a few months back. I asked him why he clicked on my website. Keep in mind this was before I was ranking high for SEO Victoria BC. He said it was because I had an image beside my website.
Already the time I spent doing this was well worth it.
Setting up Google Rel=Author
1) Setup a Google + Profile.
If you already have a GMail account, you should have a G + account too.
2) While fully filling out your profile, add your website(s) to your “Contributor To” section.
The “Contributor To” area is located under the “About” tab in your Google + profile and down at the bottom in the “Links” section.
Click here to see on my account. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom where “Links” is located. And while you’re at it, add me to your circles!
Click on “add custom link” and add your website and it’s name.
3) Add this link somewhere within your website’s main page and or blog page.
Obviously replace your profile link where mine is listed in blue.
4) Head over to the rich snippets testing tool and enter your website url. You will find out if your G + profile and website has the link above properly displayed. If not, something has gone wrong. If that’s the case, post below in the comment section and let me know.
Hopefully you know understand how to get an image beside your website in Google search results.
I’ve picked up a few SEO Victoria contracts in the last month. Mostly because I am now ranking #1 & #2 for the search term Victoria SEO.
Back in April I decided to change the keywords that I was targeting. So I went after every combination of SEO and Victoria. Considering it only took 7 months to get to the top spot (I was ranking #2 after 4 months), I feel confident that I can help anyone get there in a shorter period of time.
After all, my competition is SEO experts. Your competition is not.
As much as I like to boast about this, I want to give away a few tips to help your website. Although Google states that this will not help your rankings, it will help the search engines learn where your business is located. No matter what, it’s always a good thing to please the search engines!
Much like my 10 part series on the best free internet marketing tools, I’m going to give you a series of blog posts on how to please Google and help your search rankings.
Tell Google You Are a Local Business
One of the first things I do with any of my clients is add structured data to their main domain.
Here is the definition of structured data:
“If Google understands the content on your pages, we can create rich snippets—detailed information intended to help users with specific queries. For example, the snippet for a restaurant might show the average review and price range.”
Even though you can tell Google and the other search engines that you want to rank for city related search terms, it’s still a good idea to add these rich snippets to your website. Once again I do this by adding some coding to their website to tell the search engines that the business is local and more specifically, what industry it is in.
You can test to see if this has already be done by visiting the rich snippets testing tool. Simply enter your main domain name and hit preview.
Your results might be blank. So to see if you’re listed as a local business, you might see something like this test for StudioYDesign:
Google Structured Data Testing Tool
Looking at the above, we’ve notified the search engines that we are a Victoria Furniture Store.
Add This Coding to Your Website
You can add this information to your website coding in two ways.
For the item type, find out if your business and industry is listed at Schema.org. Once you click on that link you will see “local business” and “restaurants” links. I’ll assume you are one or the other. Click on whatever link applies to you and scroll to the bottom where you will see more links like this:
LocalBusiness schema.org
Click on your proper industry if it’s listed. Don’t see your business? I’ll cover what to do in a bit.
If it is, scroll down to the bottom again and you will find more links like the above. For Victoria Transmisson & Auto Care I came to this page. There is obviously a few types of automotive businesses from detailing to dealer to repair. For them I chose repair and simply added the link http://schema.org/AutoRepair to their item type.
Does this all make sense? If you have any questions, send me an email or post them below in the comments section.
The next blog post will go over how to link your Google + profile to your website so your avatar shows up beside your website in the search results like this:
Google + rel author
Be sure to check that out by subscribing to my email updates, either by the popup you will see about now or in the top right corner.
And of course if you found this post useful and like to help others out, please share this for me to your social network of choice.
Back in days of telephone books, we had no way to tell if the business was trustworthy. We just went through a page at a time and made our decision based on very few things.
So there was no first impression outside of a logo and advertisement.
However the internet has given everyone a voice. And with that voice people can say what they want about anyone. Including businesses.
When people find any Google Places business listing, they want to see what others have to say. Especially if they’re a first timer. It’s why Urbanspoon and Trip Advisor are so big.
Reviews are like a comment card. But everyone can see them. It’s not like the old days of comment cards when management were able to discard the bad reviews.
To sum it up, your reviews are your business’s first impression.
More the Merrier
Having just a few reviews is fine. But just about every Places page I see has 0-5 reviews. I believe the more reviews you have, the higher your social proof.
It also means that your business must be pretty remarkable. Especially if your competitors have very little reviews. If people love your business and take the time to write a review, you’re doing something right!
The more reviews you have the easier it is to stand out from the competition.
Getting More Reviews
I started this post off by saying all you have to do is ask. And that’s what I want you to do.
If you’ve been in business for over six months, chances are good you have repeat clients. Those are the ones who would be willing to write a review.
All you have to do is ask them.
There are only two ways we communicate (outside of body language) so here are the two methods you can ask for reviews:
1) After checkout (verbally)
If you have a physical storefront, you probably have a computer with a POS system. When they’re finished their checkout ask them how their visit was and if they have a Google or GMail account. If they enjoyed it (I’m sure they did) kindly ask them to write a review on the spot.
This might be hard for some of you to do. I suggest asking those repeat clients whom you’ve built a good rapport with.
When you do this, make it really easy for them. Have your browser on your Google Places page and be sure you’re logged out. Then all they have to do is click on the “Write a Review” button and they’ll be asked to sign into their Google/Gmail account.
Easy!
Some people might not know their password. But you can ask them to follow step two.
I have embedded a line in my signature that states:
“Reviews are important for local search engine rankings. I was hoping you could write a quick review on my Google Places page.”
When it’s embedded in your signature, you won’t forget to put it in every email.
When doing so, make it really easy. So either screen record how to do that with a voiceover or use my method of taking screenshots for step by step instructions like I did in this post.
As I said be weary of doing this for Yelp. If you have an influx of reviews on Yelp, they filter them.
But Google Places pages don’t have filters. So get out there and ask for them reviews!
This strategy will allow you to rank quickly for targeted keywords. Great news for those who are in a crowded marketplace and have too many competitors’ websites to leap frog in the search rankings.
Continue reading to learn about an SEO strategy that will have profound results for your lead generation.
The Cookie Cutter SEO Strategy
Everyday people are turning to Google. They’re looking for your service.
Most business owners and service providers know that. When they think SEO, they think people are searching for providers like “Los Angeles divorce lawyer” or “Pittsburgh life insurance”.
People are searching those terms. A lot of them too. But the price and time to reach the top search results for those terms (keywords) is high.
Also this strategy is cookie cutter in my opinion. Everyone targets those keywords. And that’s why it’s so competitive.
You should aspire to stand out. Not follow the crowd.
Let me introduce you to the SEO strategy that will yield profound results. I’m 95% certain your competitors aren’t using this strategy.
Answer My Question Google!
Yes people are searching “Los Angeles divorce laywer”. But they are also searching to find out answers to their questions and problems.
What you do next is simply answer that question by writing a blog post about it. The keyword you then target is that question.
So simple. What’s extremely beneficial about this is a qualified lead is landing on your blog post. They get their question answered and their happy.
It doesn’t stop there though. Perhaps this question has other questions tied to it. If you have a ‘recommended posts‘ plugin or links to other blog posts in the blog post they landed on, they can read more of your blog posts.
I read a great post on Marcus Sheridan’s blog last month. The topics were blogging and content. In the comment section I saw a wonderful testimonial for this SEO strategy.
My next example comes from Insurance Agent and internet marketer Ryan Hanley. He did the exact same thing I’ve explained in this post for his companies blog and the results are astounding.
And lastly I want to show my Peerless Golf blog’s Google analytics report for July 2012.
There is a slight problem with this SEO strategy which is known as targeting longtail keywords. But it can be easily overcome.
You’ll be targeting people from all over the world. Here’s a screenshot of the visitors locations.
Not exactly targeted. However I can easily change my settings through my Google Webmasters tools account to target searchers in a specific country.
If you don’t have Webmaster tools setup, do it know by reading this post.
So you’ll receive visitors from all over your home country. But in the example a few images above, Ryan Apsy and his shoulder pain found a Doctor who blogged about shoulder problems in his city. Depending on your average bill of sale or the lifetime value of a client, the ROI on even 5 people doing business with through your blog is massive.
The Ball Is in Your court
I’ll leave you with this. Write down every question you can think of when it comes to your business or service. Then get blogging!
I hope that these two tips will help your increase your click through rates.
“Why didn’t you just ask?”
