How to Rank #1 on Google for the World's Most Competitive Keywords | Ranking First Page for "SEO" - Part 2

Want to outrank the competition? Here is an article with 12 local SEO solutions to help you outrank the competition.  This is in two parts.  Today this article will cover solutions 7-12.  Leave a comment below.

12 Local SEO Solutions That Will Help You Outrank the Competition – Part 2

Why should local SEO solutions matter to your business?

Out of all of the ways to market your business, more and more people are focusing on local search. For the first few years of internet marketing, business owners and marketers were all about SEO. Then around 2009, the marketing topic was social media. Today, the big marketing topic is local search.

There are a couple of simple reasons why it’s so important to your business.

According to HubSpot, 76% of people who do a local search pick up the phone and call a business.

44% of clicks go to the top search result. The top three results get on average 75% of all of the clicks.

Are you starting to understand how improving your local search results can mean more money in your pocket?

Would you like to know how you can make that happen?

Read on for 12 local SEO solutions you can use to improve your search rankings.

What’s the Competition Doing?

Knowing how and where your competition ranks in search results can help you understand where your potential customers may be going.

You’ll also quickly learn what keywords your competition may be trying to rank for.

Here’s what to pay attention to when you’re doing competitive research:

·         Your top 5-10 competitors

·         Each competitor’s GoogleMyBusiness Listing. Pay attention to the text and images and look for keywords and locations they might be trying to rank for.

·         Customer reviews – how many and are the reviews positive or negative.

You can either do this on your own or use local SEO solutions like Crunchbase or SEM Rush.

NAP & Structured Data Markup

We can’t talk about your website without a little geek-speak.

NAP is simply your name, address, and phone number. This cannot be stressed enough to make sure that these fields are accurate and consistent throughout your website and directory listings.

Structured markup, also called Schema markup, is code that you have on your website that tells search engines how your site should appear in search results.

This makes your search results more user-friendly.

This resource from Kissmetrics tells you step-by-step how you can add structured markup data to your website.

Customer Reviews Matter

Not only can customer reviews influence rankings, they can also influence a customer’s decision to buy. Over 62% of buyers consider online reviews to be important or very important when finding a local business.

You can ask your customers to leave reviews on Google and Facebook. Also, search for existing reviews and respond to them. You’ll show that you care about your business and your customers.

Let’s say you were looking up a pest control service in Concord, North Carolina. So you search for pest control service reviews near concord nc.

You find a company that you may not be familiar with, but you decide to call based on a number of positive reviews.

Rank Images and Videos

One overlooked aspect of local search is to try to rank videos and images for keywords. This is probably one of the easiest local SEO solutions.

·         A few easy tips to rank images already on your website are:

·         Make sure the image is related to the webpage.

·         The image file name should be changed from IMG_4323425 to something related to the keyword.

·         The higher the image is on your page, the better chance it has to rank.

·         Fill in the alt-text and description of the image. Preferably with your keywords, but don’t keyword stuff.

This is one way to help you rank in local search results that your competition probably isn’t doing.

Get Listed

Online directories are easy to miss as far as local SEO solutions go. You can help your local search results by making sure your business is listed in the main online search directories; such as Yelp, Citysearch, and MerchantCircle and YP.com.

Does that mean that you should submit your website to every directory? Absolutely not. Remember the earlier discussion regarding backlinks: Quantity does not mean quality.

When you list your site, pick the main directories above and include BingPlaces.

If you’re a member of business organization or chamber of commerce, take advantage of your membership and make sure you’re listed in their business directory.

It’s very important to make sure that your listings are accurate and consistent. If you have listings all over the place with old addresses or phone numbers, you’re diluting the potential impact of your search results.

Don’t Discount Social Media

Social media influencers tend to agree that social media remains one of the top local SEO solutions.

It’s still debatable whether social media has a direct impact on search results, but social media does help in other ways.

Social media networks are great for backlinks. They also have the potential to create conversation around your company. This sends social signals to Google’s algorithm.

The more positive the social signal, the more likely you’ll rank higher.

Finding Local SEO Solutions Can Be Easy

As you can see, there are at least a dozen ways you can improve your local search results. If you make these suggested changes, you should start to see your search results improve.

You might be ready to hand some of those tasks off to someone else.

Source: by Dale Harris

https://www.articlecity.com/blog/12-local-seo-solutions-will-help-outrank-competition/

How to Rank #1 on Google for the World's Most Competitive Keywords | Ranking First Page for "SEO" - Part 1

Want to outrank the competition? Here is an article with 12 local SEO solutions to help you outrank the competition.  This is in two parts.  Today this article will cover solutions 1-6.  Come back tomorrow for solutions 7-12.  Leave a comment below.

12 Local SEO Solutions That Will Help You Outrank the Competition – Part 1

Why should local SEO solutions matter to your business?

Out of all of the ways to market your business, more and more people are focusing on local search. For the first few years of internet marketing, business owners and marketers were all about SEO. Then around 2009, the marketing topic was social media. Today, the big marketing topic is local search.

There are a couple of simple reasons why it’s so important to your business.

According to HubSpot, 76% of people who do a local search pick up the phone and call a business.

44% of clicks go to the top search result. The top three results get on average 75% of all of the clicks.

Are you starting to understand how improving your local search results can mean more money in your pocket?

Would you like to know how you can make that happen?

Read on for 12 local SEO solutions you can use to improve your search rankings.

How Does Your Site Look in Searches Now?

If you have a goal to improve how your website appears in local search results, it helps to know how your site currently appears. This will help you track your progress as your search results change.

The trick here is to understand that people in different locations will have different search results. Even if they’re in the same town or the same room.

Google’s search results can vary depending on the device you use, your search history, your Google account and your IP address or location.

With so many variables, how can you get an accurate picture of how your website appears?

One workaround is to use a local search emulator. This will help you figure out how you appear according to location. A search emulator will allow you to change your location, so you can see how your site appears throughout your service area.

Know How Your Audience Will Look for You

Do you know how your customer thinks? In other words, how will your customer search for you?

There are a number of questions you should ask yourself to answer this question.

·         Is your customer at home or at work?

·         Are they on a mobile device or on a desktop computer?

·         Are they searching in the middle of the afternoon or late at night?

·         What is the problem they want help with?

·         What are 15-20 search terms/phrases they would use in Google to find you?

Answering these questions will give you a better understanding as to what keywords you should try to rank higher for.

You should also consider positioning yourself for long-tail keyword searches vs. broader searches.

Think of it as the difference between searching for “fitness centers” and “fitness centers with a pool.” Fitness centers will have much greater competition, while fitness centers with a pool serve a genuine interest and will have less competition.

A Three-Pack Is Not Related to Beer

Currently, when you search for local businesses, you’ll see the top 3 search results. It used to be 7. That’s why improving your ranking is more important than ever.

Local SEO solutions such as filling out your MyBusiness listing can improve results.

The process to claim your listing is straightforward. Click on the above link and fill out your information. There is a verification process. Google will send a postcard with a PIN number to your address. It does need to be a physical address.

Once that part is complete, go into your account and fill out your profile. Make sure your description gives people a reason to contact you and be as specific as you can. Fill out your hours accurately, upload a few images and your company logo.

Content, Content, Content!

While these local SEO solutions are important, it’s also important to remember that as crucial as it is to get people to visit your website, they need a reason to stay there. You can do this by creating value for your site visitors.

The best way to create value is by creating content that will make people return to your site over and over again. That’s how you get people to like and trust you.

The more relevant content you have the better. A recent study by Traffic Generation Caf? showed that websites that have 21-54 posts get 30% more traffic.

There are case studies of businesses who have reported using content marketing to increase revenue by a whopping 438%

Improve Internal Links on Your Site

Linking your website’s internal links together helps customers use your website, and add link juice between pages.

Link juice is a way to let search engines know which pages on your site are the most important.

One word of caution: When adding internal links, it may be tempting to add a bunch of internal links on all of your web pages. Don’t do it!

By having a few internal links on each page, you maintain the quality of your links.

Get Quality Backlinks

Out of all of the local SEO solutions, one of the most talked about today is backlinks. A backlink is simply another website that links to your website.

The trick to making backlinks work for local search is that you have to get QUALITY links.

A shotgun approach to backlinks no longer works.

We go over a couple of ways (directories and Google’s My Business listings) to get started throughout this article.

You can also write guest articles for industry and local publications to get quality backlinks to your website.

Source: by Dale Harris

https://www.articlecity.com/blog/12-local-seo-solutions-will-help-outrank-competition/

Want to know what pay per click is and how your business can benefit from it? This article will answer those questions.  Read on and let me know what you think.

What Is Pay Per Click and How Can You Benefit From It?

Chances are you’ve heard the term tossed about in business conversations, but what is pay per click, really?

You’re not alone in wondering, and if you’re a business owner or someone considering a startup, it’s an important term to know. After all, pay per clicks can save you cash, increase your brand awareness and more.

So what are you waiting for? Learn the basics of PPC here as well as why you should consider it for your company.

What Is Pay Per Click?

Pay per click marketing, or PPC, is an advertising system used by almost half of businesses. Pay per click is utilized mostly in search engines, although it is also used in other virtual locations:

·         Banner advertising

·         Shopping engines

·         Directories

It is sometimes referred to as paid search.

Google, Yahoo! and MSN Bing are common companies offering PPC services, but more businesses have entered the market. And while owners can attempt to create ad campaigns alone, reports indicate they’re liable to waste at least 30% of their advertising budget.

According to Quirk eMarketing, “PPC advertising revolutionized the online advertising industry, and today, advertising generates 97 percent of Google’s revenue.”

Even with numbers like these, PPC investment growth in small businesses is modest. In 2018, there has only been a 5% growth thus far, more than halving the amount experts suspected would occur.

How Does PPC Work?

The process behind PPC advertising is straightforward. An entity pays a company to post ads and banners marketing their products or services. Every time an individual clicks on the ad, the entity is charged for it.

Once the funds supplied to the marketing company are depleted, the ads disappear until funds are provided. Businesses can choose to set up monthly plans to avoid halting their campaign or make one-time payments. You can find more info on plans and pricing here.

It’s that simple.

But where will your ad show up in a search? This ranking is based on the payer’s maximum bid and the ad’s relevance to the advertisement, so it depends.

What Are the Benefits?

As you probably suspect, there are a number of benefits from such a program.

You Get What You Pay For

When investing in a PPC campaign, companies are literally paying for what they get. Every worthwhile click means more visitors to the business’s webpage.

That means you’re paying only for what works.

Receptivity

Pay per click campaigns target consumers who are actively searching for your service or product. Consequently, they are receptive to the ad that pops onto their screen.

In fact, studies find that 90% of consumers select their product from the first page that results from their search while 80% select the product or services within the first four pages.

Audience Base

PPC companies research consumers to find the perfect search criteria in which your ad should appear. That means you have the ability to reach hundreds and thousands more consumers, broadening your customer base.

If you wow them with your product or business, they’re likely to come back.

Brand Identity

In utilizing search terms and other factors to reach as many people as possible, PPC campaigns encourage brand identity. More consumers see your logo or read your company name, and it is associated with whatever they searched for.

As a result, your company’s brand receives a boost.

Efficiency

You might be wondering how quickly you should expect results. The answer is “very quickly.” Dr. Raj Murthy writes, “In most cases, you should see results from your campaign in under a day, most likely in an hour–or the time it takes to bake an apple pie.”

Verifiable Results

One of the best things about PPC marketing is that it is recordable. You can measure everything: the costs, clicks, visits and more. From this data, it’s simple to analyze if your costs are truly worth it.

Recycle Data

The data you have can be recycled elsewhere. Companies use it to better reach their target audiences or for other marketing campaigns. It’s especially useful for SEO, as many of the components necessary for successful pay per click marketing transfer to successful SEO ranking.

Considerations

Investing your money is always something that should be considered carefully. Even with PPC campaigns, there are risks involved.

Research Companies

Firstly, it’s important to verify the credentials and reputation of the company you work with. In 2014, marketers lost over $11 billion in advertising because of click fraud.

In fraudulent cases, an individual repetitively clicks on a business’s ad so the campaign company receives payments. As a result of the prominence of click fraud, researchers are investigating various methods to avoid future issues.

Consider SEO Costs

Another topic to consider is SEO implementation. Because much of the same information is used for PPC campaigns as SEO integration, it follows logically that companies should invest in their ranking at the same time. In fact, 86% of small companies with PPC campaigns also invest in SEO for this reason.

It may mean more money is funnelled into advertising, but it pays off very quickly and is an effective duo.

Be Careful About Broad Match

Finally, companies may offer a broad match service, a keyword matching option. As the name suggests, this method has your advertisement appear whenever a broad range of keywords (that are still somewhat related to your product or service) are typed into a search engine.

For Google AdWords, this is the default setting. While it increases the chances of your business popping up in a search, be leery. Many investors find this to be a waste of money, claiming they get better results from specific keyword matches.

It’s a lot easier to start with a shorter list of keywords, track your progress, add some more and compare the changes.

Find Other Helpful Tidbits

Having an answer for “What is pay per click?” in the business world is akin to answering “What organ supplies blood to the body?” in medicine. Marketing, especially pay per click, is an easy way to up your game and get noticed.

To help you along your PPC journey, we’ve compiled an easy step-by-step guide on how to set up a Google AdWords campaign. Check it out here! With our help, you’ll have your account set up and those clicks registering in no time.

Source: by Dale Harris

https://www.articlecity.com/blog/what-is-pay-per-click-and-how-can-you-benefit-from-it/

How To Write The Best Captions For Your Social Media Posts

Hey there! Social Media is a central part of your marketing strategy, right? Here is an article about how to create great writing for Social Media Marketing Posts.  Let me know what you think.

How to Create Great Writing for Social Media Marketing Posts

Social media marketing is more important than ever. Chances are that social media is where your audience is — around 56% of adults use more than one social media platform. That number climbs when you only look at adults ages 18-34.

Despite this, some businesses still don’t put a lot of thought into how they create posts for social media. Posting without a strategy is a good way to leave money on the table and miss out on potential business.

Check out these tips on writing for social media to make sure that your business is up to speed.

Understand Your Audience

Who are you trying to reach, anyway?

Deciding who you’re “talking to” is one of the most important parts of writing for social media. You can determine this by looking at your current customers or what problems your products or services solve.

Figuring out your audience will help you decide what kind of voice and tone you should use in your posts. If you don’t have time to do this, companies like Reliant Social can help you do the research.

Keep Your Voice Consistent

Once you’ve decided on your voice, stay consistent! You don’t want to adopt a professional tone one week and then switch to a conversational one the next.

That gets confusing to your audience and makes your brand inconsistent.

Even though your social media account represents a business, people still expect it to have some kind of personality. Remembering this will help you create better content.

Use Active Voice

Whatever tone you choose to use, you should always use active voice instead of passive voice. You might need to think way back to English class for this one.

This is a basic grammar rule. Passive voice doesn’t grab the attention of your audience. Active voice, on the other hand, helps to give off a confident and decisive tone.

Look at the difference between these two sentences:

1.    Ten thousand units were sold by our company this year.

2.    Our company sold ten thousand units this year.

The second sentence is the active voice you should aim for.

Put Your Audience First

It can be tempting to only talk about your business on social media. After all, that’s the point of social media marketing, right?

Not quite. If you only talk about your business online, you’re setting yourself up to fail. You need to center your audience in each post you make.

What’s in it for them? How does your business benefit the people scrolling through your social media? These are the questions your audience is probably asking.

Make sure that your posts answer them.

Learn More About Writing For Social Media

These are just a few of our favorite tips for writing for social media. If you keep this advice in mind, you’ll create a strategy that puts your audience first and sees higher engagement rates.

Source: by Dale Harris

https://www.articlecity.com/blog/how-to-create-great-writing-for-social-media-marketing-posts/

Killer Writing Tips for Whipping Up Effective Facebook Ads

What is the most effective way of advertising on Facebook? Take a look at this article for some great tips and let me know how useful you find it.  Leave a comment below.

Killer Writing Tips for Whipping Up Effective Facebook Ads

Are you seeking more effective ways to advertise on Facebook?

According to Facebook, there are approximately one billion users across the world. This statistic alone makes the social media platform a unique place to reach a diverse market.

To make the most of the wide audience for your ads, you need to make sure you are creating messages that resonate with your audience in a meaningful way. This means writing your copy to reach your target market and leaving a lasting impression.

But how can you do it?!

Read on to learn killer writing tips for whipping up effective Facebook ads!

Match Words to Content

The best Facebook ads use a written message to complement other content. This content can be things like a high-quality image or short video.

Your written message can complement a picture or video by being consistent with what a Facebook user is viewing. For example, you can use the written word to emphasize an important point in a video.

This effective advertising tool can help a user identify your brand in a more positive way.

Create Short Messages

Did you know that the average internet user’s attention span is a short one?

According to a Microsoft survey, the average human attention span is just eight seconds! That’s one second less than a goldfish! The speed of the internet in our digital world is thought to be one reason behind this.

Successful Facebook ads leverage the strength of a clever but short message for users. Keeping messages short can be a challenge. But take time to think about how to cut down your word county and be creative.

If your messages are too long, you risk that a Facebook user will keep scrolling.

Use a Call-To-Action

You can have a strong message but if you do not have an effective call-to-action (CTA) you may lose out on a potential conversion for your website.

A CTA is a lot like it sounds – a simple action item for a reader that gives them an incentive to read your content to learn more about your product or service.

Your CTA can be something like, “Join our email list today” or “Shop our website now”. These are simple requests that can entice a reader after he or she reads/views your Facebook ad.

Wrapping Up: Create Effective Facebook Ads

The most effective Facebook ads are ones that combine all these characteristics in a way that appeals to your target.

Before you release an ad campaign on Facebook, you should take the time to evaluate your target and what matters to them. Is there any particular topic or trend that is emerging in the industry you are in?

By taking time on the front end of your ad campaign to learn more about your audience, it can help you develop messages that will be a hit with your audience.

Source: By Dale Harris

https://www.articlecity.com/blog/killer-writing-tips-for-whipping-up-effective-facebook-ads/