Why You Need to Optimize Your Google My Business Page

One of the most important things you can do to rank well in local SEO is to optimize your Google My Business page. Chances are high that if you haven’t done this yet, a Google representative has been hounding you with robocalls to set up your Google My Business page.

Local SEO is so significant that almost half of all Google searches are local, and this will become even more significant in 2018.

When it comes to local searches, the information Google uses to rank your website — and that  it displays to people in local results — comes mostly from your Google My Business page, not from your website. You can set up your Google My Business page directly with Google, but it’s important that you verify your listing so that nobody else is able to edit your page in the future.

Your Google My Business page must include:

  • a proper and unique description of your business,
  • the correct business category
  • local phone number and address that is consistent elsewhere online
  • relevant photos of your business,
  • plenty of 5-star reviews

Google gives a lot of weight to the reviews. But as you may be aware, reviews aren’t always easy to get. Even a business with loyal and satisfied customers must work hard to get them.

The key is to ask often and make it as easy as possible for happy customers to log in to the sites that matter and leave a review for you, such as on Google My Business listings and Facebook. You can always repurpose these reviews in other areas such as in email newsletters or on your website. One site that makes this particularly easy is Whitespark. Check out their Google My Business Review Link Generator.

If you run a local business, it’s important to make the steps above a priority. Whenever a review is left about your business, positive or negative, it’s important to respond to it. It shows others reading the reviews that you care what your customers think and that you are willing to dedicate time to their own unique experiences and needs.

If you set up a Google My Business page and make a concerted effort to build your reviews, your local search engine rankings will improve and help you compete with your local competition.

 

Why Every Business Needs A Lead Magnet

If you want to generate leads online your business must have a lead magnet. A lead magnet is essentially a bribe to nudge your target audience into your marketing or sales funnel. You ‘bribe’ a prospect with with a specific piece of value in exchange for their contact information that you can use to create a relationship that hopefully eventually leads to a sale.

lead magnet (a.k.a. “opt-in bribe”) is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address, or other contact information. – Optinmonster.com

Even if they like you, people aren’t going to part with their email address unless you can give them something special in exchange.

As an example of the lead magnet in action, suppose you have a blog post titled the top 10 ways you can improve your customer service. At the end of the post, you ask readers to join your email list for “updates”.

Or, suppose you ask readers to join your email list and get a free, downloadable PDF case study, detailing a real-life example of one business that used these 10 strategies to improve their customer service.

The second example is a much more powerful lead magnet because the offer is clear and specific.

The value offer of lead magnets are often pieces such as:

  • Case studies
  • e-books
  • White papers
  • Exclusive videos

However lead magnets can also be:

  • Free shipping
  • Free trials
  • Discounts
  • Tickets to an event
  • Tools

Make Your Lead Magnet Irresistible

Super Specific – the lead magnet should not be general. The more specific you are about the benefit of the lead magnet, the better job it will do in terms of generating leads.

Solves a Real Problem – the lead magnet must solve a real world problem. If it doesn’t help your prospective client, it’s not a good lead magnet.

Easy Win – the lead magnet should be quick, simple, and straight-forward and allow your prospect to achieve an easy win.

Quick Read – you don’t want to overwhelm your prospect. Something quick and easy to read and consume is best. PDF lists work really well.

High Value – this is really important. The lead magnet must actually deliver high value. To make it irresistible, it has to appear like a really good deal.

Instant Gratification – people love instant gratification. Create a lead magnet they can see and use immediately.

Demonstrates Credibility/Value – the lead magnet should reinforce what you do.

Why You Should Add a Promo Video to Your Small Business Website

Did you know that 45% of businesses use promo videos on their home page?

Unlike other video content you may use on your website, promo videos give you a chance to introduce yourself and explain what you do.

You can use promo videos on your small business home page, services page, or a product landing page to promote:

  • your products through demonstrations, 360 videos, etc.
  • your company by educating visitors on your business history, your organization’s focus on philanthropy, strong leadership, or some other meaningful item worth highlighting.
  • how a service works to improve the lives of others – this would work well for a non-profit organization.
  • how a product works – what it does and why someone should buy it.

Promotional videos have powerful benefits for business.

Humanize Your Brand

Have you ever noticed how much more effective a marketing pitch is if it comes from a neighbor or a friend or a human being who’s making a friendly pitch? Promotional videos with a strong human element help visitors connect to your brand.

AirBnB does this extremely well. Take a look at their What is Airbnb video below.

Beat Your Competition

If your competitors don’t yet have a promotional video, beat them to the punch. Your promotional video will show your visitors that you, your product, or your process is more transparent than that of your competitors. And when they put up their promotional video, they might appear to just be copycats.

Keep Traffic On Your Website / Help Visitors Stay Longer

Promotional videos help visitors interact with your website in a new and sometimes more intimate manner. Many visitors prefer watching a video over reading content, so a promotional video can also help you sell your products.

Speak Their Language

For many service-based businesses, it can be difficult to explain to prospective customers what you do or why they may need your service. This is even more true for tech companies or companies selling complicated products. A promotional video with a layman speaking can serve to cut through technical jargon.

Start A Conversation

If you have a brand new website or business, a promo video can initiate the conversation or experience a prospective customer may have with a brand.

Give Visitors Something To Share

People love sharing videos. 92% of people who watch videos on their phones share them with others. As long as the videos are configured so that they are responsive and work on mobile devices, they’ll basically have no excuse to not share yours.

This Old Spice video has 54,579,655 views on YouTube:

Increase Search Visibility

If you have great content, people will spend more time on your website. The more time that people spend on your website, the bigger reward Google will have for you in terms of search visibility.

How to Make a Great Promo Video

There are certain trends and phenomena that great promo videos have in common. These are:

  • Great promo videos are short. Usually less than 60 seconds in length.
  • Great promo videos are fun and engaging.
  • Great promo videos are located on relevant pages, landing pages, product pages, and always at the top of the page.
  • Great promo videos always have a call to action.
  • Great promo videos are always high quality. They don’t have to be high budget but they don’t have spelling errors or rough cuts.

It’s very important to only use high quality videos. You would never throw content on your website that’s half completed or full of errors. You also wouldn’t leave broken links on your site or use tiny images or text that visitors can’t see or read. A promotional video needs to blend in seamlessly with the rest of the content on your site and a low quality production could compromise that.

Link Building: Simple Steps to Increase Your Search Traffic

If you’re serious about increasing search engine traffic, you need to focus your efforts on link building. And you must be very systematic when it comes to how you create and promote your content. While it’s true that content is king, you can waste a lot of time and energy if you don’t have a clear content marketing and link building strategy.

Why are links so important?

To answer this, you have to go back in time to days of the internet before Google. Search engines like Yahoo! and Alta Vista were the market leaders. Their search results were ranked 100% based on a web page’s content.

Google’s PageRank Algorithm completely changed the game. Instead of simply analyzing page content, Google looked at the number of links to a page. Now, nearly 20 years later, links are still the best way to determine the quality of a page. Their algorithm keeps getting more complicated, focusing on link quality and not just quantity, but links and link building are still at the crux of search traffic.

If links increase search traffic to my website, how do I get more links?

  • Step 1: Find content worth linking to
  • Step 2: Create new content that’s even better
  • Step 3: Reach out to website owners that have already linked to similar content

Step 1: Find something worth linking to

Your goal is to create a high value page that you can use for links. Keep in mind that this needs to be real, informative, helpful content. Content so useful that people can’t help but link to it. The way you do this is to find content that has already generated a ton of links.

Step 2: Create new content that’s even better

The next step is to take what’s there and create new content that’s far better than the original.

Make it longer

Sometimes if you publish a blog post that’s simply longer or includes more suggestions that will be a difference maker. If you find a link magnet – the article that’s worth linking to – with a title like “50 Ways to Reorganize Your Kitchen”, publish a list of 150 ways.

More Current

Maybe you found a great article that is a link magnet but the content is old and out of date. That’s a great opportunity for you to come along and make it more current.

Snazzier Design

A visually stunning piece of content can generate many more links and social shares than similar content on an ugly page or site.

More Thorough

If you’re updating a list post, go deeper. Most list posts are just a dull list of bland bullet points without any deeper content that people can actually use. If you see a list post like that you can easily add a brief description and a reference that is a link to another site.

Step 3: Get your word out and reach the right people

Step 3 is the hardest part of the link-building process since it involves asking people for links. Instead of emailing random people, you need to find site owners that have already linked to similar content. The theory is that those people are likely more inclined to link to you if they’ve already linked out to another site.

So how do you do this?

  1. Use an SEO backlinks tool like (ahrefs.com, majestic seo, or Open Site Explorer) and export all of the links pointing to your competitor’s content into a spreadsheet.
  2. Omit referring web pages that don’t make sense to contact. Examples of these are forums, article directories, etc.
  3. Email all of them using the following type of template:

Hi [Name],

I was searching for some articles about [your topic] today and I came across this page: [url].

I noticed that you linked to one of my favorite articles – [title of article].

Just wanted to let you know that I created a similar one. It’s like [name of their article], but more thorough and current: [URL].

Might be worth a mention on your page.

Keep up the awesome work!

Best,

[your name]

Obviously you should tweak this template for every person you send this to.

Remember that the goal here is building quality links. You should aim to get a 10% success rate. Hopefully those links that you do get will increase your organic search traffic.

 

The Equifax Data Breach: What To Do Now

News broke this week of yet another major data breach. Equifax, one of the main credit reporting companies, was hacked back in July and sensitive personal information for more than 143 million Americans was exposed. If a credit report has ever been run for you, chances are strong that your data has been compromised in this hack. The three big credit agencies have a very high duty to keep customer information safe, and they failed outright.

According to Equifax the data breach lasted from mid-May through July. Hackers accessed names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. They also stole credit card numbers for about 209,000 people and dispute documents with personal identifying information for about 182,000 people.

Equifax has set up a website so that people can check and see if they have been hacked. I strongly urge against this. Equifax’s website is filled with security holes. Their executives reportedly sold Equifax stock in the five weeks between the discovery of this data breach and notifying anyone about it.  Equifax is also pushing their own credit monitoring service. Why trust someone twice with your valuable information? This is like asking the guy who robs you at gunpoint to watch your kids for you. 

Here’s what the FTC suggests you should do to protect yourself after a data breach:

  • Check your credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — for free — by visiting annualcreditreport.com. Accounts or activity that you don’t recognize could indicate identity theft. Visit IdentityTheft.gov to find out what to do.
  • Consider placing a credit freeze on your files. A credit freeze makes it harder for someone to open a new account in your name. Keep in mind that a credit freeze won’t prevent a thief from making charges to your existing accounts.
  • Monitor your existing credit card and bank accounts closely for charges you don’t recognize.
  • If you decide against a credit freeze, consider placing a fraud alert on your files. A fraud alert warns creditors that you may be an identity theft victim and that they should verify that anyone seeking credit in your name really is you.
  • File your taxes early — as soon as you have the tax information you need, before a scammer can. Tax identity theft happens when someone uses your Social Security number to get a tax refund or a job. Respond right away to letters from the IRS.