Are You Mobile Friendly?

I know - if I’m not banging on about Video I’m ramming mobile down your throats but trust me on this one, it’s important.

I’m not going to bore you with the detail behind Google’s projected separation of mobile from the search index or what AMP means, or how to determine what percentage of your target demographic are looking at your site on a phone.

What I am going to do is encourage you to put your website url into this link:

https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

If you don’t get a big green check mark - well, you should probably do something about that.

Oh - and if you are interested in finding out which which sections of your audience use mobile and developing an appropriate content production, site design and sharing strategy - then, get in touch.

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit:  Gilles Lambert on UnSplash

Citations & Organic Search

Aside from the fact that everything seems to have grown in 2016 (so what exactly decreased in importance since last year?!) it looks like most SEOs are doubling down on the big two:

• Citation / Directory building
• Content Marketing

Citation Building

Appearing in the local three pack in Google’s search results is different to appearing in traditional search.  If you’re a local business & you haven’t taken care of your NAP and citation building - now would be a good time to start.

So - just exactly how do you go about that?

Citation building is a pain in the ass - you need to know the directories to approach - you need the time allocated to cut and paste and follow up and upload and blah blah blah...  Citation building is ideally suited for outsourcing - but where do you spend your money and how much do you spend and why?

Get in touch I have a good solution for you.

Content Marketing

Generating a link back to your website because you produced a brilliant piece of content delivers a huge and long lasting "organic" payoff.

Unlike Citation building, content marketing really shouldn't be outsourced.  Unless you know a writer who has as good a grasp of your business as you do - it's likely that you're going have to do the content production yourself.

What I know to be true is that content marketing takes a long time to return results because it takes you - the business owner - a year or two to not only establish what works for your audience but also to get good at it.

But once you do - the results are awesome!

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit: Citation building rated the most popular link building tactic for Local SEOs - Bright Local

Is Speed Affecting Your Business?

For humans this is what happens when you have too much speed over time - for your website, it’s just the opposite!

I’m not going to go through all the reasons here, but site speed is having an increasingly important impact on your site’s visibility in search.

Go Look...

https://gtmetrix.com/

Click on the link and put your home page URL in the speed test.

How did you do?

Change Required?

Anything above 2.5 seconds and you probably need to do something.

Got questions, concerns?

Get in touch.

Written while listening to: Music to Create Flow to by music2work2

Image credit: The plight of a lady on meth - Don Hankins on Flickr

Here’s How Local Search Works

Aside from the whole “Organic SEO” bit, (which if you don’t fully grok, get in touch ‘cos it’s really important,) here’s the fundamentals behind being visible in local search results.

NAP & Digital Footprint

I’ve written about NAP before, (if you don’t understand what it is and how it affects your visibility, get in touch,) but it’s not just NAP - it’s about visual branding, about imagery, about standardized language and about knowing where and how to apply these things.

Top 10 Directories

Links back to your website are perhaps the biggest factor in online visibility, (see Organic SEO above,) however in the local world there is a category of links called “Citations” - these are links back to your website from online aggregators.

• Google is an aggregator - it aggregates the world
• Facebook is an aggregator - it aggregates friends
• YP.com is an aggregator - it aggregates businesses
• Yelp.com is an aggregator - it aggregates business reviews.
• Citysearch.com is an aggregator - it aggregates local businesses

This is not about having a blog post linking to your site with cleverly devised anchor text - this is a simple listing - your NAP (see above,) a link to your website and occasionally some photos and language.

You need a citation to your business from the top 10 aggregators at the very least - 5 of which are listed above - and citations are generally free.

The Next 50 Aggregators

• IRS.gov is an aggregator - it aggregates Tax information
• NAEA.org is an aggreator - it aggregates Tax Professionals
• CSEA.org is an aggregator - it aggregates Californian Tax Professionals
• TaxMama.com is an aggregator - it aggregates discussions between Tax Professionals

I’m using the word aggregator on purpose but you could substitute it for Directory.  There are thousands of websites that list or curate information where your business could get a citation.

Note that - as with organic links - not all citations are equal.  A link to your website from IRS.gov is going to have exponentially more impact than the flattering blog post on bryanslegoblog.com.

Researching the right sites for your business, creating the citation and following up to make sure it has been implemented correctly, all takes time.

It’s Not Rocket Science

I know that for my clients it’s not that they can’t do it or couldn’t learn how to do it, it’s that they don’t have time.

So the question becomes, who is going to do it?

If you’d like to get a jump on your local visibility get in touch - I have some solutions.

Written while listening to: Sadness Development by music2work2

Image Credit: Citation House, Worcester by Duncan Hull on Flickr

For All Businesses

Remember the Science post?  Well I’ve got some more good stuff for you.

Social Proof

It’s the current buzz word and will be for a while until something new takes over.

What is it?  It’s the presentation of what people are saying about your business on your website.

Cut and Paste Reviews Then…

Well yes - that’s a start and what we’ve done in the past but there are ways you can make those reviews stand out. 

With the arrival of the semantic web you can wrap your reviews in code that tells the search engines what they are and can result in them being pulled into your search results.

This is good.

Do People Review Your Business? 

Yes.  Yes they do.  And while some of them might use Yelp, G+ or Tripadvisor, the vast majority of reviews come in the form of word of mouth or thank you emails.

The micro-formatting doesn’t care where a review comes from - it’s just as easy to wrap a thank you email as it is a Google+ review.  Sure you’ll need to get their permission to publish and at the same time you might want to ask them if they would rate you on a scale of 1 to 5, but so long as it’s real - the search engines don’t care.

What Next

I recently wrote that generating reviews is a must for any local business.  I’d amend that and say generating reviews is a must for any business.

Shout me if you need help with this.

Written while listening to: Introduction to music2work2

Image Credit: 4.5 Stars.SVG on Wikipimedia.org

How To Find Your Audience For $9 A Month

If you are posting to social media at least once a day Narrow.io is a great tool to help you find your audience.

Here’s How It Works

Enter your business’ keyword phrases into Narrow.io, it will then “like” tweets containing those words as well as follow the person who tweeted.  If that person doesn’t follow you back within a couple of days, the tool will unfollow them.

The killer data here is that Narrow.io shows you how many followers you generate from each keyword phrase.

What This Does

Unlike buying 5,000 followers for $5, Narrow.io delivers people who are already talking about your business’ areas of interest. 

When runningon music2work2 during October I grew 330 new Twitter followers but more importantly, visitors to music2work2.com from Twitter jumped to 172 (up from 46 last year) and those visitors stayed on the site for over 5 minutes.

But Here’s The Really Good Bit

After a few weeks of running 20 or so different keyword phrases you begin to identify what words resonate with your real audience - real being defined by people who follow you back.

Not only can you start expanding on those phrases, you can start incorporating those words into your new content, especially in the titles and you can use the words as hashtags when you publish. 

Not Just About Twitter

Narrow.io only runs on Twitter but the information you gain can be applied across your digital strategy.  When you know the words that people are interested in you can be laser focused on what content to write and how to market it.

Not bad for $9 a month.  Let me know if you need a hand setting it up.

Written while listening to: New Release: Breathe 61 Bpm by music2work2

Image Credit: Narrow.io