Discover one of the simplest and most affordable SEO services available now: Google local optimization with Local Business Cards

In 2019, about 50% of the 67,000 search queries made on Google Search are local searches.

Today, Google offers a fleet of help and often free tools under their Google My Business suite of strategies.

So, first, make sure your business is represented with its own Google My Business page.

Once that’s established, let’s look at other features Google offers you, a s a local entity to stand out.

How can your business tap into this user base, attract, and convert them into raving, paying customers to grow your business? And what does Google local optimization, local business cards, or Google My Business have to do with anything?

Let’s do a little experiment.

Open a new tab in your browser. Type “green tea in Houston” in the search box. What do you see in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs)?

Anything like this?

Google My Business in action on top of search results

Notice the first result is a spice store. If you are looking for coffee and baked goods, you’d choose the second or third ones, right?

So, let’s pick Palm & Boy Coffee and Acai. Click on the name once.

This comes up:

Inside Google My Business—the top Google local business card

Now, in the middle column, can you spot the following by scrolling down?

Google My Business reviews

And then this:

The last of the local business cards in a GMB listing

If you search for a business online, like 60% of consumers did in 2018, you may see this too:

Google knowledge panel directly in search results

The above series of screen shots demonstrate the cluster of features that make up Local Business Cards. Google calls all of it Google Posts and is yet another form of affordable SEO.

What is a Local Business Card?

A Google Business Card is a search result feature that displays a host of critical information about a local business.

The information typically displays on the right-hand side of search results. It is essentially what a search engine user needs to know about your business such as:

• Your location on Google Maps, and directions
• Official business website link
• Type of business
• Star rating
• Contacts and address
• Open hours
• Relevant images

Even more critical, a local business card will help persuade (or deter) a potential customer through Google Reviews, busiest hours, and the competition’s appeal (as highlighted under “People also search for” section).

Instead of clamoring for overwhelming and expensive SEO techniques right out the gate, you can start by claiming your GMB listing. Then learn how to optimize your Google My Business Account.

How to optimize your local business cards?

Here’s how to improve and take advantage of Google Local Business Cards in the simplest, most actionable way so you can start immediately.

1. Claim your GMB listing

Getting on GMB will almost instantly have your business feature in Local Finder, Local Pack, and Google Maps. You can link the listing to your business website.

You will also show you are a real business, in a specific location, and are open for business to boost your local and affordable SEO service.

1. Fill all the information in

From your business name to type of business to upcoming events/promotions, to open hours, give searchers the information they need to get to you

1. Use your niche keywords in your 300-word description.

Google only shows the first 100 characters on first glance so make those count.

Amplify what you offer without copy-pasting your menu (if you are an eatery). For example, highlight attributes such as free WI-FI, a vegan diet, and home delivery.

Don’t overuse keywords, too.

1. Activate most relevant CTA

You’ll have several calls-to-action prompts to choose from such as read more, get, and buy. Use one that suits precisely what you want searchers to do after seeing the listing.

2. Enable and solicit Google reviews.

And regularly respond to reviews whether positive or negative to show potential customers you care. Remember

Remember over 85% of people trust online reviews more than the would the word of a friend or a personal recommendation.

3. Activate Click-to-Message

The feature allows consumers to easily text your business so you can connect more and convert them to buyers.

4. Verify your GMB Listing

Log in to your GMB account. Select the business to verify. Choose verification method. Follow the prompts.

5. Add striking images

Use sharp, 750 by 750 images or 30-seconds video on your listing to give a visual highlight of exactly what you offer. Show out your exterior, interior, team, the team at work. Ensure they accentuate the mood you want customers to know you for.

6. Use Posts

Regularly post upcoming events such as promotions, karaoke, team building, and competitions to keep your listing fresh and buzzy. Each post lasts up to just 10 days.

With just these nine local business card optimization tips, you can start seeing increased exposure online whether you are big or small business with a limited SEO marketing budget. Try it and see. Will you?

 

A lot of business owners think that having a crawl budget is beyond their means. Rather, it’s much more common for anyone with an online shop to simply think that there isn’t one at all. However, if your business is expanding, that means your site is also growing. You’ll be adding more products, so your inventory grows. That means more product pages and more pages to manage. You’ll need to start thinking about setting aside that budget, then, sooner rather than later.

What is a crawl budget?

 

This refers to the resources that Google puts into crawling your pages. A crawl budget, some say, is about equal to the number of pages that are crawled every day. But that’s not really what happens. Some pages drain Google’s resources much more than others. That’s why the number of crawled pages isn’t the same every day. However, the budget remains constant. Google generally takes in four things when it allocates its crawl budget: the popularity of the site, how many pages you have, the update rate, and how well your site handles crawling.

 

Why does the budget matter?

 

The budget affects how quickly your pages show up on the SERPs. When there’s a mismatch, though, between the crawl budget and the update rate of your site, though, that’s a problem. It could lead to delays between the moment you make or update a page and the moment it pops up in the SERPs. Another likely problem is when Google doesn’t allocate enough crawl budget to your site. That means it doesn’t see your site as important. In that case, what you can do is improve the quality of your content. To pull that off, get help from an organic SEO company. With a team of experts to help you, you should be publishing better content in no time. That will help you ranking score.

 

Should you worry about the crawl budget?

 

Not always. It only becomes a problem when you run a large or medium-size website. And also, if your update rate is more than once a day or once a week. If that’s the case, you might need to start worrying about the crawl budget for your site. After all, it could be the culprit behind the delay in your permanent index. In addition, it could also be an issue if you are launching a new site or redesigning an old one. With so many changes happening all at once, you’ll likely end up with a crawling lag. However, this issue usually fixes itself sooner or later.

 

How do you make the most out of the budget?

 

You’ll need to fix your pages. This is where pros come in. Let them look over everything and pinpoint the problems with your site. They’ll start from your sitemap, SEO plugins, and more. They’ll know what to fix and replace, to prevent the crawling delay. With digital marketing experts to help you, you can also maintain your pages with no crawling lags in the future.

The success of e-commerce sites has led to a surge in Shopify sites. If you’ve tried your luck at this, too, then you might be wondering how to improve your site. What can you do to get Google to boost your SERPs ranking? How do you increase the visibility of your brand and business? Pick up expert tips on how to make the most out of your store on Shopify.

Understand the Platform

 

The first thing you need to do is learn as much as you can about Shopify. How does marketing work on this channel? You also need to beef up on your understanding of search engine optimization or SEO. But if you already have your hands full running the business, then you might not have enough time to deal with your site. It would be best to pay for the services of an organic SEO company. With a team of pros to guide you, you’ll know what steps to take.

 

Fix the Structure of the Shop

 

The way you organize your content is crucial to the success of your shop. If the user experience isn’t the best, that could be a contributing factor to why your traffic is poor. The key is to make it easier for your customers to find the products they need. If your store has little to no order, then that’s probably compromising your revenue and profit. Hire a digital marketing team that knows how to fix the structure of your shop. That way, your customers won’t have to end up lost in a labyrinth.

 

Eliminate Frustrating Elements

 

What are you doing to keep your customers at your shop longer? Seasoned digital marketers know how to identify the frustrating issues with your site. For instance, do you have super-slow loading times? That irritates customers to no end and also one of the reasons why people often leave a shop. Also, take a look at your visuals. Are there too many images? Does the site look cluttered? Is the design streamlined or not? You’ll want to work together with pros to get rid of anything that causes your customers undue frustration. With those problems gone, then they’ll stay longer at your site. The longer they stick around, the more chances that they’ll buy your products.

 

Offer Collections

 

Another way to make it easier and faster for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for is to offer Shopify collections. These collections group products together. For instance, you may have sleepwear, sportswear, jeans, skirts, and more. By putting all the similar products together, you cut down on the amount of time it takes for your customers to find them. That makes for a faster and more convenient shopping experience. By offering that kind of shopping experience, customers will be more than happy to shop at your place again.

 

Research Target Keywords

 

Make the most out of your pages by using targeted keywords. Hire digital marketers to help you compile a list of these. That way, you can optimize your pages for search much better.

The core web vitals refer to factors that Google looks at when checking the overall user experience of a page. There are three you need to know. The first is the largest contentful paint followed by the first input delay and then ending with the cumulative layout shift. You need to make sure these are a huge part of your pages. If you want your ranking to improve on the SERPs, you need to pay attention to all three. These are also referred to as loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

Why do they matter?

 

The Core Web Vitals tell you exactly what sort of page Google will look when it goes over your shop or site. It will affect your resulting page experience score. By knowing these factors, you can tell which areas of your pages need considerable work. You can also use these factors as a basis for why some sites rank high. With the information, you can figure out what pages you’ll need to prioritize when you set out to overhaul or fix your site. If you’re not quite certain how to proceed, it’s best to hire the services of an organic SEO company. Pros will know how to measure your Core Web Vitals. The data they’ll get from those results will be beneficial to your business.

 

How does that data help?

 

With pros to check out the Core Web Vitals of your pages, they can determine which areas are problematic for your site. Which ones are causing you endless problems? They pinpoint parts of your pages that aren’t doing so great. What do they do with all that information, then, you may ask? They use that as a guide to come up with a solution to all your problems. That’s why hiring pros work. When they’ve gotten a good look at what’s happening, then they’ll be ready to roll out plans and changes for your approval.

 

How do you fix your pages?

 

Well, start by hiring the right team. You need pros to go over your pages. If you know next to nothing about managing and maintaining sites, then get experts to help you out. If you don’t, poor user experience could be your downfall. It could even be one of the reasons why your ranking on the SERPs hasn’t improved. Look back on the last time you had upgrades done on your pages. If it’s been so long that you can’t remember, or long enough that your pages might no longer be compliant with the new changes rolled out by Google, it’s time to get help.

 

How do you find the right team?

 

Solid research will help. Look for digital marketing companies that offer the services you need. First off, determine the extent of the help you’ll be asking for. What do you need out of the team? Most businesses look for one-time hires. But there’s also the fact that you need to maintain those pages. It’ll work in your favor if you hire a team that you can work with for the long term instead.

E-A-T in digital marketing means Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are all the qualities that excellent sites must-have. If you’ve been wondering how you could increase your page ranking, then improving the E-A-T of your pages is one way to make that happen.

What is E-A-T in SEO?

 

To fully understand why E-A-T matters in search engine optimization, you’ll need to have a basic idea of what E-A-T is. Basically, it refers to having up-to-date content on your pages. The content must also be factual instead of fabricated. Do you have positive reviews on your pages? That counts too. Your content must be created by experts and must have relevant URLs on other sites. These aren’t new concepts, though. It’s been this way since Google started. What just changes over time are the measures that Google undertakes to keep ensuring that the content on the site is relevant, factual, and accurate.

 

Why Does It Matter for Local SEO?

 

Improving the E-A-T of your site will help you improve your local traffic. For instance, with better authoritativeness and trustworthiness, you can get more customers to like your page, interact with your content, and pay for your products or services. That all sounds wonderful. How do you improve E-A-T at the local level, then? If you’re already running SEO campaigns, then this might confuse you. That’s where hiring an expert organic SEO company comes in.

 

How Do You Improve at the Local Level?

 

You’ll need to work on your Google My Business Categorization and Services, for one. Is the information on your page accurate and true? Is it updated? Mistakes in your information will make it harder for customers to find you. Pros check that for you instead, build up great content, and also engage with customers who leave reviews. That helps generate more positive reviews of your business, which future customers see. That helps get you more traffic as well. You’ll also need to provide better GMB images. These images will help you get more clicks. So long as the images attached to your Google My Business page are appropriate and aligned with your business, that will help you get more traffic.

 

Why Hire an SEO Team to Help You?

 

There are a ton of details that you’ll find yourself attending to. More than fixing your Google My Business page, you’ll also need to make sure all your content on your website and social media pages are aligned with E-A-T principles. If your content is already doing that, then great. But if that isn’t the case, you’ll need to revamp your content and pages. When was the last time you updated your site’s web design? What about the navigational experience of your site? Are your pages mobile friendly? Hiring pros that can help you fix all those issues will help you get the attention of your target market and improve your conversion rates and sales. You could also hire that team to maintain your pages for you, allowing you to concentrate on your core business.

Attracting high levels of consumer attention is essential to your conversions and sales. If that doesn’t seem to be happening, then you’ll need to start finding out what’s wrong. One thing you’ll need to do is set up ways through which you could measure consumer attention that your marketing efforts are getting. Here are five ways that you could try.

Measure Against Benchmarks

 

What are the regional as well as industry benchmarks? Use them to determine how successful your campaigns are. Over time, you can develop your own benchmarks or adjust those to fit your organization and needs. If you’re just starting out, though, stick with the regional and industry benchmarks first as they help you understand what’s best for your campaigns.

 

Look Beyond a Single Metric

 

Success is a combination of metrics used to measure consumer attention. That means you need to have a more holistic approach when you measure consumer attention. There are plenty of metrics that you can use. Determine channels available to you and figure out which metrics apply in your case. How are people engaging with your ads? That will help you pinpoint which metrics are well worth using. If you’re not sure how, seek out professional help. Hire an organic SEO company for assistance.

 

Know What Metrics Matter

 

Not all of those metrics will apply in your case, though. That’s why it’s also important to find out which ones matter to you. By that, we mean metrics that are aligned with your marketing and business goals. Metrics that support and can help you achieve those goals. This is why hiring pros is a must. They can help you understand all the metrics when you’re running specific campaigns and demonstrate which of those metrics and performance signals should you track if you want data that you can use to improve your campaigns.

 

Tell Compelling Stories

 

People want personalization. If the story of your brand sounds just like everybody else’s, that won’t grab their attention. That’s not to say that you should like just to create a narrative that they’ll find interesting. What you can do is personalize your brand. What kind of personality and character does it have? Taking that step will help your brand stand out from the rest. One way to create compelling stories for your brand, aside from creating a brand personality, is to use measurement outputs. With detailed campaign results, you gain more of your target market’s trust. More trust means more chances of conversions and sales, as trust means they’ll choose your brand over the rest. The detailed measurement outputs, though, will come from your agency marketers who will track campaigns and assess how the ads performed, what worked, and what went wrong.

 

Apply Core Attention Metrics

 

First, you’ll need to know what they are. These are essentially metrics that form the core of your campaigns. Meaning, these are at the center of your measurement strategy. Hiring pros to help you understand these will prepare you to measure metrics that are more advanced in the future.