Local SEO Tactics and Digital Marketing Strategies

We're talking about the Google Posts feature within your Google My Business (GMB) listing this week.  Previously we discussed the various types of Google Posts you can leverage, but in this episode, we take a deeper look into the "standard" Google posts option.  This is a powerful method to quickly communicate to Google the primary services you offer and the geographical area that you wish to be found for.  Check out and put it into action, whether you are just getting your GMB off the ground, or if you're a GMB veteran! What You'll Learn Use Google Posts to communicate to Google the primary cities you do business in How to identify nearby cities and neighbor hoods that Google will recognize How use Google Posts to communicate to Google the primary services you provide How to use these tactics to launch an initial content strategy for Google posting Visit the show page for all links and for more information; https://www.localseotactics.com/setting-up-your-initial-posting-strategy-for-google-posts/

How To Get More Reviews On Your Google My Business Listing For this week we're talking about reviews again.  Specifically, we're talking about how to get even more reviews on your Google My Business listing.  Just being passive and asking a customer to leave a review, or contacting them a few days after the sales transaction is not enough.  You need to hold their hand, coach them, and even slightly pressure them to leave a review right then and there.  If you can accomplish this, you will outpace your competition, improve your Google rankings, and get more business fast!  Check it out! What You'll Learn You need a Google My Business Listing in order to get reviews on Google Be up front and help walk a customer through how to immediately leave a review in person Some customers may have “technology shame”, not knowing how to leave a review and so they will not leave one Double the amount of reviews you are getting by being a little bit pushy and focused on getting reviews Getting more Google reviews can improve your visibility and search rankings Visit the show page for all links and more information; https://www.localseotactics.com/getting-more-reviews-on-your-google-my-business-listing/

Learn The Different Types Of Google Posts And How To Best Use Them In this episode we kick off our second season with one of the most important topics for local SEO...Google My Business.  Specifically, we're talking about the Google Posts feature within your GMB listing (Google My Business listing).  There are four primary post types, at the time of this recording at least!  Those are Google Update Posts, Google Offer Posts, Google Even Posts, and Google Product Posts.  We will explore what each one should be used for, the best practices for each, and what using them properly will do for your business and local exposure online. We will also talk about the new domain name and home for the Local SEO Tactics show! What You’ll Learn New domain name and home for the show at localseotactics.com What are the four main areas and types of Google Posts How to use Google Update Posts How to use Google Event Posts How to use Google Offer Posts How to use Google Product Posts View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode40

Learn What Plugins We Use To Power Our Websites With Joe Anderson From Metaphor Creations This week Jesse interviews Joe Anderson from Metaphor Creations, talking about Wordpress plugins and taking a peek at some of the powerful plugins we use at Intrycks to power our websites.  These plugins help to create dynamic content on your website, keeping them fresh and engaging for your customers and prospects.  Plus we unveil our newest collaboration, Agile Alerts, and announce the free Beta Registration on the show. What You’ll Learn Interview with Joe Anderson of Metaphor Creations Intrycks collaborates with Metaphor Creations on a regular basis to provide websites and digital marketing services to customers Our new collaboration www.agilealerts.com is now live and taking beta users Joe has been a Wordpress developer since 2011 It's very important to create good and "sticky" content for your website, to keep users engaged Use the Content Duplicator plugin to quickly create new page or post templates for your Wordpress website Always change the page title, URL, and content on a duplicated page so as to avoid actual duplicate content Use the Alternate Timed Content plugin to schedule when you want content and widgets to show, or be hidden, on your website You can use the Ditty News Ticker to dynamically display scrolling, rotating, or other text and news on your website The Ditty Facebook Ticker allows you to pull in your recent Facebook posts into your website and display them anywhere in your website View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode39

Develop A System To Consistently Produce New Content For Your Website Content is king, but producing good relevant content for your website is easier said than done.  Especially if you need to put out that content on a regular basis.  In this episode we share some tips and tactics on how to create a content production strategy that allows you to stay on track and keep putting out fresh content.  Learn how to get easy ideas for content, what type of content you should produce, and how often you should be creating it.  Plus, don't forget to setup your website to automatically alert Google when you have new content on your site, too! What You’ll Learn You need to have a regular content production schedule to continually produce new content for your website Your level or quantity of content production will depend on what your competition is doing You can research your competition to see what their content output is by viewing their blog, or checking their XML sitemaps You need to be active in producing new content because Google is continually looking for new content to show in search results Use an XML sitemap and submit your website to Google via Google Search Console to automatically get your new content submitted to Google Putting out content with 1,200-1,500 words on the page once per week is ideal, but at least once per month or every two weeks is okay Sit down one day per month (or quarter) and list out the content or topics you will be working from Easy ideas for content creation can include things like category pages, FAQ pages, Q&A, industry news, internal company news or events, and local community related topics You can create new content for your website by using case studies or customer testimonials Do keyword research to find out the most popular keyword searches for services or products you want to be found for so you can write content specifically for those topics You can use a freelancer to help create content for your website, but make sure you understand the process yourself first View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode38

Get Your Website Submitted To Google and Bing And Have Your Pages Indexed For Search Listings Learn how to submit your website to Google and Bing, to make sure your pages are indexed and available to show up on search engine results pages (SERP). The only reliable way to accomplish this is to use the Google Search Console to submit your website to Google, and to use Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your website to Bing. In this weeks episode we'll walk you through the basics on how to get your website submitted, make sure the Google and Bing know about new pages, and ensure that your pages able to be found by the search engines! You'll Learn The only way to submit your website to Google Setup your account in Google Search console (GSC) to submit your website You need to submit a sitemap in your GSC account Your sitemap acts like a Table of Contents for Google, to help them understand your website pages You should be using a Wordpress plugin or some other method to auto-update your sitemap when you create new content You can manually submit a page to Google by going to the Fetch as Google in the Crawl section of Google Search Console The process to submit your website to Bing is very similar to submitting to Google via Bing Webmaster Tools View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode37

How To Create and Use Category Pages To Improve The SEO On Your Site Use category pages to boost the SEO on your website!  Category pages are very helpful for multiple reasons.  They are an easy way to produce content on your site, and attack specific keyword or phrases you're trying to rank for.  Category pages can boost your SEO by helping to group relevant web pages together, so Google can understand the products and services you provide and better match them up with the searchers intent.  This approach is also great for your actual human web visitors, too, since it gives them natural navigational hubs to learn more or explore your offerings further.  We'll walk you through some easy ideas and concepts, to help you get started making or improving your own category pages. What You’ll Learn Using category pages on your website to round up content on similar topics Improve your SEO and search engine rankings with category pages Begin by looking at the type of products and services you offer and put them into groups Come up with the category for each of these groups and create a category page On each category page you will list individual products and services in that group Create the category page with SEO in mind for keywords, URL, title, and h tags Link to the product and service pages from the category page Category pages can be listed in the main menu of your website or other prominent areas Category pages can have call to action (CTA) buttons and other traditional conversion features Treat the category page similar to a landing page because you want to match user intent and convert Putting FAQ's on a category page is an easy way to add more relevant content to the page Add links to the category page from any relevant individual pages, where it makes sense for visitors to follow Update category pages with new content and links when it's created to keep your category page fresh View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode36

Hire Top Talent On A Temporary Or Part-Time Basis To Instantly Increase Business Productivity This week we interview Nate Hirsch from FreeeUp.com, who teaches us how you can use freelancers to scale your company on a budget.  Nathan Hirsch is a 28 year old serial entrepreneur who is an expert in hiring online and building eCommerce businesses. He co-founded his first eCommerce company out of his dorm room in 2009  built it to sell over $25 million worth of product over 5 years. While scaling, Nathan discovered the power of outsourcing and ended up building a remote army of freelancers.  In 2015, Nathan co-founded and became the CEO of FreeeUp, an online hiring marketplace that allows business owners fast access to a hand-picked network of top talent freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, web development, and much more who have already been vetted for skill, attitude, and communication. Nate shares his story of entrepreneurship, delegation, and scaling a small business on a bootstrap budget.  Using freelancers to supplement your team can provide some great benefits to local business owners.  You can hire top quality individuals quickly, and instantly improve the talent on your team - often with higher skill sets and lower costs than if you were to hire local talent.  Learn how FreeUp only accepts the top 1% of all freelancers into it's pipeline, and how you can get started with a discount for being a Local SEO Tactics listener! What You’ll Learn How Nate Hirsch founded FreeeUp.com and grew it into a successful business that allows customers to hire top quality temporary freelancers Nate got his first taste of scaled success by selling niche baby products on Amazon when he was attending college at 20 years old As Nate tried to scale his business he encounter many struggles in how to hire talented people to join his team Growing your business and delegating your duties as a business owner are very difficult FreeeUp only allows the top 1% of all freelancers to join their network and perform work for FreeeUp.com customers Freelancers are all vetted on many levels, including skill, attitude, and communication Utilizing freelancers allows you to utilize top level talent for short term tasks or projects instead of hiring them and retaining them In a job market where hiring local talent is very tough, using freelancers is a great way to get talented team members It is important to set expectations on what type of talent you need and what type of talent you are hiring in a freelancer Focusing on your own hiring process and refining them will make sure you continually bring talented people that fit your needs You should delegate things that you are not good at or that you don't want to do Find specialists to execute these delegated duties for you so you can turn your weaknesses into strengths Get $25 OFF from FreeeUp.com for all Local SEO Tactics listeners View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode35

Understand Searcher Intent On Google So You Can Incorporate User Intent Into SEO For Your Website Understanding user intent and searcher intent can be a huge benefit to your SEO.  As Google continues to leverage it's AI and Machine Learning to provide search results, one of it's main focuses is to effectively guess the user intent on any given search term.  For example, someone who often watches DIY videos may be presented with DIY information for a relevant search, even if they are not inputting "DIY" or "DIY videos" into their search.  Gaining a clear understanding of the your audience, and what their intent would be when finding your page, will help you develop clearly identified content.  This makes it much easier for Google to match your content with searcher intent, rather than guessing.  In this episode we'll break this down and digest what it means, so you can create better content, convert more users, and rank higher in Google by incorporating searcher intent into your SEO strategy. What You’ll Learn How to create pages on your website for the user intent Creating your page with a good user intent helps Google know who you are creating the page for If you are targeting a search term that is ambiguous for user intent then you may have poor results Going after long tail keywords can add more context to your content and help define intent Matching content to user intent will reduce bounce rates and keep users on your site longer Example - if you're creating a DIY article or page, make sure the content is helpful for solving their problems Example - if you're creating a page for services you provide, make it clear you are offering your services Strive to really understand what users are searching for - answers, info, services, help, or products Google uses AI and machine learning to try and guess a users intent and tries to match it to search results Having a strong intent based content page will also deflect poor quality visitors who did not match your intent At the top of the page clearly state the intent of the page right in the title and headings of the page View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode34

The Importance of Using Google Questions and Answers on Google Maps and Your GMB Listings Have you heard of or viewed the Google Questions and Answers area in your Google My Business listing?  This is an area you should be paying attention to!  Anyone with an active Google account can post a question about your business.  Additionally, anyone can also answer that question!  This is pretty cool, but also pretty scary from the standpoint of the business.  Learn how to monitor Google Q&A, how to answer questions in Google Maps via the Q&A area, and how to leverage this to enhance your online exposure.  Learn how to take control of the questions, how to have the best answers, and how to make sure your business content is in your own control. What You’ll Learn What is the Google Question & Answer feature in the Google My Business listing area Anybody with a Google account can ask a question about your business Anybody with a Google account can answer a question about your business It's possible for people outside of your business to provide price quotes and answer information about pricing There can be multiple answers to any question on Google Questions and Answers about your business If you are registered as the owner of the business, when you answer a question it is tagged with "Business Owner" so the public can distinguish your reply All answers can be upvoted and the answer with the most upvotes will be the answer that is shown for the question Make sure you monitor the questions that are being asked on your GMB so you can provide answers to them You can check to see if you have new questions by going through your GMB listing by clicking the "view in search" or "view in maps" links Leave answers as fast as possible to answer the customers questions and to be the first answer provided Upvote your own answers right away and ask others you know to upvote your answers too Ask your own questions so you can get the information you want up in the Q&A section You can answer your own questions too, to make it a very good FAQ type of area in your GMB   View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode33