Local SEO Tactics and Digital Marketing Strategies

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's still important to focus on your SEO and website. One thing that is important to your SEO, but often hard to execute, is getting more backlinks for your site. A great way to get backlinks right now is to tap into your local media and community resource websites. Right now, most of these organizations have web pages or sections of their website dedicated to giving local businesses more visibility. There are resource pages, maps, and listings of businesses that are open, and the services they provide. This is an excellent and easy way to obtain great high quality and relevant backlinks for your website. In this episode we'll discuss the tactics and strategies you can take advantage of right now. Backlinks are a big part of search engine ranking in Google Most media outlets have a page online to list local businesses that are open Often times you can link back to your website on these sites Find local TV, radio, newspaper, or online publications Look for their Coronavirus resources area and find their posting area Get your business listed in as many as possible

When it comes to your website, security is often an overlooked topic. Right now, with the current coronavirus pandemic impacting our lives and dominating our news and discussions, we are all very distracted. The bad guys and the hackers know this and can take advantage of the situation while our attention is focused elsewhere. Make sure your website is secure and protected against these threats with some simple and often free solutions. As the saying goes, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and that holds true for this topic here. Taking the time to make sure your website is protected can save you many headaches and a lot of time down the road. Always be aware of website security, especially in times of great distraction Security issues can impact your customers or users and your search engine visibility Your website should be secure with SSL security If you are using Wordpress, keep Wordpress updated to current releases Make sure all Wordpress themes and plugins are updated to avoid security vulnerabilities Use security plugins for Wordpress to easily strengthen the security of your website Audit user access, credentials, and password policies to understand who has access to your website If your website is compromised, your web page speed can be impacted severely If your website is compromised your email addresses can get blacklisted and prevent emails from being delivered An exposed website can be hijacked and used for phishing scams, or to charge you a ransom to restore it You can use software to monitor your website and watch for any unauthorized changes

In this episode Jesse and Bob share thoughts and ideas that are working to keep businesses afloat during this coronavirus pandemic. It's always important to listen to your customers to identify their pain points, their motivations, and their desires - and that is even more amplified right now. By quickly adapting your business, and communicating these adaptations clearly online and on social media, you can continue to serve your customers and maybe even thrive in the current marketplace. Leverage technology and your human resources to change now, setting your business up for maximum success now and also for the future. What You'll Learn Ways that businesses are pivoting their digital marketing for the coronavirus pandemic Google reviews are still paused by Google, so new reviews are not showing The questions and answers section of Google My Business is also temporarily down Keep using the available GMB features, like posts and photos to communicate Make sure you communicate your business open status front and center online If you have downtime and extra labor, you can focus on producing content to improve Google rankings Record videos to showcase your products to customers and leverage the videos online or in emails Show customers what you are doing right now for no-touch service, and how you are being clean Customers are looking online to see what steps your business is taking to be safe during the pandemic Understand your market and how it is shifting today, and make sure you adapt with it to serve customers Look at selling gift certificates to generate revenue now and stay connected with your customers View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/how-remain-open-for-business-and-stay-relevant-online-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-055/

Since we can't escape the current coronavirus pandemic, we will again embrace it in this week's episode! Learn some of the tips and tricks that businesses are using right now to adapt to the current marketplace, and how to communicate those changes to their customers and prospects. You can leverage your website and social media in new ways, to stay connected and give customers the information they are looking for. Adapting to these customer expectations and providing them solutions will win you new business now while positioning your brand for operating in the future COVID-19 era, however long that may be. What people are doing to make sure their businesses stay open and active How to let everyone know you are open for business still How to better communicate with customers about your business and status Opportunities with social media and digital communications Position your brand to survive the coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus is having a major impact on businesses large and small. In addition to the economic impact of COVID-19, customers are changing the way they interact with businesses, and businesses are forced to pivot and offer services or products they may not have in the past, in order to survive. Luckily there is a host of technology solutions to enable more dynamic online interactions with your customers, as face-to-face retail becomes an issue in the coming weeks or months. In this episode, we'll focus on some popular video and communications tools, and discuss how to use them to operate your business, and also to engage with your customers in new ways. What You'll Learn How the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way we interact with businesses online People are rapidly changing how they look for a business online Businesses are shifting to more online and website based communications Use tools like Zoom, Loom, and Google Hangouts to interact with customers in new ways Leverage video recordings and YouTube to enhance the content and purpose of your website

For local SEO, your Google My Business listing is an extremely important tool for your business. In this episode, we will discuss the best practices and relevancy of the description field within your GMB listing. The description field is the largest single input area for your GMB, and it's also an area that is highly relevant for inputting specific keywords and geographic references that you want to be found for. Here are some tips and tricks to approach your GMB description with SEO in mind, to improve your local rankings! What You'll Learn Google My Business (GMB) is very important for your local SEO The description field in your GMB is a great resource for targeting keywords and geographic areas Your GMB description will show in your business Knowledge Panel You can input up to 750 characters in your description Even if the description is not seen by users every time, Google knows what it contains Google has eluded to the fact that putting keywords in your GMB description will help you rank for those keywords Make sure your Google My Business description is optimized for SEO and readability just like any other content on your website

Doing SEO on your website is very important, but how do you know if you're doing it right? In this episode of Local SEO Tactics, we cover three of our favorite 100% free online testing tools, to help grade and gauge your website and SEO. The three primary areas are page speed, schema implementation, and overall SEO - which contains keyword optimization, page structure, images, and other on-page website elements. There are many tools online, and there are many more free tools that we are not talking about today. A simple Google search will show many popular testing options, in addition to the ones mentioned in this episode. Enjoy! What You'll Learn There are dozens of reputable tools you can find online to help optimize your website Use our free SEO audit to check your web page for optimization on specific keywords Make sure any SEO audit tool you choose looks at domain issues, keyword optimization, and image analysis Use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to check your web page schema markup Check the speed of your web pages for loading times and find what elements may be slowing it down

Here we are at episode 50! A small but significant milestone for the Local SEO Tactics shows so we want to first thank you for the support and feedback on this journey! In today's episode, we feature our first call-in question. Evelyn, asks if it is okay to use the same background image on all pages of your website? We cover this, and some related scenarios, to talk about the SEO impact as well as the user experience for choosing to do this! YOU'LL LEARN Does it hurt SEO to use the same background image Make sure the background image does not slow your page load times It is better to use original photos over stock photos You can use a slider instead of a background image if it makes sense on your page Sometimes a background image does not reformat to a responsive page properly Use a slider with image effects like Ken Burns effect to create movement and animation Find show notes and episode information at https://www.localseotactics.com/using-the-same-background-image-on-every-page-of-your-website-50/

By now we all know online reviews are a necessity for a local business. Your reputation and public ratings are an instant edification of your business and show potential customers what they can expect if they patronize you. If you are getting good reviews and have a sizable amount of reviews, you can leverage what we call "review clout" and expand your business into new revenue streams. In this episode, we talk about how to find the related niches for your business, where your review clout can quickly get you new business and dominate the competition! YOU'LL LEARN Getting reviews is always very important for your business Ask customers face to face for reviews to get as many as possible Use automation like ReviewLead to capture even more reviews for your business Once you have high review count and high review rating you can leverage it for new revenue streams Find niches that you can serve that have low competition Look for competitors in the map pack that have low review scores Add keywords and optimizations to your GMB and website for the niche to gain visibility View show notes and all links on the show page at https://www.localseotactics.com/review-clout-leverage-your-online-reviews-to-expand-into-new-revenue-streams-049/

Images and graphics are an important part of any website, landing page, or sales page. Images help tell your story, showcase your brand, or clarify an example. As the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words! In this episode we will cover some of the basic things you should be doing to optimize your images that you use on your web site. You can get your pages to load faster, and you can take advantage of some very important SEO benefits with image optimization. Take a listen and hopefully you will learn a new trick or two! What You'll Learn Google can tell if you are using stock photography or not Google Vision AI can determine an image object, relevancy, and topical associations Use your own original photos and graphics whenever possible on your web pages Optimize your images for proper size Optimize your images for maximum loading speed Take advantage of alt tags and file name to benefit your SEO efforts View show notes and all links on the show page at https://www.localseotactics.com/learn-how-to-optimize-images-for-web-speed-and-seo-benefits-048/