Local SEO Tactics and Digital Marketing Strategies

These Are The Pages You Need To Include On Your Website What are the most important pages you need do have on your website - one of the most common questions we get asked! In this episode we'll break down the main pages that every local business should be including, and answer this question. These are the critical pages for Google bot and your customers, and you need to design them for both to have success. Here's what working for us right now and we hope it helps you, too! YOU'LL LEARN What are the critical and essential web pages that you need to have on your website Your homepage is the most important page on your website Using your primary Google My Business category on your homepage How to properly display your address and nearby cities you serve on your homepage Creating niche pages for the products and services you provide Including your secondary Google My Business categories in your niche pages Designing your pages for both your customers and Google to navigate and find Using an About Us page to send signals to Google about being a legitimate business Putting a Contact Us page in your main menu What type of information you should be putting on your contact page and how to display it The importance of a reviews or testimonials page, and what it does for Google Creating a "locations served" page if you serve cities outside of where you're physically located Matching your Google My Business service area with your locations served page View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode23 Thanks for Listening!

Apps For Website Change Monitoring, Change Detection, and Alerts Nowadays, there are many great website change detector apps to help monitor website changes and give you instant alerts to said changes! Ever have the pleasure of receiving a message from your customer, telling you your website is down? Or that you have an error on the page preventing them to buy or contact you? It's fun, right? No matter how great things seem to be going, errors can happen in an instant! We'll break down some of the free and low cost apps we use for change monitoring and to keep us instantly informed! Plus - learn how to use these same apps to spy on what your competition is doing! YOU'LL LEARN How to automatically monitor your website for downtime Get automatic alerts if your website goes offline, and when it comes back online Monitor your website for hacking and hijacking issues How to make sure your website does not have plugins causing on-page issues Ensure any content embedded into your website is always active Monitor specific landing pages to ensure they are always up and working properly Catch changes any hackers, malware, viruses, or bots make to your website Monitor the source code of your website for unauthorized changes Monitor your Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, or other social accounts for changes and updates Get alerted when content on other websites changes - like pricing on Amazon Spy on your competitors websites for content updates and get notified when it changes Get instant alerts when your competition updates it's online prices Monitor your competitors website to see what new keywords they are targeting Get alerted when your brand is mentioned on specific websites Setup notifications when important websites are updated with new posts or content Create alerts to monitor your competitors social media accounts View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode22 Thanks for Listening!

How To Take Better Photos For Your Website - Part 2 Matt Addington shares tips and tricks for taking your own photos for your website, with your smartphone, in part 2 of this interview. We'll also cover how to edit photos, great tools for editing built into your phone, and how to use photos on your website in the best way for maximum engagement and conversion. Matt shares some great tips that will make anyone better at taking photos, telling stories, and ultimately developing better content for your website! YOU'LL LEARN How to take great photos for your business with your smartphone What are the best angles to take photos with your iPhone How to zoom in on ordinary things to take dramatic photos Getting your camera to a place that you or others normally take for granted Don't let the background be a distraction ("when in doubt, leave it out") What is the HDR camera setting on your phone all about How using the touch focus feature on your phone can help take better photos Using built in editing features right on your phone Using apps and mobile versions of programs like Photoshop for professional editing Powerful features with Adobe Lightroom for phone and desktop photo editing When it makes sense to hire a photographer instead of taking your own photos Using a "less is more" strategy when putting photos on your website Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode21  

How To Take Better Photos For Your Website - Part 1 One area of your website that can have a huge impact on user experience is the photos (or videos) that you have on your web pages. Interesting and engaging photos can draw customers in, enhance your image, and tell the story of your brand. We've got Matt Addington – photography wizard – in to talk about this. In part 1 of this two part episode, Matt shares some tips and tricks on how to take better photos for your website, to help make your pages stand out from the crowd and resonate with your customers! YOU'LL LEARN Techniques on how to take better photos with your smartphone Why images, photos, and video are more important than ever for your brand identity How to stand out with photos taken from a unique perspective How photos and videos can be used to tell a story and be more engaging Focus on a simple and tight image and remove background clutter for powerful images Use multiple images on your page to tell a story, instead of one all inclusive photo Great photos on your website should invite users to read and view more content Don't show the same type of image multiple times - be unique with each photo on your website Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode20

Introduction To The GMB Offer Posts and How To Craft A Great Offer Google has released a new feature within Google My Business (GMB) called Offer Posts. The new GMB offer posts are very similar to the traditional posts, but you can use them to post sales, discounts, promotions, or other special offers.  The new offer posts have some unique features like staring date and ending date, promo codes, and more! We'll break down the features, and go over some best practices to leverage this new feature to help you improve SEO, gain rankings, and get more sales! YOU'LL LEARN What is the "posts" feature in your Google My Business listing What is the new GMB offer posts feature How is an offer post different than a traditional post Where you'll find the GMB offer posts feature in your GMB listing How often you should put out new GMB posts How many words you can use in a GMB post What types of offer posts are having the best conversion rates How to construct a good offer within GMB offer posts How you can use keywords in your posts for SEO How to set starting and ending dates for your offer post Using promo codes in your offer post for eCommerce applications Using promo codes in your offer posts for non-eCommerce situations Benefits of using images with text overlays in your posts How to make a GMB offer post with a strong call to action (CTA) How to present a clear CTA for your offer with relatable context Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode19

Avoid Over Optimizing Your Website To Maintain High Search Rankings Yes, it is possible to over optimize your website.  Too much of a good thing can get you in trouble with Google, and impact your search rankings in a big way. In this episode we answer the question "what is over optimization", and break down some of the tactics and strategies you can use identify and avoid over optimizing your website. YOU'LL LEARN How is it possible to over optimize your website? What it means to be over optimized on your website What is keyword stuffing How keyword stuffing can lead to website over optimization Developing your web pages for "user intent" and not just focusing on keywords How to fix and reformat an over optimized web page Mixing in keyword variations on your page to make it SEO friendly and user friendly Methods of reviewing your page to determine if it's too focused on specific keywords Google knows if you are writing your pages for rankings and not for humans to read Quality content and clear communications can get your pages ranked Consider the "user intent" on what your page is communicating Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode18

Rank Higher in the Google Map Pack By Using GMB Categories as Keywords On Your Website Google My Business, also known as GMB, is a crucial part of any SEO strategy in today's world. In order to maximize the relationship between your GMB listing and your website, you need to take advantage of the Google My Business categories. These categories are very important on the SERP (search engine results page), and using these categories like you would a keyword is a great way to increase your exposure, bump your web rankings, and show up in the map pack! YOU'LL LEARN How to bring synergy between your website and your Google My Business listing Get your GMB listing to show in the Google Map Pack more often Choosing the primary category in your GMB listing is critical to your success Checking to see which categories are relevant for your business in GMB Using your primary GMB category as a keyword on your homepage Using variations on GMB categories versus exact match Avoiding over-optimization and over usage of the category keyword Leveraging your secondary GMB categories into new pages on your website Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode17

Use An XML Sitemap Generator To Create and Auto Update Your Website Sitemaps Want your pages to show up in Google?  Then you better have a sitemap on your website! A sitemap, or more specifically, an XML sitemap, is like a roadmap or a table of contents for all of the important pages, posts, and images on your website.  Having an XML sitemap will tell Google, and other search engines, which pages are on your website - so they can know to include them in their search results. In this episode we'll cover the basics of sitemaps, how to create them, and why you need one! YOU'LL LEARN What is a Sitemap for your website What is an XML sitemap What is an HTML sitemap Why you need both HTML and XML sitemaps Easy plugins for WordPress to generate an XML sitemap How to choose what content to include in your sitemap How sitemaps tell Google you have new pages or images on your website How to generate sitemaps on non-WordPress websites Selecting sitemap generators that auto-update Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode16

Use Google Search Console To Submit Your Website To Google and Report On Google Search Performance Google Search Console (also known as Google Webmaster Tools pre-2015) is a free service, provided by Google, that lets you peek into some great information about your website. If you're not using this right now - you should be! You can use it to submit your site to Google, report on how many people are finding your website from Google, where your pages are ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). Plus, you can view how many people visit on mobile devices versus desktop computers. Check it out! YOU'LL LEARN What is Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) How to get your website into the Google Index faster using Google Search Console, so you can show up on search results ASAP What does Google Search Console do for you How often should you be reviewing Google Search Console Instructions on how to setup your Google Search Console account How to add your website(s) to the console for tracking and reporting How to verify your website to prove that you own it How to submit your sitemap to Google Using the "Fetch as Google" feature to trigger your pages for indexing How to see which pages you have in the Google Search Index Access Google search data to see how many times your pages are shown on the Google search engine results page (SERP) Access Google search data to see how many clicks you're getting from Google SERP Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode15

How To Decide If You Should Refocus Your Homepage Or Make A New Page To Attack Keywords In this weeks episode, we dive into a question that was submitted by Patrick, who listens to the Local SEO Tactics podcast.  Patrick was wondering if he should modify his homepage to attack a new keyword target, or if he should create a new page to go after that keyword instead. We'll break down the options and talk about the various situations in which you may choose path over the other. YOU'LL LEARN Which page carries the most weight on your website How Google serves up web pages, not websites, in search results Deciding if you should change your home page or create a new page when going after a new keyword target for your website When you should avoid refocusing your keyword targets on your homepage When it's okay to refocus your keyword targeting on your homepage When you should create a new page to attack a new keyword focus When you should refocus your keyword targeting on an existing page versus creating a new page The danger of deleting pages off your website with out properly informing search engines Thanks for Listening! View the show notes, resource links, episode transcript, and watch the video version at https://www.localseotactics.com/episode14