SEO

SEO + Your Local Business

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has always been important, and it will continue to be as such. If you are a business owner of any kind, you’ll want to be sure your website and surrounding digital assets are up to snuff. It’s wise to think like you do when you need something. Think about it. You’re in your car and you need to know who repairs broken iPhone screens, or who has the best pizza. So, you either use your voice to search, or you key in your query. If your digital assets are up to date and optimized, there’s a solid chance your business name and website will rise to the top. If you lean towards playing it fast and loose, you are not likely to be found.

Where to start? Make a list of your digital accounts and ask yourself if they are up to date and serving a purpose. Google likes websites that are mobile friendly first, then on to desktop performance. This is simply because the world continues the shift towards mobility. Now, go through your website page by page, consider everything and list out what you think it needs and what may need to go away. If you are a pizza place, you’ll want to talk about how great your pizza is, and show it through reviews and other means. Can people order online? This is very important during a pandemic, and options we’ve grown accustomed to during the pandemic are not going away. They are only going to harness technology greater. The businesses that participate and keep up will flourish by answering existing demand. SEO wise, you’ll need to make mention of your location, and other traits that help Google’s engines find you. Page rank goes up when you are searched, found, visited and solve a problem/answer a question.

Every page on your website should be fully functional on mobile and be up to date. Using keywords that describe what you do is a must, alongside being sure your title and meta data is uniform and correct for each page on your site. Every image should have appropriate alt text as well. Taking the time to do these things is important, and most of all a necessity. If you build a site and let things like title and meta data fall towards the default category, Google will assign what it thinks* to your website, should it be found in search results. You know what you create, sell or offer as a service – so it’s best to tell Google yourself. This helps the search engines to know without question what you are offering. Local SEO has always been big, and it’s important to participate in. The reason for this is that most searches end in ‘…near me’. You’ve probably noticed how Google autofills this when you type in certain keywords. So, if you are SEO optimized and someone types in ‘best pizza near me’ -you’ll likely see that person within minutes.

Keeping your hours of operation, phone number and menu up to date is very important. Taking advantage of your free Google My Business profile is a great way to do this. With the majority of searches happening on Google, it just makes good sense to do this. Google uses things like location data on people to give us all useful information on Google My Business. When you search for a business and they tell you when it’s usually busy or not, that’s how they know. That is how it is accurate. These are just a few reasons as to why you should keep your digital assets up to date. As I like to remind clients, it is the World Wide Web. Before anybody sets foot in your establishment, has a surgery scheduled or hires you to build their home – they have researched you online. If your website and associated properties are not up to date, they will potentially see your business as less successful and even lazy. We each experience gratification when we search for anything, find it and solve our problem. If your properties aren’t doing that, we can help.

Digital Presence Management is a service we offer that handles things like this on a month to month basis. Each month planning occurs and we then execute with intent to stabilize and grow your digital assets. This in turn will increase your business measurably, and allow you to handle your day-to-day work without interruption. Don’t have a website yet? We can do that too. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin.

#localseo #localseomarketing #googlemybusinessseo #localseoagency

 

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Instagram Linking; The Alternative

If you’re here – you know that linking products or other useful information from your Instagram account can be challenging.  I see it all the time, and we all experience it regularly. There are a several platforms in existence that will gladly link your content for free, or for a small monthly fee. Now, depending upon your level of need and skill you may not need any of these. After looking at Linktree and a few others, we quickly realized that it was simply a landing page with links from Instagram in order as they were posted. So, we just set up our own page at https://sevenind.com/instagram. Why? It just makes good sense to control all the variables you can. If LinkTree, ContactInBio, Shorby, or any others go down – you’re missing out on business. Additionally, why would you want to send traffic away from your site to begin with? We certainly don’t want to. Building your own link page built for Instagram or any other medium is a must, and is well worth the time.

We think the best way to execute on this is to keep it simple. You’ll have quicker load times and the information will be direct and to the point. You don’t want to create a frenzy of information that will drive people away from your site. That’s why many of the aforementioned services are pretty bare bones. It takes up less room on their servers and gets people back to Instagram, or whatever platform they launch from. Now, we’re not saying hold back on your creativity – we’re saying temper it a little. Playing a little devil’s advocate here; you could take the opportunity to create an experience your audience is not expecting. The internet affords you the opportunity to dream/create whatever you want, and show it to the world. For now, our page is going to be pretty straight forward. We may add post dates to each occurance of new content on the page or a snippet/preview, however. Simplicity, functionality and cleanliness in a busy world is working for us, so far. When the entire USA is not on a data plan and is 5G, then we might make some larger leaps, collectively – and we should.

If you don’t want to build your own page, here are the top 5 to consider:

  1. ContactInBio
  2. Shorby
  3. Lnk.Bio
  4. Tap Bio
  5. Campsite.bio

It does not matter what your profession is, creating a dedicated landing page for all of your Instagram posts is worth it. The analytics alone will tell you a great deal about your traffic which will afford you an avenue to better strategize as we head into 2022.  A few examples of how to use this new page:

  • Doctor’s Office – Link to new appointments, procedures, specials and more.
  • Law Firms – Link to service areas, appointments, special news in your area of expertise, et. al.
  • Building Contractors – Link to recent projects, upcoming projects, contact forms, click to call, etc.
  • Retirement Homes / Assisted Living – Links to amenities, floor plans, availability, recent events, campus updates, and more.
  • HVAC / Heat & Air – Links to appointments, click to call for service, seasonal specials, reviews, brands carried, installations and more
  • Retail / Goods – Links to new products, sales, locations, events, hours of operation etc.
  • Colleges / Universities – Links to campus events, sports, crowd-funding, fund raising, alumni events, etc.

The possibilities reach as far as your imagination and tenacity to seek out new ways to meet your audience where the stand. We’re here to help you create your own landing page or website when you are ready. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin.

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