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3 Marketing Tools You Can Use To Create A Local Digital Footprint

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Most businesses start small. Before you can cater to a diverse audience, it is imperative to create a strong local footprint. Don’t forget, all the big brands of today started small, whether it be Apple or Walt Disney.

The good news is that in today’s time, it is quite easy to reach a local audience. Most of them are present online! After all, according to Statista, over 50 percent of the global population currently has internet.

And local searches are significantly more common on search engines. As per Go Gulf, 46 percent of the searches conducted on Google look for local information. And HubSpot further reports that 72 percent of consumers that conduct local Google searches end up visiting the store.

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Therefore, you must ensure that you have a strong local presence. To do so, you can make use of the various tools available. Here are four tools that will be of immense help when you are trying to dominate the local market.

Ubersuggest

Keywords are an essential part of any SEO strategy, whether it be general or local. However, in the case of local optimization, the type of keywords used are different. Here, location-specific long-tail keywords become more important.

One tool that helps during keyword research is Ubersuggest. This freemium SEO tool is made for generating keywords from topics.

  1. Keyword ideas

To get keyword ideas with Ubersuggest, all you need to do is type a given keyword into the platform and viola; the tool suggests a variety of long-tail keyword ideas you can use to create content that will help your site get indexed on Google for high intent search terms.

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To make sure you select the one with the most reach and traffic, Ubersuggest also offers key metrics for each keyword. This includes average CPC, monthly search volume, PPC, and SEO competition.

At times, you will find a trade-off between the metrics. For starters, a keyword with a high monthly search volume might also feature high competition, and hence the difficulty of getting a good ranking in.

Additionally, there are different types of keywords you can search for, namely:

  • Suggestions: Words covering a given topic
  • Related: Words related to the seed, but not always on the exact topic
  • Questions: Keywords phrased in the form of questions
  • Prepositions: Keywords that have two concepts in one search, for instance, “Local SEO tools for Ecommerce.”
  • Comparison: A list of common comparisons made by searchers, related to the keyword

You can use a mixture of high performing keywords to optimize your content best.

  1. Keyword Overview

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Ubersuggest also provides its users with data regarding their keyword search. The information delivered includes:

  • Search Volume Trend and Overview: General information about the keyword along with its ranking in the past year
  • Domain Score and Average Backlinks: Suggestions about how many backlinks are required for the keyword to enter the first page of search results

The keyword overview can be combined with the first feature to choose the right words.

  1. Content ideas

Even if you have the right words in your content, if the blog itself is not relevant to your target audience, you won’t be able to generate traffic. This is where Ubersuggest’s content ideas come in handy.

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The platform provides a list of topics that are known to drive traffic, social media mentions, and backlinks.

In Short

While there are various other features provided by Ubersuggest, the three discussed are highly useful during the most integral and primary stages of local SEO.

BrightLocal

The local citation and SEO platform have a plethora of features, each of which helps in boosting the visibility of a local business. Here are some of its local SEO specific features that are highly recommended.

  1. Location Dashboard

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To make the right decisions, you must have a clear understanding and view of your SEO health. Here, Location Dashboard comes into the equation, which allows you to see all the relevant local SEO information in one place.

  1. Local SEO rank checker

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Via the tracker, a business can keep tabs on their ranks, regardless of the platform. This includes organic, mobile, local pack, and map ranks. You can also filter the feature down to track your business at a postal code or city level.

  1. Local Citation Tracker

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The Citation Tracker helps in monitoring existing citations, locate duplicate listings, access a full NAP audit, as well as manage all citation work. It also helps highlight inaccurate citations as well as eliminate citations that end up harming your ranking.

In Short

Yes, BrightLocal provides a diverse range of services, and each has its own benefits. However, we find its local citation and keyword ranking features to be ideal for reaching a local audience.

Rize Reviews

As per the Search Engine Journal, 91 percent of young consumers trust online reviews. Since businesses are bound to receive both positive and negative reviews, it is imperative to manage your reputation through tools like Rize Reviews.

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Rize Reviews is a reputation management tool that gathers and tracks feedback, customer satisfaction as well as publishes positive reviews on a variety of online channels. This can help your local business in boosting its image as well as initiating word of mouth for its projects.

  1. Customized Brand Messages

Since each brand has a unique voice, Rize Reviews customizes messages which are aligned with your brand voice. These messages can then be sent out as email or comment responses to positive and negative reviews.

  1. CRM and POS Integration

Rize Reviews integrates with different POS and CRMs to help eliminate any manual work required to manage reviews. Instead, the process is automated so that your customers are contacted smoothly for reviews.

  1. Multiple locations

Even if a given business is serving one city today doesn’t mean it will never expand. Rize Reviews allows businesses to add locations as you grow. This allows for effective management.

In Short

Whether it be embedding websites, eliminating negative feedback, or highlighting positive reviews, Rize Reviews has features for it all.

Ending Remarks

Use these four tools, along with local SEO tactics, to reach a satisfactory search engine ranking for local searches. Let us know how it fares for you.

Local SEO: Master the Art of how to Rank a Website Locally by @shane_barker

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If you have a local business, then one of your top priorities should be to secure top rankings in search engine results. It’s crucial that you design a robust local SEO strategy; otherwise, you may lose out on highly qualified leads.

Additionally, SEO helps you drive high-quality traffic to your website and increase the conversions of your local business. This may sound easy, but it’s not.

So, here are some vital dos and don’ts of local SEO:

The Dos of Local SEO

Ask for Positive Online Reviews From Your Customers

Never hesitate to ask your loyal customers to write a positive online review for your business. A study from BrightLocal revealed that positive reviews encourage 68% of customers to visit a local business.

Therefore, don’t overlook the impact of positive review on your local business. Make sure to always ask your customers to give you positive online feedback and high ratings.

91% of consumers from 18-34 years of age believe online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.

So, the more positive online reviews you have, the easier it gets to win the trust of your target audience. It also helps you drive high quality and quantity leads to your business.

But, how do you ensure that your customers give you positive online reviews?

Here are some tips which will help you get positive online reviews from your customers:

You need to provide high-quality services or products to your customers. This will automatically motivate them to give positive online feedback. They may even turn into brand advocates for your local business and recommend it to their family and friends.

Also, it motivates your customers, even more, when you ask for a review in person once they have made a purchase or availled your services. If you cannot ask in person, then make sure to send them an email or a text message, requesting that they leave a positive online review.

Additionally, always make sure to reply to reviews from your customers. Local businesses often ignore the significance of responding to customers.

Always thank your customers for the positive review and invite them to visit again. And if you get a negative review, you need to respond to your customers and say sorry to them. Reply to them professionally and politely saying you will look into the matter as soon as possible.

The Don’ts of Local SEO

Never Add a Wrong Category in GMB

According to Moz, Google My Business (GMB) is the third most important factor which affects local search engine rankings. GMB also highly affects whether or not your local business can attract customers.

Often, marketers underestimate the importance and impact of GMB categories on their local businesses. You can check out the your business for various locations using a VPN.

Google frequently adds and removes categories. During the first half of 2018, Google decided to remove 36 categories and add 34 new categories. So, it’s crucial that you keep an eye on these changes and add the most relevant category for your business. When you add the most relevant category, it can help you secure top rankings in search results.

In addition to this, Google also changes the name of their categories frequently. So, you need to be really careful and don’t misunderstand the new name for an existing category as a new category.

The primary category of your local business in GMB is a significant factor affecting your local search engine rankings. Hence, be extra careful when selecting the primary category for your local business.

Do you want to master the art of local SEO and secure top ranks on the search engine? If so, then check out this infographic by Shane Barker for more information.

Mastering The Art Of Local SEO To Rank Your Local Business

Image Courtesy: ShaneBarker.com

 

How to Use Local SEO for Your Business by @danafiddler

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by Dana Fiddler | Featured Contributor 

If you own a brick-and-mortar business, it’s time you implement a local SEO strategy! Local SEO is when Google and other search engines provide specific search results to a user depending on their geographical location.

For instance, ever notice that when you are in a certain city if you search for something like “best ice cream” your search results will contain ice cream parlors for the area you are in, even if you didn’t specify?

How do You Optimize for Local SEO?

If you’d like your business to show up in local searches, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances. Today, we are going to discuss the first steps you can take!

Set up “Google My Business”

If you want your business to show up in a listing like the one below, you will need to register for a free “Google My Business” account.

Google shows this listing for searches for and related to your business, so even if someone doesn’t search up your business name, you still have a chance of being featured in this prime real estate!

Contact Page

A good contact page will help Google and other search engines identify where your business is located. The information you want to include on your contact page is:

  • business name
  • phone number
  • address
  • email

Your email and phone number should be clickable so that when someone clicks them, they are able to either call you straight from your website or send you an email.

This also improves the user-experience of your website, so it should be done regardless if you plan on implementing a local SEO strategy or not.

Add Your Business Listing to Review Websites and Directories

Websites such as Yelp, Facebook, the Yellow Pages and Google my business can help search engines determine your location, and they can also boost your rankings if you have amazing reviews.

In regards to review websites, you should try encouraging your customers to leave reviews. The easiest customers to start getting reviews from are your current customers. You can simply contact them letting them know that you’re working on building up your testimonials, and would love if they left their honest thoughts on your Google business account.

Build Your Backlinks

As with any SEO strategy, backlink building is crucial. Backlinks, which are links from other reputable websites linking to yours, will help Google trust your website and can greatly improve your rankings!

When developing a localized SEO strategy, it helps to have your backlinks coming from local sources. Some ideas for local backlinks includes:

  • getting a link in a local publication such as an online news outlet or newsletter
  • reaching out to local bloggers and asking for reviews on their blogs
  • doing interviews with local publications
  • sponsoring a local event and getting your website linked to from the event’s webpage

Add Keywords To Your Pages

Finding keywords to add to your website can be done through keyword research which is a process of finding the most appropriate keywords that you can easily rank for.

When trying to appear in local search, you will need to also add local search terms to your website copy. These search terms should first be added to your primary landing pages such as your homepage and primary product or service pages.

For example, if you are an ice cream parlor in Los Angeles, you’d want to include the keywords “ice cream in Los Angeles” throughout the content on your site.

In Conclusion

You can begin a solid local SEO strategy by:

  • setting up Google My Business
  • revamping your contact page
  • adding your website to review sites such as Yelp
  • adding your website to local directories such as the Yellow Pages
  • encouraging customers to leave online reviews
  • building your backlinks
  • adding local keywords to your homepage and other main landing pages

5 Easy Ways to Increase Local Business’s Online Presence by @MarleeWard

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Local_SEO

by Marlee Ward | Featured Contributor

If you have a local business online marketing tools should be your best friend. Truth be told, most local business owners completely overlook the power of online marketing for their business. As a result, there has never been a better time to leverage the power of local search engine ranking. If you apply even two of these five easy methods for improving your local online presence, you’ll surely outrank your local competition.

1. Use Get Listed to Get Found in Local Search

Circa 2009 submitting your website url to link directories was all the rage. Oftentimes, directory websites ranked well in Google. Being listed in a directory was an easy way to get drive by traffic and a backlink. But people abused this luxury, so Google changed the game.

Nowadays, it’s much harder to leverage the power of directory websites, but you can still rock your local directory listings by submitting your website to top quality sites that Google likes. One way to do this is by using a free service provided by http://getlisted.org.

GetListed.org shows you how your business is indexed in local search engines like Google, Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, YP.com, and many others. Then, it gives you insight on how to leverage those sites to improve your rank in those search engines and it submits your business info for you!

Get Listed is the real deal, and they were just acquired by SEOMoz (a leading SEO company), which lends them major credibility. If you own a local business, after you read this post, head over to Get Listed and get started now!

2. Connect with your Target Market using Meetup.com

Meetup.com is a site where anyone can launch a group about anything, and meet up locally to connect.  Meetup is free to join, but you have to pay to host your own group on the site. The beauty of meetup.com is that it already has lists of groups gathered together by affinity. So, if you know your target market as well as you should, it can be one of the easiest ways to find prospects to network with.

Beyond networking, you can use meetup.com to improve your online presence by offering “perks” in the form of samples or freebies to group leaders who can in turn offer these to their members. You could also “sponsor” a meetup group by paying their annual meetup dues in exchange for a link and blurb about your business on their meetup page.

And, if you have the time, you can start your own meetup group. This is one of the easiest and best ways to grow a highly targeted email list. Do keep in mind that meetup is about connecting, not selling, so if you plan to start a meetup group to sell to people you’re wasting your time. On the other hand, if you can find a way to add value to the group, and become a resource to them, the visibility you get for your business is just an added bonus.

3. List Your Services on Craigslist

Craigslist receives over 50 billion page views per month and has more than 60 million users per month in the US alone. It’s is like a giant, ultra-busy village market with lots of eager buyers where you can advertise for free.

You can promote virtually anything on craigslist, from tutoring to your e-commerce site, but doing so successfully requires strategy, wisdom, and persistence.

First, you need to identify your target market and their specific location. Using this information you are going to want to create highly targeted ads that speak to your most ideal prospect. If you offer your products and services in multiple cities, you will need to tailor each ad to each city. Craigslist frowns upon spamming the site, and users can easily spot a duplicate ad, so take the time to customize each one.

Also, beware of fraud. Depending on your business craigslist may turn out to be a great resource for new leads, but always engage prospects with caution. Because of the anonymous nature of Craigslist, scammers are attracted to the platform. Always sell your products and services using best business practices, and don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do in a transaction.

Lastly, with so many users and ads being posted to craigslist on a daily basis, you have to post often and regularly to make the most out of this strategy. Craigslist is not a set it and forget platform. You have to work the platform to make it work for you.

4. Get Local Using YouTube

Youtube is the second most popular search engine after Google. With over 800 million visitors per month and 25% of those views coming from mobile devices, having a YouTube presence can be a great opportunity for gaining visibility as a local business.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of marketing on YouTube locally:
1.    Localize your video title by including local keyword search terms.
2.    Include a link back to your website in your video description, and be sure to include your local keywords in the description as well.
3.    Select tags that match your local search terms.
4.    Geotag your video by indicating the exact location of where your video was taken (just click the “Date and Map Options”)
5.    Upload your video to directory listings like Yelp, Google Places, and others.

5. Use Google Pay-Per-Click Ads

Local SEO (search engine optimization) is essential for your local business, but as more business owner’s try to capture “free” organic rankings in Google, the more difficult it is to get found organically.

Enter Google PPC advertising.

I love Google PPC advertising for local business because it makes driving highly targeted prospects to your website easy, effective and very, very, very affordable.

But there is one caveat; you must work with someone who knows how to setup Google ads. This can be the hardest part of all. There are a lot of “experts” out there that can lead you astray.

To help you avoid making any missteps, I highly recommend you download this free ebook by Hubspot: An Introductory Guide to PPC. Inside you’ll find everything you need to know to attempt PPC advertising yourself, and more importantly, to be able to competently hire a true professional to help you.

Because so many local small businesses are asleep at the wheel when it comes to online marketing there are huge opportunities in the local online market for savvy business owners like you. So don’t delay. Get to work applying some of these tips today, and be sure to come back and let us know how it goes!

Photo credit: Elvert Barnes

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03142012 Marlee fuji 400H-3_nacweMarlee Ward empowers solo entrepreneurs make more money and serve more people by teaching them how to leverage high-level marketing principles, online tools, multiple income streams, and a success mindset, through personalized coaching programs, online training workshops, and live training seminars.

After practicing law for nearly five years, Marlee left her career as a lawyer to pursue her passion – seeing individuals succeed as entrepreneurs.

With over 10 years experience in marketing, public relations, and new media technologies, Marlee speaks to a variety of industry specific small business in the US.

She’s served as Business Editor of the popular woman’s blog BizChickBlog.com, co-authored Engagement from Scratch! How super-community builders create a loyal audience, and how you can do the same, and was voted “Top 40 under 40” by a Central Florida Magazine

To receive your FREE weekly marketing and mindset training, plus a free copy of the mp3 training audio “6 Ways to Increase Your Income”, visit http://marleeward.com.