Local SEO services provides local businesses opportunities to reach local customers using internet marketing. Local SEO aims to provide search engine visibility close to to the time of purchase. A good example might be a mobile search for "pizza." Being mobile, we know the searcher is probably on the move and hungry. 
As a business owner, top rankings for local searches can provide a huge boost in business. Local searches are almost always very closely aligned with user intent. In our example, the searcher wants pizza now. If you are nearby and happen to sell pizza, you'll almost certainly win the business. Local differs from global, organic SEO. Google ranks local results separately. Preference is given to websites that provide the best experience for mobile users. The foundation of your local SEO plan should be your Google My Business listing. More on that in a minute. Local SEO also includes managing online directories like Yelp, Superpages and TouchLocal. Keeping tabs on these helps you reinforce your presence in online search. It is also critical for managing your online reputation.
The first step in establishing a local plan is to make sure your Google My Business page is complete. Start with the following list:
Online reviews impact your business. While not as dire as bad reviews, having no reviews at all sends the message that your business isn't very active. The number and quantity of online reviews is generally considered a ranking factor as well. You should never create fake reviews, but your should definitely encourage happy customers to share their experiences. Most often, they'll be glad to talk about you, but aren't likely to think of it on their own.
Going through these steps will go a long way toward boosting your local search engine rankings. In reality, these local SEO tips only scratch the surface, but are nevertheless essential. If you are too busy, unsure where to begin, or are in a very competitive market, it might be time to bring in the pros. OCG offers local SEO services for all types of organizations. Call us. We'd love to help. (775) 324-1644
Having spent most of the last two decades planning, developing and marketing websites, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when marketing your business online. For the most part, I can sum up website planning in one word: relationships. Thousands of books and articles have been written about building relationships online. In the end, it isn't any different than building relationships offline. Business relationships are often compared to dating. The metaphor works in the sense that you start by talking a little, then maybe go out for coffee... Over time, a lot of other stuff happens until, shazam! One day you get married. The point here is that beginning a relationship with a marriage proposal pretty much never works. And if it does, your odds of marrying a desperate, toxic nut-job are pretty high.
I think a better comparison is a student-teacher relationship. Outside of our marketing agency, I teach scuba. I am passionate about diving, especially deep diving, using exotic breathing gasses and hundreds of pounds of highly specialized equipment. Although a student brand new to diving has no need to understand the effects of high oxygen partial pressures on the human body, my expertise is never questioned. The rationale being that if I can survive dives in excess of 100 meters, breathing gasses I mixed myself, surely I must be qualified to teach a new diver to swim around in the top 60 feet or so. When that same diver is ready to buy equipment, who do you think he/she goes to? My students won't even consider making a purchase without talking to me first. That concept translates to virtually every business relationship and should form the basis of your website planning. Reno web design and website planning is relationship planning.
The absolute first rule in website planning is to make sure the right people see it. 7/11 stores are located on busy neighborhood intersections because people who like Slurpees live there. In today's world, 'busy intersection' means Google's search engine results page (SERP). If you stop reading right here, take away this one concept: Make a plan to reach your audience in Google search before you even think about website design. I see it over and over. Clients toil over every pixel and make countless revisions spanning months to make their websites "perfect" before allowing us to take them live.
Meanwhile, not one human being is exposed to their business online. With this in mind, website planning essentially means Google planning. I've never been comfortable with the term, search engine optimization (SEO). Partly, that's because so many of the people and agencies that claim to be SEOs fall somewhere between incompetent and crooked. I just don't want to be lumped in with that group. I also don't think SEO is as hard as it is time consuming. At least, not for most businesses.
After over a decade resisting the term "SEO," I've grudgingly come to embrace it. If you want your website to bring you customers, you have to play by Google's rules. That means the written text has to take priority over design. Yet, I'm told over and over, "people don't read online." Really? Scores of bloggers make their living writing content people read online. It is more accurate to say, "people don't read boring crap online."
The fact is, people DO read online. They read a lot. It's just that they are very choosey about what they read. If you are a sucky writer, don't expect people to read your sucky writing just because you want them to. Be the expert in your business, but hire pros to do the writing for your website. A website writer must understand how to write engaging content for humans that also supports the relevancy requirements for search engine rankings. Writing for SEO purposes is an essential website planning strategy.
The myth that people "don't read on the internet" is partly made believable because large blocks of text are miserable to read online. You can solve that problem by making content readable. Unless and until we (we being OCG Creative) bring it up, typography never enters the conversations about website planning we have with our clients.
Typography includes all the elements related to your website's written content. The creative use of headings, type styles, font choices, sizes, color, italics, bolding, lists, etc. all contribute to the readability of your website content. Website text must be well-sectioned and scannable by the reader. Online readers will scan your page for specific terms in about 2 seconds before deciding whether to read it or go back to Google and search some more. Therefore, it is essential that typography be central to your website planning.
Right from the start, accept that your website will never be done. Your planning process must include a strategy for ongoing updates. In nearly every instance, websites that are easy to update get more attention than those that aren't. Generally speaking, the more complex the website design, the more difficult it is to make changes. Plan your website for your visitors, not your designer, or worse, your ego.
It's funny. Our Reno web design team ask new clients every day to describe what elements they feel are most important to their websites. 9 times out of 10, the first word they'll use is "clean." Yet, 9 times out of 10, the same client will want everything he or she can think of thrown in once the design phase begins. At the same time, all attention shifts away from content and search engine rankings in favor of graphics.
By now, it should be clear that search engine rankings and speed win out over everything else about your website. Once you make it to the top of Google, you'll have the luxury of dialing in your website for conversions. At that point, you can make all the design changes you want. But early on, plan your website around rankings. I promise you'll thank me later.
Ah, that thorny space between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when we all try to stick to a diet of salad for the next four weeks while we wait for our bank accounts to refill in time to get the last few gifts we forgot about on Black Friday. On tap this week: Best selling books of 2015, SnapChat for business, wrangling your 2016 email marketing plans into a calendar, a look into OpenTable’s dual-design process, and hot business trends. Hottest selling business books of 2015 NEW YORK TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2015-10-11/business-books/list.html Evergreen business heavy-hitters Malcom Gladwell (Outliers, Tipping Point) and Tony Robbins (Money: Master the Game) are joined by mid-career authors Steven D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics, Think Like a Freak), relative newcomer Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit), and others on this list of the best-selling business books of 2015. What the heck is SnapChat, and how do I use it for business? SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/09/what-is-snapchat-use-snapchat-for-business.html Just a few short years ago, SnapChat was making headlines as a controversial tool for frisky teenagers and adults who wanted a way to send private content to friends without the risks of exploitation—the content disappears as soon as it’s viewed—that come with other social media outlets. Today, businesses from BuzzFeed to Mashable to Comedy Central are using SnapChat to reach a younger audience, with content that lends itself to SnapChat’s ephemeral quality. Build a killer email marketing calendar for 2016 EMAIL EXPERIENCE COUNCIL https://emailexperience.org/2015/10/building-your-2016-email-calendar-a-planning-process-for-success Newsletters, promotions, launches, events. New customers, current customers, former customers, possible customers. If you’re a businesses with multi-layered email campaigns, things can get overwhelming when you’re planning for the coming year. The Email Experience Council lays it out for you in this handy guide. Too complicated? Let us build a comprehensive email marketing campaign calendar for you. See how restaurant reservations maestro OpenTable designs its mobile experience for both sides of their marketing coin INVISION http://blog.invisionapp.com/inside-design-opentable We love a good behind-the-scenes look at how today’s most innovative companies are handling their web and app design, digital marketing, brand strategy, content creation, and other components of a successful product. Here, OpenTable opens the doors to its design department to give us a look at how they solve the problem of who to design for when two different market segments use the same app. Srirachi2Go Makes Hot Debut AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/sriracha2go-small-business.aspx Possibly the only instance of a tiny, empty bottle going viral you’ll ever see. Sriracha2Go pleases hardcore chili sauce fans by providing a portable vehicle for their addiction, and the Internet goes wild.
Short of Apple and American politics, I can’t think of an industry more consistently skilled at building and riling up a fierce, loyal fan base than sports. Games are exciting by nature, but great sports marketers are experts at capitalizing on that foundation. They know how to make full use of tools like brand strategy, social media, and email and internet marketing, even internal marketing, to make everything about their game, their players, their ticket sales. But those sales boosting strategies aren’t unique to sports, and any business willing to invest in the value of enthusiasm can steal them to power their own home field advantage.
This is something that sports marketers do really well, and it’s an easy play for any business to add to their repertoire. There are many great ways in which the sports industry markets that any business can put towards their list of sales boosting strategies. We all know that social media is about engagement, and that engagement usually means broadcasting and interacting. But how carefully are you listening on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and other social media outlets for positive mentions by existing and potential customers? What do you do when you find them? You amplify them. Like them, but don’t just like them. Respond, but don’t only respond. Retweet, reblog, link to those mentions in your marketing emails, share them through all relevant channels. Enthusiasm is most infectious when it’s observed in an un-coerced third party (just like endorsements—and enthusiasm is a form of endorsement). Sports teams amp up fan excitement by compounding the energy of excited, individual fans, and you can do the same thing for your product or service by letting your potential customers be voyeurs to the happiness of your existing customers. Be sure to listen for other customer and market segment conversations about things relevant to your business, too, and be a conduit for those. Sharing excitement about upcoming events, new technology, and other things your customers are interested in can align you with the shared philosophies and positive feelings that are precursor to buying.
We know what happens in the football huddle: The quarterback pulls the team together mid-game to strategize the next play, congratulate or motivate players, commiserate on a sagging score, or in general to get player buy-in back at peak levels. In other words, it’s a kind of internal marketing. Whatever it is that happens here during any given game, you can be sure the quarterback feels it’s critical to winning that particular game. Not the game they planned for, hoped for, or even expected statistically—the game that’s currently in progress, with all of its unexpected turns. Keep your sales boosting strategies and marketing plans bold and robust but flexible. This way they can be quickly adapted to unexpected changes like economic downturns, new technologies or outlets, poor product reception, social media backlash, or any of the number of fumbles, blocks, and interceptions that can plague a campaign. Internet and email marketing are especially good channels for marketing flexibility. Social media, too. Campaign messages can be quickly adapted to reflect changing information, corrected for mistakes or oversights, take advantage of new developments, or work around a mea culpa situation gracefully.
Have you ever been invited to a luxury box seat for a high-profile sporting event? If so, you know how much that changes the experience of watching a game. That game is, technically speaking, the same game for everyone in the stadium. The lineup is the same, the announcers are the same, the plays are the same, no matter where you’re watching from. But I assure you the game doesn’t feel the same from up there behind those big windows, wine and cheese in hand, as it does in the crowded, sometimes too-hot or too-cold and almost always stiff-seated stands below. The VIP treatment changes—and almost always enhances—the customer experience. Sales boosting strategies that add to a customer's value and experience will increase sales simply due their satisfaction. Levels of purchase have become more commonplace since the advent of web apps and services, and this can work for just about anything—but keep it simple, and make it meaningful. You can shift up or down with this. If your service is basic, what expansions, add-ons, or concierge-like perks can you offer at a higher price point to add value, and boost the customer’s experience (and opinion of your brand)? Even something as simple as extended support hours can boost your customers’ sense of their value to you. If your product is already complex and/or high-dollar, can you provide a pared-down version to offset the image and value of the original? This can also make your brand more accessible to a larger market, but be careful and talk to a brand strategist on this—some brands can be damaged by offering more basic and affordable options (think of a $22,000 MSRP on a Rolls Royce).
Team marketing is a big component of sports marketing, but I’d argue that player marketing is the key to the emotional resonance that gives sports its true power. Players are storied, and as humans we’re helplessly attracted to stories—particularly ancient story archetypes like the hero’s journey, rags-to-riches stories, David and Goliath. Embedded deep down in our DNA is the universal need for something to root for, and it’s why sports and games elicit the responses they do. It’s why a single sports team can affect everything from a fan’s wardrobe (black and orange, anyone?) to their emotional behavior (shouting red-faced at the screen, or the field), to their willingness in some cases to paint themselves and go out into public with large foam appendages attached to their bodies. Burt Shavitz, the now legendary figurehead of Burt’s Bees personal care products, is a favorite go-to example of the power of storytelling in a brand. The quality of his products is top-notch, but it’s his unlikely story—north country recluse living off the land and raising bees stumbles on myriad uses for beeswax—that populates the brand with its infectious personality and wins it fans (and hundreds of millions in revenue) worldwide. If you can capture the fertile seeds of story that served as the seeds for your company’s products and services, or that underlie the company itself or the people in it, marketing magic can happen. Just be sure the story is congruous with the company’s brand image, and is told consistently across all messaging.
Read our other articles pertaining to e-commerce.
Local search engine optimization, lovingly referred to as local SEO, is an integral part of any businesses local marketing initiatives. When a business has a great search engine optimization strategy, its search ranking can be expected to be higher. The higher a search rank, the greater propensity for potential customers to visit your website and ultimately purchase your product or service. (more…)
Local search engine optimization, lovingly referred to as local SEO, is an integral part of any businesses local marketing initiatives. When a business has a great search engine optimization strategy, its search ranking can be expected to be higher. The higher a search rank, the greater propensity for potential customers to visit your website and ultimately purchase your product or service. (more…)
