Posts Tagged ‘SEO service’

Google My Business: New Features For Local Businesses

May 6th, 2020

Your Google My Business (GMB) page is one of the most important things for your local SEO. it lets your customers know the basic information about your business like its address, phone number, operating hours as well as special offers. For businesses that cater to a local customer base, it goes a long way in establishing your business’ identity. Any SEO agency will suggest creating a GMB page as the first step in local SEO. For years businesses have been reaping the benefits of GMB profile. Recently, Google has announced some new features in the GMB profile. In this article, we will discuss what these features are and how they can be helpful.

GMB Clap Creative

New Google My Business Features

Booking New Appointments

GMB now allows your customers to book an appointment with your business directly from your GMB profile. Google now allows you to add an appointment URL to your profile. This URL can be of any webpage through which your customers can fill out a form to book an appointment. Most businesses are using their contact page URL here, however, you can also use your homepage here as well.

This feature will be the most useful for restaurants and doctors clinics as well as any other business that works around appointments or scheduled bookings. This feature gives the customers the power to schedule appointments as per their convenience while helping businesses keep better track of their bookings.

GMB Q&A

GMB profiles now give the option for your customers to directly ask you questions about your products or services on the GMB page itself. This is a great way for your customers to connect with your brand and get answers to some common questions that other customers could also have. You can answer these questions asked by the customers and both the questions and answers will be visible to everyone who visits your GMB profile.

You and your customers can give thumbs up or down to questions and answers to ensure the quality of your answers. This feature saves a lot of time for you if you are getting a lot of the same questions again and again. New visitors will be able to get these answers from the previous answers itself.

Direct Messages

GMB profile now gives customers the power to directly message businesses through their profile. This creates a clear line of communication between you and your customers. You can set up alerts when you get new messages and give a prompt reply. This also helps your ranking in search as Google always gives preference to more responsive businesses.

You can link a mobile number with your GMB profile and receive customers’ messages on that and reply to them through the phone as well. These days, customers do not live staying on long customer service calls so giving a direct messaging option to your customers will improve customer experience and conversions.

Expanded Product/Service/Menu Editor

When the menu editor was originally launched by Google, it was only for the restaurant business. Google now has expanded this editor to add products and services as well so that it can be used by a wide variety of local businesses to promote their business. This will help small-medium businesses reap the benefits of GMB profile more.

This feature was introduced to keeping local businesses in mind. Businesses can go into their GMB profile and add a catalog of their products and services. On the desktop, these products will be visible on your Google My Business page, and on mobile devices, they will be shown in the search results. Better product descriptions can also give your SEO performance a boost as well.

GMB Posts

Google My Business page posts have been around for years. However, they have recently added a new feature that allows you to add multiple images to a single post. This is great for businesses that want to showcase more images of their products for customers to choose from. This will make your posts more attractive to customers and get more eyeballs on them on your GMB profile.

During this Covid-19 pandemic, the GMB posts have added an additional option for businesses to share Covid-19 updates with their customers to let them know how the business is coping and how it is pivoting its operations in these times.

Conclusion

The purpose of Google My Business profile is to give local businesses the opportunity to reach as many customers online as possible and build a reputation for themselves both online as well as in the community. Make sure you update your GMB profile using all the above features so that your customers can get the most relevant results and information about a business on Google.

If you have more questions about how to improve your local SEO or want to get a free consultation, contact us today.

Digital Marketing Trends that will Hold Sway in 2018

April 23rd, 2018

With the unfolding of modern technologies, businesses whether small or large scale, are doing everything in their power to match up, be it bringing their brick and mortar businesses to an online platform or escalating the current marketing strategies with the help of digital marketing techniques. But whatever the effort, the central idea behind every marketing technique will always be the same, to capture the attention of as many viewers as possible.

For it is this process of attracting audiences (whether online or offline) that will differentiate a successfully thriving business from a failed one. And I am not talking about receiving tons of daily traffic as it will be equally useless if you are unaware of the art of converting leads into sales. What I am talking is identifying and keeping up with the current trends in digital marketing that will hold sway in 2018 to unleash its full potential. But what are these trends we should keep up to? Let’s find out –

Video Marketing

I understand video marketing is nothing new, but it is certainly proving itself to be one of the most powerful tools of digital marketing now more than ever. And it seems convenient as well, I mean why spend 15 mins reading an article when you can watch its video in 2 mins. But that’s not all,

  • Videos attract viewers like magnets and that’s why search engines love videos.
  • Using a video to promote your brand will triple your chances with conversions.
  • Implementing video strategy into your email marketing campaigns will dramatically increase open rates along with decreasing unsubscribe rates.
  • Eye-catching videos bore much higher chance of getting shared by consumers.

Chatbots

Brands have relied on semi-intelligent chatbots for user engagement for a long time now, but chats, with the help of Artificial Intelligence, are about to take digital marketing strategies to a whole new level this year. For e.g. we can expect chatbots to better understand users’ inquiries via Natural Language Processing Technology.

Also, chatbots are being upgraded to offer more human-like responses while interacting with customers. By offering a standardized customer service, interactive bot plays the key role when it comes to improving your site’s design and architecture for marketing purposes.

Social Media Advertising

2017 was the year you could have expected organic reach to provide steady traffic and customer engagement but those days are long gone since. Now, in order to gain any traction, you must advertise on social media. Unfortunately, it’s an expensive process. Though it doesn’t seem much expensive when you consider the Return on Investment which is roughly around 11 times more as compared to traditional digital marketing strategies. Nevertheless, this advertising cost is something you will have to bear if you wish to offer seamless UX to your visitors.

Voice Optimization

In 2017, you must have come across certain virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana etc. Well, this year there contribution to digital marketing is only going to get sky high with over 60 million people currently using these digital assistants in the US alone. Moreover, in coming years, websites optimized for text-based searches will give way to voice-based queries.

Personalised Marketing

As the year 2018 is progressing, so is the need to personalize the shopping experience of consumers. Automation has always been used as an effective marketing tool to help branch out people according to their behaviors, interests, and demography. Now, digital marketing is ready to take one step further by providing a personalized experience throughout the customer’s buying journey. Below are listed some such tips to help you with personalization,

  • Using customized landing pages for different campaigns.
  • Recommending products and services based on purchase history.
  • Analysing visitor’s behavior and sending out lead nurturing emails accordingly.
  • Offering customized games and other interactive features.
  • Conduct personalized surveys and offer rewards for completing it.

Content Marketing

Content marketing will continue to gain even more importance this year and with it, the creation and distribution of content will also change radically. Some of these changes include laying more emphasis on remarketing technique to help with lead generation, creating more niche content that is extremely in-depth or creative, producing shorter and visually rich content to meet the ‘shorter than goldfish’ attention span of millennials, offering complete transparency with brand advertising and much more.

Conclusion

The time has come to shed old techniques and replace them with tools and strategies that will bring your business some jaw-dropping results. With the help of these above-mentioned trends, you will not only tell unique stories about your brand to your audiences but will also be able to provide astonishing experiences to your target customers. Though for this to happen, you too will have to keep a close eye on the latest features of the popular marketing platforms to create innovative campaigns for your audience.

How your Tweets Help in SEO, Google Introduces Tweets to SERPs

April 4th, 2015

So, it’s official!. Google will now display Tweets in SERPs for the search engine’s results. This once again gives credibility to the fact that search engines are deeply in love with Twitter. These were already showing in certain search results like where content is well shared or liked. But this official notification will set the tongues wagging in SEO world.

Raw tweets are now showing prominently in the search results. Most of these are primarily from authority Twitter users. The most popular posts are now attached with the searches. Businesses can certainly use this facet in their online campaigns.

Pages Are Now Ranked on Facts

Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) is a far more superior method for SERPs. The quality of pages is determined on the basis of accuracy instead of just links. The facts about a certain topic will be compared, tweets included, and relevant results are compiled. Webpages deemed factually correct are more likely to be displayed higher in the search results. When used in tandem with traditional search methodology, this method is likely to deliver more accurate results.

Up to the Minute News & Updates

Inclusion of Tweets in the searches will also help Google deliver real time news and updates. The idea here is to provide the users with live updates in the Twitter world and track a topic in real time. This not only updates the users better but also delivers news best related to a context. Conversations have a relative effect on the news since news can be manipulated but the tweets show the real world’s perspective in a more organic way.

Better Content that Stimulates Search Results

Twitter now offers more control over the content to its users, creating a huge wave of trust from its users. This helps stimulate the social content and drive further sharing of the content. New audience’s viewpoints can be better integrated into the search results. To increase its user base, Twitter has purchased ZipDial. Now, it has more than 248 million users.

No More Twitter Crawling – Faster Access to Tweets

As social content is now readily put into the SERPs, the lines between traditional content and social content is blending. The inclusion of tweets now shows that other social content will soon find its way onto the search engine’s radar. Added visibility of the tweets will lead to integration of other channels of social media with the Google’s algorithm.

It is vital to note that social and search are not that different from each other. Facebook’s Graph is a perfect example of how social search can be highly influential in building online brands. In the near future, the distinction between these two channels will dissolve further. Also, this agreement between Twitter and Google will further help cement the relationship these two brands share. In the end, it will be search marketers who will benefit the most with this strategic partnership and is bound to change the way users interact with each other in the digital social sphere.

2015’s Best SEO Tips for Startups

March 31st, 2015

2015 is shaping up to be an excellent year for search engine industry. The mobile developments are taking things to the next level and we are witnessing a steady rise in number of Google updates. All of which means that startups need to be on their toes for 2015.

Startups already have a lot going on. With limited budgets, marketing and SEO in general are their biggest concerns. So, here are some tips that will help you this year and possibly beyond even.

  1. Optimize for One Keyword

Optimize for One Keyword | 2015's Best SEO Tips for Startups | ClapCreative

Keyword stuffing has been declared dead many years ago. The use of excessive exact match keywords is next. Optimize all your pages around a central keyword and insert important on-page elements for an organic look. Ensure keywords are present in heading, image alt text, page title and other vital areas. Most importantly, write for humans with focus on one topic.

  1. Keywords Are Vital but Not Crucial

Google detached PPC from its reliance on exact match keywords in 2014. And it is going for the search now. Do not go for exact match keywords in your content. Rather, create a holistic list of semantic variations which add organic elements to the content. Such an approach also helps in appearing in results where misspellings are common.

  1. Short and Clean URLs

Short and Clean URLs | ClapCeative | 2015's Best SEO Tips for Startups

If you want your website to be categorized well, URL structure should be short. Each URL should cleanly reflect its purpose and help to categorize your website. This greatly helps in determining the page rank since good URLs are easy to crawl. Short URLs are also beneficial from a user experience point of view.

  1. Optimize Image Alt Text

Image Alt texts are gaining prominence. Make sure your image alt texts contain vital keywords.

  1. Increase Site Speed

Increase Site Speed | 2015's Best SEO Tips for Startups | ClapCreative

Site loading time is now a critical factor in determining the ranking on major search engines. With emphasis on user experience, site speed plays an important part in deciding the ranking. Fast load times make sure that your website works well with slower internet speeds. HubSpot or in-built CMS tools can be used to test site speed. Avoid over loaded web servers, large media files, many plugins, excessive image use and uncompressed images.

  1. HTTP vs. HTTPS: Why They Matter

HTTP vs. HTTPS: Why They Matter | 2015's Best SEO Tips for Startups | ClapCretive

Google is giving a big push to HTTPS instead of HTTP. This newer and more secure platform provides for more encryption and better data security. In 2015 and beyond, this is the standard that most large corporations will follow. If you can afford it, go for it.

  1. Mobile Search Implications

Mobile search is an ever increasing realm. Instead of optimizing your website for mobile, design with mobile in mind. Responsive themes and templates are widely recommended by every major search engine. Follow Google’s general guidelines for mobile optimization.

  1. Go For Other Search Engines

Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are raising stars of the SEO industry. You should look to optimize for them since their annual search share is increasing. This means more marketing and sales channels. This will help you increase your visibility. Also, the SEO is comparatively easy for these search engines.

In 2015, SEO will be more about conversion rather than just keywords. Focus on metrics instead of ranking for a set number of keywords. Look for other revenue channels. Focusing all your guns on search engines will drain your marketing budget sooner. Rest assured, these SEO tips are definitely going to help you for the remaining 2015. ispanų kalbos kursai https://intellectus.lt/ispanu-kalbos-kursai-suaugusiems/