What You Need to Know About Local SEO and Business Growth

Local SEO and Your Business

local seo business growthA solid local SEO (search engine optimization) strategy might be your missing ingredient when it comes driving more leads and growing your business.

Local SEO is the strategy and process of optimizing sites and pages with the intent of appearing in organic search results from people seeking out local information.

By optimizing your web presence, you are giving your local business a chance to experience widespread, organic visibility within search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

The best part?

The consumers behind those searches are the most highly qualified potential leads you will ever hear from. Why? They are already looking for what you offer.

Let’s breakdown what you need to know about local SEO for your small to medium sized business.

The Basics of SEO

A successful SEO strategy includes a combination of:

  • content creation, authoritative + subject-specific pages
  • in-page optimization (structure for search engine consumption)
  • off-page optimization (citations and trusted links)
  • analysis + research (what is working / what needs more work)

The truth is that achieving competitive SEO is neither basic nor simple, and it is always a moving target.

While some information is disclosed, nobody knows exactly what search engines are looking for day to day. What we do know is that extensive analysis, quality content and recognition of that content lead to long-term results.

Local SEO Keyword Research

Once you have a website set up with all the fundamentals in place, your next step is keyword research.

In a way, this is the most important part. You need to take the time to find out exactly what your potential customers are searching for before you can begin trying to rank for those searches.

You can begin by using general knowledge to compile a “common sense” list of terms that relate to your business and the issues you solve. For local SEO, you’ll want to add specific towns and counties to your keyword targets.

For example, if you run a coffee shop, instead of choosing the keyword target “best dark roast”, you’ll instead use “best dark roast in austin texas”. 

Content is King

The content within your website including service pages, blog posts, etc are where your keyword research begins to take action. Honestly, we cannot recommend an investment in good content enough; competitive SEO is content driven.

The way search engines identify what your website is about is by ‘crawling’ and seeing keyword consistencies in your pages, especially those that match consumer searches.

Equally important, we recommend highly useful, unique, subject-focused content for every page on your site! You want users to appreciate your content enough to react.

Reactions like sharing, bookmarking or links serve as signals to search engines that users are having a positive experience. We recommend the careful addition of images as well as video embed, a sure-fire way to support more and better indexing.

The goal is to create content with the intention of helping the reader while also making it as easy as possible for search engine algorithms to understand what it is about and where they should place it.

Link Structure

This is where a lot of people get tripped up. You cannot control who links to your pages, and you should never try to manufacture links!

Only highly trusted links matter. Sure, it’s good to accumulate links to your website from outside sources like directory listings, social media accounts, other websites & blogs, BUT ONLY so long as the links are from sites that have trust!

Is a random blog trusted? Maybe, maybe not. Is a directory listing or an official association website trusted? It’s likely!

Something many people don’t seem to know is that linking to different pages in our own websites is a good practice. Good, so long as it’s done to improve user experience. It can tell a search engine that pages you have linked add value for users. And adding the links in descriptive text only supports.

You should certainly add links back to your pages from all of your social network accounts. Your Google listings also offer posting – definitely a quality source for back-links!

Reviews Are Your Competitive Advantage

Having numerous positive reviews show up alongside your business in search results is invaluable. For many searchers, you will have an immediate sense of authority and trust.

Your plan in place to increase reviews should include the following:

  • identify satisfied clients and ask for their reviews
  • plan to help them when necessary, possibly with instructions
  • send follow up requests
  • setup alerts for all reviews in order to be informed
  • get informed on dealing with any negative reviews

You Cannot Grow What You Do Not Measure

Once you begin implementing your local SEO strategy, you will need to track and analyze your results!

Through this consistent process, you will be able to see what’s working and what isn’t, and then adjust as necessary.

Your SEO analysis plan should consist of the following:

  • setup reliable keywords ranking software, analyze
  • setup website traffic and search analytics software, analyze
  • setup off- website traffic and search analytics software, analyze
  • report on successes, report on action items where needed for improvement
  • have a plan for updating under-performing keywords and pages

Is Local SEO worth your time?

SEO is a time-intensive process that is not only worth the effort, it is a necessity if you plan on competing in the digital marketing world.

Local SEO success requires the pursuit of a seemingly endless number of paths needed to connect a prospective lead and the appealing local answer to a search.

At Kinetic Knowledge, we have helped hundreds of local businesses increase traffic, visibility, and leads through our Fundamental SEO services.

If you’re interested in experiencing the benefits of a solid, well-executed local SEO strategy but don’t have the time or desire to learn and implement these practices, contact us today to find out how we can help!

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How The Long Tail Of Search Drives Leads

Long Tail Keywords Can Drive Leads For Your Business

long tail keywords business leads

The Long Tail theory was developed by Chris Anderson in his Oct 2004 Wired Magazine article describing how the web might influence business. Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine at the time, later authored his best selling book ‘The Long Tail’ to better detail his theory.

As it applies to better search engine optimization and marketing – the idea with ‘The Long Tail’ is to be visible for as many variations of one’s core business subject focus (via indexed keywords in published website content) as is possible.

The proven theory being that, while a business may generate less search discovery per keyword variation (i.e. 3 Bedroom Condos For Sale New York City) than it will for the most obvious & highly targeted keywords (i.e. New York City Condos) due to the amount of competition for those obviously targeted keywords, the collective impact of a broad set of variants might easily exceed that of the most targeted.

Again the more varied (or long tail) a search term is, the less competitive it is to be discovered in search results.

An SEO strategy focused on long tail keywords is one capable of not only capturing more traffic, but more highly qualified traffic.

This is NOT meant to suggest a business should give up targeting the obvious searches (i.e. New York City Real Estate).

On the contrary, the argument is a potentially cost-effective approach to being a great deal more visible in the search engines. It means being visible to extremely qualified people demonstrated by how specifically they search.

Search visibility is undoubtedly one of the most cost-effective advertising strategies out there; however, pursuing the most competitive search topics can easily become cost-prohibitive.

Analysis Supports a Long Tail Keyword SEO Strategy

Research shows that people do search more specifically.

To demonstrate this ‘Long Tail’ theory here is traffic analytic data drawn (compiled 2007) from a ‘publish-content-committed Vail CO Real Estate agency’ client of ours.

This agency had broad keyword indexing for both the most sought after (and then also the not so sought after) targets. Their writers focused on being indexed for everything going on in the area & community as it relates to Real Estate.

We examined one month of data to demonstrate ‘long tail’ search discovery success for this (anonymous) agency in Vail, CO.

the long tail keywords SEO and leadsA. Total ‘Short Tail’ search discovery equaled 190/ 1,015 searches bringing new visitors to their website = 19%

  • Short Tail being the town’s name and state plus the words property, real estate, home or homes

 

B. Total ‘Long Tail’ search discovery equaled 825/1,015= 81%

      • Long Tail being as many variations relating to obvious town searches as is possible

a.) different areas of the town were equal to 130 total searchers
b.) condominium complexes equal to 299 total searchers
c.) new developments equal to 89 total searchers
d.) local clubs equal to 101 total searchers
e.) local business news | info equal to 27 total searchers
f.)  listings or specific streets equal to 32 total searchers
g.) developers equal to 56 total searchers

h.) random/ miscellaneous equal to 91 total searchers … hey, they blog about what’s going on locally a lot! 

 

Albeit anonymous, the data above demonstrates ‘Long Tail theory‘ success based upon discovery for less targeted keyword variations; that discovery amounting to 81% of the overall search traffic and 435% more visitors than what the short tail of search delivered. That’s a lot of traffic and potential qualified leads!

We’d argue the Agency is not only a cost-effective marketer, but one that is capturing the most highly qualified eyeballs!


Read more on how to create an effective ‘Long Tail’ & ‘Short Tail’ Keyword lists.


About Kinetic Knowledge NJ Digital Marketing Services 

Based in Monmouth County NJ, Kinetic Knowledge is a full-service digital marketing firm offering SEO, website design, social media, graphic design, e-commerce, content marketing, video editing and more.

Contact us here or give us a call to learn more at 732-722-5915.

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Using Permalink Slugs As An SEO Tool Yet?

Using Permalink Slugs For Better SEO?

 

There’s a very subtle SEO tool in your editor known as the ‘Slug‘. If you aren’t already aware of it, WordPress offers configurable page URLs also referred to as ‘Permalinks’. Slugs are the words that follow the primary domain name URL used to describe a page. The Slug can be a URL friendly version of a longer maybe less specific page title otherwise automatically added to the end of a permalink.

Here’s a quick look at how to leverage ‘Slugs’:

 

 

We may wish to write page (or blog post) titles with humans in mind, to help motivate them to read more of our content. The same is not necessarily true for URLs, which can be less useful with humans yet still incredibly useful with search engines. 

  • A good permalink with customized slug example might be: https://www.kineticknowledge.com/using-slugs
  • Otherwise WordPress automatically adds the entire page or post title unnecessarily like this: https://www.kineticknowledge.com/Using-Slugs-As-An-SEO-Tool-Yet

Overriding the page title with a Slug can simultaneously shorten the URL while maintaining target keyword use. WordPress offers a number of opportunities to improve the presentation of your content to both humans and search engines. Depending on your targeted keywords, Slugs makes it possible to serve them both!

RELATED:

SEO Blog 

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IMAGES ARE IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SEO

image is importantIMAGERY CAN DRIVE BUSINESS

We’ve all searched for a product or a service and hoped for good pictures that illustrate that product or service.  As the old adage goes:  “a picture is worth a thousand words”.  How true that is in advertising and marketing!  Really strong, illustrative images draw people to whatever you are selling.  Be it real estate or window blinds, home inspection services or paving and road construction, medical imaging or long term care, decorative ironwork, antique furniture or dog walkers – you need to appeal to a customer’s emotional attraction.  Images are important for search engine optimization.

Like our furry friend and his selfie – emotional attraction for sure!

 

HOW IMAGERY IS USED MATTERS

Wordy marketing and advertising can be instructional but is not very appealing to today’s average consumer. Some imagery goes a long way toward making the words come alive. Of course, pictures should be well chosen and readily apply to the very words on a page.

Naturally, useful content leveraging targeted keywords needs to be present along with the illustrations. Keywords are what drives search visibility and thereby helps to bring prospective consumers to a website and a product or service page. Pictures then hold their interest and can prompt folks to get in touch!

Informative content, with carefully placed keywords, and impacting PICTURES, named for those same keywords, is of optimum value to marketers. Google – everyone’s favorite search engine – puts a lot of stock in content and it indexes the images when able.  As do other search engines, as well as social media sites. When possible, video imagery is a step up in this regard. They all love imagery, if not video, obviously because it is so favored by their users = the consumer.

 

TOP REASONS FOR ADDING IMAGES IN THE CONTENT

 

  1. It’s Simply More Visually Appealing
  2. Supports Structure For Different Subject- Parts Of Page
  3. Improves SEO – be sure to name the file and add descriptive al tags
  4. Supports Understanding
  5. More Impact In Social Media
  6. More Memorable

SUPPORT WITH IMAGE CONTENT

 

Kinetic Knowledge offers experience in copy writing as well as for carefully choosing the images that support it. We also offer on-location photography or video production. Check in, we welcome a conversation about a program that will lead prospective clients to you.

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