December 19, 2017 How to Drive More Foot Traffic to Your Local Business with an Online Presence

There are many things you can do to get more traffic to your door.

One of the things that are surprising is that many local physical businesses don’t have, or don’t think they need local SEO, such as getting listed on major local business listings.

Not having some type of online presence is a big mistake for companies. Take into consideration that more people are closely connected to their mobile devices more than ever.

People use their smartphones to do everything from ordering pizza, to finding out who has the best price on the car part they suddenly need. And while this is just a small example, you may or may not be surprised that many people go online to check to see if a business has what they need, what the prices are, if they are currently open.

They do these things before deciding to drop by a store!

There are many things that a local physical business can start doing besides having a website online so that they can be found easily by new prospective customers. Getting yourself listed on Google My Business is free, and the page is likely to get indexed very quickly since it is Google.

The next best thing to do is get listed on local directories and review sites. Many people are using these sites to check business reviews and will be able to find your business quickly.

Some other things that you want to be sure to do are building links from local news sources, establishing partnerships with other businesses and of course, utilizing search engine optimization using locally targeted keywords which very well could be easy to rank for.

If all this sounds great to you, and you need more information on how to get started, then contact us now, and we can help you get your business in the important places that matter most and help increase your foot traffic.

info@evoklocal.com
Digital Marketing Consultant

May 24, 2017 See What You Need to do to Build your Brand Online

Building your own brand online contains a lot of small steps (and a few big ones) intended to put you in a position to gain trust and authority for yourself online. You may have the best shop downtown, but if you don’t have an online presence, you won’t exist for anyone that doesn’t know that or searches online.

In order to take your brand online you need to do some very basic steps to get going.

Let’s see what four of those steps are and help you get your business and brand online in 2015.

Four steps to start building your brand online

Here are some of the basics you need to secure in order to successfully take your brand online.

Know who your audience is – You might have a good idea of who you want to appeal to, but this is the time to do some research and see not only who your ideal customer is, but who you will be in competition with for their interest.

Secure your Web properties – Getting a domain name for your brand that accurately reflects your business is crucial. Have a website built. Don’t choose a free site you see advertised, as this will severely limit your alternatives and you won’t really own anything. Bite the bullet, secure web hosting, and get a site built that you can be happy with for a while.

Establish Social Media accounts – Social media is very important these days, because it can have a positive effect on traffic, authority, search ranks and a lot more. Deciding which social sites to employ is up to you, but most likely you’ll be using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Create a presence on these sites and be certain to have consistency in your contact information across each of these as well as your website. Having this last element wrong could really cause search engine problems so attend to it!

Begin to post content and engage people – Once all of your properties are set to go, it’s time for you to begin to populate them with content. This is a necessary step, and one to take care with. It is where your authority, search engine ranks, and traffic will ultimately sprout from. When people begin to engage with you through comments, be sure to keep up your end of the conversation, and thus help begin your brand’s authority online!

April 16, 2017 How to Make Your Site Google-Friendly

While many consider content marketing to be the darling of the search engines at present, there is another aspect to ranking your pages well, and that lies on the technical side of things.

Google loves to reward pages that are technically done well with high rankings, as they feel that while you may have great content, if your user experience is less than wonderful, they’ll say no thank you and look elsewhere.

So how can you satisfy the technicians at Google and get them to rank your pages better? Let’s have a look at 5 tips you can use to ensure that your pages are Google-friendly and provide the best user experience you can deliver.

5 Tips for optimizing the technical side of your web pages

Page speed – You may have heard the latest human attention span statistic; that we now are transfixed a mere 8 seconds, one second less than a Goldfish. Therefore it should come as no surprise that Google probably will not rank your site well if it loads slowly, as people will consider this a poor user experience, or simply not go there at all!

Internal links – Google likes to see a good internal linking plan, one that provides users with useful links to relevant pages inside of and outside of the site. And also this plays a role in passing Pagerank. Also, don’t make the mistake of having multiple navigation menus. Use one, as well as a sitemap and a link back to your home page from each page.

Make sure you are Schema compliant – Schema.org is the web language markup that Google, Yahoo and Bing have consented to use in order to better see what your pages are about. This is one you’ll need a webmaster for.

Use HTML elements – A significant part of how your page will be ranked is determined by the use of certain HTML elements that indicate what your content is about. This includes the use of H1-H4 tags, meta data and image optimization, to name a few.

Keywords you wish to rank for – This is your opportunity to tell Google in no uncertain terms what your page is all about, and hopefully be ranked for these terms. You’ll have to make sure they are found in all the places Google is looking for them, such as title tags, titles, description, the body of your content and links.

December 16, 2014 Need to Get a Handle on your Local Listings? Here’s How!

Managing your local listings can be a headache if you don’t have a plan. There are lots of moving parts, and even a relatively small error can lead to problems that can cost you in a rather expensive way.

In some ways managing your local listings is more work than a site serving globally. You need to make sure all your data is correct for each location and this can be challenging. Let’s take a look at some of the essentials necessary for good local listing management.

Getting the basics of your local listings in order

Here are some of the things you’ll need to get in order from the start.

  • The most essential aspect of managing your local listings is to ensure that your NAP data, that is your company’s name, addresses and phone contact, (along with all your other data) is correct across all locations and platforms.
  • Many times local companies make the mistake of lacking a phone contact number. Don’t be that guy! Even if it is only a voicemail ensure your customers and prospects can reach you.
  • Make sure to completely fill out any profiles online that contain your information. This is a great way to get info out there about your business, and the more you can inform readers, the greater shot you’ll have at getting that new lead.

Taking the next step

Once your basics are covered, make sure you are taking advantage of all the wonderful sites and opportunities that are available to local businesses. A lot of them are free, and others have a modest fee. Here’s just a few to get you going.

  • Ensure that you have a local presence in Google, Yahoo and Bing.
  • Look at local directories like Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze, and Factual as aggregators like these provide data to mobile companies and search engines alike.
  • Look into listings with properties like Yelp, Yext, Foursquare, Facebook. You’ll find that their local packages can be less than you might have thought, and can make a huge difference.
  • Use tools like Bright Local, Moz Local or Whitespark to monitor your citations and track your progress. This will be an ongoing process, as you’ll want to keep getting more and more citations that will give your business even greater reputation.

December 17, 2013 Use These 7 Tips to Profit from Location Based Marketing

Location based marketing services including FourSquare, Yelp and others have combined with mobile devices to seriously change the way your customer discovers and interacts with your business. The quantity of information and trust these sites share has supplied consumers a real help when deciding on where to shop, eat or go. How can you as a small business owner make the most of location based marketing in your business?

Here are 7 tips to help you cash in on location based marketing!

  1. Ensure that your local listings are correct – It should go without saying, but it doesn’t, so here goes. Make certain that your listings in Google+ Local, Yelp, FourSquare and any other service or listings you have are correct with regards to name, address, phone, maps and anything else you want to convey.
  2. Mobile responsive website design is crucial – Since progressively more users are accessing your site through a mobile device, it’s more critical than ever before to have a mobile version of your site that renders perfectly.
  3. Pushing  and pulling – There are two ways to reach consumers: you can push ads out to those who are in your area, as well as being available to those who are trying to discover someone just like you where they are!
  4. Local reviews can make a difference – The majority of shoppers are making local purchasing decisions based upon reviews they read. It’s still a good idea to encourage and reward reviews of your business, as this could be the swing vote!
  5. Offer incentives – This is an easy way to leapfrog the competition when the choices aren’t so clear-cut.
  6. Be responsive to reviews and social media – Don’t neglect to keep up with your social media, especially reviews. People notice!
  7. Offer deals for Mobile wallets – Here’s a new one: offer deals to consumers who are choosing to use their mobile wallets, such as through Google Wallet, Passbook or others. You will very likely skin your competition with this one!