30-second summary:

Following pandemic-driven shopping trends, lots of local businesses had to explore online marketing opportunitiesGoogle offers a few great ways for a local business to get found through organic searchLocal 3 Pack is Google’s search element containing top three local businesses based on your search query.To rank in the Local 3 Pack you need to ensure your Google My Business listing is complete and activeThird-party local business listings (like Yelp and Tripadvisor) may also drive some organic search visibility so it is a good idea to claim your business thereHyperlocal content may help your business discovered by people who were not even searching to buy a local product or service, so produce relevant content on a regular basis

Local marketing has become even a more trending topic, following the pandemic-driven pandemic.

Lots of local businesses that used to rely on local foot traffic were forced to turn to the Internet to get found by customers.

That digital transformation brought this huge challenge to just about any local business – how to get found online. 

Step 1: Claim your business profile on Google My Business

Google offers huge organic search visibility to local businesses through the so-called Local 3 Pack that shows up on top of organic results when search intent reflects buying (or doing) something locally.

Local 3 pack is Google’s search element that includes three relevant businesses from Google Maps results:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

Ranking your business in the Local 3 Pack is no easy task. It heavily relies on proximity of those businesses to the customer’s current location.

However, there are a few things you can do to improve your local rankings:

Make sure you have a detailed (and original) description of your business and what it is you do.Add your website (oftentimes Google would grab text from the associated website and rank a business based on that content). There are also a few great plugins allowing you to embed your local listing onto your website for better visibility.Upload pictures and videos of your office and teamAdd your products and services (Note: Services are not believed to have a huge (or any) impact on your local rankings but why not add those anyway)Your business categories. Keep those categories as relevant as you can as they can harm your local rankings

Image source: Screenshot by the author

Most importantly: Keep an eye on your Google’s reviews

Business reviews are known to be crucial for your local (and hence Local 3 Pack) rankings, so make sure to keep an eye on your reviews and reply to all of them.

Note that Google may remove your review if they find you have been using manipulative or misleading tactics when getting those reviews, for example:

If that review is repeated across other business profiles on other sites (which, by the way, can be quite natural… I’ll be the one to admit that I may leave my favorite business the same review on a few platforms I am registered at. But again, I think we are talking about suspicious patterns here rather than one-on-one cases)If you had a massive influx of reviews overnightIf Google suspects that you and your team are reviewing your business pretending to be clients.

While you may notice your competitors implement these manipulative tactics without no obviously negative impact on their rankings, I’d still suggest avoiding these at all costs. 

You can invite your customers to review your business on Google through ashort URL that’s specific to your local business (and even note that on your business card). But you are not allowed to request positive (five-star) reviews or segment your customer base to only invite happy customers to review you.

If you have a budget, investing in ads on Google maps is also a great idea. This could bring in more customers and reviews.

Step 2: Claim your business profile everywhere else

While claiming your business is generally a good idea to get better control over your branded content, it also gives you additional organic exposure because those listings may rank in organic search results and bring additional exposure.

Hence, your next step is identifying important local directories (like Trip Advisor and Yelp)and claiming your business everywhere.

Here’s a huge list of those you can consider.

Image source: The Ultimate Free Business Directory List for the USA – Updated 2020

Just about any local business out there will need to ensure a strong Yelp presence, for example, so that one will always be on top of your list. Yelp marketing is tricky but if you start getting reviews there, there’s a way to display those reviews on your site to boost your conversions.

When putting your business on maps…

Make sure your business name and address is consistent across all channels, including the phone number formatComplete all available fields and use all available characters! More content generally means higher rankings for your listings!Monitor your listings for reviews, add updates, ensure your info is up-to-date!

Step 3: Develop a hyperlocal content strategy

Similar to how foot traffic works for a local business (passers-by may check a store out of curiosity), a well-planned content marketing strategy can drive customers who never intended to buy anything or didn’t know they needed you.

Describe (location-driven) problems your business solves. For instance, a Seattle hairdresser publishes an article on haircuts that work well in the windy or rainy climate.Address some problems that are common in your area. These work best when they are timed to a particular seasonal trend. For instance, a bakery in Albany publishes a checklist of foods to store at home to prepare for a snowstorm.

Here are a few ideas for hyperlocal content:

Ideas for local vacations and where your business can be of helpLocal events and how your brand participatesLocal partnerships like local charities

Take note of local People Also Ask results because those are great sources of hyperlocal content.

Image source: Screenshot by the author

Generally, answering local questions is a great idea! 

Let’s take a look at this search query: “how far is Central Park from Times Square

People searching for this may not necessarily be looking to buy anything but there are still some opportunities here as your content may give them ideas on where to dine or stay.

Image source: Screenshot by the author

The beauty of hyperlocal content marketing is that your clients don’t have to be in the area to find your content: They may be planning a trip to your area and discover your business prior to going. This is something local maps placement won’t be able to help with.

Using semantic search is another good way to come up with hyperlocal content ideas because it will help you identify location-based keywords that are able to generate organic traffic. Here’s how semantic search works:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

Conclusion

Organic search provides quite a few opportunities for local businesses to generate traffic and get found by customers. Keep an eye on your local listings and keep creating hyperlocal content to generate relevant traffic for your local business. Good luck!

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

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The post Three organic search opportunities for your local business appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Rachael Hammond

www.61seoservices.com

30-second summary:

The PageRank still exists and here’s a deeper look at how Google’s Reasonable Surfer Model plays a key roleA well thought linking strategy both internally and externally for your ecommerce site can amplify search visibilityGoogle expert, Susan Dolan and Founder of leading agency NOVOS, Samuel Hurley share an ecommerce SEO guide ahead of the holiday season

PageRank is a patent Google introduced, which used links to help determine websites rankings in the SERPs. The algorithm was named after Google founder Larry Page.

The original patent has not been renewed and has since been updated by other algorithms, which work to achieve the same goal. However, by understanding the fundamental principles, we can better understand how to position our eCom sites to drive traffic and revenue.

PageRank key concepts

PageRank is passed between websites through links and can be distributed through a single website with internal links.

Some pages have a higher PageRank than others and thus can pass on more PageRank to pages they link to. When a page links to another, a dampening factor is applied. The original patent set this as 0.85 – so a page with a PageRank of one, linking to another page would pass 0.85 PageRank.

Key update: the Reasonable Surfer Model

Google’s Reasonable Surfer Model indicates that a link that is more likely to be clicked on will pass more PageRank than a link that is less likely to be clicked on. This is determined by a whole host of factors, including font size, color, and anchor text. However, the position of a link on a page is also something that we often have control over as SEOs and that we can, therefore, leverage.

Here is a simple, rather crude representation of how certain links will pass more/less PageRank based on the prominence of a link and how likely it is to be clicked on.

Build external links through to key pages

As linking pages pass PageRank, it stands to reason that we want to generate backlinks to key pages that we want to rank. For most ecommerce sites, the pages that rank for the highest volume and most revenue-driving keywords are category pages.

Wherever possible, we should therefore look to use tactics that support link building through to the pages that drive revenue, which for most sites looks something like:

Category pagesProduct pagesHomepageBlog posts

This is obviously easier said than done. Practicing these tactics with an overall aim to drive PageRank to your key pages. This reduces the dampening factors at play.

How to get past this

One common way to bypass this difficulty in building links to category pages is internally linking to key category pages we want to push from blog posts/Digital PR pieces that then get links themselves.

Although the PageRank passed to the page we ideally want to rank will undergo a dampening factor, this can still be more beneficial than failing to get any links at all to your target page.

It is worth considering how relevant the category page is to the blog/PR piece it is being included on, as well as where the links are placed on the page, being mindful of the impact the Reasonable Surfer dampening effect can have.

1. Build links from pages with high PageRank

As any Digital PR will know, high authority pages or pages that have lots of PageRank to pass onto your own site are some of the most sought-after links to attain.

Most of the time, this is actually viewed at a domain level, however as is demonstrated in this great review of how PageRank works by Majestic, a domain that should theoretically have a high PageRank can actually be significantly decreased at a page level by its own internal linking.

One caveat for Digital PR teams in this regard is not being too reliant on domain-level metrics as a proxy for links that pass a lot of PageRank and are thus good for ranking. Exactly which pages have high PageRank is nigh-on impossible to know, and although an over-reliance on third-party tools is never optimal, they may be the closest we can get to figuring out PageRank passed by a specific page, rather than a domain.

2. Build links from relevant sites

As part of the Reasonable Surfer Model, it suggests that a link is less likely to be followed if the links are unrelated to the document:

“This reasonable surfer model reflects the fact that not all of the links associated with a document are equally likely to be followed. Examples of unlikely followed links may include “Terms of Service” links, banner advertisements, and links unrelated to the document.”  (Source)

As a result, building links from sites that are of higher relevance to your own site, is likely to pass more PageRank.

3. Remember it is not just about the number of links

Due to how PageRank is calculated, the PageRank value passed by one site can be drastically higher than the PageRank passed by the culmination of 1000s of others combined.

This is why the reliance on the overall number of links can be misleading.

Use internal linking to spread PageRank

We need to consider a few different methods while identifying pages that will benefit the most from ranking and how you pass PageRank around an ecommerce site:

Link to pages you want to rank from pages that have high PageRank themselvesLink to pages you want to rank more frequently throughout the siteGive links to pages you want more prominently ranked

1. Link to pages you want to rank from pages that have high PageRank themselves

Pages that have high PageRank, from which we can assume to be the pages most linked to from external sites, can be used to pass PageRank to – 

Homepage linking

The best example of how you can do this is through the homepage. The homepage for most websites tends to be one of the most, if not the most externally linked to page on a site.

This means that in terms of PageRank, the homepage has the most to pass on to other internal pages.

By carefully selecting which pages you link to from the homepage, and therefore pass the high levels of PageRank to the key pages you want to rank.

2. Link to pages you want to rank more frequently throughout the site

Another method to consider is how frequently you link to the most important pages you want to rank.

Considering that each page can pass PageRank on – this stands to reason that if a page is internally linked to more frequently, it is likely to pass on more as compared to a page less internally linked to (although obviously influenced by the PageRank of the linking pages).

Therefore, you should be considering where you can add internal links to ensure that important pages are linked to more frequently, including:

Global navigation

Due to being outside of the main body content of the page, we can reasonably assume there is a dampening factor applied to links in the menu. However, given its role in navigation, this is likely to be far less than in the footer. 

Therefore, since the global navigation is, as the name suggests, linked globally from every page on the site, the sheer number of links that will be passing PageRank is likely to funnel to those pages included in the navigation. These should therefore be the key pages you want to be ranking.

Breadcrumbs

As long-time fans of breadcrumbs at NOVOS, their benefit of passing PageRank to key pages should not be underestimated, due to the frequency with which different levels of pages are linked to.

The benefit of breadcrumbs on ecommerce sites (outside of usability benefits for the customers) is that they pass PageRank up to the core pages that generally rank for competitive keywords. They are typically helpful to rank the categories.

Most ecommerce websites have a pyramid structure with the homepage at the top, followed by some core categories, an increasing number of subcategories, and lots of product pages. By implementing breadcrumbs on the site, you use the pyramid structure to your advantage (both SEO and CX wise). Since every product page will link up to its relevant subcategories and category, and every subcategory will link through to its relevant category.

In this sense, you distribute internal links as an inverse pyramid, concentrating the highest number (if we disregard the homepage) on the core categories that are the pages generally targeted for high volume keywords. In this sense, your ecommerce site stands a great chance of receiving large amounts of PageRank from internal links.

Product pages also generally are easier to build links to and also naturally generate them. The higher PageRank product pages can distribute upwards, the greater is the relevance – which implies lesser chances of suffering significantly from dampening factors.

Footer

Based on the Reasonable Surfer Model we can assume that the PageRank passed by footer links is significantly impacted by dampening factors. However, the fact that these links are site-wide may mean that there is some benefit to including important pages in the footer for the accumulation of PageRank.

3. Give links to pages you want more prominently ranked

As the Reasonable Surfer Model applied to the likelihood of a link being clicked on a page, it is therefore worth considering whereabouts on a page. This could also mean considering page templates in general links.

For example, in a content strategy, where multiple blogs are being written on a given relevant topic to support a category page, linking to the category page early in the article, with clearly related anchor text, is likely to drive more PageRank than right at the end of an article. On a case-by-case basis, this distinction may appear trivial, however, on an ecommerce site with hundreds and thousands of blogs, the PageRank passed in total may be significant.

Susan Dolan is a Search Engine Optimization Consultant first to crack the Google PageRank algorithm as confirmed by Eric Schmidt’s office in 2014. 

Samuel Hurley is the Founder of NOVOS, Global SEO Agency Of The Year 2020 and 2021.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post How to use PageRank for ecommerce websites appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Rachael Hammond

www.61seoservices.com

30-second summary:

Often SEOs and search marketing managers struggle to convey value to the board which hampers funding and support for relevant strategy implementationThere are three aspects you need to balance in order to win over C-suiteKevin Indig, Director of SEO at Shopify helps you navigate these crucial conversations

Your best ideas aren’t worth a dime without funding. What’s the key to funding? Executive buy-in! To understand how to get buy-in, you need to know your audience: the mighty C-suite.

Executives are busy, stressed, and care about three things and three things only – 1. Market share 2. Revenue 3. Talent. They want to know if the company is capturing more of the market, makes more money, and has the right people. Mind you, a healthy team and culture are part of talent.

So, whatever you need funding for needs to have a direct line to one of these three factors. Only a few projects can live outside of these and provide enough strategic value to be considered. Everything else gets a friendly head nod and then collects dust in backlog hell. Relevance is important!

But your success will also depend on strong storytelling. Think about it like packaging. A sports car needs a nice chassis, an iPhone needs a classy box, and your presentation needs a capturing narrative.

Designing a narrative

Stories are how we retain information. I’m not going to give you the whole spiel about how humans told stories around fire camps and painted the walls of caves. Let’s just say our brains still connect information with stories because they trigger emotions. We imagine ourselves to be part of the narrative. It even triggers certain parts of the brain – as if we were really in it!

Storytelling has two key components: a problem and a solution. The problem needs to be big, timely, and relevant. You don’t want to cut the problem definition short but take your time showing what the root issue is, its magnitude, and how it is connected to other problems. This is called issue framing. In the end, your audience should think “We need to take care of this right now!

Emphasize the problem with data or a strong construct of reasoning. The executives should be able to see the issue in one paragraph or on one slide without too much explanation. This is an important data visualization challenge. Problems often come down to a simple display or something not trending in the right direction or being too small/large compared to something else.

Seek to connect the issue to a larger goal of the organization or an existing problem. This is easier to grasp than dealing with a completely new problem. Plus, connecting your problem with another one has a carry-over effect of relevance. Suddenly, your point is top of mind.

The solution to the problem can be a set of prioritized actions or an outcome. Just like the problem, keep the solution simple. “Here are three things we’re going to do about it.” Show the time horizon and resources you need to solve the problem. You should be able to show one to three metrics to measure progress against the solution to give everyone an understanding of success.

This is how data and storytelling play together to lead up to a coherent narrative.

Building trust

Ideally, you gain the executives’ trust over time to get the point fairly quicker and not have to develop a full pitch every time. Trust comes from keeping commitments. Following through. Keeping your word.

That’s why one of the best things you can do after a successful pitch that leads to funding is to follow up with progress and results. Showing things turn out the way you said they would displays to executives that they can rely on you.

On the other hand, not following up can stick out negatively and lead to uncomfortable questions during your next pitch. Even if results are not coming in, reaching out and showing you’re on top of it goes a long way.

Emotions matter as much as data

By now, you’ve realized that getting C-suite buy-in depends as much on evoking the right emotions as it does on data.

Be careful with evoking too much fear, it can lead to paralysis and panic. Be careful with too much excitement, it can come across as naive and unserious. Aim for just the right amount.

One factor that helps is timing. Bringing the narrative up at the right moment means executives are primed to listen and be open to understanding. That could be annual/quarterly planning or when the company hits a pivotal moment, but also strategy shifts or personnel changes in the C-suite.

Another factor that helps, are advocates and champions of your pitch. Talk to someone before you pitch and ask them for feedback. When people co-create, they get invested in the outcome.

Kevin Indig is Director of SEO at Shopify. He is also the creator of Growth Memo. You can find Kevin on Twitter at @Kevin_Indig.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post How to get buy-in from the C-suite appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Rachael Hammond

www.61seoservices.com

An SEO agency is a professional expert at search engine optimization. They work closely with companies to increase their online visibility. SEO is generally a set of complex procedures that an SEO agency follows to improve their organic listings rankings in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Companies rely on these services to increase their online business by improving brand name recognition and increasing sales.

There are various aspects of SEO services offered by an SEO agency. The SEO analyst works closely with the company to determine which keywords will optimize content and videos on their website. SEO companies use analytical tools like Pay per Click (PPC) and visitor-level analysis (LSI). These two aspects of SEO are an integral part of the SEO process. The analysis of SEO strategies helps determine what keywords or key phrases should be used to optimize websites.

The SEO company researches for the latest keywords and conducts keyword research to determine the best keywords or key phrases that can be used to attract organic traffic. They then use these keywords to optimize the content on the website. Links can also be added to attract organic traffic. Most SEO firms have a wide network of experts, bloggers, and website owners who they use to get the best possible deals. The SEO firm researches the market and selects the best companies to work with.

One of the most common questions people ask about SEO is, “How do they generate so much traffic to their site?” The answer to this question is not that hard to give. SEO experts create in-house blogs to inform their clients of SEO methods and trends in the SEO world. SEO content writers write SEO articles, press releases, and SEO content to keep their clients updated on what is happening in the market.

To get your website to the first page of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, you must ask for an in-house SEO expert to conduct keyword research for you. If you are working with an SEO firm, you must ask them about their SEO in-house blog. The SEO team should have a well-written blog with fresh content to keep readers interested and inform them of the latest updates in the market.

Another common question that SEO agency employees usually receive from clients is, “How will I know if my website is ranking well for my target keywords?” The first meeting with an SEO expert should address this issue. You will find out which keywords your website is ranking well for by conducting keyword research. An SEO expert can also guide you towards high-quality links.

Most SEO agencies conduct a thorough content audit. This audit determines which of the content on the website needs to be updated or improved. This way, the SEO team improves the website’s rank as well. An SEO content audit involves identifying which sections of the site need to be improved or amended. This way, the website’s ranking will be improved as well.

Before hiring an SEO agency, it’s important to conduct a thorough analysis of your business requirements to ensure that you don’t waste your money hiring an ineffective company. Hiring an SEO firm is a big investment, especially when you want to improve your online presence. You must ask questions to ensure that the SEO agency hired by you is capable of providing results as promised. An SEO company that guarantees results is not always an effective one and should be avoided at all costs.

Rachael Hammond

www.61seoservices.com