It's All About The ExperienceA blog about managing and improving customer experience and improving profits.https://ronrassociates.com/Rons-BlogThree (Non-obvious) Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Find on Googlehttps://ronrassociates.com/Rons-Blog/PostId/14/three-non-obvious-ways-to-make-your-business-easier-to-find-on-googleSEOWed, 17 Nov 2021 19:48:31 GMT<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Everyone knows that Google owns the ranch in terms of search. Recently, Google&#39;s leadership has expended much energy around local search, accessibility, and voice search.&nbsp; All three of these trends offer savvy business owners opportunities to be found more quickly without spending lots of money to do it! Failing to harness these three trends can hold you back.&nbsp; Here are three things you need to do.</span></span></p> <ol> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">&nbsp;​<strong>Create or Update Your Account on Google My Business (GMB).</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;Google My Business can help a great deal in terms of local Search Results. Whether you&#39;re a dry cleaner, orthopedic surgeon, attorney, or taco restaurant owner, you want&nbsp;<em>and need</em>&nbsp;to be part of the conversation when people enter a search for [<em>your type of business]</em>&nbsp;near me&nbsp;on their phones. Here&#39;s how to set up a free Google My Business Account:</span></span> <ol> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">&nbsp;<b>Find your business on Google Maps.</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;Claim your business if there is a listing; If none exists, create a new listing by adding your business&#39;s physical address and phone number. (You may need to verify your business with Google, so Google is sure you are authorized to manage the account.)</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Be sure to&nbsp;<strong>add opening times, contact info, services offered</strong>. Add a link to your website.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>Use keywords</strong>&nbsp;in your descriptions. Keywords will help when people search for specific products, services, or businesses on Google.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>Add photos</strong>&nbsp;that are of high quality and use all the available space in the photo frame.&nbsp;Make sure you are providing compelling images &ndash; this is the first thing people will see when they look for a business like yours.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>Embed </strong>service request, reservations, and appointment setting<strong> links</strong>&nbsp;in the GMB listing.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Upload&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ronrassociates.com/Rons-Blog/PostId/10/6-steps-to-affordable-video-marketing"><strong>a short video</strong></a>&nbsp;highlighting your business and emphasizing the unique aspects of your service.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">If you have multiple locations, make sure that&nbsp;<strong><em>all&nbsp;</em>your sites appear</strong>&nbsp;in Google My Business.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Keep up to date with what customers are saying about you online&nbsp;<strong>- </strong>monitor reviews.&nbsp;</span></span> <ol> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Address <a href="https://www.ronrassociates.com/Rons-Blog/PostId/7/finding-increased-profits-through-better-complaints-management">customer complaints</a> quickly. If you don&#39;t, customers will take their frustrations out on you in the reviews section of your business listing. These <a href="https://cutthroatmarketing.com/blog/the-only-four-ways-to-delete-google-reviews/">negative reviews</a> are challenging to remove.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Have a happy customer? Send them a note!&nbsp;&nbsp;Request that satisfied customers write a positive review&nbsp;on Google My Business.</span></span></li> </ol> </li> </ol> </li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><b>Write articles about profitable and exciting parts of your business that competitors ignore.</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;One of the easy pitfalls that companies fall into is allowing third parties (SEO Consultants, Ad Agencies) to define their business in SEO terms, with a broad-brush category (usually one with lots of pay-per-click traffic) of competition. Often these one-size-fits-all approaches can ignore part of your business that drives your profits.</span></span> <ol> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Make sure you&nbsp;create content for your business&#39;s low volume, high-profit&nbsp;areas that your competitors ignore.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Find the so-called <a href="https://www.wordstream.com/long-tail-keywords"><em>long tail</em> (less frequently searched) keywords</a>&nbsp;related to your specialty and build content that addresses them. By some estimates, seventy percent of all searches fall into the long-tail category.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>Research questions</strong>&nbsp;people typically ask about this area and <strong>write Q &amp; A copy</strong> to answer them. Keep a notebook with questions that your clients ask and update your content periodically to address them. Some examples will clarify:&nbsp;</span></span> <ol> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>Attorneys:</strong>&nbsp;Maybe you&#39;re a liability attorney who specializes in a certain kind of court case. Write copy around issues you like to take on and document the questions and answers typical for this case.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">If you&#39;re&nbsp;<strong>a doctor</strong>, perhaps you specialize in a specific type of surgery or procedure at which other doctors do not excel.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>A dry cleaner</strong>&nbsp;may have a specific type of garment, drapery, or bedding that is profitable to clean and which your competition may not handle well.</span></span></li> </ol> </li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><b>Use Schema Markup for Your Web Pages.&nbsp;&nbsp;</b><a href="https://schema.org/">Schema markups</a> are specialized machine-readable information added to your website that allows search engine bots to categorize and interpret the information on a particular page quickly. <a href="https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study">By some measures</a>, Google pulled as much as 40 percent of voice results from these so-called structured data snippets.</span></span></li> </ol> </li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;"><strong>Make sure your website is accessible</strong>&nbsp;to a wide variety of users. Google is committed to making sure the web is accessible to all users. To its credit, Google&#39;s User Experience Design curriculum emphasizes the so-called curb cut effect &ndash; in essence, the idea that improvements that help people with disabilities help everyone else as well. Curb cuts (ramps at corners) make street crossings accessible to people in wheelchairs.&nbsp; Curb cuts&nbsp;also make life easier for the rest of us&mdash;for&nbsp;example, anyone&nbsp;using a dolly or someone looking at their phone.&nbsp;Google&#39;s search algorithm mimics this effect. It rewards&nbsp;sites accessible to many users,&nbsp;<em>including those with disabilities</em>, and punishes those not. Fortunately, accessibility&nbsp;is becoming easy to test! Follow this link to download a&nbsp;<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe-devtools-web-accessib/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd?hl=en-US&amp;utm_term=web%20accessibility%20checker&amp;utm_campaign=Search%20-%20axe%20DevTools%20-%20Checker&amp;utm_source=adwords&amp;utm_medium=ppc&amp;hsa_src=g&amp;hsa_ad=552272061839&amp;hsa_tgt=kwd-297561648378&amp;hsa_mt=p&amp;hsa_ver=3&amp;hsa_acc=7854167720&amp;hsa_kw=web%20accessibility%20checker&amp;hsa_grp=135123751144&amp;hsa_cam=14920961979&amp;hsa_net=adwords&amp;gclid=CjwKCAiA7dKMBhBCEiwAO_crFLeljydGPQM4x-_BvlA6xuHiMKtqXKhyN_3LH_ok0hzzNRVHAfciExoCvtsQAvD_BwE" target="_blank">free Chrome extension</a>&nbsp;that tests accessibility. In the meantime, here&#39;s a shortlist of questions to ask about your site:</span></span> <ol> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Does&nbsp;your site work well for both mobile and desktop&nbsp;users?</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Are your website&#39;s page load times short, so customers in low bandwidth parts of the country can access your content?</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Does your site use&nbsp;fonts, colors, and contrast that works&nbsp;for people color blind or otherwise&nbsp;sight-impaired?</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">For the blind, does your&nbsp;site work well with screen readers&nbsp;like Apple VoiceOver and NVDA for Windows?</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">For the hearing impaired, do your&nbsp;videos or audio offer subtitles? (Web apps like <a href="http://www.kapwing.com/subtitles">www.Kapwing.com/subtitles</a> offer affordable tools for doing this)</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">Do your<strong>&nbsp;</strong>photos include alt text<strong>&nbsp;</strong>describing the images and provide a text-only version of your videos (for those who can&#39;t see)?</span></span></li> </ol> </li> </ol> <p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:larger;">For better or worse, Google dictates the rules for how search works on much of&nbsp;the Internet. Follow the above suggestions, and you&#39;ll rise higher in search rankings, be found more often, and convert more traffic!</span></span></p> 14