5 Factors That Will Help Your Business Achieve Better Listings on Google My Business

What are the top ways for your local business to thrive on Google? We turned to the guys at Local SEO Guide and their 2016 Local SEO Ranking Factors for inspiration.

While there are a number of important factors to consider, Andrew Shotland and his team ask:

Local SEO is a fickle beast. Not only do you have to worry about traditional SEO around a businesses website, but you also have to worry about traditional local signals like Google My Business, citations and reviews. This creates a real challenge: How do you prioritize not just your Local SEO operations but your investment in Local SEO?
What does this mean from an everyday perspective? Consider these five core conclusions from their study:

  • Reviews matter!
    Good reviews help greatly. Using Google reviews and sources like Yelp and others will count towards higher listings. Be sure to ask your clients to review your business, monitor review sites to ensure the conversation stays positive, and respond in the right place at the right time.
  • Make your listing attractive
    Google My Business profile views are also a major factor for local SEO. Claim your listing with Google, make sure your business information is up to date and remember to include keywords, geomodifiers and images to make your listing attractive.
  • Think about your on-site SEO
    Organic ranking and positive SEO practices on that front still matter if you want to rank locally as well. Think of the content that you add to your website and ensure that you keep things fresh. The content you post to your website or blog can go a long way towards helping you stay relevant for local search results with Google.
  • Build relationships to build backlinks
    Quality citations and quality backlinks matter greatly too. Be noticed, get referenced and look to build relationships with people who can provide high quality referrals back to your website.
  • Think of your searcher
    Local SEO should take into account user intent and the various factors that qualify their decision.

Are there any tips on what to avoid?  There’s one important thought unveiled in the Local SEO Guide’s Study: stop wasting time on geo text. There is simply no statistically significant correlation that shows how stuffing city and state names in titles improves search performance in relation to Google My Business. While it’s been assumed for a long time, this practice can now safely be put to rest.

Need help setting up your Google My Business account? Let us know and we’ll be happy to get you up and running with Google, Bing, Yahoo, review sites and key mapping technologies so your business is found quickly and easily online.

An SEO Specialist Walks Into A Restaurant…

It’s always smart to focus on SEO when it comes to promoting your restaurant online. However, this can be done in many ways, with on-site SEO only one of several options.

What’s truly important, though, is what searchers are finding when you come up in their results. What if you come up first but the searcher is able to find information related to your competitors that the search engines don’t offer about your business? For example, what if their menu is syndicated across search engines and review sites and yours isn’t? It would stand to reason that the consumer is going to click on the business that gives the most information first, even more so if the menu is present.

Did you know that 86% of people view a menu online before dining out and that 50% of local searches lead to a visit within a day? With this in mind, look at just how important it becomes to ensure that your listing is optimized with proper business information and your menu. Because it’s most important for people to see what you’re serving, where you’re located, if you’re open, and if they can easily make a reservation.

Working with 10|20 Marketing to claim your business listings, provide your business information and post your menus to key online networks actually improves your SEO. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have algorithms to determine which businesses show up in search results. One of the things the rankings are based on is “user interaction”. By adding your menus into all these listings more people will be clicking and viewing them and those businesses organically rise in the search rankings.

This makes for a powerful one-two punch. Your menu attracts diners and the business information that goes with it gets them to your restaurant. Allow us to help you ensure that your listings are updated with your menu and proper business details so you don’t lose this powerful opportunity to expose your restaurant to new diners in your local area.

What’s Your 10-20?

One of the questions we’ve been asked most often over the past month is “what does 10-20 mean”? It’s a question that can be answered easily, actually.

We took inspiration from CB Radio slang. In fact, the following is from CBSlang.com:

If you hear a truck driver say “10-20” on their CB radio, it’s just another way to say “Your current location.”
And this definition from Urban Dictionary offers a little more history:

The phrase essentially means, “What is your location?” or “Identify your position,” but is a corrupted phrase from the original “10-20” used by law enforcement to verbally encode their radio transmissions so that non-police listeners would not easily discover police operations, as well as to communicate quicker and more efficiently by standardizing frequently used phrases.

These verbally-coded messages were called “10 codes”, of which “10-20” stood for “Identify your position,” or “Where are you?” originally. Other such codes include “10-7” meaning the officer was busy such as with a traffic pull-over, “10-8” meaning that the officer was back on patrol such as from having just written a citation, the popular “10-4” as an affirmative, “10-10” as a negative and “10-22” to disregard a previous transmission have only seen light integration into common use. It was not uncommon for a city to have its own set of particular 10-codes for other phrases frequently used particular to that locale.

So that’s where we took our inspiration from.

More importantly, though, is ensuring that your 10-20 is protected online. And by that we mean that your location, your brick and mortar address, should be claimed and consistently presented across a number of search engines, review sites and mapping technologies. Why? Because when someone searches for your business or keywords associated to it, you’ll have a greater chance of turning up on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Facebook or Tom Tom, to name a few online listing technologies. And in today’s local search-driven economy, being able to pinpoint your location on the maps and search engines that drive the small business economy is not just good practice, it is critical to the survival of your livelihood.

Because if your small business doesn’t show up as a search engine result, your competitor’s will.

Our Mission Is To Help Every Small Business Become Found Online Easily

10|20 Marketing wants to see every small business succeed online. With the importance of local search only growing, it’s essential that businesses are found where people are searching for them. That means on search engines, review sites and mapping technologies.

With 10|20 involved, the process to ensure that local businesses turn up on these critical search engines is easy, time saving and automated. We will ensure that your location is consistently presented and error-free, that menus are present and easily updated, and reviews aggregated and monitored, so your business can enjoy improved findability and better overall search engine optimization across the web.

Why? Because modern consumers start their shopping experience on search engines and listing sites. The results they get from those sites determine where they spend their money, with reviews on each location’s listing helping them determine if a business is the right fit for them. As a result, if a business doesn’t appear in local search results, the consumer will be happy to spend their money at a competitor.

Consider these statistics:

  • 49% of local searches occur without a specific business in mind.
  • 50% of local searches lead to a store visit within a day
  • 85% of consumers still prefer to shop in physical stores vs. online
  • 86% of people view a menu online before dining out.
  • 87% of smartphone owners make a search engine inquiry at least once a day
  • 97% of smartphone users use a search engine on their mobile device at least once per week

10|20 Marketing will help you turn up in searches for your business and related keywords by:

  • Claiming all your location listings on key search engines, review sites and mapping technologies
  • Managing how your business appears across the internet with consistency
  • Fixing errors or omissions that are costing you sales
  • Listing your location on new engines, review sites and maps
  • Keeping your menu or price list syndicated and updated
  • Monitoring your customer reviews and ratings
  • Driving more customers to your locations