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20 No-Brainer Ideas for Advertising Your Small Business

hannah@theharvestfirm.com (Hannah Martin) — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:04:27 GMT

Let me guess: You set up your business, opened shop, did all the paper work, and even paid for a website.. but people still aren’t coming in?

Well, you might have forgotten an important step, or maybe you just didn’t know where to start with it…

You need MARKETING and ADVERTISING.

Marketing your small business is the key to all business sales, unless your entire business model is based on impulse buys. With marketing and advertising, the saying that “the early bird gets the worm” really rings true. Here are 20 ways you can advertise your local business without any expertise, so you can increase sales and get more customers.

Before you jump into the list, did you know that SEO (short for “Search Engine Optimization”) can help bring customers to your business naturally? Imagine being listed on the first page when people search for your services in Google. We can do that! Check out our SEO services here.

Here are 20 affordable marketing and advertising ideas for your small business

Submit your business name, address, and phone number to all of the local directories that cover your town. This means setting up profiles on websites like Yelp, Yellowpages, and Foursquare. ( Bonus : do SEO on your Yelp page to come up higher there, too.)
Make sure your business is listed on Google+ for Business. If it is, make sure you claim the listing. If it’s not, make sure you set it up! (And then claim it.)
Create an optimized Facebook page for your business. Invite all of your friends in the area, and run ads to people who might be interested in your services nearby.
Put your vehicle in a vinyl wrap. This is like a mobile billboard that advertises your local business wherever you go!
Establish your expertise on social media by creating posts about your professional/business accomplishments.
Ask for referrals from past customers. You can even offer a referral free (like I do!) to encourage fee, word of mouth advertising.
Submit for a local “coupon book” membership.
Take out an ad in the local newspaper.
Sponsor a local event, such as Relay for Life, or a community marathon.
Run a contest. You can advertise this contest using any of the methods above.
Consistently blog about topics related to your business, that your customers would find helpful.
Retarget people who have already been to your website, but might not have contacted you on their first visit.
Take out PPC ads.
Optimize your website to rank organically in Google . This is called SEO, and it means that when someone searches for your services (for example, “roofing company in Las Vegas”), you’ll come up first!
Advertise on local news websites.
Place ads on Craigslist.org.
Join your local Chamber of Commerce.
Use press releases when there is significant news for your business to talk about. (A grand opening press release would definitely be appropriate!)
Attend a BNI meeting for your local chapter

Once you start using some of these tips, business will start coming in.

From there, the most important thing to keep growing your business is to ensure customers come back , so make sure you’re providing the best experience possible after your advertising brings the customer in.

Best of luck!

5 Steps For More Website Traffic & Sales

hannah@theharvestfirm.com (Hannah Martin) — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 18:09:27 GMT

5 Steps Every Service Business Can Take to Get More Website Traffic & Sales

Every roofing/plastic surgery/legal/accounting company wants to get more business from their website. After all, that’s the point of having one, right? So what do you do after you’ve published a website (we hope!) and you’re simply not getting the number of clients you thought you’d get from being online? Well, there are a few things you can do to both increase your traffic and increase the number of people that contact you .

So, how can you get some of these results for yourself, even if you DIY it? Here we go!

INCREASING TRAFFIC

First off is increasing traffic. If you don’t have traffic coming to your website, nobody will be there looking to contact you. There are a few ways to get traffic – namely advertising and search engines. If you don’t want to constantly spend money advertising, the best way to get long-term, steady traffic to your website is by ranking well in search engines, aka Google. If nobody can find you when they search (your services) in (your city), then you have a problem. Here’s what you can do about it.

1. Optimize your page titles and meta tags.

Every page on your website has a title and meta description in the code. Optimize these by including the name of the service listed on the page along with your hometown in each one. For example, if you’re offering roofing in Phoenix, your homepage title should be something like “Top Roofing Services in Phoenix | Company Name” and your meta description should be a quick description of what you offer. This same method can be used for your other pages that discuss roof repairs, commercial roofing, etc. If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can research the top ranking competitors and see what they’re doing to win before you start changing your own tags.

2. Make sure your website is responsive (mobile-friendly).

This one is really important for 2 reasons. The first is that Google actually released an update last year that actually penalizes your website rankings in mobile search if it’s not mobile friendly. The second is that mobile search is completely taking over desktop search, especially for local services. So if you want to be found (and you’re reading this, so you do!) you need to make sure your website is responsive. You can hire a developer to do this, or if you’re on WordPress, move to a responsive WordPress theme. Not sure where to turn for help? You can always get in touch with us – 100% of our clients’ websites are responsive, because we always keep up with Google’s requirements.

3. Get rid of all of your website errors.

For this, you can check Google Webmaster Tools or use a crawling tool like Screaming Frog. You’ll want to make sure you repair any errors such as 404 pages, as Google frowns on these, and paying customers may be landing on them as well.

4. Make sure your Google Maps listing is filled out with the correct info and linked to your website.

If you’re a local service provider without a claimed Google maps listing, you’re gonna have a hard time. First, make sure you have a solid, consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) format. Then make sure your Google listing has this exact information along with a link to your website, a description of your services, and some relevant photos.

5. Last but not least, citations & backlinks: They’ll make or break you.

The last thing you need to make sure to have after all the above is said and done is consistent citations and strong, relevant, healthy backlinks. The best thing you can do to help yourself with this is to make sure your consistent NAP (that we mentioned above) is listed everywhere you can in local search directories. These are websites like Yelp, the Yellow Pages, Manta, etc. With an SEO campaign, we can handle this for you, but it can be done manually as well. Just list yourself everywhere you can. You can even do optimization within websites like Yelp.

For backlinks, try to leave blog comments on relevant blogs, get guest posts by reaching out to blog writers, and sponsor any local events that come up.

INCREASING CONTACT REQUESTS

Once you have a decent flow of traffic coming to your website, you need to make sure people can reach you. This would seem like an obvious thing, but you’d be surprised how many websites do not make it easy to contact them, especially if the website isn’t mobile friendly and someone has landed on it from their phone. The best thing you can do is put your phone number and email address right at the top of your website, and make the phone number a click-to-call link that way nobody has to go back and forth between their browser and their calling app.

All of this will help to increase your search rankings over time, and ultimately increase the amount of business you get from your website. It’s not easy, but it does work. If you need an expert’s help or you just don’t have time to do it all, please reach out to us and we’d be happy to give you a free consultation to see if our marketing plans can fit your needs!

How To Ask For A Google Review

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 18:36:00 GMT

Wondering how to ask for a Google review? You must be a smart business owner because you're here reading this article, and you understand how important reviews are for your online visibility and reputation.

Have you noticed that when you search for a business online, the top businesses have a lot of reviews on their Google My Business listings? Google reviews are an important signal that tells Google your customers enjoy your services and your business should show up higher in search results and on Google maps. So if you’re not regularly getting reviews now, you need to begin asking for Google reviews from your local customers.

Here’s how!

Why Ask for Google Reviews

Google is probably the most important platform for customers to leave reviews for your small business. Getting reviews on your Google business profile means that you’ll improve your local SEO, look great to potential customers who have found your profile, and stand out above competitors.

“According to online reviews statistics and ReviewTrackers data, 63.6% of consumers say they are likely to check Google reviews (through Google Maps and Search) before visiting a business location — more than any other review site.”

https://www.reviewtrackers.com/reports/online-reviews-survey/

That means that Google search is even more important than Yelp, Facebook, Angieslist, (the list goes on) for a local business.

One review won’t help you, but when you have multiple reviews from multiple customers, you’ll show up higher in search results and gain trust with potential local customers who are researching businesses in your area.

Additionally, the people who are most likely to have the motivation to leave a review without being asked are those who will leave a negative review. So it's more important than ever to ask your happy customers for feedback.

Lastly, getting customer feedback helps you understand how your business is doing. Honest reviews not only reward for good service, but they reveal areas for improvement, so you can continue to grow and improve your business.

How To Ask Your Customers for Google Reviews

Asking for reviews can be a little awkward. But this part of your marketing is essential, and awkwardness never killed anyone, so it’s time to train your staff give every customer you service a review request! This will help you get more positive reviews over time.

Here are a number of ways you can begin asking for reviews:

Ask At The Time of Service

Ask Via Automated Text/Email Right After Service

Add A Review Link To Your Email Signatures

Add A Review Link To Your Customer Area Online

How to Get Reviews Successfully

Ask soon after a successful service - within a week is best
Remove friction and make it easy for your customers - provide a direct Google review link for them.
Send followup reminders, if you’re using an automated email or text sequence and can track whether your contacts have clicked the review or profile link
Make sure to explain that it will help your business, and request that they detail what service they received in their review - this will encourage them to actually leave the review, and to use keywords that discuss your services, which is another factor that helps your SEO.

What to Avoid When Getting Google Reviews

There are a few mistakes that some business owners can make when asking for reviews.

First and foremost is forgetting to ask every customer for a review. This is covered above.

Next is dabbling in fake reviews. It can be temping to pay for reviews, or ask friends and family to leave reviews.

If they aren't actually customers of your business, you shouldn't be asking them for reviews. Google doesn't take fake reviews lightly, and they can pick up cues like multiple reviews being left from the same device or network.

Another mistake is failing to reply to negative reviews, or replying with an attitude. It can be easy to be upset when you receive a less-than-stellar review, but savvy consumers understand that not every review is completely true, and they will take your response into account when weighing their options to become a customer. Negative responses to negative reviews can be a turnoff - professional responses to negative reviews, on the other hand, can actually boost your trust and likeability in a potential customer's mind.

Finally, you want to make sure that the Google My Business listing you're getting reviews on is completely optimized in your account.

You'll want to make sure there are no duplicate listings, and that all of your business info like your business name, address, and phone number are correct and completely consistent with your business information across the web and on your website. NAP (Name, Address, Phone) inconsistencies across the web are a frequent killer of online visibility in Google, because Google as a search engine wants to make sure they're only showing the most reputable, trustworthy, legitimate businesses - and having inconsistent formatting across your primary information negatively impacts all of those factors.

Have any further questions about getting online reviews? Post in the comments and we'll help out.

How to Track Your Local Rankings in Google

Mon, 30 May 2022 00:20:00 GMT

Monitor where your business stands in search results.

Want to know where your business stands for the best keywords in Google?
After all, if you’re a veterinarian in Vancouver, and you’re working on your local marketing… don’t you need to know where you show up for keywords like “Vancouver veterinarian” - and how those standings are changing over time as you work on your website?
Otherwise, how do you know if your efforts are actually working?
That’s where rank tracking comes in! A rank tracking tool will monitor the position of your website and your Google My Business listing for keywords you select throughout time.
Now , rankings may not be the only indicator of success, and they may not be 100% accurate since Google customizes the rankings of the pages in their SERPs for each user. But they are a helpfu l baseline to see relative changes, and you’ll typical see ranking changes before you see changes in traffic and leads.

Rank Tracking Services

Our Internal Tracking

If you sign up for any of our SEO services or Analytics plans, we’ll monitor your rankings for you for a minimum of 3 months (but oftentimes longer) - either through our agency dashboard or through BrightLocal. Which system we settle on internally will depend on the project and what all we’re doing together.
If we’re not actively working together on SEO, you can pay for our rank tracking a la carte for $50/mo (which also includes setup of your Google Analytics property, and updates if their technology changes, as it has with GA-4.) Or, you can pay for another service like BrightLocal directly (discussed below.)

BrightLocal

Brightlocal costs $29/mo for their lowest plan currently, and gets you rank tracking and more. It also has a 14 day free trial.
We recommend this as the top rank tracker for local businesses, because it includes both organic and local rankings.
(Organic rankings are where your website ranks with your website pages in search engines - local rankings are where your GMB listing ranks within the “local” section of any search results.)

WhiteSpark

WhiteSpark's local rank tracking costs $25/mo for their lowest daily rank tracking, and focuses specifically on where your business stands in search results, without the additional tools.

Other Alternatives

Other rank trackers that include local rankings tend to be significantly more expensive, with RankRanger coming in at $79/mo for its cheapest plan.
There are some rank trackers which are cheaper, for example Serprobot is significantly cheaper at just $4.99 per month for its low est plan - but you will not be able to see where your GMB listing ranks in local results , which is pretty essential for anyone working on their local listings.

Is it possible to do SEO without rank tracking?

Sure, you can try to improve your local visibility and market your local business without rank tracking. You can see your website traffic stats with Google Analytics, and your GMB listing stats in your GMB dashboard.
But you won’t be able to monitor results as well as if you were tracking rankings and knew what was happening with your visibility. If you’re serious about your growth and actively working to increase your visibility in search engines, sign up for a rank tracker today!

Multi-Location Local SEO: A Strategy Guide for Ranking Multiple Locations

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 17:43:00 GMT

Is it possible to rank one website for multiple locations in multiple different areas?

YES! In fact, that’s how you should perform local SEO for your multi-location business.
When done properly, you’re able to use the existing authority of your existing website instead of having to start from ground 0 with a brand new website for every location. (Can you imagine if Whole Foods had an individual website for every location? Eeek.)
When it comes to promoting a business with multiple locations in search engines, it’s important to be strategic with your on-page factors like your website structure, location pages, and other on-page signals.
It’s also important to follow the typical off-page local SEO best practices when it comes to your NAP (name, address, and phone) and your Google My Business listing.
I’ll dive into general recommendations for each below.

First, what's the outcome of a multi-location SEO strategy like this?

By following this strategy, the goal result will be that when people search for [insert business service] in an area where you have a location, your location page will show up in the organic SERPs (search engine result pages), and your local GMB (Google My Business page) will show up in the Maps & Snack Pack (the list of 3 businesses at the top of search results that Google believes has local intent.)
Here is an example I recently shared with someone, where a veterinary hospital with multiple locations shows up in the snack pack with their GMB, as well as in organic SERPs.

With your understanding of what we're aiming for here out of the way, let's dive into the strategy to achieve this.

1. On-Page Multi-Location Strategy

Website Architecture

Your website should still have the basics - a homepage, service page(s) (whether and how these should be broken out individually depends on your specific industry and business), any general about information, and - with a single location - a contact page. But with multiple location SEO, you break out your contact information with location pages .

Location Pages

Every single location you have should have its own location page with information for that specific location. It can be either at /individual-location-1 if you just have a few locations, or within a silo like /locations/individual-location-1 if you would like it to live within an index of locations for people to browse.
Each location page’s on-page factors, such as the meta title, description, content, etc should be optimized specifically for that location.
These location pages should not be hidden on the website - they should be provided as crawlable links to Google, whether you do that by linking to a location page index, or linking to the individual location pages in a top nav dropdown or the footer.

Appropriate Local Signals

Your location pages should be optimized per location with local SEO signals. Each location page should list its respective NAP (Name, Address, Phone number - always consistent, please!!! Choose a NAP format from the start and DON’T. USE. ANYTHING. ELSE. EVER. ), include the NAP in schema markup, embed the map from your actual GMB (Google My Business listing) on that specific page, and provide any other relevant contact information, hours, and content specifically about/for that location.

Location Silos

Do you have location-specific information that may not fit or be appropriate on the individual location page? For example, are you a medical practice and you’d like to feature the medical professionals at a specific location?
Those pages should be built as subpages within the specific location’s silo . For example, you have /individual-location-1. If you wanted to add information on the medical professionals at the location, you’d create a subpage like /individual-location-1/meet-our-medical-staff.
Any location-specific sub-pages should include c ontent only relating to that specific location .
You do not need individual service pages for each location, unless your services are different across locations. In that case, the structure would need to be individually strategized based on your specific business - I can’t give advice that unique here.

2. Off-Page Multi-Location Strategy

The off-page signals for your multi-location business would follow the exact same strategies as a single location business, except you need to create them for each location.
This means that, just like with a single location, you need to decide on a single NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) format to use across everything for each location.
You need to create a Google My Business listing for each location.
The URL linked to the Google My business listing should be your individual location page that was created and optimized for that particular location.
Your address and phone number should each be local to the actual area you intend to rank in. For example, if you’re wanting to rank within Chicago, your address and phone number should actually both be Chicago based - as in the city of your address should actually say “Chicago” and your phone number should have a Chicago area code. (Although it's possible to rank using suburb locations, location to centroid is a large ranking factor, so it will be easier to rank if you're closer to the actual location you want to rank in.)
You need to build all of the same citations for your original location for your new locations. Yes, each location needs its own location signals, because you are technically promoting a separate business.
Lastly, any other location signals that you need in order to compete in the area - for example any local chamber of commerce backlinks or events you can sponsor - will help per location.

In Conclusion...

Building your SEO strategy in this manner will allow you to take advantage of your existing website and business authority, while building up visibility for every location you open.

Good luck, and if you need help optimizing your multi-location business, get in touch !

Benefits of Having a Google My Business Listing

Wed, 13 May 2020 17:23:00 GMT

Learn how GMB can help your business and get you more customers.

If you're a local business owner, you've certainly heard of Google Maps, now known as Google My Business.

Why you need to be on Google My Business

There are so many benefits to having a Google My Business listing.

Did you know that Google can tell when someone’s search has local intent, and because of it, they show local businesses at the top of search results? In fact, as of 2018, Google said they estimate 46% (!!!!) of searches to have local intent, meaning that 46% of people searching on Google are actively looking for a business or place near them. [Source: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-46-of-searches-have-local-intent-26529.html]

On top of that, more and more people are searching from their mobile devices and in Google Maps. This means you need to take advantage of the free advertising Google My Business gives you, because having a listing set up for your business means you can show up in all of these searches!

So here are some of the main benefits of having a GMB listing set up for your business. If you don’t already have it set up, here is how to get your business on Google .

GMB Listing Benefits

1. Mobile map searches - many consumers actively use the Google Maps feature to find businesses nearby. Google populates this section of their search engine using data from GMB.

2. Local intent searches (3 pack results) in organic search - even if a customer is simply going to Google.com and typing in a keyword, Google will often show what is called a “3-pack” of local businesses at the top of the organic search results page. This is also populated by GMB!

3. Free visibility - showing up in these areas means your business is getting FREE advertising in search engines. Yes, they will show your business without you paying anything, if you’re properly optimized!

4. Branding & reputation management - Your GMB listing includes so much more than your basic business information. You can add photos, descriptions, and services to enforce your branding, and they also display reviews of your business which impact your online reputation and trust in the eyes of local consumers.

5. Organic website improvements - Having your GMB live and optimized actually helps your own site rank, too, when they are both properly optimized with consistent NAP and interlinked. when they are interlinked properly. Because of the Possum update in 2016, Google evaluates content on your website to decide when to show your GMB listing, and I believe this happens vice versa as well. So you can improve the visibility of both by having them both set up.

6. Increase customer engagement - With listing features like table booking, posts, menus, etc, your customers can engage with your listing on Google more than any other directory. And because Google is the biggest search engine out there, that’s important.

7. Business accuracy and updates - Your GMB listing makes it easy to keep customers up to date on hours, contact info, specials with posts, etc - anything that they may need to know about coming in (or not.)

Clearly, getting your listing up and optimized is a boon for your business. If you haven't already done so, start today so you can start impressing and capturing more customer attention!

Best Website Platform for Small Business [2022]

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 23:45:00 GMT

So you want to build a website for your small business, but you're not sure which platform is best to host and build your website on. I get it! There are so many options and the ones that are best for you really depend on your specific business and what kind of resources you're willing to contribute to launch the perfect website for showcasing your services and products.

I am writing this comparison from the perspective of a small business owner that wants to get online easily without paying massive development fees , and wants to choose the best platform for them from the start instead of having to jump around. This angle is largely focused on service based businesses, as that's who I tend to work with most often, but I will also touch on my recommendations for the best e-commerce platform.

Before we jump into the details, you should know that we can build you a website on any of the recommended platforms here. Request a quote anytime!

Psst... Get on the earlybird list for my One-Day-Website masterclass! You will learn how to build a small business website, step by step in one day in this course. Get on the earlybird list here.

Best Small Biz Website Platforms Summarized

Don't need to read the full comparisons and just want a quick answer to the best website builder/host for your small business? Here you go:
1. Self-hosted Wordpress: best for business owners who do want to maintain their own server or are okay consistently paying someone else to, are comfortable with a learning curve, and are comfortable handling Wordpress errors as they come up.
2. P roPages (our builder) : best for service providers and business owners who don't want to deal with hosting and servers, don't necessarily want to build their site themselves, yet still want the DIY customization of a quality website builder once its live, and would prefer to have a direct support on hand (me & my team!) vs a big company support maze.
3. Squarespace: best for consultants, entreprenuers, and business owners who don't want to deal with hosting and servers, but do want to build the site themselves, and are okay with paying someone else to do updates when they don't feel like it, or prefer the Squarespace community and support system.
4. Shopify: best for business owners who will have a heavy emphasis on ecommerce products. Shopify is the best, easiest, out-of-the-box solution for a DIY ecommerce site for your small business - and even if your site is somewhere else, their cart can still be used to sell products from your SMB website on any other platform.

Website Builders Comparison Chart

To see this chart on your mobile device, just tap and slide to the part of the chart you're interested in.

Website Platforms to Avoid - Free/Lacking

Before we jump into platform specifics and comparisons, there are a handful of website platforms I would strongly urge you not to use. These are any free platforms where your features are limited (meaning you'll have to move later anyways, doubling the amount of time and effort you put in, instead of doing it right the first time), or where the out-of-the-box functionality of the platform will impact your visibility negatively.
The website platforms I personally do not recommend using are Weebly and Wix.
Why? Because after 10 years helping businesses increase their visibility in search engines, I can tell you Weebly and Wix are not set up to get you the best visibility for your effort. I know their ease of use is very attractive, but I have never seen a high performing website on either of those platforms, and instead see massive gains in search engine visibility when moving from one of those platforms to any of the 4 recommended above.

If you are desperate for a low cost small business website and just need to get a page up, I would instead recommend the website platform through Google My Business , as long as it's used with a custom domain. And I would only recommend that until you can afford a higher quality platform.

So, which recommended platform is best for YOUR business?

Let's jump into features and comparisons for the website builders I would recommend.

Which platform is best for you depends on a few key factors that you need to ask yourself.

Which resource would I rather put towards my online presence - time or money?
Of that, how much time or money am I willing to personally input to maintain the website?
What type of business do I have and therefore what type of website am I trying to put together? (local service based business, consultant/entrepreneur portfolio, blogger, ecommerce store)?

With those questions in mind, here are the best business hosting platforms I can recommend with their pros and cons, and why they might (or might not) be the right fit for you.

Self Hosted Wordpress

Are you comfortable learning a technical website platform, dealing with website errors, cpanels, FTP connections, and performing maintenance yourself? Then Wordpress might be a great platform for you!

When set up correctly with speed optimization and site-architecture/crawl optimization in place, this is a very customizable website platform. Wordpress as a platform is free, and your only ongoing platform costs are to the host of your choice. There are even great front-end page builders like Thrive Architect to make the design process more straightforward.

When done yourself, this can be a low cost but high learning curve/time-intensive option to get set up.

When built by someone else, this can be a useful way to get online at a low monthly cost, as long as the web designer knows how to optimize it for you and as long as you can maintain it yourself (or pay someone else to when issues come up.)

PROS: Highly customizable, large online community, many plugins since it's one of the most popular platforms.

CONS: Too many features/bloat for what most businesses really need, typically the least secure website platform out there (and dealing with a hack is NO fun), have to stay on top of maintenance and updates (which might break your site) by yourself, or pay someone else to do it - usually an unpredictable cost.

Use Wordpress if you're not scared of tech, or of paying someone who can handle the tech. If you just need a small business website though without extensive custom features, a website builder might be a better option for your business long term.

ProPages Builder

Do you want all of the perks of an optimized Wordpress website (high visibility, great user experience, easy to update content), without the tech headaches? Or do you want done-for-you website updates and changes included in the platform fee, and with an easy, intuitive website builder to make endless changes yourself to your heart's content?
Then a site built on ProPages might be the right choice for your business.
ProPages is our internal platform, and it's like Wordpress and Squarespace had a baby. I believe in this platform so much that this website you're reading right now is built on it .
It is more SEO-friendly than Squarespace out of the box, and more intuitive, easy to update, secure, and optimized than Wordpress. It has all of the features a small business needs without extra bloat, SEO or security issues, or constant maintenance.
Even non-technical business owners can log in to make changes if they want to, but the platform also includes 1 set of changes per month - so you can update your website as often as you want at a predictable cost. You get the optimization of Wordpress and the ease of Squarespace.. without ever having to touch your website again if you prefer not to.
We don't offer fully Do-It-Yourself plans (yet), but a site on ProPages is an affordable and low-time-intensive way to get online quickly, with a website that does everything you need it to (including blogging.) Your startup costs range from $99 to $600, depending on whether you want a templated or custom site, and whether you want my team to build it, or you want me to build it for you in 1 day (this would be done through a VIP Visibility Intensive directly with me.)
PROS: Optimized out of the box, predictable cost, your level of hands-on time is completely elective and up to you, there is no server maintenance, and the interface is incredibly intuitive. CONS: Because of the concierge/direct support, and done-for-you nature of maintenance and website changes, this is slightly pricier than other site builders like Squarespace, where you are on your own or have to hire outside help.
Use ProPages if you're a service based business that needs a reliable, beautiful website - without banging your head against the wall, spending hours learning new technology, or dealing with hiring unpredictable outside help.

Squarespace

Are you a public figure, consultant, or entrepreneur who needs to get online without managing your own hosting, and need to stick to a smaller budget, but you are pretty hands on and are okay with hiring outside help when you need it?

Then a Squarespace website might be the right choice for your business.

It tends to lack the bloat and security issues of an un-managed Wordpress website, while having a pretty intuitive design editing interface. Its visibility is not *perfect* out of the box because of some platform quirks (for example, navigation links don't point to the canonicals of each page - which in layman's terms means the internal linking they use gives less value throughout your site, in Google's eyes) but if you don't want to learn Wordpress and are okay being pretty hands-on, it is a great site builder to get started with (and eons better than Weebly or Wix.)

With a little time and effort, a business owner can build an effective Squarespace website that won't need constant technical babysitting.

However, there is no hands-on support offered here. If you want your website updated or changed, you'll either have to do it yourself or find someone to hire, often at an unpredictable cost.

PROS: *Mostly* optimized out of the box, very affordable, no server maintenance, easy to build a nice looking website yourself, can hire out hands-on help if you don't want to do it yourself, more secure and easier to learn than Wordpress.

CONS: The platform fee only covers hosting and basic support - Squarespace plans don't provide monthly content/design updates.

Use Squarespace if you're a public figure, artist, consultant, entrepreneur, or professional that is totally okay with being hands on on a regular basis and learning a new platform - but perhaps wants to avoid the deeper technicalities of Wordpress editing and maintenance.

Shopify

Do you need to build an online store for your business, with the store functionality being its primary purpose?

Then a Shopify website might be the best hosting platform for your business.

Although Shopify can be pricy, I've found it has the best balance between functionality and features without having the excess number of moving parts that can constantly break in a Wordpress or Magento e-commerce store.

Another factor to consider with Shopify is that if you want to sell some products but keep your website on another platform, you can use their lite plan to take advantage of their shopping cart without hosting your full website on their platform. To do so, you simply add your products to your existing website in whatever manner you prefer, and then link to Shopify.

So you get the benefit of an excellent, bug-free checkout, without having to worry about cart security issues like you might on Wordpress, and without the constant development costs/nightmares of Magento.

The blogging functionality is not quite as good as any of the above builders, but if your priority is e-commerce, then the trade off is likely worth the switch.

PROS: You can easily launch an online shop in a day with Shopify, and you don't have to worry about PCI-compliance yourself, because they have a built in cart. It's much more optimized than other e-commerce platforms, it's secure, and it has a large community behind it for hiring third-party help and adding plugins and apps.

CONS: If you're hosting your website on Shopify and using a non-Shopify payment processor, they do add an extra percentage to the fee. The higher plan you're on/the more you're paying monthly, the smaller this fee will be (down to half of a percent.) However, I believe (anecdotally) that this fee is worth it for the checkout experience and lack of excessive development costs, because in comparison to Magento, it's unlikely the platform fees will outweigh the extensive development costs that would be required on other platforms. The blogging functionality is also lacking in comparison to the other platforms here.

Shopify is my best recommendation for any small business that needs e-commerce functionality as core factor of their presence online.

Wix & Weebly

I'm not going to get into full comparisons of these website builder hosts here, because I honestly can't recommend them! I think using these platforms does a big disservice to any business that wants an ROI-generating online presence.

If you really can't afford anything else, using the Google site builder (linked at the top of this page) is still a better option than Weebly or Wix, because it should be considered temporary until you can afford to get on a more robust platform. Or, Wordpress can still be another low-cost option if you DIY it and are okay with getting around technical barriers.

Keep in mind if nobody sees your site, it's basically like it doesn't exist - which is why your platform is so important!

How To Add Your Business to Google + Google Maps in 2022

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 20:41:00 GMT

Get your business listed in Google maps aka "GMB" to get more traffic and customers.

Google My Business allows you to manage your location's online presence in Google for free, across all of their platforms. It's one of the most important local listings, otherwise known as citations, for Local SEO. Basically, Google will send you customers for free through local searches, if your Google My Business listing is set up and properly optimized, and especially if you're doing Google Maps marketing .

This guide is going to show you how to get your business listed on Google maps for free, step by step.

Benefits of listing your business on Google

Google is the #1 search engine in the world. So why does your business need to be listed? Because when you add your business to Google Maps, and people search for services in your area, your Google My Business (formerly known as Google Places and Google Maps) listing is what will show up in search results. This means you'll get more online visibility, calls, and foot traffic from having this listing show up in an optimized fashion. In fact, there are a ton of benefits to having a GMB listing .

Imagine if you could show up #1 on Google maps - what would that do for your business?

How to Add Or Claim Your Google My Business Listing

1. Go To Google My Business

2. Click Manage Now

3. Enter Your Business Name

If your business already exists in Google maps, the listing will show up in the search and you can select and claim it. Make sure you search for your existing business listing here using any name variations you might have, because you don't want to create a duplicate listing or cause NAP inconsistencies!

Make sure you’re using the exact name format you use everywhere else, since this is very important for SEO consistency and will impact your visibility later.

If your business isn't already in Google, this is where you can add it.

4. Confirm your business name

5. Select your primary business category

After your NAP information, this is the most important section of your business information. This is how Google will categorize your business, so it needs to be accurate and encompass all of your services. You can add more categories later.

Start typing your main category, and see what comes up in the suggestions. Choose the one that fits best!

6. Add Your Services

Google may suggest some for you. You should add all of your main services here!

7. Designate whether your business has a location or not

8. Enter your business address

Make sure you’re using the actual address of your business in the city you want to show up in, and make sure you can receive mail here. It will be important for verification later.

9. Designate whether you have a service area

10. Enter your phone number and website

11. Click Finish

12. IMPORTANT: Verify your listing

This will usually be done with a postcard. Your postcard should arrive within a few weeks, and then you need to enter the code on the postcard into the verification section of your GMB listing. If you don't verify your Google listing when the postcard comes in, it will never go live, so this step is very important!

Sometimes if your business is established and there are already many references to your business name+phone number throughout the web, you can opt for a different faster kind of verification like a phone call.

Once you are done adding your listing to Google, it will become live after verification. After that, congratulations, you have successfully added your business to Google and can start getting free traffic and exposure from searches in your local area!

Next you’ll need to do some optimization for local search to be able to increase your visibility month over month. This includes adding more information to your listing, like photos, descriptions, and additional categories, and getting reviews on your new GMB profile.

Watch Our Presentation to Get On Google Step By Step

[CASE STUDY] 13 Client Leads in 24 Hours: The 4-Step Framework

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 17:35:00 GMT

Get new local clients this week without wasting time.

If you're a small business owner, your head is probably spinning each week hearing about new marketing strategies left and right and trying to figure out which of them will actually help your business grow - which of them to invest your time and money into.

Many strategies are legitimate and will get you more exposure, but few of them are able to bring in quality clients practically on demand.. until now.

Marketing is always changing, and after a spending thousands of dollars and months learning and testing , my team has developed a 4 STEP FRAMEWORK that can practically bring in clients on demand, by bringing in dozens of inquiries each week.

I call this the CLIENT FLOOD FRAMEWORK because they're not just any inquiries, either. They're exclusive, local, hot inquiries who are ready to sign up for your services and become a new client!

This might sound too good to be true, so to break it down very simply for you, today I want to give you a peek inside of this on-demand client-generation strategy.. (psst, we provide this as a service.)
Yes, that's right - I want to show you the exact framework we use to generate leads on demand for local service businesses to fill up their appointment books and sell more services.
WITHOUT SEO.
WITHOUT blogging.
WITHOUT posting on social media.
WITHOUT bugging friends and family or relying on referrals.

On-Demand Client Lead Generation: The Antidote to SEO, Blogging, and Social Posting

For years now, SEO has been the hottest strategy in the local business owner's marketing playbook. In fact, it's still a great strategy. Why?
Because if you can dominate local searches for your market, then you have free incoming leads, day in and day out, when people search for you, find you, and email or call from your website.
The problem?
You can't just rank overnight. It takes time, a skilled SEO professional (which can be hard to find since there are so many fly-by-night companies out there), patience, and even then you may get clicks without getting a lot of inquiries if you have a terrible website.
So, while our clients were waiting for results to come in from their organic search marketing.. we wanted to offer something better. Something instant.
The solution: Multi channel marketing X big data demographics X perfect targeting X perfect offer X campaign management = INSTANT QUALIFIED LEADS.
No more waiting to show up, no more "hoping" people will contact you from your website. Formulating the perfect offer for the perfect audience and putting it in front of them on the most effective mediums can get local client leads almost instantly. That's exactly how this se rvice works.
You see, many other marketing strategies out there work, but they either take some time (like SEO) or aren't really guaranteed to bring you interested clients quickly (like social media.)
Those strategies are still great - SEO gets you long term visibility and growth, and social media is what I like to call a "decision amplifier" in your customer journey funnel - but that's the thing... they still don't get you immediate LEADS and CUSTOMERS.
We wanted to provide a more instant solution to businesses that needed fast pipeline growth.
We took some traditional methodologies and applied our tweaks and quality-multiplying strategies to scale up and get the lead targeting right.
Then on top of that, we came up with processes to help business owners AUTOMATE turning those leads into appointments, because I've found everyone is too busy running their business to manage sales effectively.
So now on top of just lead generation, we offer appointment-booking marketing automations to also help automate getting these leads onto your calendar and in your door , and ultimately selling more of your services.

SO WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS? Introducing the 4 STEP CLIENT-FLOOD FRAMEWORK

Forgive me if it seems too simple, but most of the best things in life are. In fact, when you over complicate it, you tend to drag behind and your results suffer.

1. The Perfect Offer - Without a good offer, every single marketing campaign will fall flat. If you're reaching the right people and not getting results, IT'S YOUR OFFER. No amount of marketing, no amount of wasted adspend, and no amount of hyper-specific targeting can fix a bad offer.

Think of it this way....

If you're selling llama hats, it doesn't matter how good your marketing is... in all likelihood, nobody wants llama hats.

So this is the most important step in putting together a calendar-flooding campaign, because the success of tying everything together depends on it.

2. The Perfect Targeting - It's important to KEEP IT SIMPLE while USING BIG DATA.

This means stop over-complicating your campaigns with a hundred different interest types and audiences. Simply target your area and basic demographics for your ideal customer, while adding in any artificial intelligence that you may have gathered through related custom audiences.

When this is done, your campaign should be targeting at least 100k people to be able to reach enough eyeballs to get you results.

.....That's it!

3. The Perfect Campaign - Next you have to put together the PERFECT AD COPY & IMAGERY to present #1 (the perfect offer) to #2 (the perfect audience), and you have to put this together within the correct AD FORMAT and PLACEMENTS.

The ad copy should get your perfect audience's attention, immediately speak to them, and get them excited to hear from you.

With the right campaign implementation and management, this will cause your perfect audience to opt in to your perfect offer as soon as they see it.

Then DING your phone goes off, your email inbox gets a little bit fuller, and you have sales ready to make.

4. The Perfect (or at least better than typical) Followup - Believe it or not, this is the most important part in getting an ROI with this framework, but this is the part that falls short most frequently with small business owners , whether they're running lead generation campaigns or not.

Most business owners are lagging on response times,

letting leads fall through the cracks,

feeling embarrassed about following up too much,

unsure of what to say when they contact the lead,

unsure of how to ask for the next step,

etc etc.

This all comes together in the perfect storm and means all of those juicy, relevant, targeted leads they've just acquired go to waste. Bye bye, down the drain.

But here's a fact...

If you're selling a service in an area,

And you have targeted people who match your ideal customer who have literally seen your offer and manually opted in to sign up for it - that is a relevant lead. Once you own that lead, YOU HAVE TO WORK TO CLOSE IT. They're not going to come chasing you - they don't know anything about you!

So you MUST 1) follow up and 2) build a relationship.

Getting clients is like dating. Just because they haven't handed you a wad of cash within a week of hearing about you and your services, doesn't mean they're a bad lead - it means you need to do the work to build a relationship and have realistic expectations about closing the sale.

Now, let's say there ARE some bad leads. Let's say (gasp) 20% are bad. That still means that out of 100 leads, you have 80 GOOD leads to nurture into appointments and clients. If you can't sell even one of them, there is something wrong!

SO HOW DO YOU FOLLOW UP, NURTURE, AND CLOSE ....(WHEN YOU'RE SHORT ON TIME?)

The perfect followup is simple but straightforward.. it needs to be done within minutes while your business and your offer are still top of mind, and the followup needs to push for an appointment, consultation, or other commitment as soon as possible as in the same or next day.

You also need to follow up until you hear back which many business owners are scared to do - which is silly, because once a lead has inquired, they're still a lead until they're either a customer or not interested!

It doesn't matter if they buy from you right away or in weeks or months.. you need to continue nurturing that lead that you paid for whether they seem interested or not. (If they're not they'll tell you.)

This can take a lot of time! You're trying to run a business here!

Don't worry - there's this great thing called marketing automation that we can use now to take this task off your hands.

SO, If you don't have sales staff available who can be on top of this manually, using a CRM and following up immediately, the best way to do this is to created an automated follow up funnel using sales & marketing automation tools like Activecampaign.

Prospect opts in > automatically receives email +/or SMS within 5 minutes following up to schedule appt or consultation > based on client response.. automatically gets follow ups or calendar bookings.

So... Does This Really Work?

Yes. Period. Fullstop.

If you can get these 4 things down, you can create an unbeatable client-generation machine that will bring you new inquiries day in and day out so that your pipeline is literally never empty.

Every marketing strategy is effective based on a different input. Sometimes you put in time, sometimes you leverage existing lists or assets like social media, other times you leverage money/ads. This falls under the last situation.

You pay to play and get clients on demand.

When you get this right, here is the outcome ( look at the timestamps on the emails .)

Like, 13 leads in 24 hours works.

Like, have to pause campaigns to catch up, works.

Like, we can guarantee you up to 100 leads per month if you have the right market and budget, works. And if you don't have the budget to cover a guaranteed number of leads, we can work within yours.

1. We had a consultation call with the client to formulate a few options for their perfect offer and identify their ideal client. The offer would be enticing enough to get client inquiries, while still allowing the client room for profitability, especially when considering lifetime value. We also discussed follow up expectations and overall qualified the client to make sure they could handle this.

2. We set up the offer within a perfect campaign to be shown to their audience, including our proven copywriting techniques, images, and creative targeting.

3. We let it run at max budget for 24 hours until the client was overwhelmed, and in this time made sure the client was following up regularly.

1. We had a consultation call with the client to formulate a few options for their perfect offer and identify their ideal client. The offer would be enticing enough to get client inquiries, while still allowing the client room for profitability, especially when considering lifetime value. We also discussed follow up expectations and overall qualified the client to make sure they could handle this.

2. We set up the offer within a perfect campaign to be shown to their audience, including our proven copywriting techniques, images, and creative targeting.

3. We let it run at max budget for 24 hours until the client was overwhelmed, and in this time made sure the client was following up regularly.

What's the Catch?

This can only be done in certain industries (desire based, not need/emergency based), we have to qualify you to make sure you fit the capacity and sales requirements, and we only work with one business per industry in a geographic location.

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?

Have you ever run demand-generation ads on TV, radio, or direct mail? You can expect similar but better results, except they're practically INSTANT (within 24-28 hours), much more cost effective, and fully tracked and targeted!

So as long as you have services that your market wants, any desire-based business owner should be able to get leads using this method.

WHERE DO YOU GO FROM HERE & HOW CAN YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS FRAMEWORK?

There are a few options.

0) (This is the route most people will take) - Take this knowledge and do nothing with it, keep spending time on social media "hoping" to get clients, wondering why your business isn't growing.

1) Take the above framework and run with it today.

2) Wait for my in depth training to have step by step instructions - sign up for my earlybird launch list for launch announcements & pre-launch pricing.

3) Get us to do it for you now. If you want us to implement this for your business yesterday, set up a call to see if your business and market is a good fit for our done-for-you service, and start getting more client appointments this week.

A Short Guide: How Does SEO Work & Can It Help YOUR Business?

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 06:01:00 GMT

A straightforward guide for business owners who think they might need search engine optimization but aren't sure.

Many people know they need marketing but aren't sure exactly what kind or where their customers hang out.

This post was written as a quick guide to answer how SEO works and who can benefit from it, for business owners who think their customers might be searching for them in search engines like Google. (Psst, if you already know you need SEO, check out our local SEO services here .)

First, What Is SEO?

To determine whether SEO will be helpful to you, we first need to understand what it is and how SEO works.

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a web property to rank higher in search engines for specific search terms . The target search terms should have been discovered and identified as valuable targets through keyword research for the industry and market.

SEO can help to grow a business when a searcher enters a relevant search phrase, clicks on a website, and submits an inquiry to a business through the website, thereby helping the business grow and get more customers - all because they had high visibility up in a search engine.

How To Know If SEO Will Work For YOUR Business

To determine whether this will help your business, we have to answer two questions:

1) Are there people searching for your services?

If yes, this means that we can reach your audience through search engines. Move to question 2.

But how can you tell if people are searching for what you offer? Google actually provides this data publicly! That is how they run their advertising platform. If we couldn't tell how many people are searching specific phrases, nobody would be able to target those phrases for ads.

So you can use Google's own tool, or many other free tools. Here are some links:

Google's Keyword Tool - you will need a Google Ads account to access this, and they will only give you estimates unless you're paying for ads
SEMRush
KWFinder
Use Google suggest - meaning do a few searches in Google for phrases you think people might be searching, and then scroll to the bottom to see what other keywords Google is suggesting as similar searches.

If there are people searching for what you offer (even only a few hundred), then you can probably benefit from getting in front of those people - so move to question 2.

If you can't find any specific phrases that you want to show up for, search engine optimization will not help you (Unless you target your audience through content marketing - which is a topic for another day.)

2) If people are searching for your services, do you have the resources to compete?

A) Does your website and content type fit into the SERP template?
Do a few searches for the keywords that you want to show up for. Look at the web pages already ranking in the SERP (search engine results page). Are there any websites similar to yours?

For example, if you're a local business, do you see other local businesses websites ranking? What type of page on their website is ranking - the homepage, a blogpost, something else?

If you want to rank a LinkedIN page, do you see a LinkedIN page already ranking?

If you're an e-commerce store, do you see any product or category pages ranking from other websites? What are their pages like?

Or are they blog posts and informational posts? If so, can you create content like that?

This concept is what I like to call a SERP template - meaning that Google is choosing to rank specific types of pages for that search . If you have a similar type of content that you want to rank, then you can fit into the SERP template. Move to the next step.

B) Can you out-do the websites and content that are currently ranking in the SERP?
What are the current high ranking sites doing that have earned them those top positions? Are these extremely competitive sites or can you outdo them, in any way such as better on-page optimization, better and longer content, more thorough topic research, better internal linking, a faster site, a better user experience, an SSL certificate, a faster loading speed?

Often times particularly in local search, it is very easy to outdo competitors.  So if you have the budget and the ability to compete within the current top ranking results, then SEO can help you! It comes down to which business has more resources: content, budget, patience, time, etc.

If the answer is YES to all of the above questions... you are a good candidate for search engine optimization. :)

If the answer is NO to either question, then no SEO plan will work for you and you should consider other marketing avenues. You can view all of our local marketing services here .

What Type of Marketing Do You ACTUALLY Need, Based on Your Business Type?

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 05:48:00 GMT

A guide for small business owners who know they need more visibility and sales, but aren't sure where to start or which strategy is best for them.

As someone who has been in digital marketing for quite a while, you can imagine I field a lot of questions about starting and marketing businesses of all types, and I get a lot of inquiries from people I can't necessarily help. Especially after refining our market and services for the past year, there are a number of people I have to turn down because I don't want to take on anyone who isn't a perfect match.

(Psst, we primarily serve brick & mortar/local service clients with our agency services like local seo , industry-specific guaranteed lead generation, websites, and search & social ad campaigns... you can read a rundown here .)

So with that being said , I wanted to put together a little guide to help those who maybe aren't ready for a full fledged marketing service yet, or aren't sure what they need, despite knowing that they need more visibility and sales.

People frequently think they need one digital marketing service or strategy when really they don't. So I want to give a quick rundown of a typical client acquisition process for different business types, and what that means for you in terms of the systems and marketing campaigns you have in place.

Step 1: WHAT do you do and WHO do you serve?

Defining what you do and for who is absolutely essential. Without that, there is no way to define your marketing or figure out where your target customer hangs out.

Sometimes the answer is obvious, like in the case of a "roofer in Chicago" etc etc. Roofers in Chicago serve homeowners and business owners by providing roofing construction services. Right? Right. Easy.

In the case of an ecommerce store that sells false lashes, the store serves [insert perfect audience - maybe women between 18-35 who make $xxx per year and are interested in things like Kim Kardashian, Urban Decay, etc.] by providing beauty products that make [perfect audience members] feel [perfect outcome - maybe something like beautiful without effort, whatever the outcome the person is trying to achieve by buying the product.]

You are a [subject or service expert] that serves [who] by providing [what].

I am a [digital marketer] that serves [small businesses - honestly, I could refine this much further] by [building client generation machines] that allow [business owners] to [stop worrying about where their next customer or appointment will come from.]

In these cases it's very easy to define what your marketing is (and I'll discuss that below) because you know exactly who you are serving, what you are providing, and because of that you can figure out where your target market hangs out to get in front of them.

But sometimes I find that a business owner doesn't really know yet. Case in point, my friend wants to provide UX and visual design services, but also wants to provide specialized computer gaming systems. To who, I asked? Which one?

Your product + market offering defines where you market yourself. Because how do you sell hot dogs? You get in front of a bunch of hungry people who want hot dogs.

Step 2: WHERE does your audience hang out?

For ecommerce stores : this is usually Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Product-based searches are competitive and nationwide so you will need a big SEO budget to compete with big dogs. Social media like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram can get you cheaper visibility but you'll have to pay for it at first. In the long run, you can build a rabid audience but will always need to pay for marketing.

For service-based/local businesses: this is usually Google (people searching for your services), Facebook & Instagram. Local searches for small businesses are only as competitive as your local industry, so you don't need as big of a marketing budget as an ecommerce store might for SEO. Facebook and Instagram can be used to reach your ideal audience with a killer offer (remember WHAT for WHO.)

For consulting or expertise-based businesses or brand-name searches: If you're building custom computers for a certain industry (ie gamers), or marketing something like an application or band or blog, the key is to establish yourself or your business as an expert in your subject within the communities where your target audience hangs out, so that when they do need your music/services/app they remember you and come back. Note exactly what I am doing with this blog you're reading right now... :P

For these types of businesses, there usually isn't search volume in Google that will help you. This is where I frequently run into people thinking I can help them with SEO, but I can't. You don't need SEO for your band - simply having a website with some basic information about your band will be sufficient to rank for your name when people search for it. The problem is nobody is searching for it - your audience is not actively seeking your product or service on Google.

So for specialized business types, you have to find out where your audience hangs out, or what your audience does search, and join those communities and create content on those topics to establish yourself as an expert. You can do this through content marketing (taking advantage of non-buyer-intent searches in Google by creating content that answers questions people are searching and then getting opt-ins through lead magnets that relate to your industry), engaging in relevant communities (does your audience hang out on specific subreddits? Facebook groups? Can you start your own?), providing a helpful newsletter, running ads to generate a relevant audience who might hire you later on, communicating your results and services on your personal social media and connecting with your audience on LinkedIN, etc.

You have to figure out what kind of content they want on Instagram and who they're following there, and connect with them as thoroughly as you can. You have to make sure that you give your audience members return paths to come across you again - through retargeting, email lists, etc.

You have to brand yourself so that every time someone comes across you and your offer, they know exactly what you stand for and why they should be interested in you.

Step 3: HOW do you plan to reach them?

Depending on your business type above, you can simply choose a marketing avenue based on where your best buyer hangs out. Once you know what you offer, who you're offering it to, and where the people you're targeting hang out, you can create marketing campaigns around that.

However you need to keep in mind that visibility is not going to be the beginning and end of your business or of your marketing strategy. Getting in front of people isn't the holy grail - you still have to convince people to contact you.

Each of these strategies - SEO, social media, community engagement - only get you visibility. You still have to have a compelling reason to work together even once you get eyeballs on your brand.

Which leads us to the next question -

How do you serve them? Why should they choose you? What are the benefits of working with you? When getting in front of them, HOW do you plan to do so?

Are you going to offer them a download? An intro product? A free session? A sample or trial? A crazy deal?

These are all questions that your marketing processes handle in order to make your sales process easier and shorter. The better your marketing is, the easier it is to make sales. People should already know who you are and what you do by the time they contact you. So you'll define your audience, figure out where to reach them, and then figure out HOW or in what manner to reach them.

The Takeaway: Defining Your Audience & Service Will Define Your Marketing

If nobody is searching for you already and there is no existing demand to harvest, then you've got to find a way to generate demand and brand yourself using ads, content marketing, social media, communities, etc.

Which strategies to use will depend on your long and short term goals for your business.

While we focus on helping small businesses that serve their clients locally, I hope this was helpful to you, whatever your business is!

Small Business Website Tips: Structure, Content, Design & More

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 21:29:00 GMT

Learn the perfect website structure and on-page must-haves for your small business to earn more customers online.

Hi there business owners, I am writing a quick and dirty post today to explain some small business website tips to explain the perfect website structure to please Google (and users), and the perfect page-by-page checklist to make sure your website performs well in search engines, advertising, and user experience. PS - We can take care of all of this for you with our small business web design services !

Site Structure, Aka Site Architecture: the #1 place small business owners go wrong

When I see a website put together by a small business owner or non-SEO web designer who is trying to optimize it themselves, the #1 most common issue (and most harmful issue for SEO) I see is a bare or lacking structure . Many small business websites are simply one page websites with a contact form, which is essentially a digital business card - but that is not going to earn you any additional visibility in search engines.

At a minimum, are a few pages every website must have to be able to effectively rank in Google and have high quality scores for ads:

Homepage - obvious, but this is where many stop, short of the Contact page
Contact page - sometimes obvious, but some business owners forego this for contact information in the footer. You need both.
About page - more than ever after the recent Medic updates which target trust and legitimacy, you need an About page that establishes you as an expert.
INDIVIDUAL SERVICE PAGES: - YES, every service you offer needs to have its own page, and this is where I see most business owners falling short. This is because Google ranks you, and Google Adwords scores you, based on the content of your pages. When Google's robots crawl your website, they are reading the words on the page to evaluate what you are relevant for. So if you're offering "metal roofing" as a service, you need to have a page specifically for metal roofing. If you're offering "roofing repair" as a service, you also need to have a page for that.
--
To define your service pages, you need to do keyword research using Google's Keyword Tool (or a free tool like kwfinder.com), to discover which searches in your area have search volume. Then, you need to organize those keywords into topic groups, and create a page around each topic. Voila! You have your service pages.
Blog posts to support your service pages: Once your service pages are created, you need to create 1-3 supporting blog posts to link to each one of them that you want to compete for. Continuing with the example of "metal roofing" above, a few potential blog posts could be on topics like "the benefits of metal roofing", "when to choose metal vs tile roofing", and "the cost and lifespan of metal roofing." Here's the kicker... these topics do not have to be fascinating or perfectly written. What matters is that you use these blog posts to link back to the service page that they are relevant for, using a variation of the keyword you want to rank for. For example, "The Benefits of Metal Roofing" would need a link from the blog post to the service page using some sort of keyword along the lines of "metal roofing services in [city]". That's it!

Page-By-Page Checklist

In addition to the website structure above, you need to follow this checklist and make sure your website has all of these features in order to be as competitive and optimized as possible:

Your website needs to be responsive, as in it needs to work on mobile devices according to Google's standards.
List your phone number in a click-to-call format on every page. This can be in the header.
The phone number must be local to the area you're targeting and must match your Google My Business listing.
Each page needs to target its specific keywords within the meta title, meta description, and content. This is the second most common mistake I see business owners making - once they have their keywords, they stuff them into every page, instead of optimizing only the specific pages for them. To avoid doing this, make sure each group of keywords is optimized only on the specific page built for that group. Other pages can link to that page , but should not have every single one of your keywords plastered all over it.
Every page on the website needs to have a unique meta title and meta description. These are set in the source code of your site, or via your website dashboard depending on the platform you're using.
The Homepage, Service pages, and Blog posts need to all have a minimum of 300-500 words of content, with optimized headings. 300 is a bare bare minimum - 500 is a minimum - and 750 to 1000 are ideal.
On your Contact page, list your exact Name, Address, and Phone number as it appears on your GMB listing.
Also on your Contact page, embed the map directly from your GMB listing.

Small Business Website Design Tips

Once you have created your optimized content for each page and planned out your structure, you can begin designing your website.

You need to keep your audience in mind during your design project. Do not make it all about you - think about what the purpose of your website is and who will be looking at it, and design it to please your audience and fulfill that purpose. For example, if you want more roofing leads, you need to establish yourself as a trusted expert in contracting work and encourage your audience to contact you.

Keep your branding consistent across your web properties
Design around your content, instead of writing content to fit your web design
Keep the use of sliders to a minimum - although this is a popular design feature, it has shown to kill conversions
Make sure to answer the most common questions your leads usually have
Embed testimonials and reviews where possible
Make it easy for your visitors to contact you
Create a clean, easy to understand navigation panel
Don't forget to install Google Analytics so you can measure your web traffic, and retargeting pixels from Facebook and Google if you plan to advertise
Make sure the code and design is efficient to keep your site speed scores up, as site speed is now a factor in SEO rankings

Congratulations.. You now have a more optimized website than 99% of business owners!

Do you have questions or need help? Feel free to comment below or request a free consultation so we can help guide you in the right direction.

Or, if you want an expert to simply do it for you, get in touch and we can get your fast, beautiful, optimized website up within weeks and without headaches.

Tips & Tools to Automate Small Business Marketing in 2022

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 18:59:00 GMT

Automate your Customer Generation With These 4 Tools

Today I want to talk about some modern marketing and lead gen strategies that can be automated and can help any small business increase their number of customers and grow their bottom line in 2019.

These 4 marketing tips we'll be discussing today are worth considering in my opinion and, depending on your business model and current levels of traffic, can begin bringing in more leads and sales immediately.

1. Implement Website Chat

If you or someone on staff is available to answer questions via chat for part of the day, then you need a chat widget on your website. Customers in 2019 expect to be able to communicate directly with businesses through websites and social media, without having to pick up the phone or send an email. This is applicable to both local and ecommerce businesses.

Many tools exist now to help you add a chat widget to your website. The great thing about many of them is you can also answer questions on the go from your phone, and if needed you can set your availability on a regular or impromptu basis. This means you can answer chats just like you would answer incoming texts!

Some live chat options you can choose from are....

Facebook Messenger
Drift
Zoho SalesIQ
LiveChat

To implement this on your website yourself, simply sign up with the chat service of your choice, go through setup, and embed the code on your website.

If your website is already hosted with us, we can give you a quote for adding this feature, or you can send us the code to have it implemented as part of your website change plan.

If you aren't a client yet and would like help with features like this, get in touch !

2. Sign Up for Appointment Booking Software - Don't glaze over this one!

So, you may not be a hairstylist or other service provider that requires a full fledged appointment management system - but does your sales process involve talking to potential clients and customers? If yes, then you should consider appointment booking software.

Why? Well there are a few reasons.

For starters, what about the potential clients who are browsing your website at 1 in the morning and would prefer to talk on the phone, but don't feel like filling out a form or sending an email, so they leave never to be seen again? ... What if you had a consultation booking page where they could self-schedule an upcoming time to speak with you, automatically offering them appointment times based on your availability, and sending them automated appointment reminders to reduce no-shows?

Or, what about the clients who simply want to book an in-person meeting (for example, an initial consultation) with the first expert they find, and don't feel like doing the back and forth phone/email tag in the beginning? What if they could grab a time in your schedule without even speaking to you?

What about the myriad of other situations we might not be discussing here? Essentially what it comes down to is can you increase lead volume from your current website traffic by offering self-scheduled appointments? If yes, put this on your website.

Some tools you can use are.....

Calendly
Setmore
ScheduleOnce
SimplyBook.me

Other benefits of appointment booking software - you no longer have to play call-tag and can just send someone your scheduling link when discussing a future conversation via email. You may have fewer missed calls from website visitors, instead knowing exactly what your schedule is. You have a built-in receptionist on your website who can pre-qualify and schedule calls for you once set up correctly. ;)

3. Automate Your Review Requests

It's 2019 - the Yellowpages are no longer relevant - and getting online reviews and social recommendations are king when it comes to the reputation of your local business.

If you are a local business, you should be encouraging every single customer to leave a review after interacting with them. That's step one. This can be done manually if your volume is low enough, but if you want to up your ante.. Automate your review generation system.

We offer an automated review generation funnel for this that allows you to automate getting reviews to all of your high priority online listings, which helps increase your visibility and conversion rate across the board, because both search engines and customers care about your volume and average rating of the reviews you get.

If you want to automate this yourself, we recommend setting up an email marketing automation software such as ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, or whichever service you prefer, into which you can upload email addresses of recent customers into an automated review request sequence, greatly increasing your chances of garnering those positive reviews. This is definitely something that can be DIY'd, but if you want it done for you, we can get you a quote on our review generation & reputation management service.

4. Educate and Re-Engage with Email Automation

As a small business owner, you might be sick of hearing about email lists. You might be of the school of thought that you don't want to "pester" your potential customer's. But here's the thing -

If someone has submitted an inquiry to you, or has opted in to your email list, it's because they are already interested in you and they want to hear from you . If you have the ability to create a sequence of valuable and informational content, you should be getting people onto your email list and sending them educational email sequences. And for many consumers, they need to hear your businesses' voice and see its brand multiple times before they will make any sort of transaction with you.

If you own a business and you are worried about scaring people off by telling them about what you do, then why are you in business?

Your messages don't have to be salesy. It can be as simple as sending educational materials once per week or even once per month, simply to remind your audience that you exist and you're the best choice in your field. This is applicable not just to ecommerce store owners - but restaurants, home services, consultants, local shops, and more.

Appropriate email topics include:

Recent customer results
More information on your services and why people love them
A recent idea or opinion that establishes your expertise in the field
A self promotional discount... every once in a while. The key is to keep the overly-promotional content to a minimum, so that you are simply filling up your customer's inboxes with value instead of with irritation . (If you don't value what you say, why should they? )

Armed with this knowledge, we hope you consider some of these strategies this year to automate your marketing and lead generation. Best of luck to you and your business in the new year!

Sales vs Marketing: What's the Difference?

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Sales comes after marketing, and marketing makes selling easier.

In big businesses, sales and marketing tend to be two separate departments, and in small business they may fall under the same team. What's important to understand is how they are different, how marketing impacts sales, and how to benefit from this knowledge.

How Marketing and Selling are Different

Marketing consists of the activities you do to gain visibility and awareness among your potential customers. It establishes your brand and brings in leads and inquiries. It's important to understand that marketing doesn't have to be in-your-face promotions to be effective - it can simply be reminding your market that you exist, using educational or informational content.

Marketing activities can include anything under the sun including direct mail, social media, SEO, paid ads, and in-person events.

In a perfect world, effective marketing reaches your target audience and shortens the selling cycle. Studies show it takes about 8 touchpoints to go from awareness to paying customer, which means you can shorten the selling cycle by building up more of these touchpoints in your marketing process.

Did you know: studies show it takes 8 touchpoints on average to turn a prospect into a customer?

Selling is what you do after your marketing brings in leads. If you've done a great job marketing your business, the sales cycle will become shorter and easier, because the customer will already know who you are, what you do, and why you are the best choice for them.

Benefitting From The Relationship Between Marketing and Sales

Now that you know how these two essential business activities work together, you can use this to your advantage. If you're struggling to make sales, it's either because you don't have enough inquiries or aren't closing the inquiries that you do get. You can make changes in both your marketing and sales processes to remedy this. Try a few of the following...

Bring in more business visibility through organic search marketing, paid ads, or direct mail
Retarget the visitors that come to your site but don't contact you
Get website visitors into an automated email sequence that educates them about you and your industry and establishes you as an expert, while occasionally making offers
Use the knowledge of the eight-touchpoint statistic to your advantage, making sure that you have a solid follow-up system for new leads
Don't be afraid of reminding potential customers that you exist - you're in business to make sales, not to be invisible.

With that knowledge, we hope you go out and dominate your market in 2019! If you have any questions about effective digital marketing for small business, don't hesitate to get in touch with us for a consultation.

Yelp Review Guide for Small Business: How to Get Them and Keep Them Unfiltered

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 20:52:00 GMT

You're going to learn how to get more Yelp reviews and get existing reviews unfiltered!

If you're here reading this, you obviously already understand how important online reviews are to a business, especially a new business, and you want to know how you can get more positive online reviews quickly and without wasting time , especially on Yelp since it's the behemoth of local business review sites.

Yelp reviews frustrate many business owners due to their filtering algorithm, competition with local businesses, and negative reviews. Oftentimes positive reviews aren't shown because they're filtered out. We're going to help you solve this!

Don't want to read? I break it down for you in the video here.

Want to get more reviews easily and without wasting time? Check out our automated review generation service , where you just plug in customer details to request reviews, without wasting your time (or your staff's.)
This just launched so we're currently offering 50% off for life until the end of October.

First, Why Online Reviews Matter for Business

By now you already know that reviews are important, but why , aside from Yelp users?

Well, first of all, other customers will read reviews and use what they've read as a decision making factor when deciding whether to become a customer, or which business to choose.

But even more important - online reviews impact your online visibility across the web, for example in Google.

Yes, Google takes into account your reviews, how positive your reviews are, whether your review listings match your Google listing (and your website), and crawls them for more information.

So aside from impressing prospective customers, you want more reviews because it will get your business more visibility on both Google and Yelp! If you didn't already know, reviews are the #1 ranking factor on Yelp , meaning that the velocity at which you receive them, the keywords that are included in them, and the scores you get on them, all impact how highly you show up natively for relevant searches in your area on Yelp.

The Reality: Studies Show Reviews Trend Downwards Without Asking!

According to Northwestern University's recent research, reviews trend downwards if you don't ask for them.

That's because people who are most motivated to leave a review without being reminded, are angry.

That's why we came up with an automated review generation service to help you ask for them.

But Yelp Has Rules (Up To You To Follow Them)

Do not ask for Yelp reviews - simply make your Yelp page visible in your marketing materials. (Tips on this below)
Use Yelp's resources like stickers and other collateral in your brick and mortar locations.
Never pay for Yelp reviews, lest you get caught and earn a warning badge on your profile.

6 Ways to Ask Customers for Yelp Reviews.. Without Asking

Since soliciting any reviews is now against Yelp's guidelines as of late 2017, you can no longer directly ask for them, but you are allowed to share your online profiles in many ways, which can indirectly solicit reviews.

Pass out flyers at your business - each flyer that is passed out (whether it's a pricing pamphlet, menu, or special deal) can have your Yelp link and can say "People love us on Yelp!". You can also specify any check-in deals on these promotional materials.
Follow up via email after each service when possible, and add a "People Love Us On Yelp" link in your email signature.
Place the Yelp review badge from your business dashboard on your website.
Put a "Find Us On Yelp" sticker or sign on your storefront or if you've earned the "People Love Us On Yelp" sticker, display that.
Offer a Yelp check-in deal - and as mentioned above, make this deal known wherever you can in-store and on other marketing materials.
Share reviews on your other social profiles.

Strategies to Get Yelp Reviews Unfiltered

Yelp reviews often get filtered because they are deemed fake or suspicious, and this usually has to do with how active a person is on their Yelp profile.

There are a few ways you can try to impact this and make their profile look (and potentially even be ) more active.

-Ask your customers to complete their profile, including their photo, and start leaving reviews regularly
-Friend your customers, and encourage them to friend other people
-Mark their reviews as "useful"
- Get them to "check-in" with a check-in deal

Now that you know a few tips and tricks to get more Yelp reviews, get to work on optimizing your profile for Yelp SEO , and don't hesitate to ask us questions in the comments!

Watch the Slideshare Here

Thumbtack vs Home Advisor vs Angie’s List vs Yelp

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 04:44:00 GMT

What do Thumbtack, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, and Yelp have in common?

They’re all local business directories that each offer a unique combination of local business search, reviews, recommendations, and lead generation.

In this article we’ll focus on comparing Thumbtack vs Home Advisor, Angie’s List, and Yelp and explain how you can use these local review sites to grow your business.

Using Local Review Sites to Boost Your Market Position

You got a fantastic idea, and that idea has given birth to a unique, qualified, and reputable business. However, before anyone can use your services, they need to know it exists. Local social review sites online can be an excellent way to raise your contractor marketing awareness to your community, but which one do you use and for how long? We will compare for of the leading options for promoting your business to increase your site’s local SEO and your sales.

Angie’s List

The oldest option of the four is Angie’s List, founded in 1995, as a means to provide a connection between contractors and those in need of their services. It was literally built from the ground up, as the founders went door to door to gain new customers to post reviews to their site. In 2017, they reported having 2 million subscribers.

Home Advisor

Launched in 1998 as ServiceMagic, Home Advisor (as it would be rebranded in 2012) arose as a competitor to Angie’s List, combined with home development cost estimate tools that helped customers to determined the total cost that they would need in order to complete their desired project. Whereas, Angie’s List provides an educated list of professionals, this service puts it in context of total project funding.

It is provided for free to homeowners and for cost to contractors that wish to be listed in the local professionals. Indeed, a contractor could be saddled with a 300 dollar annual fee plus up to that much, monthly, for contractor referral fees. However, it does provide services that attract customers, like the ability to schedule appointments with the contractors, directly on their site; and it does have a very well used customer base for their services.

Yelp

Yelp was created by two former Paypal employees in 2004, as a means of allowing customers to post reviews about local businesses, and it exploded into a site of 148 Million reviews by the end of 2017. These reviews can be searched from computers or from mobile devices on their application, so it provided a means for local businesses to gain positive reviews by customers for their area

Yelp provides a lower cost option to customer interaction than Angie’s List. When you find your business listed by customers in it’s database, you can claim your business page for free, and you can use that connection to communicate with them. However, enhanced and promoted sites come at high financial cost. Getting your customers to add high stars to your listing can boost your future calls.

Thumbtack

While much smaller than the others on the list, Thumbtack has the distinction of being known for less traditional services, allowing for connection of those wanting local fulfillment of needed tasks that might not be present on the other service websites. However, Google Capital believed in the site enough to invest 100 Million dollars into the company in 2014.

Conclusion

Which local directory site is better for business? Do these websites really work?

The answer is YES they work, but it depends on your business.

Angie’s List merged with Home Advisor in 2017, making any comparison of Home Advisor vs Angie’s List the comparison of two parts of a whole company, and both have been hit with charges of issues with security and contractor licensing. However, it does not seem that the issues have impacted the attraction to customers, and they provide a stable means of foundation for your service launch in your area.

It must be remembered that all of these sites serve the launch purpose for your business. Each of these sites have built themselves up by work of mouth, hard work, and hustle. That is what it will take to become successful, as well. As you put forth your best foot forward into the community service pool, that service will speak for itself. Soon, there will be less need for the added cost of paid promotion and more time can be spent on providing quality service, fulfilling the dream that began the process at the start.

10 Must-Try Marketing Ideas for your Roofing Company

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 02:10:00 GMT

When you’re trying to run AND market your roofing business, it can be hard to figure out what the next steps are. Thankfully, if you’re a roofing contractor looking for a steady flow of new leads and clients, there are a bunch of things you can do to get more roofing jobs for yourself. If you’re wondering how to market a roofing company, keep reading.
If you focus on these activities long term to build a reputation for yourself, you can have a year-round roofing business full of roof repair, replacement, and inspection jobs, with a full inbox and ringing phone.
You can’t rely on the Yellow Pages or newspaper to bring you business anymore. The best way to get more roofing jobs for your company is to take control of your own roofer marketing. There are plenty of offline and online advertising opportunities to market and grow your roofing company. So let’s jump into the tips!

1. Get Customer-Ready Online

Most customers nowadays, even commercial customers, will search for new companies to work with before making a decision. They will look at your website and social media as well as read reviews across the web for your business , oftentimes before choosing a company to contact.

So your online presence including your website needs to be customer-ready.

If you don't already have a website for your roofing company or are worried your competitors are outdoing you both in terms of how good it looks, how well it works, and how many people can find you, that's something we can help with.

2. Dominate your Local Roofing Searches

With your website up and customer ready, don’t forget to prepare it for search engines too. Doing some roofing SEO after finding your best roofing keywords will help give you the best chance of showing up when people search for roofing services. Don’t forget to sign up for your Google Business listing (here is our guide on how to get your business on Google ) and link it to your website, too.

2. Fill Out Your Local Profiles

Did you know that some customers also search on local websites like Yelp? Make sure all of your local profiles are filled out. You can view our Yelp SEO guide here to help you get started.
BONUS – doing this also helps your website show up higher when you add your links!

3. Show Off Your Roofing Portfolio

Make sure that people can see high quality, real photos of your recent work to get an idea of the quality jobs you can do.

This means:

advertise your roofing work on social media like Facebook and Instagram
upload photos of your recent roofing work to Yelp and Google
keep your website updated with your most recent photos

If a customer can't see what amazing work you do, even if you're advertising to them via in-person methods like flyers and postcards, how do you expect them to trust you enough to hire you?

4. Get Real Reviews

Whenever you complete a job for a customer, make sure to ask them for a review on one of your online profiles, like Yelp or Google My Business.
This is important to help others pick you as their contractors and yes, this is another online marketing factor that also helps your profiles show up higher.

5. Offer Free Roof Estimates and Inspections for New Customers

One of the best ways to get new customers in the books is to offer a one time deal, like a free roof inspection or free estimate. This can also foster good will in your new clients’ minds and will make them think of you every time they need a roofer!

6. Send Direct Mail

Believe it or not, direct mail is actually still very a very effective method of advertising for local businesses. This is because you can easily target the locations that you service.

7. Remarketing and Social Advertising

Once you have your website up and are getting traffic, make sure you remarket your visitors who didn’t contact you. This means showing them ads for your business even after they leave your site. This is important because most people who visit your website will not contact you on the first try.

Social advertising is also a great option, and a bit of a combination of local ads and digital marketing, because for example on sites like Facebook, you can target people directly in your area with a new customer offer.

8. Network Locally

Networking is not dead and never will be. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend local business owner meetups to tell people about your roofing business and become the “go to” company for roofing. Connect with real estate agents and property managers who might need your service on a repeat basis.

9. Ask for Referrals

Don’t be afraid to ask your network and your past customers for referrals.

10. Sponsor Local Events

Have you ever been to a local fair or event and noticed sponsor logos plastered everywhere? Once again, this is a great way to get your name out to your local community and make sure they know of you. Sponsorships is a form of advertising that is also philanthropic and helps you give back to your community.

Is there anything we forgot? Do you think you’ll be able to market your roofing company more effectively after checking out this list? Let us know in the comments!

Why Your Business Needs a Password Manager

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 17:08:00 GMT

Passwords – keeping track of them, updating them, making sure they’re secure, remembering them, and sharing them – all of these tasks are a necessary pain if you’re doing any kind of work online. If you have a website (which you do) or any social media profiles (which I’m betting you do), you know the pain I’m talking about.

Add in trying to manage your business and share these passwords with whoever needs them, not to mention revoking access and changing passwords when you stop working with someone, and you reach an entirely new level of headaches that password management presents.

2 Important Reasons to Use A Password Manager:

Really, do I need to say more?

How many times have you gone digging through an email thread for an old password, only to find that it’s been changed since that email?

How many times have you used the same password across multiple high-value accounts, risking them all?

How many times have you totally forgotten an important password for a service and had to spend an extra 20 minutes resetting it before you could even do the thing you wanted to do in the first place?

If you’re anything like me, I’m guessing a lot. Which is why I want to encourage everyone with digital assets to start using a password manager !

I used to be against password managers. I used to question their security. Honestly – is keeping your passwords written on a piece of paper somewhere hidden in your house probably safer? Yes. If you’re paranoid about safety to that degree, you may want to stick with that ancient method. But the companies that provide password management services take their security seriously (after all, their livelihood depends on it) – and you can always choose not to add the highest value accounts (ie your main email, any banks, etc.) That’s how I use my password manager.

Since signing up for Dashlane last year, I am wasting far less time just chasing around passwords for the different administrative accounts I have, from hosting to social media to obscure sites I can never remember. And since Dashlane integrates with my phone, it works there, too.

I can share passwords with anyone who needs it, without having to send it to them in a plain text email.

I can also revoke access to these passwords without having to change them.

Or, if I do share the password directly, I can now change it with a few mouse clicks, usually faster than a manual password reset.

I can change all of my passwords in bulk.

I don’t have to remember them off the top of my head anymore.

I don’t have to save them in separate files, folders, or spreadsheets anymore.

I’m saving my most valuable resource: time , while getting the extra feeling of security and convenience because my passwords are now stronger.

This may seem like an advertisement for password managers but really I just want to help business owners stop wasting time on meaningless tasks , so you can start focusing on what really matters in your business. Using a password manager is just one additional way to make sure your business assets are as organized as possible.

A Word of Warning

With password managers, if you lose access to your “master” password, you lose access to everything . So if you can’t keep track of one main password, this is not the solution for you.

Ready to take the leap?

If you want to get a move on this and start saving time now , the two services I recommend are Dashlane and Lastpass. They both offer free options, with limited sharing and limited device use (ie Dashlane free only syncs to one device, that kind of thing.) However they’re both very affordable as well, and worth your time. I believe Dashlane comes in at $40/yr and Lastpass is about $24/yr. That’s pocket change and a huge value for the amount of time saved!

You’ll need to sign up for an account, download the extension, and start saving each password you use as you do your work within the extension. I’ve found that that’s the easiest way to build up your password “portfolio” without having to sit there and add hours of work to your day. Just add as you go, and eventually everything you need should be in there.

That’s all for now – keep an eye out for more time-saving and business-boosting tips in the future!

Enjoyed this blog? Feel free to share it with anyone in your network who might find it useful!

The Site Gauntlet: SEO Review of a Hollywood Yoga Studio

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 20:50:00 GMT

Hey there! Today is the first of a new SEO-site-review installment we’ll be doing called the site gauntlet .

A lot of business owners are already swamped just trying to run their business, without having to break their backs trying to figure out SEO. So my goal with this series is to help these specific business owners AND help others learn something along the way by doing these reviews publicly.

Let’s jump right in!

The first business website we’re reviewing is for Hot Box Yoga in Hollywood. This yoga studio is currently under construction and will be opening this year. If the owner can make some progress in SEO before it opens, their classes will fill up sooner rather than later once they open!

Here is my video review:

New Paragraph

Here is the TL;DW version of things that need to be prioritized for this website:

I hope this helps others learn a bit more about how to apply local SEO to their own situation.. Let me know if you have any questions!

How To Pick Roofing Keywords For Better SEO

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 18:17:00 GMT

Ready to DIY optimize your site to get better Google rankings for your roofing business? If you’re not using our roofing SEO services , you’re going to need to know how to do keyword research.

Here’s a quick and dirty, extremely basic guide to finding your own keywords to SEO your roofing site, using Google’s free Keyword Planned.

1. Write down your services

First, you’re going to need to write down all of the services you offer.

This will include things like roof repair, roof inspections, roof installations, commercial roofing, etc.

Ultimately, you need to have a page for each of these services optimized for rankings, but we’re just starting out with keyword research here.

2. Determine your primary target service area

Next, you need to decide exactly where you want to rank for these services. Your best bet is to rank in your main city that your address is located in to keep it simple.

3. Look up these phrases in Google’s keyword planner

You’re going to go to Google’s Keyword Planner (https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/), enter in your roofing services as keywords, and then change the area to the county that includes your primary services area.

Here is where the magic happens. You need to scroll through this list and find the most buyer-oriented keywords with search volume (don’t worry if it’s 10/month – Google is usually lying, that’s just the minimum you just want to make sure it has!)

Grab all of these keywords and organize them by which service they are under.

4. Work these into your roofing website’s content for better SEO rankings

Here is where it all comes together to improve your rankings.

You want to make sure you can work each of these roofing keywords into your website content on their respective pages and without stuffing .

This blog is just about finding keywords so I can’t teach you everything about optimization all at once, but I can tell you DO NOT keyword stuff, DO NOT use these keywords all over your website (use them on the service page they are relevant to), and combine them with city phrases.

For example, if your keyword is “best roof repair” and your location is Denver, you can add an H tag on your roof repair page that says “Why Choose Us for Denver Roof Repair” etc etc.

5 Ways to Get More Roofing Leads and Customers (Even if you’re lazy)

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 19:09:00 GMT

So, you’ve got your roofing business successfully up and running.

CONGRATS! Many time it seems like that’s the hardest part.

But now, as each month passes, you’re worried about where your next customers are going to come from (especially if it’s not raining), and you’re thinking… I didn’t sign up to be a marketer !!

I understand your frustrations. Many local business owners start out creating a company based on their skills and passions and a gap they see in the market – NOT on their desire to become a roofer marketing expert.

Lucky for you, there are quite a few ways to get roofing customers to COME TO YOU now that we’re in the digital age. This is the age of inbound marketing, where customers search for the businesses they want to find.. and you’re in the best position to take advantage of that now! In fact, we’ve used these exact methods to help other roofers TRIPLE the traffic to their website in some cases. Here are some screenshots of their rankings and traffic results:

Some offline methods still work, too. So in this quick guide, I’m going to show you a few ideas for how to get commercial roofing leads in a long term, evergreen manner – some of which will allow you to keep getting roof contractor leads long after your initial input is over.

DISCLAIMER: Now, it needs to be said that you can’t simply set up a fly by night roofing business and get quick leads. Building a successful roofing company takes time , because when it comes to the bigger roofing jobs, decision makers want to see that you have been in business for a while, that you can be trusted, and that you have existing high quality work to show off. This means you need to have solid branding and consistent messaging. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how many people you get in front of.. they’ll always choose a different company, especially when it comes to the bigger jobs like commercial roofing contracts or complete roof replacements!

So the tips below are geared towards existing roofing contractor companies that already have a client base and past work. This is not for one-man-roofing-shops.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s jump into it!

1. Get Customers to Come To You Naturally

Of course we have to cover SEO as the number one way to get in front of your customers. We do it b ecause we believe in it , we love helping business owners reach their goals, and one our favorite specialities is the roofing industry. What better way exists to get roofing customers than to get in front of people who are literally searching for you? If you’re in Chicago, and someone is searching for a “commercial roofer in Chicago”, there is no better place to be than the first page of their search. After all, what’s the best way to sell hot dogs? Set up a hot dog stand in front of a bunch of hungry people looking for hot dogs!

This is exactly what SEO for roofing contractors aims to do. Sadly, SEO can get a bad rap because there is a lot of bad information (not to mention bad… ok, really terrible.. providers) floating around the web about whether it works and how roofers can do SEO. The truth is it works if it’s done right.

Did you know you can even do Yelp SEO to get your roofing business ranking higher there? Yep, that’s right! Anywhere there is a search engine (including Yelp), there is usually something that can be done to make sure you show up higher than your competitors.

If you want to do your own SEO, you need to make sure to optimize the following on your website: page titles, meta descriptions, images, headings, keyword density on your content pages, and location factors.

If you want us to help with this, check out our roofing case study where we tripled the traffic of a local roofing company (…even after they had already been with another SEO co for 5 years!) We do this kind of work regularly and can do the same for you!

Pros

Cons

2. PAY For Customers to Come To You

Google Adwords is a lot like SEO, but instead of paying to come up to the first page over time, you pay to show up at the top of the page immediately . The catch? Each click is going to cost you. Different keywords cost a different amount depending on the competition between people bidding for your keywords, but you can get clicks for between $10-$30 from people looking for roofers in your area. If you need more commercial roofing leads, this is a sure way to immediately start getting calls as long as your website is optimized for conversions and you are paying attention to your PPC campaigns, making sure to use the best keywords to get more commercial roofing customers contacting you.

Pros

Cons

3. Land In The Customer’s Mailbox

Direct mail marketing is an oldie and a goodie, and can still work for roofing companies. If you can contact the right decision makers who own commercial buildings, each direct mail marketing campaign can really pay off with even one additional commercial roofing job. Hire a professional to put together an action-inspiring direct mail design, and either pay someone to find you a list or go straight to InfoUSA.com to buy the exact leads you need.

Pros

Cons

4. Cold Calling, aka Telemarketing

On a budget and just need to start finding leads now ? There is always the option of just sitting down and buckling in for a few extreme cold calling sessions. Don’t be deterred if you need to bootstrap yourself this way – you will get a lot of rejections, but if you have even a 1% conversion rate, then 1 out of every 100 people you call could get you another commercial roofing contract. And that’s worth it!

Pros

Cons

5. Social Media Marketing

I left social media marketing for last because it has to be done very specifically and over the long term to be effective, and many business owners simply don’t have the time investment for this. It definitely doesn’t pay off right away.

If you can keep your Instagram and Facebook pages updated weekly with fresh, relevant content that establishes you as an expert in commercial roofing, then it can bring you leads when you use social media advertising to get in front of the building’s decision makers. It’s unlikely to bring you leads without investing a little bit more in advertising the presence you have build, so it’s not something I recommend DIYing.

One easy way to make sure your profiles are always updated with your latest work is to have your staff regularly take pictures on the job and send them to a single person (I recommend your office administrator) who is responsible for posting them online. Voila! You have a simple process for keeping your properties updated, that way you can benefit from them in the future.

Pros

Cons

Besides getting more commercial roof leads, you might also be interested in this guide of ideas to market a roofing company that we put together, which includes 10 ideas for your roof marketing. And don’t forget, you will definitely need a roofing website to make all of this come together.

With all of that being said, what are your thoughts? There are even more ways to get those roofing leads you need through referrals, networking, etc, but those usually have a larger time requirement for a smaller payoff, so I wanted to cover the things that get you the biggest long term bang for your buck.

Questions, ideas? Let me know in the comments!

Who Needs SEO? Do YOU? SEO vs Social Media for Businesses

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 20:43:00 GMT

Do you need SEO? What about social media? What are the benefits of SEO vs Social Media for your brand or business?

If you’re reading this post, you’ve definitely asked yourself these questions, and you’re also probably somewhat aware that SEO is a bit of a complicated industry. I’m going to answer this question to help you decide in a definitive matter what optimization services can help you… or not.

SEO vs Social Media

First I want to cover the differences between SEO (search engine optimization) and social media, and what each can do for a business.

SEO, which is a form of search engine marketing , takes advantage of existing search volume and demand to show your site to people who are already searching for what you offer . Your website is marketed and optimized to display as high as it can for search phrases that are already being used by hundreds or thousands of people each month.

Social media, in which a business or brand is marketed through social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, etc, is a form of marketing that takes advantage of around-the-clock social media activity to get you in front of people who are not looking for you, but may be interested in you .

Do YOU Need SEO? (And if not.. who does?)

The short answer is that SEO is for brands and businesses that are already being searched for. It takes advantage of existing market awareness . If you’re the only one with your brand name, and your products/services are not being searched for, you don’t need it.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about your business and your website to figure out if you need SEO, or rather, if you can benefit from SEO.

Examples:

I once had a musician come to me wanting to purchase SEO to make sure they came up for their band name in Google. I turned them down – they were the only one with that name, so there was no problem ranking for those searches already.

On the other hand, I encourage every local business or large e-commerce brand with a marketing budget to invest in SEO. (I would do the same with smaller e-commerce brands, however it’s unlikely you’ll have the budget to go against the big guys for category-style search terms so.. sorry!) SEO is a long-term strategy that results in long-term growth, even when you stop paying for it. In a brick and mortar store, location is everything. The same is true for the first page of google, which is prime real estate.

***There is ONE exception to all of this that I feel the need to cover here..
If a creative llama-hat-maker was determined to get more business from organic search avenues (instead of taking advantage of the ones that would probably work better with less effort), they could get creative and follow this process:

Who Needs Social Media?

On the other end of the online marketing spectrum is social media marketing. Instead of taking advantage of existing market awareness, social media marketing builds demand and cr eates awareness. Here is another set of questions to ask yourself is social media would be helpful:

Does your audience use social networks? Which ones?
Do you have the resources to maintain a (or many) social media profile(s) on those networks?
Would social media help establish your business as an expert in its field?
If one of your posts went viral, would it actually help you achieve your business goals , or would it simply boost your vanity metrics, aka egometrics ? *Take this with a grain of salt.. in some cases, egometrics matter, but only because the people measuring them don’t understand that they’re just egometrics.
Can you come up with a strategy, or hire someone to come up with a strategy, to ensure your social media efforts have a positive ROI?

The simple answer here is that anyone who wants to create awareness and has the resources to do so can benefit from social media. However, not everyone needs it. Almost any brand can typically can benefit from social media if they choose to, however they usually only need either SEO or social media. If you need SEO, then you can benefit from social media as well, but it is not a requirement. If you need social media, then it’s unlikely you can benefit greatly from SEO, as long as you have your basic web presence straightened out and can be found by your brand name.

Examples:

The best example I have for this instance regarding a company that doesn’t need social media is a local services-based client who was annoyed that their competitor was getting a lot more engagement on their Facebook page. The competitor was posting animal memes (it’s an industry that deals with animals) that would get a decent amount of engagement. When we discussed the issue, the client realized they didn’t want to go whole-ham on their Facebook page after all.. because it was really unlikely they’d get any new local clients from a few viral memes. So while they made their own efforts to increase engagement on their pages, it wasn’t worth it for them to hire professional help just to keep up with the joneses for no other ROI-focused purpose other than feeling good.

Another great example of this is this company, Maven Digital, vs a band. Maven Digital needs S EO as there are many people searching for our services. We can benefit from social media, but it won’t make or break us. Because we have the resources go to whole-ham on it, we will.

On the other hand, a band, or a llama hat seller, does not need ongoing SEO beyond the basics, but should definitely be using social media . For SEO, just make sure your brand can be found everywhere for its search terms. Take advantage of new searches that you see pop up as “suggested searches” when searching your brand name. But more importantly, create awareness through social media.

Yelp SEO Guide: 5 Steps to Optimize Your Listing & Rank Higher on Yelp

Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:32:00 GMT

Hey there, small business owner! Today you’re going to learn how to optimize your Yelp business page to improve your Yelp SEO and rankings in just 5 easy steps.
This will help you get on the first page of Yelp. Yes, even Yelp has their own ranking algorithm, and you can do a bit of “Yelp SEO” by playing with some of their ranking factors. So here’s how you can take advantage of it and come up higher to the top when people search for businesses like yours in your area. Keep reading because you're also going to learn the #1 ranking factor for Yelp profiles.

Before We Begin Yelp Optimization

Before you start ranking your business on Yelp, you need to make sure you have a claimed business page already. We’re assuming you do since you didn’t land here looking to create a page.. you landed here looking to improve its rankings. SO If you do, YAY! Log in here: https://biz.yelp.com/login If not, go set one up here: https://biz.yelp.com/
Three takeaways before you start optimizing your Yelp page are:

You should already have a consistent NAP (name, address, phone number) listed here and across your other local citation properties
You should already have some reviews (if not, work on getting more! If you need help, learn about how to get more Yelp reviews here.)
Your profile should be fully filled out with a profile photo and everything.

Now we can get started.

5 Steps To Optimize your Yelp Listing to Rank Higher (for Free)

1. Find your keywords + locations

Put together a list of valuable service keywords and locations that you want to come up for in Yelp. For example, if you’re a roofer near Seattle, you’ll want to come up for things like “roof repair” when people are searching in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, etc.
You need to have this information ready so you know how to do the remaining steps.

2. Optimize your business description

Optimize the keywords:
Using the information from step 1, sprinkle in your keywords and variations of your keywords in your business description. Following the example above, we would add phrases like “for roof repairs in Tacoma, XYZ company is the place to call..” etc etc.
Optimize the content length and structure after reviewing top ranking competitors:
Review your competitor’s business descriptions who are already ranking highly, and see how lengthy their content is. In this context, emulation without exact imitation will help you succeed!

3. Optimize your specialty section

This is where you get to add all of your specific services & products. List every service and product you provide here. The ones that are most important to you should be listed first.

Your specialty section is found in the back end of your Yelp listing.

4. Fill out all of your service cities

Many business owners don’t realize there is more than one location option in your Yelp settings. You can add multiple service cities in your Yelp dashboard.

Be sureness to add the closest neighborhoods that you want to rank for in addition to your main city .

5. Ask for service-specific Yelp reviews

Interestingly, reviews are the NUMBER ONE Yelp ranking factor, and that includes the frequency of reviews, the total number of reviews, the review ratings, and the keywords in the reviews.

When discussing Yelp with your customers, be sure to request that any reviews specify WHAT was done WHERE. This will automatically result in reviews with keywords for your services and locations!
This may actually be the most important step because reviews are the #1 ranking factor for Yelp - meaning everything about your review velocity (rate of getting reviews), content (the keywords the reviews use), and strength (the strength, trust, and authority of the profiles leaving reviews) impact your Yelp positions.
Unfortunately, this is also the area that you have the least control over, and Yelp actually recommends that you *don't* solicit reviews.
We disagree with that because a study from Northwestern University found that businesses that don't ask for reviews actually have their ratings trend downwards because people who are unhappy are usually more motivated to leave reviews, which is why we encourage you to ask for them even if Yelp recommends that you don't.
If you're concerned about safety and having your listing blacklisted (which is unlikely unless you do something really sketchy), you can always be sure to only ask for reviews in person or over the phone, that way there is no record of it. And if you're really paranoid, I have a list of ways that you can ask for reviews indirectly without actually asking. The moral of the story is those with more relevant reviews usually win in terms of Yelp visibility!

That’s it! Once you have your Yelp page set up, all it takes are these 5 simple steps to optimize your profile and rank higher in Yelp.

What should your ongoing Yelp SEO Strategy be?

Upload keyword-friendly pictures regularly.

Make sure you’re keeping your business page updated with regular photo uploads of all of your products and services. The key here is to make sure the photo files have a keyword friendly name, rather than something generic like IMG_012.png. A better name would be “tile-roofing-seattle-home.png” which allows you to target both the keyword and the area again.

Do what you can to unlock “hidden” reviews.

Sometimes, a person’s glowing, optimization-friendly review will be hidden if they don’t have an active enough profile or Yelp thinks anything else about it looks fishy. Interact with this person, add them as a Yelp friend, or send them a message thanking them for their review and possibly encouraging them to review your other favorite local businesses. This will make their profile more active, increasing the likelihood that Yelp will unlock their review.

Respond to reviews regularly.

As for the other Yelp reviews that come through just fine on your business profile, be sure to respond to them when appropriate – especially if they’re negative. Don’t forget that you can use keywords in your responses, too.. for example “Thank you for the kind words John, we really appreciated being able to help you with your roof!”

Stay on top of your response times.

Although not confirmed, it’s likely that business message response times are part of Yelp’s ranking algorithm. Either way, if you show up *near* the top of Yelp results but not *at* the top, and you have a quick response time indicator while other businesses don’t, you’re likely to get that additional lead anyways!

Create a Yelp deal

Why is Yelp important for small businesses anyways?

Not sure if improving your Yelp page’s rankings is even worth it? When you consider that most people are influenced by social proof (reviews), prefer to receive recommendations from friends, and mobile search is finally taking over desktop search, it’s easy to see that Yelp is a must-have for any small business. Whether you love or hate it, for now it’s here to stay!

Check Out Our Yelp SEO Slideshare Presentation

Yelp SEO: How to Rank Higher On Yelp

Questions about Yelp SEO? Concerns? Success stories? Let us know in the comments!

Instantly Boost Rankings With The Perfect Page Title (5 Requirements)

Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:33:00 GMT

Today I’m going to talk about how to write the perfect page title and give 5 specific requirements/guidelines that I apparently follow without realizing it, and only now laid it down as a process out of necessity for a client.

Bare with me – normally I would completely roll my eyes at this post if I saw it on Moz or SELand, but after a recent conversation with a client regarding an extremely high competition page where they were asking why I was making certain word/phrase choices, I realized there really is a lot of thought that I put into it without realizing it because I’ve been doing it so long. And it will likely help others who are trying to optimize their pages!

First off, many people who are completely new to SEO will have no idea what a page title is. So let’s get that out of the way. Skip the next couple paragraphs if you already know.

Page titles are so important that at a previous company, we had a developer make a mistake when installing a new plugin that made all of the page titles on a website exactly the same (just their brand name), and they lost almost all of their rankings overnight. They jumped back up to their original positions within about 48 hours of fixing it.

Onto the good stuff…

Getting a great page title can impact your rankings almost instantly . This is not to say that you’ll change your page title and then rankings will truly go up a soon as Google recrawls the page, but it means that the page title is one of the few tiny things you can change that can have a direct impact on rankings once Google decides what it thinks about the new title. (Obviously, this is not taking into consideration Google’s “transition rank” patent where they literally mess with your rankings to freak you out a bit after making a page change to see if you’re trying to screw with them.. but that’s a topic for another day. The point is changing a page title takes just a few seconds and can have a direct impact, unlike many other SEO changes.)

Now, the page I was consulting on to come up with this little guide is going for a huge keyword. Let’s pretend it’s business loans . So the situation was that the client had “Private Business Loans” EVERYWHERE on their page – in the title, in all of the headings, and repeated throughout the content at a huge density. I made recommendations to expand this in a few ways, adding variations and taking out some of the over-optimization. One of the recommendations was for the title, which I wanted to change from something like:

Private Business Loans | Brand Name

To something like:

Business Loan Options | Best Private Lenders for Companies | Brand Name

Why?

The client was uncomfortable with the wording as they felt “lenders for companies” was an awkward phrase, so I illustrated how competitors on page 1 are winning with that type of phrasing, and then opened the title to different phrasing suggestions as long as they followed the above points.

We’ll see what the client chooses – what’s important is that now they know exactly how and why I came up with that phrasing, and will likely be able to write better, more competitive titles in the future on their own due to the competitive research and thinking I laid out. It’s very rare that I go into this level of background detail for clients since many aren’t interested – usually all they see is the recommendation of “change your title from this to that” and think that it took seconds to come up with.

In this case I’m hoping it will help more business owners write better titles instead of defaulting to “Keyword – Brand Name,” as it’s very rare that Google will reward that level of obviousness and lack of uniqueness if the industry is super competitive. To be clear, sometimes that format actually is the best option as writing titles is not a cut and dry process, and really depends on the existing search landscape. This guide is intended more as general advice rather than a hard and fast set of rules.

The Problem with Ego-Metrics

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 23:03:00 GMT

Through a few marketing conversations recently, I’ve realized more than ever that the prioritization of ego-metrics is a serious problem.

In short, businesses need to focus on metrics that actually matter and make a difference, rather than ego-boosting metrics.

A few of these numbers that people mistakenly rely on and prioritize for improvement are:

Why Facebook Likes Don’t Matter

You don’t own the Facebook platform, so you don’t own any of your customer data on Facebook. Remember when pages could get likes, and actually reach a large percentage of their fans for free? Then, remember when Facebook took this away, and everybody got upset? This is what happens when you build your house on someone else’s land and expect to own it. It’s great to increase your Facebook fanbase, yes, but never forget that you are a renter there, not an owner.

A general rule of thumb is to never build your house on someone else’s land. While Facebook numbers can be a good benchmark , they should NEVER be your primary marketing goal. The backend numbers of how many people are actually seeing and engaging with your content, and the number of people that take action on some other form of media you own (such as a mailing list signup through your website, or an actual sale), are far far more important. Facebook likes in general should be a byproduct of other marketing that you’re doing. If this is a primary KPI (key performance indicator) for you, you’re doing something wrong.

Don’t sit there and worry about how many likes you have. Worry about what your audience is doing . The benefits of having likes on your Facebook page are that you can send them to other pieces of media and advertise to them directly, but the fact that you have the likes means nothing. I can buy 10,000 FB likes for seriously cheap, and it doesn’t do anything for me, other than perhaps increase my value in the eyes of people who don’t know better.

Why Domain Authority Doesn’t Matter

It pains me to see businesses and marketers encouraging an emphasis on Domain Authority. “How much will this improve my DA?” they ask.

First, to clarify, the domain authority of your website in Google’s eyes is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. However, there is NO public metric for this.

The domain authority per Moz’s proprietary scoring system is, outside of benchmarking, completely useless.

Let me show you an example. This recent post discusses how a marketing company increased their client’s DA score in Moz by 7 points.

My response…. WHO CARES? An increase in DA does nothing for the client, unless the same metrics that influenced the DA have also influenced traffic and sales . Is this usually what happens? Perhaps . However, this piece of content appeared to have almost no significant impact on the website’s traffic , as seen from SEMrush, outside of a slight temporary boost. (Now, we also know that SEMrush is not 100% accurate, but is again great for using as a benchmark tool. But we can guess that if the website had seen massive rank and traffic improvements from this case study, we would have seen some of those results in the post as well, don’tchya think?)

Why Estimated Competition Numbers ~~Don’t~~ Only Sorta Matter

I have one client that has been with me for 4 years. Every few months, they contact me in a panic because a certain competitor appears to be outdoing them in traffic according to an estimation tool. No matter how much actual data , aka factual traffic reports I show them which displays a consistent increase in traffic over 4 years, these numbers never fail to freak my client out, even though the tool they use doesn’t have access to either site’s actual data. It’s not like these are minor numbers, either – their monthly traffic from organic search has more than tripled since we began working together.

Only use estimation tools as a benchmark , never as a statement of facts. The numbers that matter above all else are the actual metrics of your users. Make sure you know where the data is coming from and how to interpret it, no matter what type of data you’re looking at.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Try to prioritize your metrics appropriately, that way you’ll be focusing on the marketing tactics that actually make a difference for you , instead of just making you feel good. SEO can increase the actual traffic to your website if people are searching for your services – so can Facebook marketing, direct mail, etc etc. Just make sure you’re focusing on the traffic sources and the metrics that will truly make a difference for your business!

Recent Study Shows SEO Is STILL The Best Way to Get More Traffic (and Money!)

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 19:36:00 GMT

Still on the fence about putting more marketing effort into your business website? If you have a local business or an ecommerce store, this news might change your mind.

A recent study of 87 million website sessions has shown that Google organic is still the largest source of online traffic and revenues, providing 43% of traffic on average, and 42% of revenue. ( source ) This is not to be taken lightly, and it means SEO services are your best bet!

Although the study was primarily focused on Ecommerce businesses, this also can be applied to local service businesses. According to Yelp, 85% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses. With what we know about online revenues in Ecommerce stores, we can see that with 85% of consumers searching for local businesses, local service revenues are likely tied to search just like other websites!

So, how can you take advantage of this and get your share of search?

1. Make sure your website has been optimized properly

This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you have a website that was built by someone without an SEO background, and you haven’t had an audit performed since going live, it’s likely you’ll need one. If you’re hoping to have great rankings without a professional audit, you’ll be hoping for a long time!

Simply making sure your business website is optimized for search is the absolute best way to increase your rankings right now. Simple wins are what it’s all about.

2. Check your local information to make sure it’s consistent and correct

Brand new explorers to local SEO will know that it’s essential to have a consistent NAP (Name, Address, and Phone #) across the web for your business.

When your onsite optimization has been perfected and your NAP is listed across the web consistently, the two tie together to give Google the strongest signals about where you are and what you do. This instantly helps you rank higher to get more business.

3. Make sure you have all the reviews you can get on Google and Yelp

In my experience, reviews are another high priority that business owners can help to boost themselves. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback!

The more reviews you have on your Yelp and Google listings, the higher you’ll likely rank. Google looks at both the number of reviews and the ratings, as well as the words used in the reviews. So in addition to making sure you have a solid review-requesting strategy, you’ll want to make sure you’re guiding the reviewer to use the right words.

One way to do this is to request that they state where their service was performed, and what the service was. (Ie “I had my dog trained by this business in Los Angeles, and they were great! etc etc”). This will help the reviewer add keywords without even knowing it.

Did you know? Review acquisition strategy is part of every Local SEO plan I offer. Be wary of SEO providers who only want to throw links at your site – reviews are essential and require a bit more hands on creativity to work into the process!

There you have it – search is stil l the most important provider of traffic and revenue for businesses online, and there are tons of things you can do to boost your rankings (and your bottom line!)

If you have any questions at all about implementing these tips, I’m happy to provide a free evaluation. Just request a quote anytime.

Happy ranking!!

Why Facebook Organic Reach is DEAD (And what you can do about it..)

Sat, 10 Sep 2016 01:54:00 GMT

What’s up with Facebook engagement?

REACH is how many people see your posts.
ENGAGEMENT is how many people interact with your posts, whether it’s through a like, comment, or share. Facebook also looks at post clicks without a specific action.
ENGAGEMENT RATE is the ratio of people that engage with your posts to the number of people that like your page.
ORGANIC in this sense means without paying for advertising. So organic reach would be the number of people that you’re reaching by simply posting something on your page.

I recently had a consultation with a friend of mine to discuss Facebook marketing for her music, and this is what she asked:

She was also concerned that some un-engaged likes she had achieved through advertising before might be dampening her engagement overall.

This is a REALLY common question that I get from all types of people who want to increase their Facebook engagement, whether it’s a musician or a business owner. So I figured I would finally answer it publicly!

The short answer is not going to make you happy.. organic Facebook engagement is DEAD. That may be a slight exaggeration/clickbait tactic (I am a marketer after all :P) as it’s still definitely possible to reach people if you already have a deeply involved, passionate, built up fan base, but in general it’s going to be limited without a budget. (This is even more true for industries that aren’t traditionally entertaining, like construction and dentistry.)

There are just too many people and pages competing for limited space in the timeline, so Facebook has seriously decreased the free reach of pages over the last couple of years. And if you’re trying to get a community going from the ground up, it is going to take you a very. long. time. to do it completely organically.

RIP Organic Reach

Here’s the sad truth:

But there’s also GOOD NEWS!

So in this post, I’m basically going to copy the general parts of the email I sent to my friend in italics below, and add in some notes from the call we had later.

It’s long, but you’ll learn…

I get so many questions about this that I figure it’ll be more helpful to direct people to a post. Here ya go:

I’ll go into a few things about my take on current organic FB engagement and a recommended marketing campaign here –

Normal engagement rates are already low. These days, a “good” engagement rate on a FB page is around 1%. (Here are a couple sources for that: http://www.michaelleander.me/blog/facebook-engagement-rate-benchmark/ and https://www.klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples/social-media/facebook-engagement-metrics)

I do think your engagement rate could be a bit better after checking out the page, however even if all of the likes were rabid fans, an acceptable organic engagement rate would still be ~10 actions per post which isn’t much. This is why I actually don’t recommend investing a ton of time or energy into Facebook organic page reach as a primary avenue for most people. All things considered, if you were getting a full 1% engagement rate, in most cases those still wouldn’t directly help much in terms of making sales or getting fans.

In short, organic posting to seek an ROI is a very time-intensive and resource-heavy activity that has a very low payoff in most cases, if the goal is engagement. This is why I don’t offer basic social media management as a service. The numbers can LOOK and FEEL good, but they won’t actually do much for you. In addition, it’s like building your house on someone else’s property. Social media is useful to promote the real stuff that you’re doing, but it should be supplemental rather than a main avenue for growing your fan base. I recommend funneling your social media into something that you own, like an email list on your own website.

Facebook can take away all of your reach, but nobody can take away the email list you’ve built over time, if that makes sense.

To be clear, it is still important to maintain an active presence on social media because important people like record labels still value the numbers (even if they don’t mean much outside of benchmarking), and it’s important for branding. However, I urge most people I talk to not to worry too much about the organic “ego-metrics” and instead try to focus on getting real results out of it through strategic paid ads and campaigns. Then, the likes and engagement will come as a byproduct of those real, strategic campaigns.

So that brings us to the next point – how can you actually get more out of your Facebook page?

Well, it depends on what your goal/conversion is. Likes and engagement are a byproduct of all of this, not usually the main goal – but the basic process to create an effective campaign is this:

1. Figure out what your goal is for a specific event/campaign.

Whether that’s more listens, more downloads, more people at an event, or more signups to an email list, I recommend having a real goal outside of just engagement . If you really do only want to increase the numbers, that’s fine too – just keep in mind as I said above that there is not a lot of benefit to it other than appearances. (Which, to be fair, is still beneficial if you’re trying to get signed, etc – I just hate seeing brands throw themselves into FB organic stuff without much payoff, and expecting something more!)

2. Figure out who exactly you want to reach – your PERFECT customer/fan.

This will usually fall along the lines of people who like musicians with a similar style to you, whose fans would also be into you. For example, for (band), a few artists that would be good for them to target right now would obviously be (band2) and (band3), since they are doing a tour together right now. People who are into (band 2 and band 3) will be more likely to be interested in listening to (band) right now, more so than the general public. Do a big brainstorm and try to figure out who your PERFECT, ideal fan is. Note: There is a Facebook tool that makes this even easier to do – I will get into that later, but SIGN UP FOR MY EMAIL LIST/JOIN MY GROUP to get in on it when it’s complete.

3. Create a real campaign targeted towards those perfect fans.

Instead of just throwing stuff against the wall willy nilly and saying “Facebook marketing doesn’t work for us/didnt’ pay off/was too expensive”, figure out a sequence of content/posts that would introduce you to this perfect audience (assuming you are aiming for new reach instead of your existing fan base), and that they would be interested in.

First you want to reach them with a post that introduces you and primarily entertains rather than being self-promotional – maybe a meme or a cute video of you.

Then 2-3 posts later, you can be self-promotional and push a post about the thing that relates to your goal. For example the final post could be a post that says “download my latest single here (link)” – and to download it, they have to provide their email address. This would hit 2 birds with one stone as it builds the media that you own through FB as a platform.

Done right, this should increase your likes and engagement as a BYPRODUCT. At PubCon 2015 (a marketing convention), the marketing manager of HostGator (a big hosting company) said he literally NEVER pays for likes on Facebook. He only runs marketing campaigns, and 100% of their likes and engagement are a byproduct of those campaigns.

The basic concept with this is a very simple marketing concept – you define your audience and then promote a very strategic sequence of posts to the same audience one after another. So you have a single audience, you promote the first post to them for 1-3 days. Then, the next post, promote again to the same audience for 1-3 days. By the time they have seen 3-4 different posts from you over time, going from just introducing yourself and entertaining them to the final post where you ask them to take action on something, they are much more likely to interact and take the action as they now know your brand and your face, have seen you a few times, and may be interested in that point.

It’s a bit like dating – you can’t ask someone to marry you on the first date , just like you can’t expect a potential fan to like your page/sign up for anything else/click any of your links if they haven’t met you and gotten to know you first.

As my Facebook-marketing-expert friend Nicholas Kusmich says, you can’t walk into a family barbeque and start trying to sell someone vaccuums. Facebook is like a barbeque with friends and family, and nobody cares about the vaccuum you’re selling!

So you want to figure out who would be your perfect fan and then, using Facebook advertising, create a targeted campaign to court them like you’re dating them, creating a relationship with them and brand recognition before ever asking them to take action for you, whether that’s liking your page, purchasing a service/product, or giving you their email.

Once you have this going, organic reach on your page will likely kick up. You can also use this same technique for your existing fans, instead pointing the advertising to people who already like your page to re-engage them. In fact, I recommend promoting every single important post you make for at least $1 just to make sure it gets a boost in reach. If you can’t spend $1 on your business, you have bigger problems than Facebook engagement.

As you grow, you’ll be able to do more organically, but to get the ball going when you’re not throwing big events that cause people to seek you out all the time, I’d say advertising is essential.

That is my best recommendation for results focused Facebook marketing these days. Simply posting to your existing organic audience is something that should continue to be done just to keep the page and branding going, however I really recommend doing strategic campaigns like I’ve outlined above to get real results, and engagement/likes that will stick. Unless you’re touring constantly, where fans are actively seek out all of your social media after shows, I think this is the best way for musicians/artists to gain social traction on FB right now.. and I always always recommend trying to funnel this kind of thing back into some sort of media that you own as FB reach is unreliable, and we don’t control it.

As a last word, if you think the additional likes you got a while back might be hurting you because of low engagement rate, you can always go through and remove some of the profiles that don’t engage at all, that way your actual engagement rate/ratio increases in Facebook’s eyes, which may get Facebook to reward you more reach. But before going to that length, I would recommend trying to re-engage this audience through a series of sponsored posts targeted and entertaining them and getting them to take an action.

Later when we spoke on the phone, we discussed a specific strategy where she could find 5 similar musician audiences to begin targeting her campaigns with, and then use the data that is achieved from the first few tests to hone in on people who give her the best engagement results. I highly recommend emulating this – You don’t want to keep throwing your advertising dollars at the audience of musician 3 if the audience of musician 2 loves you way more. But that will take some testing and a small budget to even know.

So, there you have it – this is the current sad state of organic Facebook reach and engagement, and my take on the best way to fix it/take advantage of the current Facebook landscape without breaking your back trying to shove a square peg in a round hole.

Stop obsessing over organic reach
Start (strategically) running results-focused ad campaigns!

It only takes a few dollars to reach a much bigger audience on Facebook. And like I said, if you can’t invest a small amount of moolah into your project or your business, Facebook reach should be the least of your concerns!

First, let’s define some terms in case this is totally foreign to you –

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