All posts tagged 'earch Engine Optimisation (SEO)'

Nov 201622

How to List Your Local Business on Google

Over the last few years, Google has been getting better and better at serving up local search results based on the searcher's current location. If you're out for walk and you fancy a bite to eat, technology has now advanced to the point where you can simply whip out your smartphone, type in 'where to have lunch', and instantly receive a list of cafés and restaurants that are within walking distance of wherever you happen to be standing. Google can even show you an aggregated star rating for each establishment and - in their new feature - warn you if your chosen eatery is currently super-busy.

These capabilities are great for users, and they can actually be a huge boon for businesses too. If you're one of the establishments that comes up in the so-called 'local pack' when someone performs a search near you - and you've got a good rating, and your place isn't too packed right now - there's a good chance that Google may end up driving a lot more people to your doorstep.

What type of local businesses can you list on Google?

Just to be clear, you don't have to serve food to benefit from this phenomenon; Google seems to be showing localised results for more and more searches every day, meaning that just about any 'local' business can have a presence in the local pack. Here are some examples of searches that now serve map results on Google:

I need a plumber
rock climbing
professional graphic designers
shoe repairs near me
aromatherapist
art gallery

And that's just scratching the surface. Suffice it to say that any business or establishment with any sort of localised presence can potentially appear in that local pack.

How can I appear in local search results?

If you want to show up in local Google results then there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of making the map pack. Here's a beginner's guide to local search success:

1. Add your business using Google My Business.

If you only bother with one of the points on this list today, make sure it's this one. A google my business listing is perhaps the most important part of getting your local business listed on Google. Go to google.co.uk/business and click 'Start Now' (you'll need to sign into your Google account, or create one if you're not already registered).

Next, you'll be prompted to enter your company's address, and then you'll have to 'verify' your business in order to manage its Google listing. Usually, Google will send a postcard to your business address with a PIN that you'll have to enter online, although if Google already has a number for your business you may be able to get verified over the phone instead. This process is in place to ensure that a) you are a genuine representative of the company you're trying to claim, and b) the business really is based where you claim it's located.

Once you've claimed and verified your business, you'll be able to edit your contact details, upload photos of your business, and add extra information like your opening hours, your website URL, a short description of the service you provide, and so forth. This information is held by Google themselves, and it helps them to work out what sort of searches your company should be showing up for (and in which locations). It is possible to show up in local results without setting up a Google My Business listing, but the odds of this happening will be a lot longer and there's a chance that Google may get some of your details wrong (since the search engine will be trying to piece together a profile of your business from whatever information it can find on the Internet).

2. Make sure your contact details are consistent throughout the web.

It's very important to ensure that your company's contact details - especially the address, telephone number, email address, and company name - are exactly the same wherever they're listed. In other words:

Make sure the information on your website matches the information you've submitted via Google My Business (see point 1, above).
Check any other online listings you have (e.g. Yell.com, Yelp, TripAdvisor) and make sure they match the details on your website as well.
If your company details change in the future (e.g. because you moved to a new building or set up a new phone number), be sure to update EVERY instance of the old details across the Internet.

Why is this important? Because Google can see every web page that features a mention of your business, and if every listing says something different, Google will be unable to confidently guess which set of details is correct and they won't list you in local search results in case they've got the wrong address.

3. Encourage people to review you on Google.

One great way to give your business an edge in the local Google results is to collect positive reviews and ratings on your Google listing. Ask your loyal customers to Google your company's name, click the 'Write a review' button, and share their fondness for your establishment with the world!

Not only do positive reviews encourage potential customers to visit your business instead of somebody else's, they also persuade Google that your company deserves to appear prominently in local search results. At the end of the day, Google's #1 goal is to satisfy its users, and when the search engine algorithm spots that you have lots of 5-star ratings from satisfied shoppers, it will think, 'Hey, this looks like a company that can really make our searchers happy!'

4. Get some links from high-quality websites with local relevance.

Links are still an important ranking factor for Google's algorithm. If lots of authoritative, well-respected websites link to your pages, that signifies to search engines that your own website is of a very high quality, and your search rankings should improve as a result. This applies to local rankings, too - you are more likely to rank highly for localised queries if your website has a lot of links from other sites that are:

Authoritative (use moz.com/researchtools/ose to check a site's domain authority - try to get links from sites with a higher score than your own)
Relevant to your business (e.g. if you own a pet grooming business, a link from a local pet shop or veterinary clinic would be more valuable to you than a link from a local sports club)
Associated with the same local area as you (if you're trying to influence your local rankings, you ideally need links from influential people and organisations within the area you're targeting)
Not spammy (steer clear of any websites that sell links, link to porn and/or gambling websites, or engage in other shady practices like hiding text)

Building high-quality links is a tricky and time-consuming task; as a local business owner, your best bet is probably to network with other local businesses, particularly those who operate within the same niche as you but aren't your direct competitors. Once you have built up a good relationship with another business in your area, they will be more likely to consider placing a link on their website.

Coverage from respectable local news sources will also be hugely beneficial to your business, particularly if the articles they publish include links to your website.

5. Be seen on Facebook, Yelp, etc.

Google sends a lot of traffic to local businesses, but it's not necessarily the only place you want your brand to be seen online. As a general rule, if you're a local business that's open to the public, it's a good idea to set up the following in addition to your Google listing:

Facebook page (select the 'Local Business or Place' option)
Yelp business page
Foursquare business listing

You may also wish to encourage customers to review your business on TripAdvisor if you want to promote yourself to tourists who visit your town. Businesses that may benefit from being seen on TripAdvisor include hotels, restaurants, cafés, attractions and landmarks.

Being seen in the places listed above (and collecting positive reviews from people who use these sites) will increase your overall online visibility while also sending yet more signals to Google that yours is a local business worth shouting about.

If you want to grow your business online, Designer Websites can help. We can design your website, help you to take orders online, and optimise your pages for search engine success. If you want, we'll even take care of your company blog and social media accounts!

Oct 201626

Google to Put Mobile Results First: Don't Get Left Behind!

joel mobile optimisation

We've discussed this rumour before, and now it looks like it's really happening: Google have confirmed that they are creating a completely separate index for mobile searches, meaning you may soon see two completely different sets of results for the same Google search on your smartphone and your desktop PC.

This revelation isn't completely out of the blue, of course. Google's mobile and desktop results have been gradually looking less and less alike for quite some time now - in fact, we're already at the point where many websites rank highly for their keywords on desktop but not on mobile (or vice versa). However, all results are currently still pulled from the same Google index, and the forthcoming split could have a big impact on the SERPs when it happens.

And that's not all. Google's latest statement included the assertion that, to quote Search Engine Watch:

"This mobile index will become the primary Google index. The newly separated desktop index will not be kept as up-to-date as the mobile one."

In other words, the new mobile-specific index will take priority over the current index. This may seem surprising at first, but it actually makes perfect sense; more than half of all Google searches now come from mobile devices, so of course the company would want to ensure the quality of their mobile results above all else.

With that in mind, the question that SEO-savvy business owners should now be asking is...

How can I rank highly in Google's mobile results when the new index arrives?

Some people will be reading this because they've already got high mobile rankings and they're anxious to keep them. Others may be here because they've never had much luck in Google's mobile SERPs, and they're wondering if this new index could be their big opportunity to change that.

Whichever boat you're in, here are a few tips for making sure you don't get left behind when Google's mobile-only index eventually comes into play:

1. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

This is a no-brainer, but since a lot of business websites still aren't optimised for mobile users, it's worth stating anyway. The best way to ensure that your website will work well on smartphones is to plump for a responsive design that automatically adapts to fit the screen it's viewed on - more on that subject here.

Some non-responsive websites have so far managed to slip through Google's net and rank reasonably well in mobile SERPs even though they're not mobile-friendly. However, the forthcoming mobile-specific index will almost certainly put paid to that, so it's a good idea to upgrade now and use Google's own mobile-friendliness testing tool to ensure that you're giving smartphone users the best possible experience.

2. Minimise your page loading times.

If there's one thing that we all hate to see when browsing the Internet on a mobile device, it's a webpage that takes ages to load. Excessive load times discourage mobile users from interacting with your website, and if you don't speed things up, Google will quickly boot you out of their mobile rankings in favour of a site that doesn't force visitors to wait around.

In order to ensure that your website is loading as quickly as possible, test it using Google's PageSpeed Tools. This will inform you of any changes you can make to boost your site's load speed.

You may also wish to consider using AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages), a recent Google initiative that aims to make the web instantaneously accessible on mobile devices - learn more here.

3. Optimise for local searches.

If your mobile customers have their location services turned on, Google will serve them local results for certain queries. Here's what that looks like:

If this so-called 'local pack' shows up for your primary keywords, that's a good indicator that you need to be thinking about local SEO. You want your shop (or restaurant, office, clinic, etc.) to show up prominently in Google results when someone in the area searches for your service, and this can be achieved by:

Add your business on Google My Business. Add your opening hours and a short written description of your organisation; you may also wish to embellish the listing with images.
Ensure that your company name, address, and contact details are consistent throughout the Internet (i.e. on your website, your Google listing, your social media profiles, and any other listings you have online).
Encourage people to review your business on Google, as well as on other well-known websites that publish reviews of local businesses (e.g. Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook).
Ask other local businesses to link to your website (but only if they are reputable, their website is of a high quality, and the link is relevant to your business - e.g. if you own a hair salon, a link from a grocery store may not benefit you, but a link from a wedding dress shop might if they're encouraging people to visit your salon for a haircut before the big day).

4. Use Google Search Console to stay on top of potential issues.

One final piece of advice (and this applies even if you're not interested in the mobile SERPs): add all versions of your website to Google Search Console and check the dashboard frequently to ensure that everything is as it should be and nothing is going wrong on your site. Of particularly relevance to today's topic is the Mobile Usability report, which can be found under Search Traffic on the left-hand side of the console.

This blog post highlights a few other reports that it's important to check regularly once you've added your site on Search Console.

* * *

If you want to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and fully-optimised for this upcoming Google change, Designer Websites can help! Click here to request a quote, or select one of the following services to find out more about what we can do for you:

Oct 201621

Google's New Smart Service: How Will it Impact SEO & How Can You Adapt?

andrew search engine optimisation (seo)

Thursday marked the release of Google's brand new phone - the Pixel! This phone is crammed with plenty of great features, including the highest rated smartphone camera ever, a battery that lasts all day and charges fast, and we mean fast! And It also has an unlimited storage for your photos and videos, but the one feature the stands out the most to us, is the new Google Assistant.

Google is taking on the likes of Siri and Cortana with its very own smart service called Google Assistant. Google Assistant combines all the features from Google Now and “Ok Google” with a new AI experience, to provide you with a virtual assistant that you can have an ongoing two-way dialogue; it’s basically your very own personal Google.

So with new advancements becoming available and with voice search becoming increasingly popular, we take a look at how this may affect how people search online and how you can adapt to benefit from it.

How Will Voice Search Impact SEO, & How Can You Adapt?

Voice search is becoming increasingly popular, with Google reporting that currently 55% of teens and 40% of adults use voice search every day! And it’s continuing to become a fast growing market, with the ratio of voice searches growing quicker than type search, and with Google Assistant just becoming available, voice search could become the new way of searching for content.

In order for you to benefit from voice search, various SEO techniques should be implemented to allow search engines to extract answers from your content.

Adapt Your Content

The rise of voice search has fundamentally changed the way people use search engines. People don't search the same way with their keyboards as they do using their voice. Voice search has led to people using more conversational queries when searching for something, which means the queries become less keyword based. In order to ensure that your webpage appears on the first page of Google's SERP's, it's important that you understand the consumer's conversational speech. Research what phrases and language people use, and adapt your content appropriately. You may find that consumers will be make queries that are unsuitable to have as a page title but you can use parts of it to help you create content to adapt with your consumers language.

Take advantage of Schema Markup

Schema is an add-on to the coding of a webpage, which provides the search engine with information that helps them understand the content of the webpage. This helps search engines return more informative results for consumers. Schema doesn't just inform the search engines what is in your content; it also informs them what it means. This enables the search engine to provide richer search results, making it easier for the consumer to find the relevant information. The more the search engine understands what is on your page, the better chance you have to appear for search engine queries.

Make the whole experience quicker

More than ever before, consumers want quick answers and immediate access to what they're looking for. Users are looking for direct answers to their questions, so it's vitally important that your content is optimised to allow search engines to identify quick answers from your content in order to answer the popular queries and questions.

If you're worried that your content isn't up to scratch to adapt to this incoming change, then Designer Websites are the people to call. Email info@designer-websites.co.uk or call 01446 339050 to discuss and SEO content strategy for your business.

Aug 201631

Google to Take on Intrusive Pop-Ups

joel mobile optimisation

With 85% of mobile search results now meeting Google's mobile-friendly criteria, the search giant has found a new battle to fight...

Don't you hate it when you're reading an article on your smartphone and you're ambushed by an unexpected pop-up that takes up the entire screen? Well, it looks like the people at Google agree with you, because they've pledged to punish sites that use this technique by diminishing their mobile search rankings. This blog post (published last week on the Google Webmaster Central Blog) makes the following promise:

"To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly."

The announcement feels like the start of a new chapter in Google's ongoing endeavour to give users the best possible online experience. You may remember 'Mobilegeddon', that day in April 2015 when Google changed its mobile search algorithm to favour pages with a mobile-friendly design; some time before that, in November 2014, they introduced the 'Mobile-friendly' label, which sat alongside mobile-friendly websites in the SERPs and helped users to identify at a glance which results would function well on their smartphones.

Interestingly, Google has now retired the 'Mobile-friendly' label, stating that "85% of all pages in the mobile search results now meet this criteria and show the mobile-friendly label". Since the majority of mobile results are now mobile-friendly (probably thanks in part to the 'Mobilegeddon' algorithm change), the 'Mobile-friendly' labels were starting to make things look cluttered, so Google has gotten rid of them. In doing so, the Big G has effectively declared this particular battle won: most of the pages listed in the search engine's mobile results are now mobile-friendly (i.e. you can read and use them on a smartphone without having to zoom in), so it's time to pack up and move on to the next fight.

And the next fight for Google is against pop-ups, or "intrusive interstitials" as the new blog post calls them. Pop-up windows tend to be pretty annoying no matter what device you're using, but they're particularly problematic for mobile users, especially when they fill the whole screen and effectively blockade the user from accessing the desired content. Even so, a lot of websites - including some of the largest, most well-respected media outlets around - use irritating interstitials for all kinds of different purposes, including:

Encouraging people to sign up to a mailing list
Telling users to install an app
Advertising

If your website uses pop-ups for any of these purposes, you may want to revise your strategy before the 10th of January, 2017. From that date onwards, Google will be penalising sites that use intrusive interstitials, meaning that your pages may stop showing in Google search results on mobile devices - and with mobile's share of total internet use increasing all the time, that's a loss that you probably don't want to suffer!

What kind of pop-ups will trigger a penalty?

Interstitials are used in many different ways throughout the Internet. Fortunately, Google has given us a pretty solid idea of which ones they're out to get and which ones will be allowed to slip through this new penalty's net. Here are a few examples...

Scenario #1: Sign Up Now!

Let's say you have a website featuring a variety of articles about all the latest movies and TV shows. When somebody reads one of your pieces, they can view everything above the fold without interruption, but as soon as they scroll down, surprise! A pop-up window appears containing a message like this:

SIGN UP NOW!

Join our mailing list and you'll never miss the latest news and insights from our team of talented writers.

Enter your email here...

Don't worry, we'll never send you any spam and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The frustrated user now has to tap on the little 'x' in the corner of your sign-up form in order to carry on reading. It's highly likely that sites using this sort of tactic will be penalised under Google's new rules, so if you're currently using pop-up forms like the example above, you should strongly consider changing tack before the 10th of January.

(To be honest, this isn't a great way to encourage people to join your mailing list anyway, as it disrupts their experience of your site and possibly sours them on your brand as a whole. You'll make your users happier - and probably get more sign-ups in the long run - if you take a different route, e.g. placing a call to action at the end of each article rather than covering up the article itself.)

Scenario #2: Try the App!

Let's now imagine that your film and TV website has a mobile app that makes it easier for smartphone users to navigate and consume your content. You know that your website, while mobile-friendly, isn't as good as your app when it comes to giving smartphone users a good online experience, and so whenever a mobile user arrives on your main site, you show them this pop-up:

BROWSING ON YOUR SMARTPHONE? RIGHT THIS WAY!

Our app makes it easy to keep up with everything we post.

Download from the App Store >

Download from Google Play >

You might think that you're doing your readers a favour here by directing them to a more user-friendly platform, but in reality, most people will just be annoyed that you've put a great big pop-up in the way of the article they wanted to read. Sites that do this probably will be penalised in Google's mobile rankings unless they cut it out by the 10th of January.

Bear in mind that Google's goal is to satisfy each query as quickly and as smoothly as possible. If they send someone to your website, it's because the algorithm thinks you have the information or the content that person wanted; if you put up barriers between the users and that content, there's a good chance that Google - eager to achieve total user satisfaction - will send people somewhere else instead.

Scenario #3: How Old Are You?

Finally, let's look at an example of an interstitial that most likely won't result in a penalty come January 2017.

Imagine you own an ecommerce website that sells wines and spirits online. Because alcoholic drinks are an age-restricted product, you are required by law to ask each user to verify their age before admitting them to your website's content. One easy way to do this? A non-dismissable pop-up that appears as soon as someone lands on your site for the first time and prompts them to enter their date of birth.

PLEASE ENTER YOUR DATE OF BIRTH

DD MM YYYY

Click to select country...

To view this website, you must be over the legal drinking age in the country where you live.

Since this interstitial is in place to fulfil a legal requirement, your website should be spared when Google cracks down on intrusive interstitials in January. Another example of a legally mandated pop-up would be a notice explaining that your website uses cookies.

Google are also saying that they'll let you off if your pop-ups "use a reasonable amount of screen space". This suggests that site owners will still be able to get away with using pop-up banners as long as they don't cover too much of the content being viewed. An example would be a small banner that appears at the top or bottom of the screen prompting users to click a link or download an app.

In fact, Google use this approach themselves!

Worried that your rankings will be affected by the forthcoming Google penalty? Anxious to remove the pop-ups from your website before they cause any problems? Get in touch with Designer Websites today - call 01446 339050 or click here to request a quote for a new, Google-friendly website design.

Apr 201612

Paid Search: Optimise Your Ads for Mobile

gael online marketing

Did you know that 70% of mobile searches lead to that person taking action within an hour?

That action could be a customer calling through to your customer service team, making an online enquiry, visiting your bricks-and-mortar shop, relocating to a desktop PC to finish their transaction, or - if the procedure is simple enough - making a purchase, signing up to your newsletter, or downloading your ebook right there and then.

We Are Social conduct a study into the digital landscape every year. This year's study shows that the percentage of total page views that take place on mobile phones is increasing year on year:

This is why devising a mobile strategy for your paid search adverts is more important now than it has ever been before.

The landline is a thing of the past. Mobile devices now dominate the communication world, and we're not just talking about making phone calls and texting - we're talking about social media, emails, free messaging services, and much more besides. But young people today aren't just communicating with friends and family members via their mobiles; they're also communicating with businesses like yours. Perhaps they're conducting a search to find out where your shop is, maybe they're passing time on their daily commute with a spot of online shopping. Whatever they are looking for, it's important that you and your business are visible in the right places at the right times.

It is no secret that people - including your customers - are conducting more and more searches using portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. We have been told this on a daily basis by Google, other search engines, and SEM influencers since the age of the smartphone began.

Google reportedly processes more than 3.5 billion searches every day. Last year, the search giant announced that over half of those searches happen on a mobile device. This is just one example of why mobile marketing is a must for any modern business.

How can Designer Websites help with your mobile ad campaigns?

Here at Designer Websites, we have a team of experience PPC specialists who can help your business to get the best possible return from Google AdWords and other pay per click platforms. Before we optimise your paid search campaigns for mobile devices, we will develop a detailed, mobile-specific strategy that's tailored to your business and the market you operate within. This strategy will take the following factors into consideration:

How your customers are searching on mobile devices
What their situation and intentions are in that moment
What type of marketing message they are most likely to respond to

Getting results for your business

Below is a graph showing one clients' conversion performance after we implemented a mobile-specific advertising strategy for them.

We can clearly see that, while this company's mobile conversions were always higher than tablet and desktop conversions, their mobile conversions grew significantly after we implemented a comprehensive mobile strategy. Furthermore, this business's mobile conversions are continuing to grow even now, with each month surpassing the previous month's total.

So how can you reap the benefits of mobile marketing using paid search? Here are four tips from the mobile search experts here at Designer Websites:

1. Create mobile-specific adverts

The adverts that you see when browsing the internet on your phone are formatted differently to the adverts you see on your desktop PC. In order to ensure that your adverts look great on the small screen, it is vital to create adverts that are formatted correctly.

Creating mobile-specific adverts not only helps with the formatting of the advert, it also helps with the performance of the adverts as a whole. Generally, mobile-specific adverts have a higher click-through rate (CTR) and a higher conversion rate than non-mobile-specific adverts shown in a mobile search.

2. Create relatable ad copy

Creating ad copy that is relevant to your customer's current situation is key. Consider this example:

A potential customer is enjoying a cup of tea and a slice of cake whilst out shopping. She suddenly remembers that she wanted to find some luxury curtains for the living room, and so she reaches into her bag, pulls out her mobile, and types (or speaks) 'luxury curtains Cardiff' into her Google app.

As luck would have it, you run a fabric store just around the corner from that tea shop. However, since your ad copy doesn't state your location or feature a call to action such as "Come visit our Cardiff store", it is likely that this particular lady will just scroll past your advert.

The same goes for online stores: you cannot guide customers to your shop because you don’t have one, but you can point out to them just how easy it is to buy from your site using their mobile phone. Possible calls to action could include "Buy direct from your mobile" or "Easy purchase from your mobile device".

People will be able to relate to these adverts because they are addressing their situation at that time. This leads to a higher click through rate and a higher conversion rate.

In the graph above, we can see that - after implementing more relevant ad copy - this client saw an increase of nearly 3% in their mobile CTR.

3. Create mobile ad extensions

Mobile ad extensions are exactly the same as desktop ad extensions, but they conform to mobile formatting, making them better-looking and easier on the eye. They also provide customers with vital information when they search for your product or service using a mobile device.

It is said that roughly 1 in 3 searches are conducted because the user wants local information. It is vital that you provide this information to them, and this is why location extensions are a must. Not only do location extensions provide users with the ability to search for your business on Google Maps and use a sat nav to find your location, they also provide additional info such as opening times.

Call extensions are another must-have for any mobile advert. The call extension gives searchers the ability to call your store or your customer service desk directly from the search results page.

4. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly

We're always amazed by the number of mobile adverts we encounter that don't direct users through to a mobile-optimised website. We're always saying that it's crucial in this day and age to have a responsive website, and that truth is getting harder and harder to ignore as mobile users increase.