With all the many plugins available to help your blog or website with SEO, my favorite is the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast. He does an excellent job of combining a number of essential plugins into one. This helps increase your website’s download time (another key to SEO success). Learn more on the following video:
How to Use Google+ Local Reviews to Promote Your Business
Your business’ Google+ Local listing is an integral part of your online reputation, and is an invaluable tool when it comes to the Internet marketing of your business. One essential factor that contributes to the success (or lack thereof) of your Google+ Places listing is customer reviews. In order to make the most out of your Google+ Places listing, you should have plenty of relevant, high-quality customer reviews. How do you handle the reviews aspect of your Google+ Places listing? Here are some tips for how to get and respond to Google+ Places reviews.
Getting Reviews:
Ask for them. This is the simplest way to get Google+ Places reviews. If you have satisfied customers or clients (and you should!), then make it a point to ask them to visit your Google+ Places listing and submit a review. Remind them that posting a review to your listing is easy: they simple click on the “Write a Review” button at the top left-hand corner of your listing and type away. They will need to be logged into their Google+ account to create the review.
Your Google+ Local listing link. Google+ Local provides you with a personalized link that you can send to your email or snail mail list to direct people to your listing and ask for reviews. You can also include your link on all of your business correspondence, advertisements and marketing materials. Don’t forget to include a link for reviews from your website, too.
QR codes. Generate a QR code linked to your Google+ Local listing and put it on anything and everything related to your business that your customers may see, along with a simple request to visit your listing and write a review. QR codes will take any smart phone user directly to your Google+ Places listing with a quick and easy scan.
Third-party sources. List your business in directories like Yelp, Bing, Yahoo! Business listings, and Foursquare and all reviews submitted to those sites will automatically link to and be listed on your Google+ Local listing. However with the transition to Google+ Local, the Google+ reviews are viewable first and carry a heavier weight with Google
Responding to Reviews:
Negative reviews. It never fails that some people simply won’t be happy with your business, no matter what you do. It is important that you preserve your business’ reputation by responding to these reviews promptly and diplomatically. Make a public attempt to resolve any issues, and express your perspective in a way that is neither self-justifying nor insulting to the customer.
Positive reviews. Thank your satisfied customers for their support, and offer them incentives to keep coming back. By offering coupons and referral rewards publicly, via the Google+ Local listing forum, you are encouraging potential customers to give you a try.
Take advantage of everything Google+ Local has to offer by enlisting the help of competent professionals like us, Premier Design Websites. We can be reached by phone, at 757-342-7960, or via email: getlocal@premierdesignwebsites.com.
3 Easy Ways Google Maps and Google + Local Will Deliver Customers to Your Door
If you know anything about business web marketing, then there is no doubt that you’ve heard of two powerful offerings from the Internet powerhouse, Google: Google Maps and Google + Local. Google Maps is an interactive map application that encompasses features like driving directions, zoom in/out, multiple map views, business location and contact information, and more. Google + Local is an extension of Google Maps, bringing points of interest from Google Maps to life with individualized Places pages. If your business is not using both Google Maps and Google + Local to attract new customers, then you should work on setting up your Google presence, and right away. Want to know more? Here are three easy ways Google Maps and Google + Local will deliver customers to your door:
Highly targeted marketing.
When you complete your Google + Local listing, you have the option of targeting your listing for your ideal consumer market in a number of different ways. You do this by enriching your content with keyword phrases that are aimed at reaching the very people your business serves, by choosing categories for your business that will attract those who are most likely to become paying customers, and by creating ads and deals that are specifically designed with your primary market in mind.
Your Google Maps place marker.
When you create your business listing on Google + Local and have the corresponding business location marked on Google Maps (with that familiar blue pin that Google users have come to know and love), you are literally making your business available to everyone who searches for a business like yours in your area. That means that even if someone doesn’t know the exact name of your business, or that person is searching using general keywords that pertain to your business, your business’ location marker will show up on the Google search Map results.
Two powerhouses, working together.
Think of it this way: everyone who searches the Internet using Google (and let’s face it, that’s practically everyone who uses the Internet) sees both Google + Local page listings as well as Google Maps results. This means your business has an even greater chance of standing out and getting the attention you want it to when you take advantage of using Google + Local and Google Maps together.
Take advantage of everything Google + Local has to offer by enlisting the help of competent professionals like us, Premier Design Websites. We can be reached by phone, at 757-342-7960, or via email: golocal@premierdesignwebsites.com.
Adding a Sitemap to Your Website with FileZilla FTP
Sitemaps are important to help search engines know where to roam on your website. While there are lots of ways to generate the sitemap, I’d like to show you how to move it to your website. I’ve also included adding your site map to Google’s Webmaster Tools. By the way, the file for your site map is usually called:
sitemap.xml
If you were able to make this work for you, enter your website in the comments below to let everyone know it worked!
Why Care About Blog Tags and Categories?
Helping folks setup a new WordPress website is a blast. However, I’ve been a bit befuddled about tags and categories. I was attempting to find a simple way to explain them to my clients. What are tags and categories and why should I care?
My first thought was to explain tags and categories as keywords. Since most people have used Google, Yahoo, or Bing to do a search, they comprehend the need for keywords. Keywords are defined by the choice of words someone might use to search for your webpage or blog post. Keywords just doesn’t seem to be enough to clarify the difference between tags and categories.
WordPress has a great video on adding categories. Take a look
After a bit more research (and little remembering), I discovered WordPress used to ONLY list categories. The challenge with using ONLY categories was using too many sub-categories (called children of the parent category). Basically folks just made a list of keywords under a particular category. Because of those long lists of subcategories, the WordPress programmers, created tags.
With the creation of tags, categories became the more global keywords and tags became the detailed keywords. For example, for a blog post called Redesigning my Living Room, your category could be Interior Design and your keywords could be living room, furniture, color scheme, painting, layout, etc. Thus catgories become the parent and tags become the subcategories.
In the end, categories and tags do impact SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You can learn more about it at:
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/categories-versus-tags-whats-the-difference-and-which-one/
There is value to categories and tags outside of SEO. They make it easier for our reader to find relevant blogs to their needs. By simply clicking on a category or a tag, the reader receives a listing of available blogs under that topic. A tag cloud also helps define what your blog is globally about simply by reviewing the higher priority (and larger) tag words.
Your tags and categories do make a difference on your blog. As you add them consider how they impact your SEO and how easy they make scanning your blog for your readers.