Monthly Archives: April 2018

Adding Your Business Description on the Google My Business Dashboard is Easier Than Ever

You can now add a description of your business directly within the Google My Business dashboard. It’s not a new feature though. Google removed this feature back in 2016 when they dropped the Google+ support. And now they have made it available again. This feature offers a hassle-free way to keep the information about your business updated and ultimately help the searchers.

Here’s how you can add business description:

Login to Google My business.
Click on the info button on the menu bar.
Click on the add business description
Click on the pencil icon and add info.

The character limit is 750, so make it crisp and engaging. Learn more about it here.

Google Has Started Rolling Out the Mobile First Index

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Google is now rolling out the “Mobile First Index”. The rollout is limited to sites that follow best practices for mobile first indexing.

Google previously moved a limited number of sites to mobile first indexing, but this time it’s on a much larger scale.

They confirmed that they will be informing webmasters/site owners about the migration via Google Search Console. So if you are a webmaster or site owner, you might receive a message like this:

Google added that the site owners will see a significant increase in crawl rates from the smartphone Google bot. Also, they will show the mobile version in search engine results and cached pages once the migration is completed.

What is mobile-first indexing?

Google says it is how Google crawls your site. Google will only have one index, but how Google crawls and creates the index will be based on a mobile-first experience going forward. Google wrote:

To recap, our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our — primarily mobile — users find what they’re looking for.

Google has a detailed developer document on mobile-first indexing.

The All New Google My Business Dashboard is Here

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The brand new Google My Business dashboard is here and people are excited about the new features. Many influential marketers got their hands on the new dashboard about a month ago, and now Google is making it available to other people on…a random basis.

Here’s a screenshot of the new Google My Business dashboard (with multiple locations).

The new Google My Business dashboard boasts many improved features such as:

All users regardless of their size will be using the same interface. It means that you will no longer have to switch between the card and list view.

The new dashboard is easy to navigate, allowing you to view and edit your listings within the same window.

What is all available? Dashboard View, Posting, Business Info Editing, Insights, Reviews, Messaging, Photos, Website, Users, Create an Ad, Add New Location, Manage Locations and Settings.

This one is big! Under Insights on the left navigation panel, you can now easily access the analytics related to the people who have viewed your photos, called your business, clicked on your website link! You can even get insights as to how many views your business gets on Google by Search results & by Maps.

Another great new feature is Messaging! You can now easily add your phone number to be listed on your Google My Business listing to receive texts from customers and prospects! Just click on messaging, add your phone number, and verify your phone number via text and your done!

Additionally, adding more listings will not affect the loading speed of the page.

Not sure if you have the latest version of the dashboard? Log in to your account and check if there’s a “Black to Classic GMB” option in the left side navigation menu.

Explore and enjoy the new Google My Business dashboard for your business! This is a game changer and will allow you to improve your online business if you just spend a little time working on this and updating this every week.

Google’s Latest Email Regarding Display Remarketing

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Google recently sent an email titled, Reach Past Visitors With Display Remarketing. The email read as follows, “People go to multiple websites and apps to read reviews, comparison shop or look at photos. It’s no surprise, then, that consumers visit websites at least 6 times, on average, in the purchase process.¹ With display remarketing, you can re-engage those consumers who previously visited your site and show them relevant ads while they browse websites and apps or watch videos on YouTube.

Follow our two-part guide on display and dynamic remarketing best practices to win those crucial moments when people are ready to buy.”

If you would like help getting Display Marketing set up for your website, you can also contact us.

BE CAREFUL HOW YOU COLLECT REVIEWS – GOOGLE UPDATES ITS REVIEWS GUIDELINES

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Google is struggling hard to keep reviews trustworthy. They are trying to weed out fake reviews and bring in more genuine reviews, but they have a long journey ahead. As reported in Google My Business forums, recently, a Kentucky law firm allegedly ran a contest on Facebook, offering people zoo tickets in exchange for positive reviews.

This didn’t go down well with other law firms and businesses and they reported the incident to Google. As a result, Google updated their reviews guideline from:

“Don’t offer or accept money, products, or services to write reviews for a business or to write negative reviews about a competitor.”

to this:

“In addition to Prohibited Content guidelines, text reviews are subject to the following additional requirements:

· Don’t use reviews for advertising purposes. This includes, but is not limited to, posting email addresses, phone numbers, social media links or links to other websites in your reviews.

· Don’t include promotional or commercial content.

· Don’t offer or accept money in exchange for reviews.

· Don’t solicit reviews from customers in bulk.”

Reviews are important and they are almost as effective as a personal recommendation, but be careful how you collect them!

To help you get more reviews for your business, we highly recommend the review widget offered by SEO Solutions. It’s a small piece of code which is placed on your website and helps you get positive reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. In addition, it helps to filter out negative reviews, thus ensuring a positive experience for website users.

Google Launches Two New Tools To Highlight The Importance of Page Speed on Mobiles

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Over the past few years, Google has consistently pushed for website owners to improve their mobile site experience. They have launched multiple algorithms, guidelines, and tools for this very reason.

Recently, at Mobile World Congress, they launched two new tools, a new Mobile Scorecard, and a Conversion Impact Calculator.

The mobile scorecard provides data on the chrome user experience so that you can compare the speed of multiple websites on mobile devices.

The mobile scorecard pulls data from chrome to compare the speed of multiple sites on mobile. That’s the same data that Google uses in the Page Speed Insights tool.

Google said that a site should load within 5 seconds on 3g connections and 3 seconds on 4G connection.

The impact calculator gives a rough idea of how much revenue a business is losing because of slow page load speed. It might seem a bit exaggerated but still useful.

Get both tools here and utilize them to the fullest to get the most out of your mobile website. And if you are in need of mobile website design or redesign services, please don’t hesitate to connect with us.