Author Archives: admin

About admin

Weston Riesche is the Marketing Manager at SEO Solutions Inc. Weston is a Graduate of Roosevelt University and holds two Bachelors in Integrated Marketing Communications and Economics. He has been an integral part of the SEO Solutions management team, developing insights into the world of Search Engine Optimization. Social Media and Internet Marketing. Weston works closely with clients to engage their companies with unique, effective and exhaustive Internet Marketing campaigns that leads them to the top of the major search engines.

Google-My-Business-Dashboard-Graphic

The All New Google My Business Dashboard is Here

Leave a reply

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).

Google-my-business-dashboard-screenshot

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.

Google-My-Business-Dashboard-Insights

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!

Google-My-Business-Dashboard-Messaging-Feature

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-Best-Practices-Display-Remarketing

Google’s Latest Email Regarding Display Remarketing

Leave a reply

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.

reviews

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

Leave a reply

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.

mobile-importance

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

Leave a reply

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.

Winning-on-Mobile

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.

calculating-page-speed

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.

google-adwords

Google Adwords Updates for March 2018

Leave a reply
google-phone-performing-voice-search

Top Voice Search Ranking Factors Analyzed

Leave a reply

There are many factors that influence a sites ranking in voice search results. To figure out which factor is most important, Backlinko conducted an extensive analysis.

Here are the findings:

  1. Page speed is crucial. Most of the results were from fast loading pages.
  2. Domain authority is of absolute importance.
  3. Content that ranks well on the desktop also ranks well on voice search.
  4. Surprisingly, Schema is not that important factor as only 36% of sites that ranked well on voice search results were using schema.
  5. 41% of Voice search results came from featured snippets.
  6. HTTPS is an absolute must.

This research debunked the myth that Schema is of absolute importance. The research also made it clear that page speed is CRUCIAL. All the results that listed well on voice search were almost 2 times faster than traditional pages.

Google’s reliance on domains with high authority for providing voice search results comes from the tendency that they “may” provide higher accuracy as compared to domain’s with less authority. But it is possible that they will come up with a more sophisticated approach for the same in near future.

The research also shed some light on the importance of long-form content. People speak more words that they type, so it’s natural that pages that use comprehensive content will reign supreme in this area.

However, you don’t have to specifically optimize your site’s content for voice search, writing in-depth content will suffice.

On a side note, virtual assistants are on the rise. So the marketers who are willing to offer their clients the latest digital marketing technology should take these platform seriously.

Google-Page-Speed-Ranking-Factor

Page Speed Will Officially Be a Google Ranking Factor Starting July 2018

Leave a reply

“Time is the new currency. Our customers want to live their lives. Technology has changed their expectations, and we knew we needed to change our approach to service and marketing in order to meet those.”

—Brian Benstock, general manager and VP at Paragon Honda

It’s 2018 and if your web page takes more than 10 seconds to load, then you are far behind! Nobody likes to wait for minutes just for your page to load — they will simply hit the back button. According to a study, 53% of the users will abandon the site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load! So it came as no surprise when Google announced that site speed will be a ranking factor in the mobile search results from July 2018.

However, Google assured that only a small percentage of the sites will be affected by it since the majority of the site loads faster than 10 seconds. Also, there will be exceptions to websites which provide relevant and high-quality content to users. Those websites can still rank well in the search engine result pages because the intent of the search query is still a strong factor.

If you are not sure about your site’s speed, you can use the Google’s “PageSpeed Tool”. This tool uses a standard 3G connection to replicate what most people are using to surf the web using mobile devices. It not only tells you about your site speed but also gives suggestions on how you can improve your website’s load time.

What About AMP? Google’s announcement stated that it “applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page”, which means AMP gets no special advantage except that by its very nature it will pass all of these speed standards with flying colors. However, that doesn’t mean that you get an automatic pass. If you’re using AMP you still need to be sure that everything is set up properly.

If you need any help with mobile optimization, we can assist. Just reach out to us and we will be able to assist you further.

google-launches-new-version-of-google-search-console

Google Launches Beta Version of Brand New Search Console

Leave a reply

Google has rolled out the beta version of the new and improved search console and SEO’s are more than happy, to say the least. The most promising new feature is the access to 16-month-old historical data. It enables year over year comparison which is great from every aspect. This allows metrics to be pulled and analyzed over a longer period of time with greater ease, something webmasters have been wanting to have available to them for quite some time now.

Google has built the new search console from scratch and not all features are available yet. They are still working on it, and they will keep on adding useful features from the old search console to the new one as it is continuously built out over the next few quarters. So, unfortunately, as of now, most of the tools you will click on will have a coming soon message.

However, you do have access to the performance tool which is easy to understand with filtering options like: By device, country, impressions, CTR and more.

The Index coverage report is the perfect blend of old index status & crawl reports errors. It enables you to see how well Google is indexing your site as well to identify and fix any issues.

Google-Index-Coverage-Report-Screenshot

The new search console will also help you validate newly fixed AMP URLs. The updated AMP status report will provide details into the specific Errors. This will allow you or your webmaster to solve the issues associated with your AMP pages faster and more efficiently.

As for now, the above-mentioned tools and features are the biggest highlights of the new search console. But it’ still in the beta mode and many tools and features are yet to come, so stay tuned. We will keep you updated on new features as and when they go live.

beta-google-search-console

Google-Adwords

Google Is Testing Images In Search Ads

Leave a reply

It seems like Google is testing a new feature, as some users have witnessed an image from the landing page, right next to the description area of the text ad.

google-ad-with-image

Google spokesperson gave a generic statement regarding this — “We’re always testing new
ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific
to announce right now.”

So they neither denied nor accepted it. Google has tested many imaged ad formats over the
years, and none made it to the mainstream. But we are seeing a lot of images right next to the
text ads lately, so this time, they might fully role out this feature.

Last years Google launched large format mobile ads exclusively for automotive makers. It
allowed the automotive company to entice the customers by showing the carousel of images
of car models. Because the looks of cars play an important role, this update was considered
useful for the car makers. Google might launch similar ad formats for other industries too, in
near future.

We will keep you posted.