Category Archives: Uncategorized

Now You Can Add Videos To Google My Business Posts

GMB Posts have the immense power to boost the bottom line of your business. Those who know how to utilize it to the fullest have seen a huge boost in sales. The latest addition to the Google post is VIDEO. Now you can upload videos of your business or any topic that revolves around it. It’s already proven that video marketing is EXTREMELY beneficial for your business, and now with the ability to add videos to Google My Business posts, it further enhances the benefits.

For those new to it, follow the steps below:

Access Google Posts by logging into your Google My Business account.
Now you will see the “Posts” option right below the Home.
Click on it and upload the type of content you want to share.

After uploading, you will have the option to preview it and once you are satisfied, hit the Publish button.
After publishing, actively monitor the conversions and see how your targeted audience is responding.

The best way to find out which type of videos work best for you is to TEST. Analyse your audience reaction to different videos to figure out what type of audiovisual content really clicks with your audience.Here are some facts that will encourage you to create and upload more videos:

63% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
76% of businesses said that video has helped them increase traffic to their website.
84% of consumers have been convinced to make a purchase after watching a brand’s video.

If you’d like to learn more about how adding media to your Google My Business posts can boost sales sign up for the SEO Solutions Newsletter and read up on all the latest Google updates.

Page Speed Will Officially Become a Google Ranking Factor, Starting July 2018

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Google announced that they will be making page speed a ranking factor within mobile search results starting July 2018. However, this page speed update affects only the pages with extremely slow load times, since the intent of the query is still one of the strongest signals. So slow pages can still enjoy higher ranking if they offer relevant content.

BUT, it’s not just about Google. Speed is a huge factor when it comes to user experience as well.

A 2017 Google study revealed that 53% of the visitors abandoned sites that took longer than three seconds to load. It might be a mark that’s hard to achieve, especially if you have high-quality images and videos on your site but you can still work on the aspects that can be improved.

You can use Google’s Test My Site to check your page load time, the approximate percentage of visitors you are losing and other aspects of your site that need improvement. It’s quick, comprehensive and FREE.

It’s worth mentioning that AMP will not enjoy any additional benefits, although it’s very nature allows it to fly high on the page load time and naturally gives it an advantage. But other than that, there will be no special “rewards”.

Here are some tools and resources web developers can utilize to evaluate a page’s overall performance. Use these tools to gain a better understanding of how a website’s page speed affect’s user experience of a website.

Chrome User Experience Report offers indispensable insights from real user measurement of key user experience metrics from all over the web.
Lighthouse is a great automated tool that is part of Chrome’s suite of developer tools. Developers can use Lighthouse to audit the performance, accessibility, and overall quality of web pages.
Page Speed Insights is an incredibly useful tool for evaluating a web page’s performance on the Chrome UX Report. The tool offers valuable insights and provides suggestions for optimizing web site performance.

Need help with improving page speed? We can help. Just reach out to our reps and let us do the rest. Please connect with us to learn more about improving page speed and optimizing load times.

Reviews Boost The Bottom Line of Your Business – Study

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A recent study shows that more review stars translate into higher paid search conversation rates. Businesses with an average of 3.31 stars managed to get 10.42 percent conversion rate, whereas, businesses that had 4.5+ stars achieved a remarkable 12.83 percent conversion rate.

The study also revealed that the response rate also affected the paid search performance. Businesses with higher response rates saw an average conversion rate of 13.86%. While the those with lowest response rates had to settle for a conversion rate of 10.42%.

Engaging with customers & responding to their questions, comments, and reviews is directly related to improved conversion rates. This type of high-touch customer interaction builds trust among users.

Reviews not only help you improve your local search rankings, but also paid search ranking, and conversion rates. So if you are not focusing on reviews, now is the time to do so.

To help you get more reviews for your business, we highly recommend our review widget. It’s a small piece of code which is placed on your website that 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. Need more details? Please connect with us.

GOOGLE ADWORDS UPDATES FOR APRIL 2018

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Responsiveness is very important because it holds a strong potential for traffic determination. And that’s the reason why Google removed advertisers ability to create or edit standard text for display network campaign. Here’s how you can use it your advantage.
Instagram stories are one of the best ways to catch your prospects attention because unlike ads, you get a full page to showcase your message and creativity. In a recent study, Facebook found out the best way to use the Insta stories to drive business results. Here is the link.
The new Google keyword planning tool: What’s really new and how to use it to its full potential.
Message reporting delivers new performance insights for click-to-message ads.
Quora Ads now offers List Match Audiences. You can now upload a list of email addresses and create a List Match Audience on Quora.
There are many occasions when we see a spike or dip in the performance & then have to dig into the account for an explanation. Soon it will be a hassle-free affair since Google has announced many productivity updates for new AdWords interface.
Promoting apps on Google play is not an easy task. To counter this problem, Google is releasing new ad formats. Learn more about the upcoming ad formats
Check out the new ways to fully utilize the combined power of Google & YouTube in AdWords.
Is your nonprofit organization involved with the Google Ad Grants Program? If yes then check out this article because the rules have changed.

Save time and efforts by using this Free script that automatically puts pivoted AdWords data in a spreadsheet.
Pinterest is testing shopping ads format on a much larger scale. Once rolled out, this will automatically turn your product catalog into actionable ads.
AdWords Version history lets you see the previous versions of your ads and how they performed. So you can compare all the version and use the one that yields best results.
In a bid to make the search engine result page cleaner, Bing has announced that they will soon be removing ride side ads from the SERP.
Some networks are better than others for targeting particular audience segments. Here’s how to choose the right platform.
Bing ad’s Account level association for ad extensions allows you to add and edit ad extensions at the account level.
The ADworld Experience 2018, the largest PPC only event in the world has released their detailed agenda. Have a look.

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

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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.