Search Engine Optimization

Manage Your Directory Listings Before They Manage You

October 19, 2021 by Advertising

Using directory websites to effectively develop a 5-star digital reputation is one of the most important things you can do to digitally market your business. Getting your house in order (your website, your social media accounts and online business directories) is a good place to start. Having a consistent and diverse reputation management plan will keep your business and brand on topic and on the positive side of your audience.

However, ending there is not going to help you create the lead generation that will help you to grow your online presence. The key to marketing success is constantly updating, adapting, measuring, analyzing and tweaking your strategy to better optimize your results, and this includes your online directories.

Let’s discuss business directories and how they play a huge part in getting your business a strong online presence.

Business Directories

If you want your company to rise in rankings on search engine results pages, take the time to claim your business directories as soon as possible (Like yesterday, soon). Think of it as yellow pages in a phone book. You want potential customers to know everything about your business in the most accessible way to get more leads. That’s why online directories are so important for your business, because they are the online phonebook.

Things like your company address, phone number, email address and website link should be consistent and updated regularly so any potential customer or client can find your business right away. Some popular websites to list your company information include Google My Business, Manta, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Facebook, Bing Places and Better Business Bureau.

Taking the time to claim your local business listings comes with many more benefits for your company. Besides helping your customers find you, you are also able to reach more people who are looking for specific services. How’s that for a FREE advertising opportunity? Yes, you read it right FREE, business directories are one of the most cost-effective marketing tools ever.

Needless to say, being properly listed in directories and using adaptive search engine optimization can be a game changer when trying to grow your business. Your business needs to be found!

Putting in the Work

Claiming, creating, updating, and monitoring your business listings can be a time-consuming task. At Advertising Is Simple, we offer directory listing services for you to take advantage of. We ensure your business listings are correct, up-to-date, spread across all channels, and optimized for maximum SEO to market your business to the right audience, making it incredibly easier for your clients to find you!

Top 7 SEO Tips for Local Business

How Local SEO Efforts Can Benefit Your Business

Google Trends as a Powerful Digital Marketing Tool

If you need help, get in touch with Advertising Is Simple. We have quality solutions and products that can help improve your brand’s SEO and make a notable increase in your number of leads.

At Advertising is Simple, we consistently stay up-to-date on the most effective methods of SEO, that’s why we call it Adaptive SEO. What works today, may not work a few months down the road. We monitor your advertising results through A/B testing and in-depth analytics to get you the highest rate of return on your advertising dollars.

Advertising Is Simple | 302.407.0431 | info@AdvertisingIsSimple.com

Google… (aka the Electronic Yellow Pages)

August 12, 2021 by Advertising

The Yellow Pages were once the fat book of solutions to many people’s problems. Whether it was a locksmith, a contractor, a seamstress, or a dog sitter you needed – The Yellow Pages were the primary business directory you depended on for finding help when you needed it, but not anymore.

Nowadays, you’ll probably only find one being used as a spider smasher or a makeshift “squatty potty”. Ask a millennial what the phonebook is and they’ll say, “You mean my contacts list?” Why is that, you ask? Because… Google, that’s why.

The search engine arrived and solidified its place as the most popular means of finding information through the Internet. Google had essentially swept the legs out from Yellow Pages, making all of this information (that would normally come out once a year) available with a single search and click.

One In The Same

Google and The Yellow Pages accomplish the same task, they help you find a business or service. The Yellow Pages made businesses pay to be featured in their directory, and that made all of the difference.

So, why wouldn’t you invest time and resources into the search engine that is now responsible for getting you to your customers in today’s day and age? The facts speak for themselves – 86% of people rely on the Internet to find a local business and 46% of Google searches are for just that – local businesses.

The difficult part can be having your business show up first on a Google search – which is what matters most. Legend has it – if someone has it out for you, they bury your business on the second page of Google, because who actually ever scrolls past the first?! You would think that if someone searched your business’s name, that you would automatically be the first to pop up. Surprising to most, this is not the case at all.

Pay Per Click

In order to show up first on Google, businesses need to invest in what’s called Pay Per Click, also known as PPC. Pay Per Click is the quickest and easiest way to show up at the top of a Google search. With PPC campaigns, businesses display ads that show up on a Google search using keywords related to their business and advertisers pay a fee anytime their ad is clicked. Costs per click usually range between $1-$200 dollars.

By marketing this way, you are “buying” website visits rather than relying solely on organic traffic. Coming up organically on Google can take major time and effort, so PPC ads can be a great head start to creating a solid organic presence and gaining leads. Google Ads is the most popular and effective PPC system used today, and if you are not using it for your business, are you sure your business even exists?

Google has an algorithm called Pigeon that is aimed at producing better search results for local businesses that have a strong organic presence, but in order to obtain that organic presence, you need to constantly be working on and monitoring your SEO.

SEO is now a very popular buzzword in terms of marketing and technology, but it’s as simple as this: Great SEO makes it easier to find your business through a Google search. Even if your business is not local, failing to invest in SEO is a big no-no and could be potentially costing you lots of business. Check out this article that shares 7 SEO tips for local businesses to try.

To Conclude

With the start of the Internet & the age of information, the tides of the business-world waters have drastically changed, and if you aren’t keeping up to speed, your business may get swept away and lost in the current. Your business may not be one that involves technology, but regardless of what you do, Pay Per Click, SEO, & Google are essential parts of the marketing machine that you need to be utilizing today.

Top 7 SEO Tips for Local Business

How Local SEO Efforts Can Benefit Your Business

Google Trends as a Powerful Digital Marketing Tool

If you need help, get in touch with Advertising Is Simple. We have quality solutions and products that can help improve your brand’s SEO and make a notable increase in your number of leads.

Advertising Is Simple | 302.407.0431 | info@AdvertisingIsSimple.com

Top 7 SEO Tips for Local Business

April 19, 2021 by Advertising

Have you heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and know that it can be beneficial for your business, but just don’t know where to start? Here is a checklist of our top 7 SEO tips to show you what areas you should focus on, what needs to be optimized, and what you need to do to fix any problems you may encounter to best position yourself for local search traffic and business.

1. Start with a comprehensive audit

When you create a complete snapshot of your current SEO efforts, along with an understanding of your competition, you’re able to curate a plan that is going to be more effective and sustainable. We recommend that you conduct regular SEO audits and maintain an organized worksheet to record and track your progress.

2. Optimize your Website & Landing Page

When it comes to organic and local search, having a properly optimized site is more important than ever before. Organic signals are now tied into the local algorithm and having a properly optimized website will help you outrank your competition.

3. Correct Basic Location Information

Correct all discrepancies and inconsistencies in your business Name, Address, Phone number (NAP) and other related information. Also, ask questions about previous business names or previous experience with SEO or SEO penalties.

4. Seek Reviews & Reputation Management

Reviews have a direct impact on local search rankings. They can make or break a local business regardless of how well their keywords can rank. So, you’ll want to spend some time acquiring them in a manner consistent with the directory or service, such as Google, Facebook, or Yelp. For any directory, we strongly discourage paying for reviews.

5. Analyze and Maintain “Google My Business” Page

Find the proper Google My Business (GMB) URL and record it in your Local SEO Audit Spreadsheet. Follow Google’s guidelines to assure your business NAP, category, and subcategories, and other items are represented properly on your Google My Business listing.

6. Create Organic Link Building & Avoid Penalties

You need to keep the site out of a penalty short term and long term. You need to identify any potential problems and prepare yourself to make effective business decisions. Google penalties can be brutal, and recovery is not a walk in the park.

7. Analyze your Social Profiles

Review your profiles – Facebook, Google My Business, Foursquare, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, Instagram, etc.- and verify they have consistent branding, NAP consistency, high-quality photos, a business description, positive reviews, effective geo-targeting, and other elements in accordance with the guidelines of the platform. It’s very important that you post regularly to these platforms for them to be useful in your SEO efforts.

At Advertising is Simple, we consistently stay up-to-date on the most effective methods of SEO, that’s why we call it Adaptive SEO. What works today, may not work a few months down the road. We monitor your advertising results through A/B testing and in-depth analytics to get you the highest rate of return on your advertising dollars.

We believe local SEO plays a big part in the digital marketing arena and we have no doubts it will remain for many marketing light years to come! If you have any questions or would like to find out more about how Advertising Is Simple can help you compete in the Digital Marketplace while managing your online presence, get in touch!

Advertising Is Simple | 302.407.0431 | info@AdvertisingIsSimple.com

How Local SEO Efforts Can Benefit Your Business

March 16, 2021 by Advertising

Keeping up with the ebbs and flows of search engine optimization is part of every marketer’s job. While local SEO has evolved a lot in the recent years, it is certainly one of the strongest assets a business can invest in.

What businesses need to realize is that an effective digital marketing strategy is a lot of various tools, of which the main ingredient should be SEO. To achieve marketing harmony, all elements need to be implemented in a cohesive manner. A good digital marketing company knows this and will offer Adaptive SEO packages that will perform much better in the whole than any other quick fix solution.

A good place to start is by getting your house in order (your website, your social media properties and local directory listings). Marketers use search engine optimization to provide informational and educational content that is typically supported by the use of social media, publishing blogs and creating video content. All of these strategies help boosting SEO efforts.

Local SEO

According to the Pew Research Center, 91% of adults use search engines to find information.
46% of the searches on Google are have local intent. In fact, they represent billions of high-value searches for local businesses and services.

It’s been proven that when people perform local intent searches, there’s typically a much higher intent to purchase. This leads to a higher conversion rate. When taking into consideration mobile users, the likelihood of that local search resulting in an in-store visit increases 35%.

The Takeaway

While many praise SEO for its ability to help businesses expand and scale, don’t forget to take care of business in your own backyard by running local campaigns.

We believe local SEO plays a big part in the digital marketing arena and we have no doubts it will remain for many marketing light years to come! If you have and questions or would like to find out more about how Advertising Is Simple can help you compete in the Digital Marketplace while managing your online presence, get in touch!

Advertising Is Simple | 302.407.0431 | info@AdvertisingIsSimple.com

Google Trends as a Powerful Digital Marketing Tool

September 1, 2020 by Advertising

Your digital marketing is only as effective as your efforts to find the right target audience who’s interested in what you have to say. While there are many marketing tools available to do just that, figuring out which ones can bring you the most value and return on investment is crucial. Today, let’s take a closer look at a free Google data explorer called Google Trends.

Google Trends

With Google Trends, you can not only explore what the world is searching in real time, but you can also use your findings to later target specific keywords in your marketing efforts. Such database is priceless nowadays if you take into the consideration the fact Google handles over 3.5 billion searches per day across the globe.

Having access to such a vast database (for free) can be a very powerful digital marketing tool. Knowing what’s the most popular search term is relevant to marketers finding the map to a pot of gold. While they’re not exactly digging for gold yet, at least they have a very good idea on where to start.

How to Use Google Trends

You can use Google Trends to see search interest in a topic or search term over time, where it’s being most-searched and what else people search for in connection with it. You can also compare trends against each other and look at data regionally vs all other searches. In addition, a new Google Trends update allows now filtering the trends in a real or non-real time, meaning you can access data going back as far as 2004.

Google Trends can be especially useful if your marketing focuses on content storytelling. Seeing trends in what people are searching for and how they’re responding to different moments can easily explain the magnitude of each event over time.

For more industry tips and updates on different Google tools and features, click here.

Need Help with Your Digital Marketing Efforts?

Contact Advertising Is Simple today! We help small to mid-sized business owners who are too busy running their businesses to focus on their marketing and advertising efforts. We specialize in digital marketing with a strong focus on adaptive search engine optimization, website design, video marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, and original content management.

Call 302-407-0431

Manage Your Directory Listings Before They Manage You

Business Directories

Putting in the Work

RELATED ARTICLES:

Top 7 SEO Tips for Local Business

How Local SEO Efforts Can Benefit Your Business

Google Trends as a Powerful Digital Marketing Tool

Advertising Is Simple | 302.407.0431 | info@AdvertisingIsSimple.com

Google… (aka the Electronic Yellow Pages)

The Yellow Pages were once the fat book of solutions to many people’s problems. Whether it was a locksmith, a contractor, a seamstress, or a dog sitter you needed – The Yellow Pages were the primary business directory you depended on for finding help when you needed it, but not anymore.

One In The Same

Pay Per Click