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Let Your Expertise Shine - Parqa Marketing

Brand Credibility Part 6 of 6: Show or Tell – Let Your Expertise Shine!

One thing staffing and recruiting agencies know better than anybody is the difference between simply working and actually getting the job done.

When it comes to your brand, you could be working hard and doing everything right by:

  • Starting from the ground up, creating a brand guide complete with all the elements of a cohesive brand that defines your agency
  • Taking the time to define what you do and who you serve
  • Log hours creating and broadcasting consistent messaging that resonates with your audience
  • Build credibility by living into your company values every day

So how could it be, after all this time and hard work, this strategy still might not move the needle? 

We’re wrapping up our 6-part series on brand credibility with one of the most crucial elements to building credibility: demonstrating your expertise.

Read on to learn about how demonstrating your expertise could be the most important ingredient to your brand strategy, the final step in building credibility and creating a winning and successful brand.

Expertise Puts the “-ability” in “Brand Credibility”

Can your staffing and recruiting agency solve persistent and complex employment problems for your partners? Of course you can! But how?

Simply telling your audience that you can create employment solutions and help their businesses grow is a good start. But stopping there accomplishes very little. It might be good news that you can create employment solutions, but unfortunately, your audience is less likely to choose your agency simply because you say you’re up to the challenge.

Your audience is looking for more than lip service. They’re looking for themselves in your content. Ideally, they’re looking for a story or a challenge similar to their own, like finding and hiring job seekers in a candidate-driven market. They’re looking for the solution you (and only you) can provide and how it not only solved the problem but was the beginning of a years-long, mutually beneficial partnership

When you demonstrate your agency’s expertise, you demonstrate a clear ability to get the job done. Only those agencies who can clearly demonstrate proven results will attract the most clients and job seekers. 

Why Demonstrating Expertise Can Be a Tricky Business

Expertise is like salt. Too little or too much can spoil a recipe.

In the same way, demonstrating your expertise can be a tricky business. Modesty in marketing is always good. On the other hand, leaning too heavily into your expertise, and you risk blurring the line between genuine enthusiasm for your work, and bragging.

The balance in developing and delivering just the right mix of expertise often comes down to subjective unknowables, like:

  • Intuition to know what content works the best
  • An ability to read an audience
  • Tactfulness in how or where you tell those stories
  • A moral compass to guide how much or how little to highlight your successes

Once you can create the right strategy, showing your work – from your process, successes, and even your mistakes – can build a potent back catalogue of expertise that is supported by the emotional weight of genuine storytelling.

Broadcasting Expertise With Your Digital Marketing Strategy

At Parqa, helping staffing and recruiting agencies demonstrate their industry experience is one of our favorite things to do. Nothing moves the needle like telling your story through authentic, relevant stories on platforms like your website, social media, email campaigns, and many more. 

When it comes to your online marketing goals, we believe there’s an opportunity to leverage every digital platform available to broadcast your industry expertise. Here are some of the key  tools and strategies we use to highlight your industry expertise in your marketing mix: 

1. SEO

Primarily a tool to increase your agency’s brand awareness and direct more traffic to your site – a key SEO strategy can make your agency rank higher in search results. The search engines which deem those higher-ranking sites to be the most authoritative sources in their industry or subject matter will make them more visible to consumers who will then associate your company with industry expertise.

2. Social Media

Not just for pictures of the office dogs. Using your social media platforms to create engaging and useful content, interact with your target audience and answer their questions is a great way to promote your staffing and recruiting agency and a powerful tool in demonstrating your expertise.

3. Blogging and Guest Blogging

What better way to demonstrate your staffing and recruiting know-how than to share or interpret industry information, trends, and interesting articles? Actively blogging and contributing blogs to other sites not only keeps visitors coming back to your site, but is also a great way to position yourself as a modern and savvy staffing and recruiting business.

4. Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials are the physical evidence of your industry expertise. Publishing your feedback from clients and employees to your website is a key strategy to adding their powerful endorsement directly to your site. But you shouldn’t stop there. Responding to positive and even negative reviews on Google or Glass Door is not only mature and thoughtful but demonstrates your commitment to following through on your commitment to excellence. 

5. Customer Service

Providing excellent customer service is often not the foremost strategy in promoting industry expertise. But nowhere is word-of-mouth and strong relationships more powerful than in staffing and recruiting. When you go above and beyond to create a customer experience that is second to none, you’re laying the groundwork for associating your strong brand with positive, uplifting experiences.

6. Case Studies

What better way to demonstrate your expertise than by telling a true story about a real client, with a real challenge, and a real strategy that accomplished real results? These should be editorially written with plenty of data to support the outcome. It’s even better when you can get an authentic testimonial from your client at that specific organization to speak sincerely about the great experience they had with your firm. 

It’s okay if creating a digital marketing plan that leverages all of these powerful tools sounds like a tall order. That’s where a digital marketing agency can help.

Entrusting your content strategy to a marketing agency – especially one that specializes in serving staffing agencies and recruiting firms – might be the best business goal you can set.

Everything Your Staffing/Recruiting Agency Needs to Know About Brand Credibility

Branding, maintaining your brand credibility, and demonstrating your industry expertise is an ongoing process. It’s one that takes attention to detail, savvy and consistent commitment.

For everything you need to know about brand credibility and the importance of your agency’s most powerful tool, check out our previous five episodes here:

  1. The Set-Up: Brand Messaging for Staffing and Recruiting Agencies
  2. The Follow-Through: Living Into Your Company Values
  3. Brand Your Way Out of the Summer Slowdown
  4. How Messaging Can Resonate or Repel Clients and Candidates
  5. The Core Components of a Brand Foundation

At Parqa, we’re big believers in the power of branding. We want your staffing and recruiting agency to be empowered to create and sustain a powerful brand.

We’d love to help you create content and a strategy that will:

  • Project the trust and reassurance that is so critical to your industry
  • Establish your agency as the leading expert
  • Help you to rise above your competitors
  • Create and nurture leads
  • Ultimately, grow your business

For everything you need to create industry expertise and brand credibility for your staffing and recruiting firm, contact us today!

web design layout with bright colors

Is Your Website Holding You Back?

About the Webinar

For most staffing and recruiting firm owners, the question is not if they need a new website, but when? Discovering when the time is right for a website tune up is a multi-faceted process that requires thorough exploration. New websites require a significant investment of time and resources, so you’ll naturally want to be certain that your website in need.

Here at Parqa Marketing, we deliver digital marketing solutions that are custom-built to serve the modern needs of staffing and recruiting firms—including website design, development, and management. 

To help your firm determine when to pull the trigger on a new site, we’re hosting a webinar to comprehensively discuss the topic. Hosted by our Vice President Karen Feder, we will show you how to diagnose the current state of your site’s design, functionality, and content.

Some of the elements of your website that this webinar will cover include:

  • Responsiveness
  • Site speed
  • The performance and quality of your content
  • The user experience of your visitors
  • Technical SEO
  • And more!

Who Should Watch This Webinar?

  • Staffing and Recruiting leaders looking to leverage their website as a sales tool
  • Teams without internal website development resources
  • Sales leaders who think their website could be doing more for their team
  • Staffing and Recruiting firms ready to kick-start their online presence

Presenter:

Karen Feder

VICE PRESIDENT, PARQA

Karen brings nearly a decade of tactical and strategic marketing experience to the Parqa digital marketing team. As the VP, Karen acts as an idea hub within the agency to provide clients with innovative digital approaches and solutions for their websites and marketing campaigns.

guy typing

Rank Higher: The Biggest Factors on Your Website That Influence SEO

CONTENT… CONTENT… CONTENT

Content is still king, and quality beats quantity every-time.  Your content has to provide real value to your visitors and should capture your visitor’s attention with images and graphics to complement the written content.

Not only is it critical to publish relevant content but it’s also important to update the content regularly.

seo-results-image

TIP: When optimizing your content for your website or blog you can utilize Google’s semantic search to get ideas for similar keyword phrases others are associating with that topic – (See Figure 1).


Related Posts:

Let’s Get Real: 4 Ways to Make Your Content Strategy More Authentic ➢

How to Create Content that Sticks ➢

Content Marketing: Your 3-Step Recipe for Lead Generation ➢


EXTERNAL LINKS

An external link is more valuable if it links to popular and relevant pages that are highly ranked and related to the content on your web page.

Getting external links to your site is the single most important objective for attaining high rankings. This stems from the idea that external links are one of the hardest metrics to manipulate, and therefore one of the better and easier ways for Google and other search engines to determine the validity and popularity of a particular website/web page.

figure-2Below are some of the metrics search engines use to help determine the value of external links:

  • Trustworthiness/ domain authority of the linking domain
  • Popularity/ page authority of the linking page
  • Relevancy of the content between the target page and the source page
  • Anchor text
  • AND MORE

Adding high quality, trustworthy and informative external links to your pages will help improve the credibility of your website, while adding poor-quality links will hurt your site’s reputation.


Related Post: What to Know About Real Time Google Penguin 4.0 ➢


MOBILE FIRST WEBSITE DESIGN

52% of all website traffic generated in 2018 came from mobile devices

Mobile first website design is where the website is designed from a mobile perspective before anything else. From there, it’s then transformed into a design that fits all screen sizes.

“In the past, many responsive website development companies considered mobile design to be secondary, starting with a desktop design and slimming it down to fit smaller screens, known as graceful degradation.” – Lisa Lerman

Why is this important?

It all comes down to providing your visitors with a better user experience while they’re on your website, which in turn, drastically improves your SEO score. In #5, we’ll discuss more why UX plays a crucial role in your websites organic rankings.


Related Posts:

Mobile Friendly vs. Mobile Optimization: What’s the Difference? ➢

9 Stats That Prove the Importance of Website Design ➢


STRUCTURED DATA/ SCHEMA MARK-UP

Structured Data, a.k.a. Schema markup, is code that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users.

With the increased emphasis on local SEO, structured data is becoming more important and beneficial for small and local businesses.

google structured dataMost Popular Types of Structured Data Mark-Up:

  • Article/ Blog Post
  • Job Posting
  • Product
  • Local Business Information
    • Logo
    • Social Profile(s)
    • Organizational Info

SEO is going local, so this is becoming a huge factor in helping small businesses rank higher on Google.


USER EXPERIENCE

As Google’s algorithm continues to get more advanced, UX is going to continue playing a larger and larger role in websites organic Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) rankings.  While it’s difficult to know how exactly to measure UX, as it “varies by industry and demographic, studies do show a strong correlation between an accurate UI/UX and good placements on the SERP.” – Doron Wolffberg


Related Posts: 

9 Stats That Prove the Importance of Website Design ➢

Your Website’s User Experience: Why It’s Important ➢


There is no one thing that will single-handedly improve your websites organic rankings or online visibility.  It’s true that there are certain things that can have a greater impact on helping improve your websites SEO & organic keyword rankings.  But if you focus on only one thing without the other, one of two things will happen: 1. You may see a small improvement in your website’s SEO performance, but it will be short lived; or 2. You won’t see any impact.

It takes a combination of the above in order to see the SEO results you want on your website.

man typing in a google search

Is Google Jobs the New Indeed? Why Your Jobs Should be on Google Jobs

“Indeed will no longer consider Job Board requests to be indexed on the site.” – Indeed Employer Support – Job Board Inclusion Guidelines

Starting in 2019, Indeed will no longer be crawling company website job boards for FREE. This means recruiting agencies who want their jobs posted on Indeed will need to pay to have their jobs crawled.

For large national recruiting agencies like RobertHalf, this may not be an issue, but for many smaller boutique recruiting firms (with smaller amounts of web traffic) who rely on other job board sites this adds yet another marketing cost.

Note: if you currently sponsor jobs on Indeed, this likely won’t affect your cost 

What is Google Jobs?

A little over a year ago, Google launched a new job search feature right on its search results page that lets individuals search for jobs across almost all of the major online job boards, as well as job listings on a company’s website.

Google Jobs portal is different from other job portals in the way that Google does not store the job listings directly. Instead, Google redirects the user to the relevant job posting on one of the major online job boards or company job pages.

Note: on the above Google job listing you can see that there are three different places individuals can go to apply for the Healthcare Recruiter job (posted by Versique) – on the Versique website, LinkedIn or Neuvoo.

Recently, they have begun competing more and more with online job boards, especially Glassdoor and Indeed with their recently released features including: company reviews and typical salaries for positions.


Related Post: How Digital Marketing Can Get Me More Clients ➢


Why Your Jobs Should be on Google Jobs

With company jobs boards and recruiting agencies job boards no longer being crawled by Indeed for FREE, there will likely be a significant decrease in the number of overall jobs on Indeed.com.  As a result, if you’re not advertising your jobs on other third party job boards (LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Monster, DICE, etc.) you’re going to want to work on getting your website’s jobs crawled by Google so they show up on google jobs.


GOOGLE JOB STATS:

Organizations that post their jobs on Google get results.
After ZipRecruiter integrated with Google’s job search experience, organic conversion rate from Google grew 4.5x. Learn More about Google Jobs


How to Tell if Your Jobs are on Google Jobs

  1. Google your company’s name followed by job/jobs (i.e. Versique jobs)
  1. Do you see one of your company’s jobs?
    1. No – (if there isn’t one there your jobs aren’t being crawled by Google) – from both your company’s website and third party applications (e. Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, etc.)
  1. Click on one of your company’s jobs
  1. On the job posting look for the “Apply Buttons” – there will be at least one, maybe more depending on how many places that jobs is listed
    1. If there is a button that says “Apply on ‘INSERT_COMPANY_NAME’ – Congratulations! This means that job is being crawled by Google Jobs and there’s nothing more you need to do.
    2. If all you see are button(s) that say “Apply on LinkedIn” or another online job board, this means Google is not crawling jobs directly from your website. Instead, they are crawling your jobs from third party applications.  Candidates can still apply for your job, they just won’t be directed to your website to apply.

*Some of the major third party job boards include: CareerBuilder, Monster, TheLadders, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, SimplyHired, Jobs.com, Dice, etc.)


Want to learn how you can get your company’s jobs listed on Google Jobs for Free? Click the link below.

How to Get Your Jobs Posted on Google Jobs

search overlay with typing in background

What is SEO?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Although the exact ways that search engines rank sites are guarded secrets, there are many known factors that make up SEO. The three main focuses are technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. In this guide, we’ll be diving into all three![/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”35px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row equal_height=”yes”][vc_column width=”1/2″ el_class=”download-left-img”][vc_single_image image=”4593″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″ el_class=”download-right-text”][vc_column_text]In this FREE guide, you’ll learn:

  • The Technical Side of SEO
  • All of the On-Page Optimization Tactics Your Website Needs to Perform
  • How to Speed up Your Site While Maintaining and User-Friendly Experience

Take advantage of this opportunity to learn how your staffing or recruiting firm can benefit from expert SEO.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

woman reviewing marketing reports

4 Tips to Optimize Your Business for Local SEO

Local SEO uses a variety of strategies — getting your site ranked on search engines like Google, business directories such as Yelp, Foursquare, Yellowbook, Google My Business listing, Bing Places for Business page, localized content on your website, online reviews and other strategies.

Below you’ll learn 4 of the most important strategies to improve your local SEO presence.


Related Post: The Importance of Local SEO and Why You Should be Investing There ➢


1. Optimize your Website’s ‘Localization’ Information

This means you should be including your address, city, county or region name naturally throughout your site (with schema markup). For businesses with several locations, this may involve creating individual pages for each location and optimizing those pages with location-specific content and keywords about your various services or offerings.

2. Claim your Google My Business Page

This should be the first online directory you take ownership of and is a first step towards helping your business display on important Google services (i.e. Maps and Google+).  Only 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business listing, which means by starting/investing in local SEO already puts you ahead of your competition.

3. Create/Claim your Business on Trusted Online Directories

Reliable and trustworthy online directories also play a big role in the impact of your local SEO efforts.  By creating/ claiming your business listing in these types of directories you accomplish a number of things including showing Google that your business services and information are present and consistent across the web, and you open your business up to being seen by more potential customers utilizing those online directories. Examples of these trustworthy directories include Yellowbook, Best of the Web, Yelp, Foursquare, etc.

Note: it’s important that your citations (address, phone number, website, etc.) are consistent across the various online directories. If there are any discrepancies Google will most likely avoid listing your business in the local 3-pack.

4. Get Reviews and Ratings

Reviews are critical for two main reasons, they:

1.) Portray the quality of your service

2.) Send signals to search engines telling that your site and services are trusted (yes, they are a ranking factor Google utilizes)

88% of local consumers trust online business reviews.  The number of reviews you receive, the overall quality of the reviews and the authority of the review sites themselves are all important factors for local search rankings.


Related Post: How Long Does it Take for SEO to Produce Results? ➢


Why Use Parqa Marketing

Local SEO companies help you to position your business on search engines and other digital marketing platforms/directories so you’re seen by potential customers — on their terms.

Parqa is a Digital Marketing Agency that specializes in SEO, SEM, Local Search Optimization, Marketing Automation, Social Media and content creation. We help grow your brand and drive leads through a variety of inbound marketing tactics.  See how our experts can help your business grow through search engine optimization.

man typing on tablet and reviewing graphs

PPC Match Types for Recruiters

As any recruiter knows, generating leads online has become more and more critical.  Mobile web traffic is integral, we rarely go very far without our handy-dandy smartphone nowadays.  People are more attached to their phone than their wallets.  How crazy is that?

Today I wanted to talk about match types and the importance of utilizing the right set up.  Match types in the PPC world allow you to cast a small or large net depending on your traffic goals.


Related Post: How Your Recruiting Firm Should Approach Competitor Negative Keywords ➢


 

Google has 4 match types for recruiters using PPC:

Broad match:

Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned. Ads may show on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. So, if your keyword is “women’s hats,” someone searching for “buy ladies hats” might see your ad.

Broad match modifier:

Similar to broad match, the broad match modifier option only shows ads in searches including the words designated with a plus sign (+women’s hats) or close variations of them.

Phrase match:

Ads may show on searches that match a phrase or are close variations of that phrase, with additional words before or after. Ads won’t show, however, if a word is added to the middle of the words, or if words in the phrase are reordered in any way. Designated with quotation marks (“women’s hats”).

Exact match:

Ads may show on searches that match the exact term or are close variations of that exact term. Close variations here may also include a reordering of words if it doesn’t change the meaning, and the addition or removal of function words (prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and other words that don’t impact the intent of a search). Designated with brackets, the keyword [women’s hats] could show when someone searches on Google for “hats for women.”


Related Post: Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO: What’s the Difference? ➢


 

How to Use Match Types

Here is an example using the keyword example finance recruiter:

Broad: finance recruiter

Broad Match Modified: +finance +recruiter

Phrase: “finance recruiter”

Exact: [finance recruiter]

The match type I really like to play with when optimizing is the broad match modified. This match type allows you to modify a specific keyword to make sure that it is in place, followed by other keywords the searcher is searching for. All while simultaneously minimizing the junk traffic to your website.

Example: +finance +recruiter

These keywords tell the system that as long (finance) & (recruiter) is in the search query, show the ad.  If someone searched IT recruiter, the keywords would not match and your ad would not show up.  This will help your ad reach a highly relevant audience, which in turn helps out your CTR and conversion rates.


Related Post: New Site Launch SEO Checklist ➢


 

Integrating BMM Keywords [Broad Match Modified]

One method we recommend and prioritize is different variations of Broad Match Modified (BMM) keywords. For example, you could run keyword with this match type:

+finance +recruiter

And then the next month or a certain time period run this match type:

+finance recruiter

This match will allow for more traffic but not necessarily the most relevant traffic because you can potentially pull up for tons of searches that have finance in them relating to something else other than just recruiter searches.

You really want to open up to broad matches when you feel you are not getting enough search traffic on the BMM types.  If you do open up to broad matches, make sure you have a vast negative keyword list so that you limit the amount of needless spend.  We recommend avoiding broad match for extended periods of time and watch your account like a hawk if you do so.


So, the next time someone tells you that you have an opportunity to increase overall organic visibility on your site, hear them out. Ask them pointed questions about how they plan to drive marketing success.

And if you do find yourself starting a partnership with a marketing agency, here are four ways to build an effective relationship.

macbook air on desk with phone and mini cannon

Google Reviews: How to Get Rid of an Inaccurate Google Review?

So, you’ve been given a bad Google review. Most companies have, and sometimes it’s something you simply can’t avoid. But what happens if the review is wrong? What if the review is misleading, the wrong location, or even the wrong company? Each of these can be very damaging to your brand. Let’s break down a few simple tips on how to get rid of inaccurate Google reviews.

Types of Reviews Google Will Remove

While there’s no recourse for having Google delete a bad review, they will intervene and remove damaging reviews that are inaccurate. There are a number of different types of inaccurate reviews Google will remove, including:

1. Fake Accounts

If a user creates multiple accounts and leaves similar reviews in a short amount of time, you can ask Google to look into the activity. This could be five, 1-star reviews in under an hour, or something along those lines.

2. Incorrect Location

If a review is posted under the wrong location. This is most common with franchise locations such as restaurants or shops. While they all share the same brand, it doesn’t necessarily mean a location should be hit for the experience someone received at a different location. Google will remove these reviews if you contact them.

Along those lines, Google will also remove a review if the same user leaves the review for all locations. For example, if you have 15 locations in 1 state, the bad experience may have happened at 1 location, but all 15 reviews can be removed if it is not defined which one should truly have the bad review.


Related Post: PPC vs. SEO: Which One Should I Focus On? ➢


3. Disgruntled Employee

If a former or current employee leaves a bad review, this can be removed. Reviews of this nature violate Google’s guidelines.

4. Incorrect Company

Sometimes people leave a review for the wrong company altogether There are many companies out there with similar names, or a customer could have forgotten the actual name. If you’re a recruiting firm, but someone left a bad review about your cheeseburgers, Google will also remove that!

Steps to take if you have a review to remove

If you’re sure your review reflects one of the above issues, then it’s time to flag the review for Google to take care of. Here are the steps to take according to Google:

How to Flag Reviews on Desktop

  1. Sign in to Google My Business.
  2. If you have multiple listings, open the location you’d like to manage.
  3. Click Reviews from the menu.
  4. Find the review you’d like to flag, click the three-dot menu, then click Flag as inappropriate.

How to Flag Reviews on Mobile

  1. Open the Google My Business app.
  2. Tap the menu, then tap Reviews.
  3. Find the review you’d like to flag, tap the three-dot menu, then tap Flag review.

Related Post: How to Build Your Brand Through Digital Marketing ➢


Respond to Bad Reviews

If none of these tips are consistent with the bad review you’re dealing with, at a minimum, just respond. There is a spot on a Google review where you can hit ‘Reply’ and this comment will be made public. When people are looking at your business on Google and they see a bad review that has gone unanswered, it resembles something the company has ignored or could be true.

Respond with clear & concise sentences recognizing their concerns, but also offering a solution to the issue they had with your business. Do not engage with arguments but offer solutions where they can reach out to you individually or let them know you emailed them personally to help resolve the issue.


business projections and reviews

The Importance of Local SEO and Why You Should be Investing There

More than 50 percent of search queries globally now come from mobile devices.  As a result, more and more searchers are looking for local businesses when they’re on the go.

Local SEO can help your business stand out in search results, increasing your chance of being seen by potential customers.  In this article you’ll learn about what Local SEO is, why it’s important, and how to use those local ranking factors to rise to the top of organic results.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is SEO for location-based searches.  This means a physical address or location is a required for a business to show up in a local search as a result.  It helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them.

Local SEO strategies range from including your website and business information on your website to claiming your Google My Business listing to creating/claiming your business in various online directories (i.e. Yelp, Yellowpages, HotFrog, etc.)

NOTE: There are some local SEO ranking factors and optimizations tactics that are universal across all types of businesses/ organizations, however, there are also ones that vary based on business type.


Related Post: How Long Does it Take for SEO to Produce Results? ➢


Why is Local SEO Important?

Millions of customers conduct local searches every day to find the top local businesses in their area (both services and products). By investing in Local SEO you can help increase your chances of being seen by potential customers.

Highly Targeted and Timely

There are two main reasons why users do local searches, to:

1.) Find a specific business

2.) Find a local service or product at a local store

Local SEO provides potential customers the information that they want (targeted), when they want it (timely), and where they want it (within SERPs), making Local SEO both efficient and extremely cost-effective.

There are also many users who don’t have a specific business in mind when they execute their search for local services and products. Local SEO helps better position your business and promote your services/ product offerings to local customers when they’re looking for your type of business.

Mobile Searches Continue to Grow

According to official Google statements, “more than 50 percent of search queries globally now come from mobile devices, however it could be as high as 60 percent.”

As more and more customers use their mobile phones to find the best local businesses while they’re on the go, showing up in the ‘local 3-pack’ (we’ll talk about this more later) and having relevant business/location information within search results has become even more important.

On average, 61% of people doing a local search on their phone end up calling the business.

It’s a free Source of Advertisement

It’s free to claim your listing on Google My Business, Bing Places for Business, Yahoo Local and hundreds of other online business directories, but that may not be the case forever.  While it is a somewhat time consuming process, it’s worth it to reach highly targeted, high converting in-market prospects.

Drop in ‘near me’/ Geographic Modifiers in Searches

“Over the last two years, comparable searches WITHOUT ‘near me’ have grown by 150 percent” – Google, June 2017

This shift towards dropping location modifiers is “because people know and expect Google to deliver results that will be relevant to their location.” They assume that Google now knows when a search has local intent.  This further emphasizes the importance of claiming your Google My Business page, and other alike online directory listings.

Rank Higher in Search Engine Results

Have you ever done a google search and seen this (see right).  This is known as the “local pack”, it showcases local businesses and stores relevant to the search query/term you entered, in this case it’s “barbershops.”

The goal behind the ‘local pack’ is to provide users with better information about the top local search results (i.e. images, photos, reviews, prices, etc.)

In 2015, Google cut the number of ‘local pack’ results from seven to three.  While this change benefited those businesses 1.) with multiple stores across the world 2.) businesses that were already ranking in the first three spots within the ‘local pack’, it made local SEO even more important.

Today, local SEO can help your business appear in Google’s local 3-pack, which is one of the most coveted spots when it comes to search engine results.

“44% of people who performed a local search clicked on a local 3-pack listing, while only 8% chose to load more local results” – MOZ

“95% of smartphone users have used their device to perform local searches, out of which 61% called the business and 59% visited” – Forbes

“70% of mobile users click to call a business directly from Google search results using their mobile phones”
Search Engine Watch

Adding an SEO company to your marketing team will not only boost your local SEO but also increase your organic search engine rankings for your site.  Every small business or multi-location company can benefit greatly from using Local SEO optimization strategies.

“Only about 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business listing”
Local Marketing Institute

Have you claimed your Google My Business? If not, this means you as a business/company have the opportunity to jump ahead of your competition and take advantage of local SEO services and boost your businesses local online presence, before competitors catch on. No matter what type of business you own/work for, from recruiting firms and plumbers to accountants and construction workers, Local SEO can improve business. Set up your company and website for easy sales with Local SEO, opening conversion opportunities to eager customers, helping you make more money.


Related Post: Top 5 Questions Business Owners Have About Digital Marketing ➢


Why Use Parqa Marketing

Local SEO companies help you to position your business on search engines and other digital marketing platforms/directories so you’re seen by potential customers — on their terms.

Parqa is a Digital Marketing Agency that specializes in SEO, SEM, Local Search Optimization, Marketing Automation, Social Media and Content Marketing. We build strategy to grow your brand and drive leads through a variety of inbound marketing tactics.  See how our experts can help your business grow through search engine optimization.

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