Blog page 48

We’ve been hearing from a lot of our clients lately who say they are getting repeated, irritating calls from people claiming to represent Google. Most of these calls start with a recorded voice asking you to press a number to update your listing or “verify your business.” Some of you have been getting as many as 10 of these phone calls each day! People are understandably angry about this – after all, nobody likes having their time wasted. However, despite what these people claim, they have nothing to do with Google. They’re scammers trying to sell you things, and they’re using Google’s name to try to appear more legitimate. How to beat these “Google” scammers Google doesn’t actually make telemarketing calls. They’re one of the biggest companies in the tech world – they know they can just sit around and wait for people to bring them their money. The telemarketing […]

Social media is an indispensable tool for small businesses who are hoping to market themselves online. However, if you are already working long hours to make your businesses a success, managing a social media account can seem like a huge waste of time. If you feel this way, don’t worry – there are plenty of tools you can use to make managing your social media accounts easier and more efficient. Here are four of our favorites! 1. Buffer Buffer is perhaps the biggest time-saving tool out there for social media users. It allows you to queue up a series of updates for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more – and then post those updates on a schedule that you set. This means you can create all of your social media updates for the week when you have a few spare minutes, and then set the schedule so Buffer will release them […]

Link building is exactly what it sounds like – working to increase the number of links pointing to your website from other places on the web. Link building is a huge part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because Google uses the number and quality of links pointing to any given website as a way to measure how reliable that website is (ie the more high quality links, the better!). If your business is going to compete and thrive online, you need to do everything you can to drive traffic to your website, and link building is a vitally important part of that. But how do I actually build links? If you are working on link building on your own as a part of your online marketing efforts, then the most effective method of generating links to your website is by creating great content that people want to link to – […]

When you were using Google over the weekend, you may have noticed that things are looking a little different. The 7-Packs have been reduced to 3 listing “Snak Paks,” hours of operation have been added, and there is now a link for directions. No A,B,C pins, no G+ links, no street addresses. These changes have been noted around the world, on both mobile and desktop. This is a roll out my friends, not simply a test. The SEO community isn’t totally shocked by the new layout. Here is a post from July, 2 foreshadowing the switch as an effort to make a desktop UI that mimics mobile experience. How will this new landscape affect your business? Last week you may have been quite pleased with your site’s fourth position in the 7 pack, and how could you not be? Nearly 75% of users never scroll past the first page of […]

Starting on July 28, Google began to shut down unverified and inactive Google+ business pages. If you are a small business owner, this could have a big impact on your customers’ ability to find you online. Read on to learn why this is important and what you can do about it. What are Google listings and why do they matter? Google listings are simply pages on Google+ for local businesses. They work a lot like a Facebook page – they show potential customers the name and address of your business, give customers a place to review your services, and give you the ability to upload pictures and run promotions. However, because Google uses this information in search results and in Google Maps, they have allowed anyone to create listings for businesses. Any listing created by the public doesn’t contain much more than the name and address of the business. If […]