Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business



A few concrete, easy-to-follow steps for making your business discoverable online.

  1. Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business Entity
  2. Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business Online
  3. Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business Address

When you’re a small business owner, figuring out how to build your SEO can be tricky. If you ask around, you’re sure to get a two types of “expert advice” on small business SEO:

It’s simple! Just change some text in your headlines, decide on a few keywords, start a blog, and you’ll be rolling in web traffic. Seriously! It really is that easy—anyone can do it! Anyone!

Try running a 'Yelp Deal': Finally, if you want to both drum up new business and improve the visibility of your company's listing in Yelp's search results, consider running a 'Yelp Deal.

  • Again, we don't advocate cheating Yelp, but if we owned a small business and business wasn't hot, we would lie awake at night thinking about it. There's also a legal way to improve your rating.
  • Schema displays a rich snippet in the search results, which makes your website look more attractive and lets Google know that your business is customer friendly. By providing good reviews, readily available on the search results, you are bound to generate more traffic to your website, which in turn will let Google and the like know that you are.

It’s impossibly complicated. You have to have immense technical knowledge, know how to code, pay for expensive software, post a new blog entry a day, and tirelessly optimize every web page until you’ve made the Google crawlers happy.

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Somehow, neither and both are true.

If you want the backbone of your business’ marketing strategy to be search engine optimization—if you want to rank for a long list of highly trafficked terms, and you expect your primary customer-driver to be search—then yes, really mastering SEO will take some time and expertise.

But if you just want to make sure your target market can find your brand amidst the noise—you can give your traffic a boost just by doing a few key things right.

Here are some SEO low-hanging fruit opportunities every business owner should take advantage of.

First, in layman’s terms, what is SEO and what are your primary rankings factors?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a general umbrella term to describe “actions you take to make sure your website shows up in search engines.”

Google has a long list of ranking factors, and the internet has had a long history of “trying to figure out what they are.” Exactly what needs to be prioritized changes with every update. But generally, we divide “optimizing your website for search” into three different categories:

Second, some basics: Here are things you can do in an afternoon that may move the needle.

1. Check your listing with Moz Local and fill in any blanks.

By some estimates, online reviews make up over 15% of your local search engine ranking. And existing on trusted review sites and directories, that may point your website a decent bit of traffic, should be an SEO no-brainer.

Moz Local offers a free tool that breaks down and scores your business based on its presence on those pivotal sites and directories. It will tell you where you lack a presence, where there elements of your listing missing, and where you have your bases covered.

One of the easiest things you can do to improve your rankings is to work out a plan to “fill-in-the-blanks.” Make sure on your site, and on these platforms, your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) are prominent. On Yelp, that’s as simple as adding your business and claiming your page.

Bonus points: check out this list of 57 local directories, and work to get your business on wherever appropriate.

2. Set up (and utilize) your social media profiles:

There are a few right and wrong ways to use social, and there are a few misconceptions about how social media influences search engine rankings.

It’s not extremely likely that social media is a ranking factor, in and of itself. But it does serve as a very legitimate way to fuel activities that are. A few reasons you should be established on major social networks:

  • Social media is largely driven by link-sharing. If you have content you want to share with your audience, posting it (and potentially, paying to promote it) on social is a good start. If it gets shared—your site gets traffic, links get circulated, and Google is happy.
  • Similarly, existing on social can prompt a greater frequency of “brand mentions.” Increased brand mention changes the way search engines “think of you”—and that influences what terms you rank for, and how you rank for them.
  • Social media profiles rank by themselves in search results. Social platforms are high-authority pages. If someone searches your business name, they’ll likely see your website, and then your social pages. It’s a far better first impression if the people searching for you see a well-established Facebook or LinkedIn page, then a results page of unrelated (or competitor) pages.
  • Social media sites are now also search engines. Increasingly, users are searching for local businesses and events via their social platforms.

Having a robust, engaged, social media presence can help move the needle for your digital marketing strategy, but establishing that takes time. Having your social platforms set up, with photos, a few relevant updates, your open hours, and a quick “about”—takes an afternoon. And even that undertaking yields some measurable benefits.

Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business

3. Make a plan to get discussed online:

When all things go well: people are talking about your business. They should also be discussing it online. And when they’re discussing it online—they should be linking to your website. A few ways to facilitate this

  • Set up Google Alerts for your brand name to get notified of when you’re discussed on the web. If your mentioned by a site, you’ll get an email. If you get an email, and notice that your brand mention isn’t linked, follow up with the publisher, and request an addition. This builds a “backlink” and gives your site search-engine credibility.

If you can manage it, request the publisher change the “anchor text” (the words themselves that get linked) to include the location of your business. If they’re mention you as “Pete’s Hot Dogs in Cincinnati,” and that link gets traffic, you’re more likely to rank for “Hot Dogs in Cincinnati.”

  • Look for earned media opportunities. In the digital age, press releases are still a solid way to get the word out. Anytime something of note happens in the world of your business, getting it written about, and getting it written about online, should be a high priority. Try pitching your story on HARO (Help a Reporter Out)—or take down a list of journalists who cover local stories like yours.
  • If event marketing or sponsorship is already a part of your strategy make sure to include link-building opportunities in your agreement. Essentially, if you’re involved with anything—an event, a market, a pop-up, a conference—that has a website, that website should be pointing to your business.

Third, a stronger foundation: Where you should go next if you want SEO to really propel your business forward.

1. Do some substantive keyword research.

There are a lot of tools and tricks for doing keyword research—but your goals are essentially the same. You want to end up with a list of:

  • What your target customer is searching for online
  • How much volume each keyword grouping gets
  • How difficult or easy it is to “rank” for those keywords and absorb some of that traffic.

A good place to start for most small businesses is to focus on ranking for “business type in town” and “business type near me” searches. But if you’re going to expand your business, or expand the role of SEO in your business—it may be in your best interest to get a more comprehensive view of what keywords will bring you relevant web visitors.

2. Build a blog and start posting “lowest hanging fruit” content

Once you have a series of keywords that you know have potential to bring in traffic: start looking into the intersection between “what people are searching” and “what content would solve their questions.”

If you’re a “Coffee Shop in St Louis”—maybe people want to know about “the best coffee shops in St Louis to work in.” If you’re an auto mechanic in Tallahassee, maybe people want to know “how often to get their emissions tested in Florida.”

Looking back at your keyword research, the best content will be:

  • Hyper relevant to what your audience is looking to know
  • Interesting and engaging to read
  • Something you can answer better, or more clearly, than existing articles
  • Demonstrative of your expertise

The important thing to note, as you build your content strategy, is that you’re using research from search data, but designing content primarily for readers.

3. Optimize the pages on your site that do get traffic.

Once you have an understanding of which terms are important to rank for, and what content you can create to get you closer to the top results—there are some subtle, on-page tactics you can take to better your odds.

  • Optimize your headlines/H1: Search engines are smart, and there’s no need to match the “exact keyword” you’re hoping to rank for. But having it “as close as possible” in your headline, and as close to the beginning of your headline, could substantially help your rankings.
  • Optimize your subhead/section headlines: Search engines tend to prioritize the text of subheads and section headlines (usually H2s – H3s) over your paragraph text, as they try to get a grasp of “what a page is about.”
  • Optimize your meta descriptions: Your description is the paragraph text after your headline that comes up in search underneath your headline. This text doesn’t technically affect your rankings, but it does affect what gets clicked on by searchers. And that traffic matters.
  • Add meta-descriptions to your images: Search engines can’t scan an infographic and know what that infographic is about. But most CMS (like WordPress) have plugins that allow you to give those images written descriptions for search engines to log and note.
  • Promote your page: When your page gets visits, shares, link backs, and a higher average time-on-page: search engines consider it to be more important. If there’s an article or promotion that tends to be performing well, paying to promote it with digital ads might give it the boost it needs to make the top of the rankings.

Summing it up: small business SEO

As digital pathways become more and more of a customers path-to-purchase, digital marketing becomes more of a small business owner’s priority. Making sure your business is discoverable online can be a real difference maker for its success.

When it comes to search engine optimization, a little effort can go a long way. And a more substantive effort, can be a huge growth opportunity for your small business.

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It’s common knowledge that rankings in Google search results are influenced by a number of factors. You’re probably aware of the importance of keywords and creating high-quality content to improve Google rankings. But besides these basics, there are several other factors and tactics you should consider if you want to learn how to boost your rankings.

Let’s take a look at some tried and tested ways to improve Google rankings and gain more visibility for your website. If you're just starting our view our what is SEO guide.

Let's jump right in:

#1: Optimize with Conversational Phrases

Voice search is becoming more popular among internet users worldwide. With the development of voice-enabled speakers and improvements in voice search engines, we should expect to see more growth in the coming years. According to GlobalWebIndex, 20% of online adults use mobile voice search at least once a month.

Image Source: GlobalWebIndex

Catering to these voice searchers will give you more visibility in voice search results and drive traffic to your site. In turn, this will help you improve Google rankings. Catering to voice searchers involves optimizing your content with keywords and phrases they are more likely to use.

The way people conduct voice searches isn’t the same as how they conduct regular searches. 41% of voice-activated device owners say that using their device feels like talking to another human being.

This suggests that people use conversational phrases when they conduct voice searches. So instead of “best cakes in Kansas,” they will say something like “Which bakeries have the best cakes in Kansas?”

So put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think about what terms they might use to conduct voice searches. You can use platforms like Answer the Public to discover popular conversational phrases relevant to your chosen keywords. Pick out the best, most natural phrases and use them to optimize your content and improve Google rankings.

#2: Re-Engineer Your Competitors’ Keywords

Getting ahead of the competition is a major goal for anyone who wants to improve Google rankings. After all, it wouldn’t really be an ideal improvement in your rankings if you’re still ranking below your competitors.

That’s why it’s crucial to keep a close eye on the competition and one up all of their strategies to improve Google rankings. This includes monitoring the keywords for which they’re ranking, and re-engineering them for your own content. So you’ll need to create better, more informative content than your competitors using the same keywords they’re using.

You can use SpyFu’s Competitor Analysis feature for this. You just need to enter your competitor’s URL in the search bar and the tool will pull up all of the details of their search engine performance. This includes the top organic and paid keywords for which they’re ranking and how many clicks they’re getting for those keywords.

Image Source: SpyFu

Besides this, you’ll also be able to discover your competitor’s top competition in the same report. This is great for discovering more competition that you weren’t aware of. You can extend your research to these competitors as well and re-engineer their keywords list as well. So you’ll be able to effectively improve Google rankings and stay ahead of the competition.

Your

#3: Add Social Sharing Buttons

Social signals may not directly improve Google rankings, but they amplify the factors that do improve your rankings. Social shares give visibility to your content, helping you reach a bigger audience. As more people see your content on social media, they will likely click on the link to view the content and increase your website traffic.

And we all know just how big of an impact traffic can have to improve Google rankings. Plus, more visibility for your content means there’s a better chance of people seeing it and linking back to it. Since your link profile is a crucial ranking factor, there’s a good chance this will also improve Google rankings.

Matthew Woodward, for instance, experienced a drastic increase in rankings for one blog post as a result of social shares. Once someone shared the post, people kept sharing it over and over again until it finally reached George Takei, who shared it on his Facebook page. The post received more than 31,000 Facebook shares and eventually climbed to the second position in search results.

After one and a half years, it even had the Schema markup and was prominently visible for the search term “unhealthiest foods.”

Image Source: Matthew Woodward

So in addition to creating high-quality content that people will want to share, you should also make it easier for people to share your content. This means adding social sharing buttons to your blog posts and other interesting pieces of content. You can use the WordPress Social Sharing plug-in for this.

#4: Link Out to Relevant Authority Sites

The presence of outbound links to relevant sites with a high Domain Authority will send trust signals to Google. This can improve Google rankings because the search engine considers your website as credible and relevant.

A study by Reboot on 10 new test websites proved this hypothesis, with five of the sites with outbound links ranking higher than the other five without outbound links.

Image Source: Reboot

So whenever there’s an opportunity, make sure that you link out to high-authority websites that are relevant to your industry. But that doesn’t mean you should stuff your pages with outbound links. Too many dofollow links to other websites will leak your PageRank and have an adverse effect on your page rankings.

Only add links to pages that are relevant to the topic at hand. You could link to studies and examples supporting your points. Or you could link to blog posts that could elaborate on a certain topic that you briefly mentioned. And make sure every outbound link is nofollow. You can use WordPress plugins that will let you turn your outbound links into nofollow links.

#5: Improve Content Readability

Visitor engagement is another critical search engine ranking factor. According to Backlinko, Google pays close attention to dwell time on your page. It considers how much time searchers spend on your page to understand where you should rank.

When people spend more time on your site, Google takes it as a sign that people find your content interesting and relevant to their search. So it’ll place more importance on your page in other relevant search results and improve Google rankings.

But when visitors bounce almost immediately after landing on your site or they don’t visit any other page on your site, it will consider your page as either irrelevant or non-engaging. So high bounce rates will drastically hold you back in search engine rankings.

That’s why it’s crucial to make necessary preparations that will ensure people stay for a longer amount of time on your site if you want to improve Google rankings. This involves providing them with content that is easy to read and will immediately capture their attention.

Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business Entity

Readability is an important factor that can affect reader engagement. If your content consists of huge blocks of text and complicated sentences that are difficult to understand, there’s a good chance people wouldn’t want to finish reading it. So even if they are interested in the topic, they’ll probably leave soon after landing on your page.

Improving your content readability will help you engage visitors better and improve Google rankings. Divide your content into smaller paragraphs and bullet points to avoid huge blocks of text. Make sure your sentences are short and concise, and that you use uncomplicated words. You can also add relevant images to break up blocks of text.

In addition, run a test using the Readability Test Tool from WebFX. Just enter the URL of the webpage you want to test, and the tool will analyze how easy it is to read the content. Make sure your score is mostly green. Red and orange scores signify that a piece of content is difficult to read.

Image Source: WebFX

#6: Improve Site Usability

Another factor that affects dwell time is the usability and navigation of your website. Your website should be easy to navigate and help people to easily find what they’re looking for if you want to improve Google rankings. This way, they’ll be more inclined to check out various pages within your site to learn more about your products and services.

If they have a hard time finding even just one button, they may quickly get frustrated and eventually leave without finding the information they needed. In the case of SwingbySwing, making improvements to on-site user experience resulted in several improvements.

It decreased the bounce rate by 35% and increased time on site by 95%. The website also saw a 25X increase in the number of keywords for which it ranked on Google.

Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business

Image Source: Ezoic

There are several ways to improve site usability and improve your rankings, starting with mobile responsiveness. Make sure your webpages are designed to adapt to the devices used by people to access them. You could also test out different layouts and formatting to find out which of them would be best to enhance user experience and improve Google rankings.

You could add drop-down menus so your content is neatly organized for visitors to discover. Even a prominent search bar could work wonders in improving site usability. To get an even better idea of what needs improving, you can use usability testing tools like Optimizely and Five Second Test.

#7: Identify and Fix Broken Links

Broken links are one of the most common reasons for a less than ideal user experience. No one likes to click on a link hoping for more information, only to reach a page that doesn’t exist. And since user experience is crucial to improve Google rankings, you’ll need to resolve all of your broken link issues.

It’s time-consuming to go through all of the links on your site to manually identify the broken ones. So simplify the process using the Link Checker from W3C. Just enter the URL you want to test and this tool will analyze all of the links on that page or site to identify the broken ones.

It will also give you the status of those broken links and specify whether it’s a 404, a 403, a 505, etc. so you’ll know exactly how to fix them.

Image Source: W3C

Yelp

#8: Get Backlinks from Site Mentions

You already know the importance of quality backlinks to improve Google rankings. You may even have an effective backlink strategy and are getting links from several high authority sites. To further amplify your efforts, you could look for opportunities to get more backlinks through site mentions.

There may be publications and websites that mention your brand or business without linking back to you. Reaching out to them and asking for a link back can significantly help you improve your backlink profile and improve Google rankings.

You could set up Google Alerts to get instantly notified about new mentions of your site, business, or brand. Once you get these notifications, examine each mention to identify which sites aren’t linking to you. Then analyze the quality of those mentions. Are they relevant and positive?

If they are, determine the Domain Authority of the site using the Domain Authority Checker from Small SEO Tools. If it has a high DA (at least 50), reach out to the editor or site owner to request that they link back to your site. If they do, it can help improve your rankings.

Image Source: Small SEO Tools

Make sure you use a polite and friendly approach to improve your chances of getting a backlink. And don’t forget to thank them for the mention.

Even if they don't name your site, you can find these opportunities off of relevant topics that you cover in your content.

#9: Increase Your Content Length

Long-form content is essential to improve Google rankings. This is mainly because it’s more likely to be informative with in-depth insights backed by credible research. So in terms of Google trust signals, long-form content will have a much bigger impact.

Interestingly, longer content tends to get more shares on social media, according to a BuzzSumo analysis of the top 10% most shared articles. Articles between 3,000 and 10,000 words got the most shares, followed by 2,000-3,000-word articles, and so on.

Image Source: OkDork

As discussed earlier, more social shares will equate to higher content visibility. This will, in turn, drive more traffic to your site and improve your rankings. So you need to create more long-form content if you want to improve Google rankings.

In addition, look through your content archives to see if there are any shorter pieces that you could improve on. Increase the word count of your shorter articles and turn them into 1,000+ and 2,000+ words with in-depth insights and actionable ideas.

This will also help you maintain content freshness – another factor that Google considers when ranking your website. So improving your content by increasing its length is a great way to boost your rankings.

#10: Turn Your Old Posts into Infographics

You’re probably aware that people love visual content. While you may be doing your best to add images to your blog posts, you can go one step further by creating infographics. Instead of coming up with fresh ideas entirely, you could start repurposing some of your old blog posts into infographics.

This is a great way to strengthen your internal linking structure, as you’ll be able to link to the old blog post from the new infographic page. Plus, you’ll save a lot of time in the content brainstorming process because you will already have the outline in place.

Infographics are a highly visual way of promoting your content on social media and through other publications. They can help you instantly capture the audience’s attention, engage them, and possibly get them to visit your site.

The best part is that this tactic improves Google rankings as well because infographics can drive more social shares. The BuzzSumo analysis also found that infographics were the most shared type of content, surpassing list posts and videos.

And, as discussed earlier, social shares can indirectly boost your ranking by amplifying other ranking factors.

Image Source: OkDork

You can further optimize your efforts by reaching out to reputable publications and submitting your infographic. Some publications may be more enthusiastic about publishing infographics than guest posts since they too understand the value of visual content.

Not to mention how it’s a refreshing change from the onslaught of text-based guest post submissions the publisher might be getting. They too might be looking to add a bit of variety to their content. So it’s a great way to get more backlinks from authority sites and improve your rankings.

Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business Online

You don’t even need an in-house graphic designer to create infographics. You can use tools like Piktochart to easily develop high-quality infographics. There are plenty of pre-designed templates to choose from and customize. But you can also create your design from scratch using their easy drag-and-drop feature.

Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business

Final Thoughts

Improve Your Search Rank With Yelp And Google My Business Address

These are 10 of the best ways to improve Google rankings. As you can see, these aren’t very difficult tactics, especially since you can use relevant tools to simplify each process. But as easy as they are, they can have a significant impact on your search engine rankings – whether it’s directly or indirectly. So use these tips to get the most out of your SEO efforts and improve Google rankings.





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