Website Design Blog and Website Optimisation Blog

Nov 201622

How to List Your Local Business on Google

Over the last few years, Google has been getting better and better at serving up local search results based on the searcher's current location. If you're out for walk and you fancy a bite to eat, technology has now advanced to the point where you can simply whip out your smartphone, type in 'where to have lunch', and instantly receive a list of cafés and restaurants that are within walking distance of wherever you happen to be standing. Google can even show you an aggregated star rating for each establishment and - in their new feature - warn you if your chosen eatery is currently super-busy.

These capabilities are great for users, and they can actually be a huge boon for businesses too. If you're one of the establishments that comes up in the so-called 'local pack' when someone performs a search near you - and you've got a good rating, and your place isn't too packed right now - there's a good chance that Google may end up driving a lot more people to your doorstep.

What type of local businesses can you list on Google?

Just to be clear, you don't have to serve food to benefit from this phenomenon; Google seems to be showing localised results for more and more searches every day, meaning that just about any 'local' business can have a presence in the local pack. Here are some examples of searches that now serve map results on Google:

I need a plumber
rock climbing
professional graphic designers
shoe repairs near me
aromatherapist
art gallery

And that's just scratching the surface. Suffice it to say that any business or establishment with any sort of localised presence can potentially appear in that local pack.

How can I appear in local search results?

If you want to show up in local Google results then there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of making the map pack. Here's a beginner's guide to local search success:

1. Add your business using Google My Business.

If you only bother with one of the points on this list today, make sure it's this one. A google my business listing is perhaps the most important part of getting your local business listed on Google. Go to google.co.uk/business and click 'Start Now' (you'll need to sign into your Google account, or create one if you're not already registered).

Next, you'll be prompted to enter your company's address, and then you'll have to 'verify' your business in order to manage its Google listing. Usually, Google will send a postcard to your business address with a PIN that you'll have to enter online, although if Google already has a number for your business you may be able to get verified over the phone instead. This process is in place to ensure that a) you are a genuine representative of the company you're trying to claim, and b) the business really is based where you claim it's located.

Once you've claimed and verified your business, you'll be able to edit your contact details, upload photos of your business, and add extra information like your opening hours, your website URL, a short description of the service you provide, and so forth. This information is held by Google themselves, and it helps them to work out what sort of searches your company should be showing up for (and in which locations). It is possible to show up in local results without setting up a Google My Business listing, but the odds of this happening will be a lot longer and there's a chance that Google may get some of your details wrong (since the search engine will be trying to piece together a profile of your business from whatever information it can find on the Internet).

2. Make sure your contact details are consistent throughout the web.

It's very important to ensure that your company's contact details - especially the address, telephone number, email address, and company name - are exactly the same wherever they're listed. In other words:

Make sure the information on your website matches the information you've submitted via Google My Business (see point 1, above).
Check any other online listings you have (e.g. Yell.com, Yelp, TripAdvisor) and make sure they match the details on your website as well.
If your company details change in the future (e.g. because you moved to a new building or set up a new phone number), be sure to update EVERY instance of the old details across the Internet.

Why is this important? Because Google can see every web page that features a mention of your business, and if every listing says something different, Google will be unable to confidently guess which set of details is correct and they won't list you in local search results in case they've got the wrong address.

3. Encourage people to review you on Google.

One great way to give your business an edge in the local Google results is to collect positive reviews and ratings on your Google listing. Ask your loyal customers to Google your company's name, click the 'Write a review' button, and share their fondness for your establishment with the world!

Not only do positive reviews encourage potential customers to visit your business instead of somebody else's, they also persuade Google that your company deserves to appear prominently in local search results. At the end of the day, Google's #1 goal is to satisfy its users, and when the search engine algorithm spots that you have lots of 5-star ratings from satisfied shoppers, it will think, 'Hey, this looks like a company that can really make our searchers happy!'

4. Get some links from high-quality websites with local relevance.

Links are still an important ranking factor for Google's algorithm. If lots of authoritative, well-respected websites link to your pages, that signifies to search engines that your own website is of a very high quality, and your search rankings should improve as a result. This applies to local rankings, too - you are more likely to rank highly for localised queries if your website has a lot of links from other sites that are:

Authoritative (use moz.com/researchtools/ose to check a site's domain authority - try to get links from sites with a higher score than your own)
Relevant to your business (e.g. if you own a pet grooming business, a link from a local pet shop or veterinary clinic would be more valuable to you than a link from a local sports club)
Associated with the same local area as you (if you're trying to influence your local rankings, you ideally need links from influential people and organisations within the area you're targeting)
Not spammy (steer clear of any websites that sell links, link to porn and/or gambling websites, or engage in other shady practices like hiding text)

Building high-quality links is a tricky and time-consuming task; as a local business owner, your best bet is probably to network with other local businesses, particularly those who operate within the same niche as you but aren't your direct competitors. Once you have built up a good relationship with another business in your area, they will be more likely to consider placing a link on their website.

Coverage from respectable local news sources will also be hugely beneficial to your business, particularly if the articles they publish include links to your website.

5. Be seen on Facebook, Yelp, etc.

Google sends a lot of traffic to local businesses, but it's not necessarily the only place you want your brand to be seen online. As a general rule, if you're a local business that's open to the public, it's a good idea to set up the following in addition to your Google listing:

Facebook page (select the 'Local Business or Place' option)
Yelp business page
Foursquare business listing

You may also wish to encourage customers to review your business on TripAdvisor if you want to promote yourself to tourists who visit your town. Businesses that may benefit from being seen on TripAdvisor include hotels, restaurants, cafés, attractions and landmarks.

Being seen in the places listed above (and collecting positive reviews from people who use these sites) will increase your overall online visibility while also sending yet more signals to Google that yours is a local business worth shouting about.

If you want to grow your business online, Designer Websites can help. We can design your website, help you to take orders online, and optimise your pages for search engine success. If you want, we'll even take care of your company blog and social media accounts!

Nov 201617

Christmas Marketing: Be a Helpful Business This Festive Season

laura online marketing

Christmas is often a highly stressful time for businesses and customers alike, which makes it an ideal opportunity to earn year-round loyalty, by going the extra mile for clients and consumers during the festive period. Whether you’re a retailer or B2B service provider, we’ve put together a few tips to keep in mind before and during the Christmas holidays, which point out ways in which you can use your marketing channels to be a helpful business this year:

Christmas Gift Guides & Quizzes

Gifts are one of the biggest Christmas dilemmas for most, which means that it's highly likely that many of your existing and potential customers will be actively looking for this type of content. This can be provided in the form of blogs, infographics, quizzes and more, depending on your resources and how creative you'd like to be. Gift related content can work well for many types of businesses, but of course, is particularly effective for retailers who are looking to market a specific range of products. It can also see you through to the very end of the buying period, if you're able to target last-minute shoppers who are frantically looking to find a suitable gift.

Advice-led Content

Along with gift guides, there are many other ways that you can tailor your content and services to suit the festive season, whatever your business may be. To do this, you’ll have to consider how the Christmas period affects both your organisation and your customers, in order to create resources that are both useful and engaging. For example, if your business provides financial services, it may be useful to publish advice on topics such as spending and budgeting, which is a prominent issue for many during this time of year. This content can be tailored to suit virtually any sector, and will depend on both the services you provide, along with your target demographic. When properly executed, it can provide a welcome boost to your SEO efforts, and work to improve or renew customer confidence in your product/services.

Social Media Engagement

It's common knowledge that you should be using social media to extend your marketing efforts and customer service all year round, however, these efforts should be reassessed in time for Christmas. This relates to both your own outreach endeavours, as well as customer contact, both of which carry additional weight in the case of online retailers. In terms of outreach marketing and promotion, you should be on the lookout for relevant hashtags and commonly asked questions, in order to make the most of the useful resources that you’ve spent time putting together. You should also be keeping a close eye on your inbox and brand mentions, in order to address customer queries and complaints as quickly as possible.

Email Updates

Email marketing is particularly important for retail businesses in the run up to Christmas, naturally in order to promote deals, but also as a direct means of sharing the resources we mentioned in our first point. In addition to it's value as a promotional tool, however, email is also vital to the process of aiding and informing your customers, allowing them to plan their holiday spending and activities efficiently. For example, email allows you to provide customers with stock updates, which inform them when an item is close to selling out, or is back in stock, allowing them to plan their purchases more efficiently. In addition to this, it's also the most direct way to share information about your closing times and altered Christmas hours, to ensure that you make every effort to avoid confusion.

Rewards

Christmas rewards are the most simple but effective way to make your customers feel appreciated at Christmas, and can be executed on almost any scale, depending on your resources and budget. One of the most simple way to reward customers is by providing free resources, much like those discussed in our first and second points, although this can also be extend further than tips and guides. One example, could be free printables, which can be offered as a one-off resource, or even as a daily offering in the run up to Christmas. This would work particularly well for businesses in the creative industries, as well as those targeted at families with children, who may offer craft and learning resources to keep little ones entertained in the lead up to the big day.

This also extends to gift vouchers and competitions, which can be integrated with both your social media and email marketing campaigns. The channel you choose, will largely depend on how exclusive you would like your reward to be, and whether you are simply using this as a gesture to all existing and prospective customers, or as a way to reward your most loyal followers.

Would you like help with your content creation, social media or email marketing strategies? Get in touch with the Designer Websites team today to find out how we can help, or follow us on Twitter for more digital marketing news and tips!

Nov 201610

Why You Should Be Using Infographics & How to Ensure they Succeed

andrew online marketing

If you're having trouble generating relevant site traffic that will convert into paying custumers, then you should very much consider using infographics as part of your content marketing efforts. With a huge number of tweets and videos being uploaded to social media every day, getting your content noticed can be a difficult task, so what you need is something that will stand out and grab the attention of your target audience - something like an infographic.

Infographics are a way to visually represent information and data and make these things easy to comprehend. Rather than displaying a page full of written information, infographics break down that information into an image-based format, making it easier for the user to digest.

It's been scientifically proven that the human brain loves infographics. Your brain can process information very quickly when it's illustrated using an image - certainly a lot faster than when you're reading through lines and lines of plain text. And infographics aren't just great at displaying data; they're also a great way of gaining natural links. A well-designed, well-targeted infographic will be shared all over social media and on relevant websites. This is the type of link building that can earn big rewards from Google in the form of improved SERP rankings.

If you're thinking about incorporating the use of infographics into your digital marketing strategy, here's how you can ensure that your infographics will stand out from the crowd and provide you with plenty of engagements and conversions:

Keep it Simple!

The reason why infographics are so beneficial is because they display info and data that is easy for the user to consume. Therefore, it's extremely important that you create an infographic that is both visually appealing and easily digestible. If there is too much going on with your graphic, then the person viewing it will lose focus and they will not be able to understand the message you're trying convey. Stick to one style, limit the number of colours and fonts, and ensure that there are clear visual connections between the various sections of your graphic. Above all, aim to keep things simple and clear.

Make it Stand Out!

Your infographic needs to stand out from the crowd - there are plenty of infographics out there, and consumers are unlikely to engage with it if it's similar to the hundreds of others they've already seen. Your graphic needs a design that will grab the user's attention and stand out from the rest; in other words, it needs to pack a punch. As with a news article or blog post, if your infographic's headline doesn't provoke the consumer's attention then they're probably not going to interact with it. If your graphic isn't unique and attractive, consumers and other websites are less likely to share it. Remember that the main purpose of an infographic is to display information and data that is easily digestible in a way that will attract the target audience's attention.

Be Relevant!

The infographics that are most likely to drive conversions are ones that appeal to the target audience's needs and concerns. One mistake that many people make is creating an infographic that aims to be universally popular rather than targeting a specific audience with specific interests. Your infographic should be interesting for your target audience, rather than for the whole world. Figure out what content your audience shared the most and drove the most traffic recently, and then you'll be able to come up with a topic that will interest your audience and gain conversions.

Make Sure it's Easy to Share!

An infographic works best when it's being shared across social media platforms (like Twitter or Facebook) and other websites. Of course, this can't happen unless you make it easy for people to share it. Once you've created your graphic and posted it to your site, you should share it across your social media accounts and make sure you're using a social sharing widget to allow readers to easily share it on their own accounts (this will help your infographic to reach people outside your own follower base). We also recommend that you make the graphics HTML code easily accessible so that other websites can display the graphic whilst linking back to your original post. This is an excellent way to build high-quality, mutually beneficial links - the website sharing your graphic will benefit from hosting your engaging content, and you'll benefit from the inbound link.

If you take all if these points into consideration, you should be able to create an infographic that is engaging and will result in a healthy number of conversions for your business.

Need help with your content creation or social media strategies? Whether you need us to create an infographic or an entire website for your company, we at Designer Websites are more than up to the task - contact us now to request a quotation!

Nov 201608

ABC Designs Wales: See Their Brand New Website

joel client websites

ABC Designs are a team of signage and display specialists based in Barry but working with companies across South Wales and South West England. With more than 30 years of experience, the ABC team are capable of designing, manufacturing, and installing a vast range of different solutions, including:

External signage (shop fascias, outdoor banners, car park signs, engraved plaques)
Internal signage (desk wraps, large-format prints, wall vinyls, raised lettering)
Vehicle graphics (signs and graphics for cars and vans)
Exhibition displays (roll-up banners, pop-up display stands)

If the company's name sounds familiar to you, it may be because you read our recent update about our brand new meeting room - ABC provided some of the room's most eye-catching design elements, including these great 3D wall signs:

As you can see, ABC Designs are capable of truly outstanding work, and so when they asked us to design their new website we knew that the standard would have to be high. We're pleased to announce that www.abcdesignswales.co.uk is now live, and we hope you'll agree that it has a great look and a professional finish that's entirely worthy of this business.

The new ABC Designs Wales website is completely responsive, and its modern, image-centric look was specifically designed to show off the company's work in the best possible way. As you browse the site, you'll see myriad examples of what these skilled craftspeople can produce, and this will hopefully help you to imagine what they might do for your own premises.

If you need any sort of signage / graphical / display solution, we'd strongly recommend ABC Designs Wales for the job - their new website can be found here.

Need a website for your business? Designer Websites are the people to call - click here to request a quotation.

Oct 201626

Google to Put Mobile Results First: Don't Get Left Behind!

joel mobile optimisation

We've discussed this rumour before, and now it looks like it's really happening: Google have confirmed that they are creating a completely separate index for mobile searches, meaning you may soon see two completely different sets of results for the same Google search on your smartphone and your desktop PC.

This revelation isn't completely out of the blue, of course. Google's mobile and desktop results have been gradually looking less and less alike for quite some time now - in fact, we're already at the point where many websites rank highly for their keywords on desktop but not on mobile (or vice versa). However, all results are currently still pulled from the same Google index, and the forthcoming split could have a big impact on the SERPs when it happens.

And that's not all. Google's latest statement included the assertion that, to quote Search Engine Watch:

"This mobile index will become the primary Google index. The newly separated desktop index will not be kept as up-to-date as the mobile one."

In other words, the new mobile-specific index will take priority over the current index. This may seem surprising at first, but it actually makes perfect sense; more than half of all Google searches now come from mobile devices, so of course the company would want to ensure the quality of their mobile results above all else.

With that in mind, the question that SEO-savvy business owners should now be asking is...

How can I rank highly in Google's mobile results when the new index arrives?

Some people will be reading this because they've already got high mobile rankings and they're anxious to keep them. Others may be here because they've never had much luck in Google's mobile SERPs, and they're wondering if this new index could be their big opportunity to change that.

Whichever boat you're in, here are a few tips for making sure you don't get left behind when Google's mobile-only index eventually comes into play:

1. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

This is a no-brainer, but since a lot of business websites still aren't optimised for mobile users, it's worth stating anyway. The best way to ensure that your website will work well on smartphones is to plump for a responsive design that automatically adapts to fit the screen it's viewed on - more on that subject here.

Some non-responsive websites have so far managed to slip through Google's net and rank reasonably well in mobile SERPs even though they're not mobile-friendly. However, the forthcoming mobile-specific index will almost certainly put paid to that, so it's a good idea to upgrade now and use Google's own mobile-friendliness testing tool to ensure that you're giving smartphone users the best possible experience.

2. Minimise your page loading times.

If there's one thing that we all hate to see when browsing the Internet on a mobile device, it's a webpage that takes ages to load. Excessive load times discourage mobile users from interacting with your website, and if you don't speed things up, Google will quickly boot you out of their mobile rankings in favour of a site that doesn't force visitors to wait around.

In order to ensure that your website is loading as quickly as possible, test it using Google's PageSpeed Tools. This will inform you of any changes you can make to boost your site's load speed.

You may also wish to consider using AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages), a recent Google initiative that aims to make the web instantaneously accessible on mobile devices - learn more here.

3. Optimise for local searches.

If your mobile customers have their location services turned on, Google will serve them local results for certain queries. Here's what that looks like:

If this so-called 'local pack' shows up for your primary keywords, that's a good indicator that you need to be thinking about local SEO. You want your shop (or restaurant, office, clinic, etc.) to show up prominently in Google results when someone in the area searches for your service, and this can be achieved by:

Add your business on Google My Business. Add your opening hours and a short written description of your organisation; you may also wish to embellish the listing with images.
Ensure that your company name, address, and contact details are consistent throughout the Internet (i.e. on your website, your Google listing, your social media profiles, and any other listings you have online).
Encourage people to review your business on Google, as well as on other well-known websites that publish reviews of local businesses (e.g. Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook).
Ask other local businesses to link to your website (but only if they are reputable, their website is of a high quality, and the link is relevant to your business - e.g. if you own a hair salon, a link from a grocery store may not benefit you, but a link from a wedding dress shop might if they're encouraging people to visit your salon for a haircut before the big day).

4. Use Google Search Console to stay on top of potential issues.

One final piece of advice (and this applies even if you're not interested in the mobile SERPs): add all versions of your website to Google Search Console and check the dashboard frequently to ensure that everything is as it should be and nothing is going wrong on your site. Of particularly relevance to today's topic is the Mobile Usability report, which can be found under Search Traffic on the left-hand side of the console.

This blog post highlights a few other reports that it's important to check regularly once you've added your site on Search Console.