Category: Local SEO

Why It’s Important to Have A Google My Business Profile

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“Google it!” We’ve heard it. We’ve said it. A staple in the cultural zeitgeist, we are all very familiar with Google as consumers. From a business standpoint, the importance of a Google My Business Profile cannot be understated. It is integral for every business; large and small, brick-and-mortar or exclusively online.

You may be curious why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile. Google controls about 92% of the search engine market share across the world. That means if people are searching the web, they’re almost certainly googling. Google connects people to businesses they may normally not have found and connects businesses to decision-makers that can elevate their status from good to great. When considering why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile, consider the impact of starting with trust, being seen, and increasing lead generation.

What is a Google My Business profile?

A Google My Business profile provides you with the ability to list your business and appear in local search results. You can display pertinent information on your business: location, hours of operation, and contact details. A link to your website can be listed and attract web traffic. There are even features available to link upcoming events or articles. With a Google My Business profile, you choose how you are seen in Google search and maps and can even accept online orders.

Plus… it’s free!

Start with Trust

When people are searching your business, knowingly or otherwise, they are beginning their relationship with your business. One of the reasons why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile, is to be in control of your first impression.

It can be frustrating to receive mixed messages from a business, especially after a simple introduction. When information is difficult to find, incoherent, or inconsistent, it turns away potential leads from engaging further or turns away potential customers seeking your goods or services.

There is also the possibility that your business does not get fair or accurate information posted online. Without claiming your Google My Business profile, you will not be notified of reviews of your business or any information that is listed that is inaccurate or outdated.

By having a Google My Business profile, you get to speak for yourself. You can visit your profile anytime to edit or see how many people have seen or clicked on your listing. There is even a question and answer feature that can connect you with your community. What better way to start a relationship of trust and competence than with being available and transparent with people from the second they’ve found you in a search.

Start with trust. Build a reputation for being clear, informative, and up-to-date as a business.

Be Seen

With the Google algorithm being directly linked to your company’s SEO, a Google My Business Profile puts you in a position to improve your likelihood of being seen just by optimizing your profile. With a Google My Business profile, your reviews and location improve your likelihood of being seen.

When questioning why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile, an immediate asset is the ability to be seen in Google Maps. More and more search queries are based on geography. This makes sense. With the immediacy of information available in search engines like Google, searching “restaurant near me” or “law office near me” is an efficient and concise way of searching to get relevant results. Whether or not you know it, you’re being shown businesses first that have a Google My Business profile. In fact, it’s got a cyclical benefit. A Google Business Profile improves your local SEO. A local business listing is more likely to appear when people search using Google maps.

Engaging with feedback from your community is another reason why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile. With a profile, you are able to see, respond, and contact people who leave you reviews. Reviews add to your credibility as a business. While branding yourself with legitimacy is integral to successfully running a business, reviews also benefit your SEO. The Google algorithm favors this and it highers your ranking in search results. Simply put, reviews on your Google My Profile listing improve your likelihood of being seen.

Improve your SEO

Google uses vivid phrases and keywords to help users find businesses in search results. Like traditional website SEO, implementing these keywords and relevant phrases in your content improves your visibility. Therefore it is increasingly important to add keywords that match your business and services to help potential clients find your business in all places possible – your business description, your comments, and your posts. The algorithm favors the specific. Take advantage of the profile tools like Question & Answer, Messaging, and GMB posts to consistently put yourself in the best position to be seen.

The importance of your search engine result page rank increases daily. More and more people are becoming less and less likely to keep scrolling and instead choose to click and engage with top results.

That is the difference between making a connection, completing a sale, or doing business.

To conclude

As our world becomes more insular and our online activity becomes increasingly targeted toward our habits, it’s integral for businesses to stay current on all of the opportunities available to them to gain and maintain people’s attention. With Google’s ever present impact on our daily lives, it is essential to think seriously about the benefits your company can garner from starting with trust, being seen, and improving your SEO with a Google My Business profile. All of this is at your fingertips when you make a profile with a few simple clicks, totally for free.

When considering why it’s important to have a Google My Business Profile, remember you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Make an account today.

Tags google my business, search engine optimization, seo

Local SEO Marketing Small Business Marketing Small Business SEO

Word of Mouth Has Gone Digital

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Word of mouth (WoM) has gone digital. It’s no longer good enough to hear from one or two people that a movie is good or entertaining. We won’t consider a hotel that doesn’t meet our own health and safety standards. We now rely upon a consensus of reviews before we make our decisions, even if it is something as simple as choosing a movie from our couch.

In 2022, this kind of feedback crowd-sourcing is ubiquitous. From restaurants to law firms, or from pet groomers to industrial cleaning companies, reviews are (or should be) a big part of the marketing strategy for businesses, large or small.

Many business owners feel that their best clients come from word of mouth. And they’re probably right.

If only there was a way to have those sweet, positive, and wildly influential words used to describe their business immortalized in some way so that future prospects and potential clients could hear them–oh wait, there is! It’s called Google reviews. And if you’re not prioritizing Google reviews, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

3 Ways Google Reviews Affect Your Business

Online reviews are the closest thing we have to WoM in the digital realm, and they absolutely matter for your business. Here are three ways Google reviews can impact your online visibility and reputation.

Reviews impact SEO. You read that right. Getting more of them, especially positive ones, improves your digital visibility and conversion rate. That means more clients for you. (Psst: Dealing with a fake or negative review? We’ve got you.)
Google trusts the power of WoM marketing. It factors in the quantity and quality of reviews to evaluate where and when your business should show up in search engine results. Just as customers use online reviews to validate their purchase decisions, Google and other search engines take a similar stance when showing results.
Users and search engines have a similar objective. Google wants to weed through the vast web to deliver the right information, service, or product to you in the fastest way possible, and this aligns with our goals as searchers. In fact, reviews pretty much work as crowd-sourced WoM recommendations.

If you’re already prioritizing Google reviews and reviews from other sites, good for you. If you have a system or process in place already, even better.

However, if you haven’t been able to net enough positive Google review to impact your business, it may be time to consider setting up an automated process to make getting reviews simple, painless, and effective.

GoBeyond SEO works with business owners to implement an automated process to make it easy for customers to write and submit reviews and to give businesses a cringe-free way to ask for them. Find out more by booking a free discovery call with us.

Tags google ranking factors, search engine optimization, seo, word of mouth

Local SEO Marketing Small Business Marketing Small Business SEO

Three Reasons To Claim Your Google My Business Listing

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If you haven’t already jumped on the Google My Business bandwagon, now’s the time. Leaving a Google My Business profile unclaimed (psst: even if you’re virtual) is like leaving an entire host of free marketing opportunities on the table and willingly ignoring their existence…and you know better than that.

Here’s the deal: 80 percent of internet searches go through Google. Think of the last time you actually searched through Bing or Yahoo. Yet, 56 percent of potential Google My Business accounts have not been claimed. This means the business will not be told when a review comes through, you’re allowing third-party photos to be attached to your business without your knowledge, and you’re missing out on a wealth of leads and potential sales.

Keep reading for the top 3 reasons to claim your Google My Business listing.

1. Claim Google My Business Listing for Local SEO

Claiming your Google My Business profile gives you the ability to boost your ranking, free of charge, by instantly making yourself more of an authority in your space. See, Google’s algorithm primarily considers three features: relevance, proximity, and prominence. By claiming your profile, you are essentially sounding an alarm to the algorithm that your listing deserves a higher ranking because of information you’ve provided. Here’s why:

By adding your website to your profile, you are adding backlinks, which builds up your site’s reliability.
You’ve now provided Google with a location, which tells the algorithm when it should come up in more localized searches.
It makes your business more established and well-known in the eyes of Google.

2. Get Found By Potential Clients

As your SEO improves, your business appears earlier in the search ranking, and, as a result, your website traffic increases. Even simply filling out the information in the profile, however, and turning it into your own, enables your business to share necessary content with your potential customers.

By claiming the profile, you are able to put your ideas, via posts and blogs, in front of them. You give your audience a chance to learn about your business, the hours it operates, any pertinent or new information, and how to find out more. The more information your customers consume, the more likely it is the interaction will end in a sale.

3. Use GMB for Reputation Management

Google reviews are all the rage right now, and it makes total sense. The last restaurant you’ve visited, the electrician you’ve hired, the last salon you’ve entered…I would be surprised if you’ve never checked out some reviews before making a decision. 90 percent of people read reviews. 90 percent.

When you claim your Google My Business profile, you become notified when there’s a review. And, as every smart business owner knows, when there’s a review, there needs to be a response. Without claiming the profile, you don’t know when the review comes in, and you leave it unnoticed. As positive reviews build up, more positive reviews come in, and all this leads to more sales for you.

Beyond that, Google My Business recently added a messaging feature. More customer interaction means more engagement and loyalty which, again, means more sales.

How Do I Claim My Business on Google?

So now you’re convinced, but have no idea how to claim your Google My Business listing. Follow this process, and if you run into an issue, don’t hesitate to reach out for help.

Go to https://business.google.com/create and create an account.
Add your business name.
Add your business category. If your business shows up after this step, it’s possible that your business has already been added via a third-party. This may require a bit more poking around. If you get stuck, reach out for assistance.
Add your location or indicate that you’re virtual.
Different questions will arise based on your answers. Just fill them out.
Add pictures where you can. When adding your pictures, give them names. Most images are labeled with IMG_123 or something to that effect, which doesn’t help your SEO at all. Label your images with a specific name that lets Google know what you’re about, such as “Best-Dog-Groomer-Charlotte”.
Once you’ve completed and reviewed your details, click “Claim this business.”
It typically takes about 24 hours for your business to show up in the Google listings. You’ll receive an email confirmation that your business listing is active.

Don’t leave your business behind by leaving your profile unattended. Google My Business is a fast and easy way to improve your visibility, engage your audience, and provide a ton of content, and it’s all for free.

Tags google my business, local business marketing, local online marketing, local seo, online marketing, reputation management, seo, seo tips, small business marketing

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How to Hire the Best Digital Marketing Company

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An appealing website is a great start for establishing an online presence, and the website may even be worth the investment, but the right digital marketing plan can help potential clients find you online.

If you’re going to outsource Digital Marketing (SEO, PPC, Social Media) follow these steps and hire the best company.

1. Know Your Needs Before Choosing an SEO Company

Understanding your needs is the first crucial step. Do you just need SEO or graphic design, social media, and/or paid advertising. Take an audit of your existing online presence, see what’s missing and what you need moving forward. You can’t hire the right company if you don’t know what you need. The right company can make recommendations of course, but in the end it’s up to you. No one knows your business better than you do.

Draft a budget, and be realistic about the services you’ll get. SEO costs can vary so your budget may need to be flexible, but have a good idea on what you want to spend.

2. Use the ‘Two-way Interview’ Approach

In a one-way interview, the potential SEO company will submit a proposal for you to review. It’s hard to learn about a company with this type of approach, and SEO is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The company you’re hiring needs to know specifics about your business as well.

Two-way interviews make the recruitment process more engaging, and help you explore multiple aspects of your marketing operations. Maybe you’ll discover that Google Ads or social media is a better strategy for your type of business. Either way, an in-depth conversations should happen so your money is well spent.

The potential SEO agency should always inquire about your company’s unique selling point (USP). Expect to share the goals of your website, your current means for attracting customers, your CPC, current budget, what’s working, and what’s not. Keeping this information private only makes the agencies job harder. If needed, have them sign an NDA but in my experience I’ve found that the more thorough and open the process is, the faster you can hit the ground running, and start generation positive ROI.

3. Do Your Own Research

As a client you need to be researching SEO companies before hiring them.

At the very least visit the potential agencies website to see if there are clients listed, biographies or addresses listed. The firm shouldn’t be hiding anything from you if it wants to have you as a customer. At the very least you’ll be able to tell what type of business they are i.e a small agency with a few people or a huge organization with a huge sales team. Working with either can have its pros and cons but know what you’re getting into.

4. Verify References

References help determine if a company has an impressive track record, and gives you insights on the types of clients they’ve worked with. Even if you don’t call the references there’s value in asking. Do they push back or are they glad to provide them?

Ask each digital marketing agency for at least three customers you can reach, and ask about the results generated from the SEO and digital marketing efforts.

Use the references to identify the pros & cons of each SEO firm. You’ll learn about quality of work, customer support and many other things you won’t get directly from the agency.

5. Credibility

Review sites are a great way to determine an agency’s credibility. Check Google My Business, Yelp and other industry listings for positive & negative reviews. Negative reviews may not be a deal breaker but check and see how the company responded to those reviews. Did they do it in a professional manner?

Check whether the company is listed on BBB. See if the agency’s employees are members of any groups or associations.

The agency should also have a nice website and a solid online presence. Visit the agency’s social media pages to see whether they feature quality content.

6. Request an Audit for Your Site

Any reputable online marketing agency will audit your website and be able to tell you where your short comings are, but it also takes a little homework on your end as well.

If they ask give the agency access to your analytics data and let them know what online resources you’ve used already. Having several candidates perform the audits helps you compare the results and choose the best company for you.

The SEO company should evaluate your website’s rankings in the search engines, and identify what issues may be preventing your website from ranking higher.

Website audits will help determine your businesses relevance on the web. The reports should suggest ways to make your content easier to find, and they should list SEO strategies that suit your budget and needs.

7. Involve Your Team When Making the Final Decision

SEO can help your site draw larger audiences, increase conversion rates and have positive ROI. An SEO company should offer you and your team strategies to make these goals achievable. Depending on what your goals are that will determine who in your company they’ll be working with.

If they’ll be working heavily with the sales team then you’ll want their opinion. Respect their suggestions and use them to guide your final decision.

The Right Digital Marketing

Our company targets businesses like yours looking to use digital marketing services to optimize their online presence. Our digital marketing portfolio includes web design, SEO, PPC and social media marketing.

Talk to us about how we can help you outsmart your competition with our Predictable Leads System.

Tags charlotte nc, charlotte seo, digital marketing, hire an seo company, local seo, ppc, predictable leads system, search engine optimization, seo

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Law Firm Marketing 101: An Essential Guide for Family Lawyers

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These days, it’s not enough that you have an office to meet clients. You have to have a strong online presence. Check out this guide on law firm marketing.

Every lawyer who ventures out on their own has a vision of a bustling practice and nailing one case after another. In reality, most find themselves with less action and more thumb-twiddling, than they’d like to admit.

The field of law, including family law, is a saturated and competitive industry. Why are your competitors getting more business than you are? What are they doing that you aren’t?

One of the most effective ways to build your practice is to have the right digital marketing strategy. After all, 85% of people hit the internet when they’re looking for local businesses, so a strong online presence goes a long way.

For a more effective and revenue-boosting strategy, check out these law firm marketing tips.

Family Law Firm Marketing Tips for Your Digital Strategy

Using the online world to gain business requires a few elements. You need people to know who you are. You need them to find you. And you need to be able to convert them to clients. Start with these steps.

1. Make It Easy

Before you jump headfirst into trying to get more visitors to your site, make sure your site has what it takes to convert those visitors into clients. Your key goal should be to make it easy for clients to make that conversion.

First, you need to guide clients toward taking the next step. Every page of your site should have a call-to-action. For instance, maybe you have a page about custody arrangements in divorce. At the end of the page’s content, invite users to contact you about their own custody case. Display a button they can click to do this.

Next, make it as convenient as possible for them to get in touch with you. The days of instructing clients to call you during hours of your convenience are over. Offer a way for them to contact you online with their questions. With that information, you or your staff can call them when you’re in the office.

2. Know How to Use Social Media

Every marketer talks about the importance of social media marketing today. They’re right, it is important, but it’s not just about whether you have it: it’s about how you use it.

On your social media pages, you should focus on spreading information. Your posts shouldn’t sound like sales pitches, because readers will tune out in a heartbeat.

Instead, your goal on social media should be to establish yourself as a trusted expert in your field. If you do this, you’ll be the one people will turn to when they need a lawyer.

3. Get Your Speed Up

It’s not just the content of your website that matters but the technical performance as well. After all, do you stay on a site that isn’t loading or one that doesn’t work well? Neither will your clients.

One of the key statistics you need to check is your website speed. If your site doesn’t load within two or three seconds, about half of users will head elsewhere.

When users leave your site so quickly, it raises your bounce rate which hurts your search engine optimization, or SEO. Even those users who stay are already starting to get frustrated, so they won’t have the best impression of your site.

4. Blog and Blog Well

Blogging is an important way to improve your digital marketing. The frequent updates and valuable content will improve your search engine optimization, and each blog post is providing content for your social media pages.

Those are just the benefits you get from posting each blog. When people actually read them, your articles will display your knowledge as an expert and will establish a connection with the reader and a growing trust.

Of course, not all blogging practices will give you the same benefits. Make sure you post blogs on a consistent basis and that the content is valuable and well-written. Focus on topics your clients really want, like tips for negotiating a custody agreement.

6. Get On Camera

If you don’t already use videos in your digital marketing strategy, now is the time to start. Videos are an engaging medium that users love, and there are so many ways to use them to market your firm.

You can start with simple “talking head videos,” in which you’re sharing your knowledge about a particular subject. You could also use videos to share a tour of your office or to discuss your recent interesting cases (with confidentiality of course).

After you have a video ready, post it everywhere. We’re talking about YouTube, your own website, and your social media pages as well.

7. Get Help from the Past

There’s a lot of trust involved when a client chooses a lawyer, and especially a family lawyer. One of the best ways for new clients to see that you’re trustworthy is to hear it from your past clients.

Encourage your happy clients to post reviews for you on Google, Yelp, and other sites. You can even ask them for a brief testimonial that you can post online. In many cases, reviews and testimonials are a client’s deciding factor when they choose their lawyer.

8. Prioritize Local Search Engine Optimization

One of the most common mistakes local businesses make is forgetting about local SEO. For instance, they optimize their site for keywords like “family lawyer” and “family law firm” rather than “Charlotte family lawyer” or “family law in Charlotte.”

As a law firm, attracting site visitors in California might help your statistics but it won’t bring you clients. Be sure to incorporate local SEO into your digital marketing strategy.

Building Your Client Base

Many lawyers think that if they do good work, the clients will follow. That’s not often the case. As you build your reputation as a great lawyer, you still need to spread the word about your business. The law firm marketing tips above are a great start.

If you’re ready to really jumpstart your growth, contact our digital marketing experts for a more comprehensive plan.

Tags blogging, business blogging, google place pages, inbound marketing, law firm marketing plan, law firm seo, lawyer internet marketing, lawyer marketing, online marketing, optimize your online presence, search engine optimization, small business marketing, small business seo, social media marketing

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Why SEO for Lawyers Can Make or Break Your Case

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As an attorney, you’re well aware that the legal market in the digital age is more competitive than ever before.

You’ve created what you thought was a strong website for your Charlotte-based law firm, but your traffic hasn’t increased — and neither has your client volume.

In this post, we’ll tell you why SEO for lawyers is something that your firm can no longer afford to do without.

We’ll also let you know where you can connect with attorney SEO services that will increase your conversions and give you the kind of results your firm deserves.

Poor SEO Will Cost You in the Rankings

One of the biggest reasons why you need to take legal SEO as seriously as your next client’s case, is because it directly affects where your website will land when it comes to the search engine result pages, or SERPs for short. About 75% of online consumers say they never bother to go past the first page of search engine results.

Even if you’ve worked hard to create a website that’s easy to navigate and informative, if it’s not designed with SEO in mind, all of your hard work will be for nothing. Additionally, SEO for law firms is all about outranking your competitors. You want to be certain that your law firm’s website shows up in the SERPs before your biggest competitor’s site does.

But it’s not just about choosing the right keywords and hacking your way to the top of the first page of Google. Remember that a strong SEO strategy is also influenced by your website’s loading speed and design.

It’s obvious that a user won’t bother to spend much time — less than three seconds, to be exact — on a website that’s slow to load. A potential client also won’t think much of a law firm website that’s full of spammy pop-ups, broken links, and aggressive, unprofessional graphics.

You won’t just lose a client — a poorly-designed website also impacts your site’s dwell time. This is the average length of time that a user stays on your site.

Sites with higher dwell times are recognized by Google and other search engines as providing useful, relevant information. So, they rank higher than those that have lower dwell times.

Remember, it’s not just your law firm’s reputation that’s on the line. It’s also about how SEO affects your site’s overall visibility.

The Right SEO Strategy Puts You in Front of Your Target Market

Another reason why SEO for lawyers directly affects your firm’s success?

Because the right keywords and link strategies can shorten the time it takes for your target market to find you online, and without a proper legal SEO strategy that target market might not be able to find you online.

There are currently more than 1.5 billion websites on the Internet — and that number is increasing every minute. And while all 1.5 billion of them might not be related to the legal industry, a good portion of them will be.

Keywords, or what people type into search engines to help them find what they’re looking for online, are an essential part of SEO for law firms.

First of all, your keywords should include references to the specific type of legal work that you do. For example, if you specialize in divorce law, you might choose a high-ranking keyword like “divorce attorney” or “hiring a divorce lawyer.”

But something is missing from those keywords — your location. Location-based keywords are the bread and butter of legal SEO. They don’t just help you find people who need your services. They ensure that the people who need your legal services and live within your practice area end up on your website.

Including location-based keywords like “Charlotte NC divorce attorney” or “Divorce attorney Myers Park” will get you exactly the kind of traffic you’re looking for.

SEO Establishes You as an Authority in the Legal Industry

As a legal professional, you’ve spent years earning your degrees, creating your network, and establishing a reputation in the courtroom.

Now, you need to make sure that your SEO strategy is working to effectively translate that reputation and work to the digital world. Superior legal SEO helps you to establish yourself as the go-to legal authority within your niche and service area.

It does this by allowing you to join the digital conversion, whether that conversation is taking place on your blog, your YouTube channel, or even on a third-party site.

Remember that an effective SEO strategy isn’t just about what’s on your website.

It also includes your social media profiles, any guest posts that you write for legal websites and online journals, and even third-party review sites where past clients can discuss their experience with you.

In other words, to get attorney SEO done right, you need seamless integration between all of your different online accounts and presences.

Looking for Professional Guidance on SEO for Lawyers?

We hope that this post has helped you to understand why SEO for lawyers is such an important part of your overall marketing strategy.

Remember that SEO doesn’t just help you to outrank your competitors and show up in front of the right people. It also creates a sense of authority and trust between your firm and your target market.

To get an even better understanding of how not just SEO, but our services can help your law firm to grow, check out our case study.

When you’re ready to put the right kind of legal SEO strategy into place for your firm, reach out to us to chat.

Tags law firm marketing plan, law firm seo, lawyer marketing, online marketing, search engine optimization, small business marketing, small business online marketing, small business seo