Posted by admin_rh

Top Ways to Improve your Google Maps Ranking in 2021

September 14, 2021Business, PPC Management, SEO, Website 0

When we talk about local SEO, Google Maps comes to mind. This is because Google Map results show up when a query implies local results are needed, for instance, when you look up something like “Italian restaurants near me”, or “managed IT Services San Diego”. Boosting your Google Maps ranking for relevant searches is becoming all the more important since Google Maps is the preferred navigation app for 67% of consumers. Google Maps listing helps new customers discover you, helps you stand out amongst the local competition, and of course, nurtures more leads and generates higher profits. Since we have already established that ranking high in google maps is another way to get on the first page of Google, here’s how to do it right:

Add your business to Google Maps

To get started on Google Maps marketing, you need to check whether your business is already listed on Google Maps. Simply type your business name on the search bar and if it shows up with a location next to it, it means you already have a listing. If not, you first need to add your business to Google Maps. If your business name doesn’t appear on Google maps, you will see an option to “add a missing place”. Click on the link provided and add your business name, accurate location, and category. Choosing the right category makes sure your business shows up for relevant search results and allows your target audience to connect more effectively.

Claim your Business

Don’t be alarmed if your business has already been added to Google Maps. Remember that anyone can add any business to Google Maps, but doing so doesn’t give them any control over that listing unless you claim your business. Claiming your business on Google Maps allows you to add more details about your business in addition to name, location, and category. Businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches and rank higher. To claim your business on Google Maps, you need to sign up for a free Google My Business account. Once you have created an account, you can choose “Claim this business” or “Own this business?” from the listings. Google will send you a postcard in the mail with a secret verification pin which has to be entered to claim the ownership of your business. After verifying your account, you’ll be able to make changes to your account information, upload new photos, and publish posts. Now that you have linked your Google My Business account with your Google Maps business listing, it is time to work on acquiring top search rankings and appearing in relevant local searches on Google Maps.

Update Information in your Google Maps business listing

To start optimizing your listing for local SEO, your Google Maps listing information should be complete, accurate, and as thorough as possible. From your account dashboard, click on info, and update your business information, making sure to avoid inconsistencies in information across the web. Remember that Google’s algorithm assesses the correctness and integrity of information to gauge your credibility. for instance, let’s say you run a business called “New York coffee express”. Make sure this name appears the same in your Google My Business dashboard as everywhere else online like your business website, Yelp listing, and Facebook profile. Even slight variations, such as “NY coffee Express” can ruin your credibility and trustworthiness.

The same goes for your phone number. Always utilize a local phone number with your area code, and avoid listing a toll-free number since they are often used for spam. This further goes to prove that your business is indeed located at the provided address.

Also, be sure to keep your business hours updated so that people searching for your business will know whether you are open, closed, or opening soon at any time, as well as when your business will be open during holidays and other events. Businesses that update their business hours frequently are seen as active by Google, which helps them rank higher. Not to mention, you don’t want a bad review just because someone visited your store and it was closed despite appearing open on Google Maps. Also, you need to craft a keyword-rich business description that will help customers understand what you do, as well as rank for relevant searches. Make sure to list the unique selling points in your description to sell people on why you are the best.

Furthermore, make sure your business is listed in the appropriate category that matches properly in close context with the main keywords. You need to think this one through and choose a primary category that best reflects the core of your business. For the secondary category, type out your main for other relevant categories too.

Last but not the least, you need to upload photos and videos to boost your Google Maps listing rankings. If right now you were to take a look at where your traffic is coming from, I guarantee you it won’t be from the website or maps. It’s from images or photos. Even Google users can add photos directly to your business or at the time of writing a review. Visitors like a visual appreciation of a product, place, or service, and enjoy looking at pictures of the building, the parking space, photos of your products, peaks inside offices or workspaces, and even pictures of employees at work. Pictures say a lot about a business at a glance and help customers visualize what it is like to be inside. Not to mention, pictures show Google that you are an active business. High-quality images are useful for another purpose as well. Google’s highly advanced photo recognition technology shows up images for local search queries. Don’t let your pictures sit stagnantly. Be sure to upload new pictures frequently. Make sure that your pictures are either in JPG or PNG, sized between 10KB and 5MB, well-lit, and devoid of filters. NEVER use stock photos or videos on your Google My Business listing!

Get Google Reviews

Consumers of today make sure to check out reviews from other customers before choosing a business or making a purchase. Since Google takes the preference of customers into consideration when ranking a business, it doesn’t come as a shock that Google Maps ranking depends upon how many positive reviews your business listing has received. In fact, research shows that Google reviews yield higher conversion rates than local SEO strategies and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location.

Even if you are not getting many reviews, be proactive in asking for reviews from satisfied customers and clients, and be sure to respond to each review separately to encourage others to post reviews as well. Especially responding to those far and between negative reviews shows how proficient you are at solving customer issues and how much you care about your clients. Even better, ask reviewers to use appropriate keywords or city names within their review, which will help you rank above other businesses in your area. You should also use keywords to reply to all your reviews on Google My Business

SEO Optimized Content

To boost your rankings on Google Maps, make sure to craft a compelling and visually aesthetic landing page and attach it to your Google My Business listings. In addition to design, write powerful content punctuated with appropriate keywords, geo-tagged images, and related geo modifiers. Even having articles on your site that mention your city helps a lot!

Post On Your Listing Page Frequently

Just like on Facebook, you should regularly publish content that directly appears on your listing page. Businesses that continue to push out compelling articles, photos, and videos appear active to Google algorithms and rank higher as a result. People who are searching on search engines can come across these pages as a result of your content and find your business. GMB posts are also beneficial for “Justifications.” Google might pull up a post to help ‘justify’ why a particular result is a good match for your query. For instance, if you look up “furnace repair bend Oregon”, this is what shows up:

For the first result, the justification is being pulled from the website, while for the second, one of the GMB reviews is used in lieu of justification.

Answer The Questions of Users

It is not uncommon for users to ask questions about a Google My Business listing. As a business owner, you need to answer their questions and solve their issues. If there are no questions on your listing yet, you should determine the most frequently asked questions about your products and services and populate your page with those queries from a different email ID. Now login from your business email address, click on each question and add an answer. Ask your team members to like all the questions and answers, since the question with the most likes show up on the listing panel

Posted by admin_rh

Out-of-the-Box Ecommerce Marketing Strategies to Boom Your Business in 2021

April 6, 2021Business, ECommerce, SEO 0

With most people still stuck in the midst of lockdowns or hesitant to leave their homes, online sales have never been higher, but so hasn’t the competition. As the pandemic continues to rage on, the stakes have never been higher for online retailers trying to compete with sellers flooding marketplaces left and right. If you want to increase sales, drive traffic, and inculcate an awareness of your product, you will need to increase your E-commerce marketing effort. If you are willing to go the extra mile to stand out in the crowd, and turn visitors into first-time buyers and customers into brand evangelists, here are a few out-of-the-box eCommerce marketing in UAE tips to try:

Convert Top-Of-The-Funnel Leads with Quizzes

Top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) leads are prospects that have expressed an interest in your brand but aren’t ready to engage with you yet. These people are usually your first-time website visitors or new email sign-ups. You need to understand these customers better, create awareness about your product and then try to meet their needs. First things first, you need personal details from these customers, which can prove to be impossible to coax out during signup. One way to get these people to divulge personal information without raising red flags is through lead generation quizzes. Don’t we all love quizzes that say “which Starbucks drink are you?”, “which Olive garden entrée are you?” or “which style of the bag are you?” The purpose of such quizzes is to collect segmented ToFu leads and recommend products that suit their needs. In the middle of the quiz, you can ask users to enter their email addresses so you can save the results. Once the users complete the comprehensive quiz, they are redirected to a landing page with their results, a valid reason, and research-backed product recommendations. This way you are simply recommending which products suit their style/needs/habits, rather than hard-selling your products. Now that you finally understand your customers and their pain points, you can follow up on your leads with paid ads and highly targeted marketing campaigns.

Offer an Incentive to Make Them Subscribe

We all know what upselling can do for our revenue. Even though most eCommerce stores are already capitalizing on upselling and cross-selling to boost their average order value, we are going to take it up a notch. We recommend that each of your product pages should incorporate two pricing options: regular price and member price. Offering a too-good-to-overlook price to your members highlights the obvious benefit of membership and pits it against the price of a one-time purchase. Non-subscribers risk passing on an exclusive member price, which I am sure they won’t want to do. Especially if you are selling a product that needs a refill, such as vitamins or medicines, offer your customers the options of one-time purchase as well auto stock. Offer a discounted price as well as free shipping to those who choose the latter. Sounds too good to resist, doesn’t it!

Highlight Sustainable business practices

These days, most people want to buy from socially conscious businesses only. In fact, more and more millennials are changing their habits to be more sustainable. A study predicts that by the end of 2021, customers will spend more than $150 billion on sustainable brands. With the increasing demand for green business practices, buyers are willing to pay extra to go green. If you want to appeal to your environment-conscious demographic, start producing, packaging, and selling while keeping the environment in mind and make sure to make it the highlight of your marketing campaign. Whether you are going paperless or saving energy at work or using eco-friendly packagings like biodegradable pouches and compost bags, do make sure to let your customers know.

Tap into the Power of Wish lists

Don’t we all keep adding items that catch our fancy to our wishlist, never to look at them again? Unless you actually remember to buy a wish list item, which happens once in a blue moon, they simply slip your mind. As an e-commerce business, you have an amazing opportunity to tap into your prospects’ wishlists since they contain items that have already been chosen. Remember that your leads already wish to buy those items, they only need something like a gentle nudge or a little discount to complete the purchase. Wishlist reminder emails remind them of items in their wish list, notify them if their favorite items have gone on sale or if they are low in supply. If you want to convert idle wishlist items into sales, simply display those items against a powerful CTA to help your visitors re-consider the purchase and be redirected straight to them. You can include discount codes in your wishlist reminder emails that only apply to your subscribers’ wishlist items.

Try Google Shopping

Google Shopping is becoming an indispensable part of eCommerce marketing in UAE in 2021 because of its ability to bring better-qualified traffic and higher conversions. Being somewhat of a comparison search engine, Google Shopping ads put your product right in front of potential customers, including their price and your store link. If your product description meets the customer’s search phrase, it will appear in front of the customer. Since they pre-vet potential customers by showing the product image and the price, so advertisers only get highly targeted clicks. Another benefit of showcase ads is that even if a prospect doesn’t immediately make a purchase on your store, you still get to introduce your store to a wide audience, and build a warm audience to remarket to at a lower cost.

All the businesses that appear in the SERPs are credible and authentic, though people may not have heard of them. Customers also trust Google, especially because of the price comparisons, which helps them get the best bang for their bucks. All you need to do to try your hands at Google shopping is to create a Google Merchant account, optimize your product pages, link your Google AdWords account, and create a campaign.

Play on sold-out products

For online shoppers, nothing can be more frustrating than seeing “sold out” on their favorite product pages. While this experience can leave the customer disappointed and exasperated, marketers can leverage this situation to their advantage. You can somewhat lessen their frustration by offering out-of-stock notifications. This allows you to convert leads into customers once the item has been restocked. Meanwhile, try to redirect them to your best sellers or other similar products to get them back on track. This way, you’ll appease angry customers and improve your sold-out-page conversions.

Recover Abandoned Carts with Email Offers

In the world of eCommerce, 60% to 80% of carts get abandoned. If you wish to create an email campaign, make sure it’s around abandoned cars! People add a lot of items to their cart and then leave the website without finalizing the purchase. Whenever you see an abandoned cart, be sure to shoot them an email reminding them to go back. Increase the open rate of your abandoned cart emails by adding irresistible discounts and attention-grabbing headlines. Make sure you remind your shoppers that they have left something behind.

Dynamic Retargeting Ads

Dynamic retargeting ads are a relatively new trick in the book for marketing your online store. If you are not familiar with retargeting, it is a feature that lets you advertise to people who have previously interacted with your business. For instance, if you visit a website as a one-time thing but keep on receiving ads from the same business consequentially, you have been exposed to retargeting. Now imagine being shown the same product in ads like the one you had checked out; say hello to dynamic retargeting. You may have hundreds of products on your website but a dynamic retargeting ad only displays the product that a person had checked out earlier. So far, this feature is available on all major advertising platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Google. Dynamic advertising lets you capture leads who have already shown an interest in your website and products and are already ripe for the taking.

Incorporate Customer Testimonials in Emails

While you may already have incorporated product reviews and customer testimonials on your eCommerce store homepage or landing pages, only select users will eventually see and engage with them. Why not add them to your email marketing messages to widen their reach. When used right, customer testimonials and product reviews add social proof to your business and help visitors who are hesitant to buy from you. It is also a great idea to let testimonials and product ratings speak for the products/services/company in promotional emails instead of penning down lengthy product descriptions that no one will read. After all, a prospect is more likely to believe the words of an actual user than the brand itself. Start by handpicking your favorite testimonials and customer feedbacks and send out occasional emails to spread the love. This helps you create social proof with every offering.

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