A quick note about Keywords

After the Google My Business listing is complete, what is next?

This blog post follows after Setting Up Google My Business
If you’ve not yet downloaded your free course, take a moment to do so.

Now that you have quality, helpful content in your Google My Business listing, lets get you set up for more visits to your business site as well as your website.

May be I better ask first, does your business have a website? It doesn’t need to be fancy. It does need to offer help to provide solutions to the reason that that people that are searching for you.

I am going to suggest a few, simple SEO tweaks to follow up with in your business listing to optimize the content for search engines. One that is mentioned in the short course is updating and managing the content consistently. Sometimes it is just a few changes that will help get your business be found when it wasn’t as visible before.

I recommend you get Google Analytics set up so you can track the traffic changes that occur because of the tweaks you make. Knowing what changes were effective and those that were not will help you know your clients better.  

Keywords

The best way to see changes in your results in a search engine is to choose good keywords. Even better, find the ones your main competitors are using so you might challenge their position in searches. If you use a keyword tool to find words and phrases people are searching for that are relevant to your business, it is very helpful. Google ads has one that is free to use.

Use keywords naturally in your content. (Don’t overdo it. That will have the opposite effect and negatively impact your search results.)

Something good to know: “Long tail keywords” are phrases or short sentences that more closely match how people search. If you know your customers and what they are looking for use the phrases they would use. What would they type into that search bar?

For example, rather than “hardware stores” you might choose something like “recommendations for inexpensive hardware stores that deliver in Seattle”.

The reason this will work is that longer a keyword is, the less search competition there is for it. This means you have a higher chance of attracting searches for this phrase than an individual term. I use Google search exclusively to get accurate local results.

Including quality images in your business listing and all website posts will also help visibility. Name the images with specific keywords – not image_3. Search engines favor pages with images. The search engines cannot “read” images, so naming them and including keyword-rich alt text helps the images come up in search engine results. When done correctly it does help you get found.

Remember to post content consistently on your business listing and website. Search engines like websites with fresh content. One effective way to do this is to add a blog to your site and share the content when appropriate, on your Google business listing. Even if you have a static website, new blog content will make it appear fresh to the search engines.

Finally, make sure you’re sharing your content on social media and Let your audience know whenever you’ve posted something new. It all works together to appeal to the strange algorithms the search engines use.

If you want to get more help with Keywords and SEO, download my checklist. I am in the process of reviewing and updating it, yet it still contains great tips! By inserting your email, I will get you the “New” copy when it is complete.

Terry