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Working with SEO Companies: Google My Business

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Recently, Google released a list of recommendations for picking a reputable local company to help improve SEO and Google search rankings. Google My Business makes local businesses more easily found within search results. This can lead to an increase in organic, local customers to aid in small business growth.

Google admits that even with the tools they provide, not everyone has the time required to set up a listing or properly maintain it. Working with a third party can help achieve these results with little to no effort by the business, letting them focus on maintaining store operations. For this reason, Google released their own list over “how to work with a third-party”, however, we will go over some of the more prominent points.

Be Selective

Google makes it very clear that not all third-party SEO providers are equal. It is important to find a company that has managed business listings previously while similar target audiences or budgets equivalent to your own. Furthermore, don’t be afraid to ask what other services they can provide to further your business goals.

Stick to One Company at a Time

Testing one SEO company at a time will ensure you are receiving unadulterated results from the Google My Business management you are receiving. Business listings are only shown once for each location available, meaning multiple companies would we working over each other. For best results, test companies individually, if you are satisfied with the results then stick to that SEO provider.

Evaluate Business Performance

Google My Business offers a multitude of insights and analytics options. With these tools, businesses can track how customers are finding them and interaction levels they are achieving through the listing. Reviewing Google My Business insights monthly can help evaluate the effectiveness of the third-party in use.

Avoid Deceptive Behaviors

It is important that the third-party used to manage a Google My Business account remains transparent. As the business owner, you are entitled to know how users are interacting with your business and specific data counts, such as views and clicks. It is also important to note that third-parties cannot influence the order in which a business appears on Google Search or Maps.

Also, it is imperative that you obtain an official copy of your agreement before giving your Google My Business account to a third-party for outsourced management. This can help ensure no deceptive pricing is enforced. Regardless of what the third-party provider says, they cannot remove your business from Google or access the listing without your permission. For more information on working with third-parties read the entire Google help page by clicking here.

You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your business listing, website development, marketing or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2016 your business’s best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

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Marketing

The Value of Google Plus for Businesses

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Google Plus, or Google+, is one of the best opportunities for small businesses to connect with potential customers. With several changes in functionality and significant user growth since its inception, Google+ has become pivotal in successful growth at local levels.

Since Google spearheads this platform, Google Plus can deliver unprecedented SEO impacts and increase website traffic with a little bit of effort on the business’ behalf. Anyone who has performed a search for local services through Google is probably already familiar with the listings that appear at the top of the search results.

These results utilize Google+ listings to give individuals various options in the immediate area. The top results will always have completed profiles, showing map listings, contact info, websites and social media links. This helps smaller businesses be easily discoverable! Google Plus can also have an incredible impact on organic rankings within Google search results.

When Google+ members follow a business, any recent posts that are relevant to their search will become visible in the top search results. This can be extremely beneficial with SEO based blog posts that link back to a primary website to fuel organic traffic. One of the best additions to a Google+ account is the availability for customers to leave reviews. If a company is customer service oriented, great reviews can make a business shine.

Recent studies have shown that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they do a personal recommendation. For this reason, it’s important to strive to keep reviews positive. Reviews can’t be edited or deleted unless they are irrelevant or have content that is against Google policies, so reviews have the ability to make or break a business.

If you are struggling to get your business seen, Skynet Solutions can help you use cutting edge SEO practices to ensure the best possible Search Engine Ranking. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

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Marketing

Advanced Pest Solutions Gets Website Overhaul

We’ve been telling you the past couple weeks about some of the amazing new websites the team at Skynet Solutions has been creating and we have one more we want to share with you today. When Advanced Pest Solutions came to us for a website overhaul, we were excited to have the opportunity to work with them because of the great reputation they’ve built for themselves in Bartlesville. As a local, family-owned and operated pest control company, Advanced Pest Solutions is a staple of the Bartlesville community and provides quality pest control services for communities across Northeastern Oklahoma and Southeastern Kansas. Working with a company that has such a good reputation and strong ties to its community is always fun. However, it also presents a unique set of circumstances to work within. Many local, family-owned businesses, like Advanced Pest Solutions, have customers who have been using their services for years, decades even. And when they change something about their business, whether it’s the location or the hours or the website, they have to do it in a way that is accommodating to their old customers. But, as any business-owner knows, you also need to continually innovate and improve to attract new customers and stay ahead of your competition. Advanced Pest Solutions wanted a new website to be able to better attract new customers, as well as better serve their long-time customers. They needed a site that was clean and inviting, informative and easy to use and that would be easily recognized by their old customers, even in its new and improved form. Our team got to work developing a new website, designing new graphics and images and writing fresh content for the site, including an introductory blog post to help them get their blog page off the ground. Skynet Solutions also hosts the Advanced Pest Solutions website, so we can help them troubleshoot any technical issues they have. One of the skills our team prides itself on, is the ability to meet the varied and unique needs of any client. We’ve developed and designed websites and written blogs and website content for multiple pest control companies, including Arrow Exterminators, Emtec Pest Control and Xtreme Pest Management. However, we’ve manage to make each of these sites and all of their content and blogs unique and different. We tailor all of our work, no matter the size of the project, to the client and their specific needs. The ability to make interesting, relevant and unique websites and content for all of these clients shows the creativity of our design, development and content teams, as well as the personal attention to detail that you get when you work with Skynet Solutions. We take the time to meet with each client, to really listen to them, to learn what they want and need from their website and then have a discussion about the best way to achieve that creatively, functionally and within their budget. The Skynet Solutions team takes the time to get a feel for your company and how you want your business to be displayed. You know what you want customers to see, think and feel when they come to your website. It’s our job to make that vision a reality. As a small business, we understand that the perception customers have of you is extremely important, and we want to work closely with you to maintain and enhance the good reputation you’ve spent years building. When you spend as much time as you do running your business, serving customers, training employees and more, the last thing you need to be worrying about is whether your website is sending the same message. Do what you do best and keep your business powering ahead; leave the website to us. Get in touch with the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with any design, development or marketing needs, including your online business listing, website development, marketing or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2016 your business’s best year yet. You can fill out our online contact form on our website to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

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Marketing

11 Apps Every Marketing Pro Needs

Alushta, Russia - October 25, 2014: New phone iPhone 6 Space Gray with apps on screen lies on the table. iPhone 6 was created and developed by the Apple inc.

As every marketing and social media professional knows, managing a successful marketing campaign is a 24/7 job. No matter what kind of campaign you’re running, you need these 11 apps to keep you organized, connected and ahead of the curve, no matter where you are: Hootsuite/Buffer/Sprout Social:whichever social media scheduling tool your company uses, make sure you have the app so you can schedule social media posts anytime and anywhere. You can also follow up on already posted posts to see their reach and respond to any comments. Mention:this is one of the best social listening tools available and should be a staple for every social media marketer. Mention tracks your brand’s—you guessed it—mentions all over the web from blog and social media posts to website content and anywhere else you show up based on preset keywords you select. It’s a great way to stay on top of what customers, competitors and leaders in your industry are saying about your brand and how your name is getting out there. MailChimp:we love MailChimp for email management and running email campaigns and the mobile app makes it easy to manage email lists, view statistics and edit campaigns from anywhere. Evernote:if you don’t have Evernote yet, it’s time to take the plunge. It’s basically the ultimate to-do list which automatically syncs between all your devices. You can take a note on your tablet while you’re at home and it’ll show up on your work desktop, your smartphone, anywhere you need it. You can also save pictures of a hand-written note or list and Evernote will extrapolate the relevant information from it. If you upgrade to Pro or Premium, you can also store emails, voice memos and access your info offline. GoToMeeting:this is a great way to stay connected with your office and with clients while you’re on the go and to meet with clients who are far away. GoToMeeting not only allows multiple people to conference from multiple locations, but it also allows you to share screen so you can see each other’s presentations. Nimble:this contact-managing app integrates your connections on social media to your phone’s contact list. It will suggest new social media accounts for you to friend or follow based on your contacts and will also add more detail to each of your contact’s listings in your phone based on their social media profiles. News:pick your favorite news source, whether it’s Mashable or The New York Times or BuzzFeed and download their app. Check it routinely to keep on top of the day’s big stories and find interesting things to share that are relevant to your audience. WiFi Finder:when you’re in a time crunch and you need to find a place to get work done, this app will show you where the nearest free (and paid) WiFi networks are to your current location. Eventbrite:if your company hosts any kind of event or conference, Eventbrite is an easy way to manage registration and track attendees. It also makes it easy for people who come to your events to register and find information like time, location and directions. Google AdWords:Google released a Google AdWords app last year that allows you to manage pay-per-click campaigns from your phone. We won’t say it makes AdWords fun, but it is nice to be able to check your campaigns from anywhere. Official Apps for Social Media Sites:this one should be a no-brainer, but we’ll add it in anyway. You should download the official app for every type of social media site you manage. There are apps for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, Vine and literally every other social media network in existence. If your social media accounts are getting too tangled for you to manage, you can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for all of your social media and marketing needs. We also have a talented development team who can build you anything from a basic website to custom software. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2016 your business’s best year yet. To get in touch with us, you can fill out the online contact form on our website. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

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Marketing

Content: What is the Optimal Length?

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If you’re a regular reader of our marketing blog, you’ll have noticed that a few months back our blogs suddenly got a lot longer. That wasn’t an accident. Our marketing team had been doing some research into ideal content lengths for different types of online content and found out that we were a little under where we needed to be to be able to get in the top organic Google search results. So we redesigned our blogging strategy and the blogging strategies of many of our clients. Conventional wisdom had us writing blogs that were around 300 or 350 words long—short, easily-digestible, quick reads on various topics that were relevant to customers. We thought that this length, which could be read in about five minutes, was the right length. Then we did a little research. The best length for a blog post is actually double or triple what we had been writing. For a blog post to turn up in the top, organic Google or Bing search results, it needs to have between 700 and 1,000 words. Are your blog posts in that range? If not, that could be one reason why you’re not seeing the results you want from blogging. Since we started posting longer blogs, we’ve seen a lot more traffic on our site and our blogs are showing up higher in Google search. Inspired by this, we looked into how long the content should be on webpages and found out that we were coming up a little short there, too. Well, more than a little. Chances are you are as well. Check your website and approximate how much content is on each of your pages—100 words, 500 words, 1,000 words? Guess how much content you should have on each webpage for those pages to show up in the top, organic Google and Bing search results? Between 2,000 and 2,500 words. Your immediate reaction to that statistic might be to go post a bunch of random content on your website to increase the word count, but please, please resist that urge. Part of why Google likes content-rich sites is because people like content rich sites. And people show Google that they like content rich sites by linking to them—on social media, in other blogs, all over the place. So if you have a webpage that has 2,300 words of content, but 2,000 of those words are meaningless gibberish, then no one will link to your site and Google won’t prioritize it, even though it’s the right length. Same thing goes with blog posts. There’s no use in slapping up an 800-word blog post if 450 of the words are meaningless nonsense. Nobody will read it or link to it, Google will be able to tell that it’s not quality content and they won’t prioritize it in search rankings. Being high in Google search rankings is important. It is the most used search engine in the United States and in the world with 1.17 billion users. Those 1.17 billion users log over 3.5 billion searches each day. This might seem a little overwhelming (because it is) but the important thing to get out of it is this: most of your customers and potential customers are using Google search to find things—especially local goods and services. The higher your website and blog posts rank in Google search results, the more likely that customers searching for your or searching for a business with your expertise will be able to find you. When someone searches “dog groomer in Oklahoma City” they aren’t going to look through 75 pages of search results. They’re going to click on one of the top links that comes up. So if you want to be one of the top results to come up when someone searches “your business” in “your city,” it’s time to start prioritizing both the quality and the quantity of your content. If you need any help keeping up with your blogging requirements or updating your content, call the content creation experts at Skynet Solutions. We can write interesting, fresh content for any industry or business, as well as handling your social media and other marketing needs. Whether you’re targeting specific customers or just want to get the word out about your new business, we can handle it. We also have a talented development team who can build you anything from a basic website to custom software. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2016 your business’s best year yet. You can fill out our online contact form on our website. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+and LinkedIn!

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