Above all else, you want to drive traffic. Whether it's to your website, social media, CTA's or anything else - that's the ultimate goal. If you drive traffic, you have a chance to convert, which leads to income. Local SEO is the most important part of your strategy to drive traffic, it's kind of all encompassing. Your website plays a major role. Social media plays a major role. Reviews play a major role. Backlinks. Copy. All of it. But it all ties into your Local SEO strateg

Google traffic is the best traffic. Users are already looking for a service like the one you offer. The goal is to be a Research Ender. Once they land on your listing, channel or website - their research is over and they are ready to move forward. If you are looking for an advertising agency or marketing firm in the South Bend, Mishawaka or surrounding areas, be sure that they have a firm plan in place for your Google presence, like we at the Alpha Dog Agency do. We run GMB (

You may not have noticed but GMB Q&A has been gaining popularity since being released. Sherry Bonelli goes into detail over at MarketingLand but I'll recap what local business owners should know and begin to act on immediately. Google My Business Q&A is a crowd sourced feature that allows your customers (or potential customers) to post questions directly to your GMB listing. The business can then answer the question directly from the panel. But don't be surprised if a Local G

Everyone wants to be there but no one really knows how to do it. That's even true for SEOs. As Tim Capper points out over at Online Ownership, Google is pretty tight-lipped about what does and does not factor into ranking locally. But we do know a few things. Lets recap them quickly. 1. Relevance - This seems like a no-brainer, right? How relevant are you to what users are searching for? You should probably do some keyword research in your area to see where the search volume

Miriam Ellis posted a fantastic blog over at Moz. You can read the entire blog here but I'll highlight a few of the main takeaways and give quick notes as they relate to our South Bend area. Just as there are practices that are really important to carry out when it comes to your SEO strategy, it's just as important to avoid carrying out the ill-advised practices. Here are a few thoughts on what Miriam touched on. 1. Creating GMB Listings At Ineligible Addresses GMB listings a

Earning backlinks to your website is arguably the most important factor of local SEO. So, how do you go about getting them? Here are some simple options. What are backlinks? Backlinks are whenever another website, blog, whatever - posts a link back to your website. The more traffic the posting site gets, the better. You want your backlinks to come from sites that are as authoritative as possible. The easy backlinks can get you started. These are listing websites like Manta, G

"But I have a website, aren't I good?" No, you are not. Sure, it's a good start. It's a necessary start. Your website is going to be the central hub for your online presence. Everything will flow from it. But it's far from the end all, be all. For example, your website should be the starting point for your SEO strategy. You'll need to claim your Google listing within the GMB platform and then put that to work for your business. You'll also want to supplement that with user re

Customers and yes, competitors, can edit your Google listing. If you run your own GMB listing, you've obviously noticed some changes over the past few months. In addition to the Messaging and Posts features (we'll cover those in a future blog), you're probably being blasted with update requests from Google. These are important! Potential customers and clients will see this information when they are in the research phase on Google and may make a decision to visit you based on

We hear it more often than we should. We'll do SEO when we need it. When we need it can refer to when things slow down, when they really need people through their door or when they have the time (or budget) to get to it. But it just doesn't work that way. We've told you before that Google says you need to give SEOs 4-12 months to get somewhere. Locally, you can slant that a bit toward the low end. But we still see a lot of places that don't want to believe it. If you want unt

It doesn't seem like a big deal but in reality, it's a really big deal. Google is the digital age first impression. Many times, prospective customers will make their decision regarding your business after viewing your Google snapshot. Is it fair? Maybe not. But it's the reality of today. The most underutilized aspect to GMB (Google My Business), definitely locally and perhaps nationally, is the lack of attention paid to Google reviews. Many are more concerned with Facebook re

It's not going to be immediate. And if someone promises immediate results, run. We are talking about, of course, SEO results. They are plenty of "companies" that will promise immediate results. They'll talk about link building (a better term would be link spamming) and how they can rocket you up the results. Just run. It doesn't work that way. SEO is like a tree, sitting in the wonderful Google Forest. The sooner you plant the tree, the more you water the tree and the more ha

Most people don't realize it but spam in your local search results is an ever growing problem. Casey Meraz posted a blog over at Moz going into further detail than we will here. It's worth a read but a lot of it is more relevant to larger metro areas and more competitive cities and search terms. Instead, we'll point out a couple things we've seen locally that you should keep an eye out for. First up, the relatively new Google Local Guide program is a great start in getting th

You're running a business. If you picked up the phone and it was a customer asking how to get to your business, you wouldn't tell them to not worry about it and hang up, would you? If you're ignoring SEO, that's essentially what you're doing. Actually, it's much worse. I hate to be the one to break this to you but most (would-be) customers are not calling you anymore. It's just not going to happen. There are too many other options that are far more convenient for them. First,

Google has done it again. At this point, it shouldn't be news. Google will update the way they display search results every few months. This means that most business owners will always be behind on their SEO unless they have 50 hours in their day. I can assure you, they do not. But I'll share some tips that will make it easier for those that like to manage your Google presence on your own. As always, you can contact us for a free consultation to get some options on what you c

Reviews have always been important but the bar has been raised. There have been a couple of news pieces today and both of them are relevant to business owners in a big way. First up, it was ruled that Yelp is not liable for the reviews posted to their site. This is kind of obvious but there have been plenty of business owners that have taken issue with the site and the ways reviews are relayed. In short, you are fully responsible for your negative reviews and that will not ch

Google loves keeping us on our toes, don't they? It's frustrating but hey, it's the nature of the beast. The biggest change will be the overhaul that AdWords received. It'll not only change how local businesses are recommended but how the actual layout of the search result page looks. Gone are the days of the smaller ads running along the right hand side. Now, in an effort to look more consistent with mobile, there will be ads running across the top, maxing out at four total.