Small Business SEO

Whether you are doing the SEO for your small business website yourself, or outsourcing it to a Minneapolis SEO company, how do you know if those SEO efforts are actually paying off? You might be wasting your time or throwing money down a rat hole for all you know. Enter Google Analytics.

What Is Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a FREE service that Google offers website owners who are looking for detailed statistics about their website.

To use Google Analytics, you simply insert a few lines of code into your website. The plethora of detailed statistics that Google provides will show you your site’s strengths and weaknesses. With this vital information, you can improve your return on website investment, increase conversion rates, and use the Internet to its fullest to increase your sales and profits.

Some of the statistics you can analyze include identifying the keywords that potential customers searched for to find your website. Google Analytics includes numerous other statistics such as how many people view your website, what pages they visited, how long they browsed your website, and if they click away from your website the minute they landed on it (a metric called “bounce rate”).

Armed with statistics like that, you can see what areas of your website are performing well and which areas need improvement. Google Analytics makes it possible for you to measure your results. Without it, how will you know if the money you’re spending on SEO and other Internet Marketing services is paying off?

The Benefits of Using Google Analytics

Knowing the vital statistics about your website will allow you to see what’s working and what isn’t. Google Analytics provides innumerable parameters for you to utilize during your decision-making process. For instance, you can analyze how many visitors entered your site during specific time periods. You can dig deeper and find out where in the world your visitors are coming from.

Google Analytics gives quantifiable answers to tough business questions. You will understand whether your visitors found you via a search engine or whether they were referred by another website. It will provide answers to questions such as: “How long did my visitors browse my website and what specific pages did they visit (or not visit)?”

One of the greatest benefits of Google Analytics is to show you what keywords your website ranks for – and what keywords visitors use to find your site. Once you know this information, you can optimize your site for those keywords to improve your rankings and traffic. Let’s say you discover that a handful of people are finding your website searching for, “chiropractors in Minneapolis.” You can optimize a page on your website for that keyword phrase so that your site ranks higher for it, thus bringing in even more traffic.

So what is Google Analytics? It’s a free analytical tool, but more importantly, it’s a tool that will allow you to easily measure the strengths and weaknesses of your website – and whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off. Regardless of what analytics program you use, it’s imperative that you use something so that you can track and measure your website’s performance!

What Is Google Places

So what is Google Places, you may be asking? In short, it is the quickest and easiest way to get found on Google! In April of 2010, Google introduced a revolutionary concept that has changed the way businesses market themselves online. Google created, and then fine-tuned, a unique database that collects detailed information about brick and mortar businesses such as name, address, phone number, email address, website URL, etc. That database today is called “Google Places.”

Each business listing in Google Places is called a “Place” page, and Google allows businesses to create and customize their own listing within Google Places. Think of a Place page like a micro-website containing only the most essential information about your business. Here is a brief, 60-second introductory video that summarizes Google Places and its benefits:

Important Terminology Note: Google Places is also referred to as Google Maps, Google Local, and Google Local Business Center. They are all one in the same and are used interchangeably.

4 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Google Places Listing

1. Google Accounts for 66% of the U.S. Search Market

According to the November 2011 data from ComScore, Google accounted for 66.2% of the U.S. search market. Take a look at this chart:

What’s amazing is that Google gets more than double the traffic that Yahoo! and Bing get combined! With Google accounting for well over half of the searches conducted online, it makes sense to concentrate the bulk of your marketing efforts there initially. One of the easiest things you can do to get found on Google is to secure a Google Places listing.

2. Google Places Can Get You to the First Page on Google

Research shows that 95% of all Internet searchers find what they are looking for on page 1 of the search results. Rarely is someone going to click to page 2 or 3 to find what they are looking for. (source: iCrossing.com). In short, if you’re not on the first page of Google, you might as well be invisible.

Google displays Google Places listings with their organic (natural) search results when local searches are conducted. In addition, Google gives preference to local businesses that have an optimized listing in Google Places over the organic search results so they are often found on the top of the first page. With a well-optimized and detailed Google Places listing, you can easily get found on the first page – and often times on the top of the first page!

To see how Google Places is displayed along with organic results – and usually on top of the organic results – I did a search for bakeries in my city. Here were the results:

Notice all those Google Places listings on the top of the first page? How nice would it be to have your business found there? The good news is, you can! You just have to spend a little time with your Google Places listing and you’ll reap the rewards.

3. Google Places Can Drive More Traffic to Your Business Website

It stands to reason that if Google Places can get you on the first page of Google – and in many cases on the top of the page – you’re going to get more traffic to your business website. A recent study by BrightLocal.com concluded that Google Places directs 33% of all website traffic to local business websites. With Google Places becoming more and more popular, this number will surely grow.

4. Google Places is Mobile Ready

Google automatically formats your Google Places listing for mobile devices. Remember those stats I shared with you earlier in this guide? Let me repeat them here again. A recent study showed that 95% of smart phone users search for local information on their phones. 88% of the smart phone users take action within a day. 77% have either called or visited a local business because of the information they gathered during their smart phone search. – (sources: Google, BIA/Kelsey). With a Google Places listing, you’ll be able to tap into that “smartphone search” market.

How To Set Up Your Google Places Listing

One of the great things about Google Places is that it’s free! To get started on your listing, visit the Google Places page. The first thing you’ll be asked to so is to sign in with your Google account information. Before you begin the registration process, we have two very important tips to share with you.

Tip #1:
Sign into Google Places with a Gmail account instead of a Google account. A Gmail account and a Google account are two different things. Registering for a Gmail account automatically signs you up for a Google account. Registering for a Google account does not automatically sign you up for a Gmail account.

Tip #2:
Open a brand new Gmail account for your business and link the new account to Google Places. A business Gmail account allows employees that you designate to make modifications to changing information.

Never use a personal Gmail account for Google Places! The reason is if you use your personal Gmail account for your Google Places listing, your employees or contractors (if you outsource your online marketing), will have access to your personal email. You want your business Gmail account to be separate from your personal Gmail account.

Once you log into Google Places, you’ll begin the process of entering all your business information. Take your time entering this information as it will not only convey to your potential customers what your business is all about, but it will also determine how well your listing ranks in Google’s search results. Following is a list of the information you’ll be entering and some tips to consider for each.

Company/Organization
The name must be how your customers recognize your business. In short, it is the actual name of your company or organization. Do not add qualifiers such as city names, URLs, and phone numbers. And don’t use keywords to try to “optimize” your listing. Google considers this extraneous information to be an attempt to game the system.

Business Address
Provide the exact street address. Each location of your business can have one listing, no more. PO Boxes do not count as physical locations. If you operate in a service area, list a central location, and then define the service area.

Primary Phone Number
List one local phone number for each business address. A local phone number verifies that your business operates at the local level. You have the option of adding additional phone numbers but you should always list your local business phone number first. Each physical location of your business should list a unique phone number. Never list call center phone numbers.

Website/Email
Your business URL must take potential customers to your primary business website. Do not list an URL that deceives potential customers by redirecting them to other web pages that do not relate to your business. Use a professional email account with a domain that corresponds with your business website’s URL. If your website URL is www.freshbakedgoods.com, your corresponding email address should be customerservice@freshbakedgoods.com.

Business Description
This may be the most important piece of information that your business provides. You need to clearly describe, without using frills or reciting industry jargon, exactly what products or services you provide. Make this part of your listing “sing” about the benefits of doing business with your company. Include one to three keywords that best describe your business.

Business Categories
You have up to five categories that you can list your business. This step classifies your business and it plays a pivotal role that determines which keywords Google will use to rank your business. You select your categories by what your business is (restaurant), not by what it sells or does. Place the most important category at the top of your rankings.

Additional Details
Here is where you can utilize your creativity. Most businesses include hours of operation, accepted credit cards, discounts, etc. You should include as much information as you deem necessary to prompt potential customers to call or visit your business. The information you enter here will help you rank for long tail search terms (searches with 3 or more keywords) so take advantage of this and be sure to enter additional details.

How To Claim Your Google Places Listing

Google is such a powerful search engine that Google may automatically create a Google Places listing for your business. Google utilizes numerous sources online to create these listings. Whether a Google Places listing already exists for your business or you need to create one from scratch, you want to claim your listing. By claiming your listing, you are confirming with Google that you are the owner of the business, and more importantly, claiming your listing prevents others from the unauthorized editing of your information!

Google verifies that you are the legitimate business owner by either calling you with a special PIN number or sending your PIN number on a postcard to your business address. Once you enter that PIN number while logged into your Google Places listing, you officially claim your listing.

You can follow the guidelines outlined here to set up your listing yourself, or you should check out our Google Places Optimization Service and our other Local SEO Services.

Website search engine optimization addresses one of the two components of SEO – that being on-page SEO. The other component of search engine optimization is off-page SEO. On-page SEO pertains to your website. It consists of those things you have 100% control over. Off-page SEO pertains to those things you do outside of your website. These are things you don’t always have control over. Getting other websites to link to your website (backlinks) is an example of off-page SEO. This post focuses on on-page SEO and we’ll cover off-page SEO in a future post.

Optimizing Your Meta Data

One of the first things you should address when doing your website search engine optimization is your meta data – specifically your meta title, meta descriptions, and for some of the smaller search engines, the meta keywords (Google ignores the meta keywords).

The meta title, or commonly called the title tag, is the most important of all the meta data. It is what shows up in the search results. This is not the same as the title you may have on your home page! In fact, your meta title won’t show up anywhere on your site. The only other place a visitor will see your meta title outside of the search results is at the top of your browser.

Here is a screenshot of some search results with the title tags highlighted:

The meta description is the information you see directly below the title tags in the search results (highlighted again for your convenience):

As you can probably deduce, the meta title and the meta description are very important to optimize for. It is essential you include one or two of your primary keywords in the meta title as well as your meta description.

You also want the title and the description to be compelling so the person conducting the search notices your listing among all the others. After all, you don’t want to give your competition the click! If you saw these two titles in the search results, which one would you likely click on first?

Voted #1 Chiropractors in Minneapolis | Minneapolis Chiropractors
www.chiropractorshere.com
As chiropractors in Minneapolis, we were voted #1 by the Minneapolis Chiropractors Association. We put our patient’s care first!

or

Minneapolis Chiropractors | Chiropractors in Minneapolis
www.chiropractorshere.com
We are chiropractors located just a few minutes from downtown Minneapolis. Our hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Optimizing Your Content

The next step of website search engine optimization is to optimize the content on your web pages. One thing that should be consistent across all the pages on your website is your business location and telephone number. Every page on your website should have your full address and phone numbers. You can do this easily by putting it in the footer or sidebar of your website.

Wherever you put it, you’ll want to display it using the “hcard microformat.” While Google is super smart and in most cases will rarely screw up your business location, using this format is a way to ensure your location is unmistakable. Without getting overly technical, this format is a standard method of semantically marking up your HTML to inform the search engines very precisely about which part of your web page contains addresses, phone numbers, and other typical directory listing information.

O.K., so you have the address and phone numbers on all pages. Now you want to make sure you use the primary keywords you are optimizing each page for throughout the page. If you are optimizing your home page for the keyword, “Minneapolis Chiropractors,” then you’ll use that in the title, or headline, of the home page and then a few times throughout the copy on your home page.

You may have heard of keyword density. It’s a common term thrown around by SEO professionals. Keyword density simply refers to the number of times the keyword you are optimizing for appears on the page. You’ll hear things like, “strive for a 1-3% keyword density.” Back when search engines weren’t so smart, keyword density was really important but the search engines are so advanced now that it’s not as important anymore to strive for a certain percentage.

Instead, the best rule is to write your content naturally and use your primary keyword “periodically” throughout your copy. Here are the basic guidelines we follow:

Use the primary keyword in the title, or headline.
Use the primary keyword in the first paragraph.
Use the primary keyword somewhere in the body.
Use the primary keyword the last paragraph.

You’ll also want to use variations of your primary keyword. For example, on our home page we are targeting, “Minneapolis SEO,” so we use that keyword. We also use variations of it on the page such as, “SEO Minneaplis.” This strategy is effective because you can target other keywords while still keeping the page focused on the primary keywords.

You also want to use images on all of your pages and name them with your primary keyword (i.e. Minneapolis-chiropractors.jpg). You’ll want to take advantage of the title and alt tags for those images as well by using your primary keywords for them.

Targeting Multiple Locations

If you are planning on targeting nearby cities and areas when you do your website search engine optimization, you’ll want to create a separate page for each city. For example, if you want to target, “St. Paul Chiropractors” and “Twin Cities Chiropractors,” you’d set up a separate page for each and optimize them following the guidelines already discussed here.

Optimizing Your Internal Linking

It’s important that you make it easy for both humans and search engines to find ALL of your content. To that end, you’ll want to make sure your site is well organized and that there are links from your home page to your internal pages and vice versa. You don’t want any abandoned pages – pages that don’t have any links to them.

Use anchor text when linking from one page to another. Anchor text is the keyword or keyword phrase that is being optimized on the page you are linking to.

A common mistake many small business owners make with their websites is they’ll use “click here” as the anchor text.  You want to avoid using “click here” whenever you can and instead always use the keyword you are optimizing the page for.

Sitemaps and KML Files for Optimizing Your Website

HTML & XML Sitemaps

As the name implies, sitemaps are a “map” of your entire website. There are two different types of sitemaps. There is the HTML sitemap that is for humans and the XML sitemap that is for the search engines. HTML sitemaps aren’t used that much anymore but it’s still a good idea to use them as they can only help.

XML sitemaps, on the other hand, are an absolute must. Unlike the traditional HTML sitemaps, these are more technical in nature and are strictly for the search engines’ “eyes.” You can link to your XML sitemap in your footer but it’s also a good idea to submit them to the major search engines. That way whenever you add new content to your site, the XML sitemap is a quick and easy way for the search engines to “notice’ your new content and index it.

KML Files

KML stands for Key Hole Markup Language and is a file format used to display geographic data on places like Google Maps and Bing Maps. You can create these files to pinpoint your business location on these maps.

When you’re trying to figure out how to do keyword research for your small business website, the basis of your research will always be this:

“What keywords do my customers search for when they are looking for my products and services?”

The search terms you come up with will become the keywords you want your website to target. To get started, you’ll want to start with your city location and combine it with your primary product or service. For our company, our service is providing SEO to small businesses so our primary keywords are SEO Minneapolis and Minneapolis SEO.

When you put your list together, be sure to include the plural of each term as well. For example, if you are a chiropractor business in the city of Minneapolis, then a pretty good list to get started with would be:

Minneapolis Chiropractor
Minneapolis Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minneapolis
Chiropractors Minneapolis

The next step is to take your state and combine it with your product or service. You’ll also want to include the state abbreviations in these terms. You would have a list like this:

Minnesota Chiropractor
Minnesota Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minnesota
Chiropractors Minnesota
MN Chiropractor
MN Chiropractors
Chiropractor MN
Chiropractors MN

Now what you’ll want to do is put together a list that combines the city, state, and product and service. Your list would look like this:

Minneapolis MN Chiropractor
Minneapolis MN Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minneapolis MN
Chiropractors Minneapolis MN
Minneapolis Minnesota Chiropractor
Minneapolis Minnesota Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minneapolis Minnesota
Chiropractors Minneapolis Minnesota

We now have a master list of local keywords for your primary product or service. The master list is this:

Minneapolis Chiropractor
Minneapolis Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minneapolis
Chiropractors Minneapolis
Minnesota Chiropractor
Minnesota Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minnesota
Chiropractors Minnesota
MN Chiropractor
MN Chiropractors
Chiropractor MN
Chiropractors MN
Minneapolis MN Chiropractor
Minneapolis MN Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minneapolis MN
Chiropractors Minneapolis MN
Minneapolis Minnesota Chiropractor
Minneapolis Minnesota Chiropractors
Chiropractor Minneapolis Minnesota
Chiropractors Minneapolis Minnesota

Once you have your master list, you’ll go to the Google keyword tool and enter your keyword. The Google keyword tool is the definitive keyword tool on the Internet and has the added bonus of being free! After we enter our keywords we get these results:

The “local monthly searches” is the column you want to pay attention to. As you can see from the results, “chiropractor Minneapolis” and “Minneapolis chiropractor” get the most searches with 390 and 260 searches respectively. You’ll also notice that the plural versions of those keywords are the 3rd and 4th most searched terms with “chiropractor mn” rounding out the top 5.

You’ll notice some of the keywords don’t have any results. What that means is that the searches for those terms are so few that Google doesn’t even count them. That doesn’t mean you should disregard them, however, as they are still getting searched for. You just shouldn’t target them as your primary keywords.

Instead, if you are a chiropractor in Minneapolis, the home page of your website should target these primary keywords:

Chiropractor Minneapolis
Minneapolis Chiropractor
Minneapolis Chiropractors
Chiropractors Minneapolis
Chiropractor MN

If you want to target other nearby cities and suburbs, then you’ll follow the same process but just substitute “Minneapolis” with the city or suburb you want to target.

Once you have your primary keyword list, then you are ready for the next step – website optimization. Now the fun begins!