GMB aka Maps Has Become More Popular Than Traditional Google Search - Is Your Profile Up to Date?

Did you know that most online search queries land on the Google My Business (MAPS) page? There you will find a brief to an expanded list of services, products and information that allows you to take in a quick but brief understanding about the company you are looking up. This is also a place to find REVIEWS to help you learn more - or you can post reviews of your own as well.

Google My Business also allows you to add a SHORT NAME of your business to make it easier for customers to find you. More and more companies are focusing on optimizing this result by understanding the strategies you can apply combining images, Q & A's, Videos and even Instant Messaging. The truth is, the more features you use, the better your results will be.

Above the Fold

Above the Fold is an old newspaper term for the upper half of the first page. The most important information in the paper appeared at the top - above the fold - so it would be visible on newsstands and boxes. Just like newspapers, the goal of most businesses is to appear ABOVE THE FOLD because that’s what will be seen on your computer screen on the first view.

The results are ORGANIC meaning the site is ranking high on its own and the position is not paid for, although paid ads can also appear in some searches.

It is proven that ONLY in this case do people avoid ads and look for the actual location whereas in traditional look ups, the paid ads do better because you can aggressively bid for position AND select what you wish to display, they are ads.

Optimizing Your Business Profile

You will need a separate Google My Business account in order to manage and optimize your Google Business Profile. It’s easy to get your Business Profile (your Google business listing) confused with Google My Business so remember that GMB is the tool you use to enhance your Business Profile in order to boost visibility and effectiveness. Optimizing your GMB profile has several benefits.

1. It helps you engage with customers

   Customers are able to interact with your Google Business Profile and you can use your GMB account to engage with them. GMB not only allows you to respond to reviews and answer questions, but you can also use it to publish posts like you would on Facebook or other social media channels.

2. It helps you highlight your business

   Your Google Business Profile contains a limited amount of information about your business but a GMB account gives you the ability to provide hours, link to your website, feature products and pricing along with other details that make your business unique.

3. It helps you gain insights

   GMB has analytics available through the profile dashboard that gives you key insights about your audience as well as your local search performance. You can see which queries customers are using to find you along with how they found you (Google Search or Google Maps) and what they do when they get to your site.

4. It helps enhance your local SEO

   Google uses algorithms for ranking Business Profiles just like it does with websites and ads. Your GMB dashboard allows you to incorporate keywords to your profile and perform other optimizations to help you rank better in local results.

Using GMB for SEO

GMB is not only an outstanding tool for optimizing your profile and expanding your reach, but it is also a great tool to help with your local SEO, here’s how:

1. By targeting your information

   It is extremely important to incorporate relevant keywords in your Business Profile so Google knows what you are trying to rank for. You should use as many as possible in the “from the business” description as well as in answers to questions, responses to reviews and the posts you publish.

2. By maintaining quality of information

   The accuracy and completeness of your Business Profile has a big impact on how it ranks, so it is important to provide as much information as you can in every section of your google profile. It is especially important to make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) are all correct, as well as your hours, attributes and relevant contact information.

3. By building trust

   Consumers prefer to do business with people they trust and GMB can help enhance your shop’s reputation with reviews AND responses that can be managed through your GMB dashboard. Regularly uploading photos and publishing posts will also help show Google that you are active.

Google My Business is quickly gaining favor as the place to be listed so it’s important to make sure your GMB Business Profile is up-to-date. SEO is important for any business, but it’s especially important for small businesses to utilize targeted marketing to compete against larger competitors with bigger budgets. Now SEO is easier than ever before with the help of GMB.

Are you trying to maximize your visibility in your local market? Bloomerang Solutions can help you show up where customers are searching. Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line below.

-Art

Neiman Marcus - Falling Short on SEO

I’m constantly looking at industry leaders and how they operate, particularly when it comes to online marketing and SEO. Most of us can only dream of the ad budgets they have to work with, but that does not mean we can’t replicate their successful formulas and scale them down for our shops. The important thing to take away is HOW they do things and WHY.

Neiman Marcus is a luxury brand who appears to do everything right – at least on the surface. I recently received an email from them and decided to see where I ended up when I clicked on their links. I was surprised to see that it was not where I expected, take a look below:

Proper creation of links and proper implementation and reciprocation is how you achieve results with SEO. The key is making sure everything connects and is informative and keeps you engaged and moves you on to the next step. If that is being done, that’s the proper SEO. It’s Important to star with content and wrap it around until it gets to the website and every step along the way needs to complement and make the experience better.

Call me anytime you’d like or email us at the link below. We’re happy to give you a free consultation and look over your website so you can understand the benefits of having strong SEO strategies on your website.

-Art

Boost Your SEO 💪 by Using Emojis in Google Searches

Emojis are a fun way of communicating 🤗 and some people even prefer them to words. But do these familiar little characters have any impact on marketing and do they provide any advantage to your SEO and PPC strategies that could help your business?
Many people don’t realize that when emojis appear in a piece of metadata, they can also be included in the title ads on Google Ads. Because of that, if you search for a specific emoji, such as “🌼 delivery near me” or you can get accurate results just like a traditional text-only search.

Using emojis in your rich snippets will help boost your page ranking in search which will increase your chances of being found by new searches. In fact, the use of emojis in your Google Ads tiles can increase your click through rate by 30%.

Using an emoji in place of text will show similar results. Searching for “🌼 hicksville” returns a #1 rating for Hicksville Flowers and a map to their shop.

In addition to boosting your web traffic, 🚗 emojis also make your business 🏪 more relatable to customers who regularly use emojis on a daily basis. They can also enhance your trust factor and make your content more relatable.

When used correctly, emojis can boost click through rates and improve your SEO. But it is important to remember that Google’s policies aren’t often clear 🤔 and their inclusion of emojis in Google Ads tiles has only happened in the past few years, so things can (and likely will) evolve as the use of emojis in search becomes more common. Because of that, it is better to consider the use of emojis as a small investment in your overall SEO strategy than to rely on them to boost rankings and increase results on their own. ❤️️

Whether you need help boosting your SEO or driving traffic to your website or social media channels, Bloomerang has the solutions to help your business thrive. From custom websites to Google Ads marketing, Bloomerang can help take your marketing to the next level. Call us today at (941) 806-1911.

Keep Customers Engaged with $20 Tuesdays and Other Online Specials

When many people buy flowers, they go to the supermarket where you can get a nice looking large bunch of flowers for about $20. But, what if there was an option for people to receive flowers from your shop - wrapped and delivered for the same $20? Who wouldn’t do that?

Despite some delays and shortages caused the coronavirus pandemic, flowers are still readily available in most areas, and the quality in supermarkets and big box retailers has greatly improved. So why should customers continue to shop with their local retail florist instead? The answer is something we all need to focus on - which is service and the ability to deliver.

When the occasion arises for a customer to consider sending flowers, we need to pull out all the stops and be sure they feel they can shop with us, the local florist. That’s why promotions like $20 Tuesdays (and $30 Thursdays) make sense, not only because they give the perception that our prices are reasonable, but also because they attract a broader customer base. You may not like this idea, and that’s fine, but where do you think those customers will go?

Most likely they will continue to search, or they will go take the extra time to pick up the bouquet at a supermarket and feel they saved so much that they have a workaround. Why give them that opportunity to leave and go away? Losing repeat customers is never worth what you hope to replace them with - we must keep customers with us.

The bottom line is that $20 Tuesdays make your shop approachable and show you are listening and affordable. We need to focus on transactions. Think about it, is it really worth losing a customer here?

Retailing in 2020 is all about connecting with customers

#1 Service

The easier you make it to order with you, the more dependent the customer
becomes on you. They depend and trust you because you have earned it.

#2 Convenience

Everyone is on their phone today. If you can keep customers directly connected to you, you reduce the chance of having them stolen online by your competitors. You can engage with them on social media and even notify them of your deals when they drive by your shop. What more could you want?

#3 Value

Value doesn't mean cheap - it means more for your money. If your customer can feel you achieve this with them then you will win the battle to earn their business and trust.

In closing, the two most obvious ways people are earning orders are online advertising and social strategies. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as Pinterest, are no longer for kids anymore. Customers use the platforms to learn more about businesses as they prepare to decide on who to use for that next big order or wedding.

Finding qualified people to run social media for your business is the greatest challenge. You wouldn't trust a kid out of high school to run your business, would you? Then why would you allow them to run your social? Leave it with professionals and judge them on how they report back to you with results from their efforts. Are they earning engagement? Well, if they are, how about orders? It's all there and growing.

Our industry is going through great change and while some shops get it, more shops don't. Don't let your competition get ahead of you. Call us and allow us to show you our GUARANTEED results packages. Guarantee means just that!

-Art

Personalized Content is Critical for Your Branding on Social Media

Facebook uses a number of factors to determine what content to show in a user's news feed. It’s typically based off multiple factors like who you follow, where you comment, and where you spend the most time on Facebook.

Another factor to be taken into consideration is Facebook’s algorithm analyzes each image posted by a page to determine the quality and who to show it to. One of the main points it looks for is a unique image taken randomly by an individual randomly instead of a stock photo that appears on many sites.

That’s why we try our best to make sure we can get custom images from florists because we know that it works much better when posting to Facebook but some either just don't find the time or don't believe it’s an important aspect of social media.

Below are just a few examples of the difference between seven shops that send us consistent photos of arrangements, classes, and everyday scenes inside their shops and seven shops that don’t send us any.

Both of these examples have close to the same amount of followers and times content is posted per week. The difference is the kind of content being posted. The more personal, original images do exceedingly better than ones we have to pull from a catalog, florists website, or a stock image library.

On the left is the total engagements for the seven shops that send us great content and images on a consistent basis. It’s almost eight times the engagement of the shops that don’t, over on the right.

This is the total impressions for both sets of shops. Impressions aren't as important as engagement but this still gives you an idea of how many eyes have been on your images. On the left is little to no images sent to us and on the right is consistent images. Another thing you can notice here is that we paid for a very similar amount of impressions but the shops that sent us personalized images did much better organically and with their virility.

We always try our best to stress the importance of providing this content to have the best reach and engagement across your social platforms and hopefully this look inside the numbers gives you a little more information on why it’s crucial on social media.

Do you need help with your social media accounts? Trust the experts at Bloomerang Solutions to keep your accounts optimized while you turn your attention to the holidays. Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line below to let us know how we can help your business bloom!