Ranking well within the business directory listings is separate to ranking within the standard organic results. Due to worldwide changes by Google to provide local listings to users based on their geographic location, ranking well within these directories is more important than ever. Most importantly, these results appear above the standard search results. On a laptop, or smaller resolution monitor, this means that the organic listings below may actually be hidden or off the page giving the local results prime position!
What these results show is that it is possible to rank well within the Local listings using a combination of simple techniques and a well thought out strategy. To find out more, you can contact Elevator and we can give you advise or help you with your listing.
Google have recently announced changes to the Google search that will change the way in which a lot of companies rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The reason for this is to improve the results for searchers when they are looking for a product or service; such as a local restaurant or company. Google local has been in use for a long time, but only normally appears when you add a geographic location or place name to the search string. The image above shows the results for the keyphrase Manchester SEO, which brings up the first 10 SEO companies that are listed in the Google business directory. Ranking within these listings is independent of standard search results, so even if you are ranked number #1 for this term, you won’t appear in the local listings unless you have worked on it specifically.
Google has now rolled out a worldwide plan to present the user with these results regardless of whether a location is entered as part of the keyphrase string or not. It determines your location from your IP address (which captures a reasonably broad location) but you also have the option to specify more specifically using some manual options. This is now making it very important to rank well within Google Local search, as these listings appear before the organic search results.
To find out more information, you can view the original post on the Google blog: Google local blog post
As part of our constantly improving offer to potential clients, Elevator SEO provides a free SEO website analysis report. This report is used to provide a basic analysis of your website, and can give a good insight into it’s current status and the level of work that would be involved in order to realistically meet your goals. The key sections it includes are:
Domain / website overview: Such as domain age, page rank, link report etc
Keyword ranking: How your site ranks in the top 3 search engines for your chosen keywords
Competitor analysis: A look at your top 10 competitors for your keywords
Initial recommendations: What you need to do in order to meet your goals
The report is completely free with absolutely no obligation. All you need to do is fill in our online form which includes your name, company (if applicable), URL, contact number, and email address. Once we have qualified your request, we will complete the analysis and send you a PDF with all the information. One of our team will also follow the report up with a phone call, to provide supporting information / clarification and explain exactly what you need to do in order to meet your goals.
To find out more you can contact Elevator by email or you can phone the office (0161 244 5544).
Google has recently announced the release of a new interface for Adwords (Adwords is Google’s PPC (pay per click) advertising scheme). As well as some nice cosmetic changes to the interface, the developers claim that they have completely re-structured the code allowing them to add future updates and additional functionality much more easily, as opposed to trying to ‘tack’ additional bits to a system that was over 6 years old.
The changes have been implemented following talks with different advertisers worldwide. The Google team have taken the feedback into account and incorporated the most popular changes. Ultimately the aim was to improve the user experience, and increase the usability of what can be a complicated system.
The latest version of Adwords see’s huge improvements in efficiency, with users being able to change keywords, bids etc with just a few clicks and without having to reload the page. Previously users could have between 5-10 clicks which included a reload of the page each time. The system aslo enables a greater level of insight by removing barriers for viewing and comparing your data.
To find out more information straight from the source, we have included this video (see below). This is one of about 7 videos released by Google, and I’m sure there will be many more to follow including tutorials of how to use the new system. Personally, we welcome the changes and more importantly, we’re looking forward to all the new functionality that could become available in the future.
Before I write this post, I must stress that I do actually like Twitter (can you see where this is going?). However, today I have must have been on about 5 different websites that have integrated Twitter and have a huge archive of their Twitter posts (or ‘Tweets’) on their homepage. As such, I had absolutely no idea what the purpose of their site was about until I clicked on through to different pages. The homepage content, which is so important from both a usability and Search Engine Optimisation perspective is now a collection of tweets, general ramblings and in some cases, just garbled messages and API key messages from Twitter.
I can see the benefit of integrating Twitter into a website, but I think it should have a section of it’s own, or at the most be simply part of the blogroll. Having it as the main content of the homepage may confuse many visitors or simply turn them away from the page which will increase bounce rate and lower the site conversions, which seem to heavily out weigh the advantages of constantly updated content.
We offer a free SEO website analysis report for everyone who would like to know more. Simple provide few details including your name, email and domain. Once verified we will analyse your site and send you a PDF of your report. Click for your Free Analysis
