ocal SEO.

Some experts call it “a process for increasing search visibility for businesses that serve their communities face-to-face.”
Others call it: “Integrated approach to marketing for local businesses”.

Whatever the definition, SEO is all about Local Search Ranking and all the tactics, keywords and key phrase strategies that we use to get your web site showing hopefully on top, or at the very least, in the first pages of the search result.

Understanding consumer intent and meeting their needs in the moment are the keys to winning more hearts, minds, and dollars” Google

We help you Achieve Higher Google Ranking with SEO Expert Advises like these:

1- SEO build trusts

The goal of any experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a beautiful website with a clean, effective user experience.
That in terms will enhance your brand trust and credibility.

2- SEO Increases Engagement

Thanks to Mobile Search, local Search has become a fundamental part of small and medium size businesses due to increased engagement.

3- SEO Best Practices Keep Changing
The way the search world evolves, basically at the discretion of Doctor Google, requires constant monitoring for changes to stay ahead of the competition and, hopefully, on Page 1.

4- SEO Is Relatively Cheap
Sure, it costs money. All the best things do, right?
But SEO is relatively cheap compared to your brand’s benefit and your increased ROI and bottom line.

5- SEO is A Long-Term Strategy
SEO can (and hopefully does) have a noticeable impact within the first year of action being taken.
The more SEO time, effort, and budget that is committed to it, the better and longer your website stands to being a worthy contender in its market.

6- If you are Not on Page 1, You are Not Winning the Click
It’s no secret in the world of SEO that if you’re not on Page 1, you’re likely not killing the organic search game.

What are the best ways to rank and most specifically how do we get included in the 3-PACK at the top of the page in Google?
In 2015 Google changed the number of listings in the 3-Pack from 7 to 3.

• The game got much harder to play
• It is much more competitive.
• Today SEO requires much more work and getting into specifics

Pack.

The Focus is on Links and organic SEO to be found into that 3-Pack.

SEO is technically free; it is also called organic SEO.
Organic SEO may happen overtime, it is when you earn your spot under the light. It takes a huge amount of time to get there though.
-> And nowadays with almost 2 billion websites out there with few hundred thousands appearing on the internet every single month, the organic SEO technique is becoming less and less a reality.

-> The other solution?

• You do what you do best and grow your business in your community,
• You hire an SEO expert like EckCreativeMedia to help you getting noticed on the web in a relatively short time. It takes usually 6 to 12 months to see results.

In 2016 Google introduced “the Possum Update” that made it more important for users to be closer to their location.
Customized results based on proximity not just how well you are doing in SEO.

In 2018, in addition to proximity, SEO has to be based on Links and Contents more than ever.

• So even distant prospects will be able to find you.

Google localized search will show the following:

• The 3-Pack ranking
• The Directories (yelp, home advisor, Angie’s list, etc..)
• Your organic search.

In 2019 we still have the 3-Pack which will show proximity to the user but not just based on the closest results.
There are many other things that are influencing the 3-Pack, for example a sound generalized SEO that includes;

• A lot of (relevant to your activity) Links
• A lot of Back Links
• And the most important is having Reviews

Directories.

Just below the 3-Pack are Directories.

They are websites that are similar to Google ranking but with their own ranking.

• They show local businesses by categories; plumbers, electricians, lawyers, real estate agents, etc..
• Examples of Directories are Yelp, Angies’s list, Homeadvisor, Tripadvisor, etc..
• Directories rank on page one for your specific keywords, just below the 3-Pack.

We help our clients to be listed in ALL the Directories belonging to their specific category.

• Directories help with your ranking because they tell Google that you exist and you are active in your local community. They convey to Google that you are a real business.
• One of the best advantages of being listed in Directories is Back Links.

* Back Links happen when the Directories link back to your website.
They all have top Domain Authority, which is the best back link you can dream of.

• Directories are a very effective way to build your own Domain Authority and that will help with your ranking.
• Google looks at how many directories your business is listed with and also the quality of the listings.
• Being listed in Directories that are specific to your business is an important factor in being listed into the 3-Pack.

itations Building.

Just below the 3-Pack are Directories.

Citations are really important for local SEO.

• They confirm to Google where your business is located and that your business actually does exist.
• Citations are also known as NAP; name, address and phone number.
  These citations go onto directory websites; Angie’s list, Homeadvisor, yelp, etc..
• NAP Citation help with prominence.
• The more prominence you have the better you will rank with your local SEO.

We help you getting your Citations correct on the following:

1. Industry specific websites directories.
2. Your own Social profiles; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, etc..
   You will be amazed to learn how many small businesses have old addresses, old phone numbers, no websites, etc..

• We will make sure to put your location and your correct (NAP) on your Social web pages.

rganic SEO.

Immediately underneath the Directories is where an effective SEO strategy will show results. It is where Your Organic SEO will show off your brand.

• Organic SEO is based on “tried and true” Link Building
• Whether you are going for a local audience or not, your SEO strategy should be based on Link building and Content.
• Organic SEO is all about Blog Content
• Content via smart blogging, showing Google that you update your website on a regular basis with content articles relevant to your activity (weekly is the best way to rank).
• Hitting up your website at all the time with fresh and relevant content
• Don’t forget your past blogging and your past content too. Google is paying a lot of attention to that as well.

Why LOCAL SEO?

A whopping 46% of all searches in Google are for localized locations.
From that number 72% of those people visited a store or location within 5 miles.
That is crazy good SEO!
How sweet would it be to be your store and get that person ready to buy right away?

We have the right tools to get you shown in local SEO results.

Today Google is using a blended algorithm that combines:

1- Your website with its content and your approach to link building
2- Your Reviews
3- Your Proximity to location.

• You need all these things deployed at the same time to be found in the 3-Pack and have great local SEO.

Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization.Google

Today, people are not putting their geomodifiers (name of your location, neighborhood, or a city) into their searches; we don’t need to push these terms anymore.

• Google has got a lot smarter when it comes to searching
• They know where you are located

So people just have to put only what they are looking for.

Google looks at the following:

1. Who has the best Reviews?
2. What is the proximity to the searcher?
3. How user friendly is your website?
4. How are your Content and links?
5. Does your site have authority references?

We make sure that you are ranking for All those 5 factors.

• Not only the geographic location
• Like for example “Exterior House Painting in Chelmsford Massachusetts”  or “Tax Preparation in Chelmsford Massachusetts”
• But also with very generic key terms too, like
• “Exterior House Painting” or “Tax Preparation”.

 You have to get your generic key terms in your organic ranking to be found in the 3-Pack.

Local SEO Strategy

We deploy a local Link Building strategy for your website.
1- As far as Links go.

• Organic search results happen through links.
• Links are a very important part of you organic search results.
• Links are the most important SEO elements when it comes to local SEO.
• Link building strategy is key to be found in local SEO.

Then we deploy a Domain Authority Strategy.
2- Domain Authority

• You need a diversity of inbound links that already have a pretty high domain authority to your domain.
  With both strategies we work on the following:
• High Quality Links coming to your domain.
• High (and Relevant) Domain Authority of the websites coming to your website. The Authority of these websites has to be very high.
• Diversity of Domains coming to your website (Back Links) is also a priority.

Back linking Strategy is having other websites linking back to your website as an authority or a resource page.

• The more you get authority references going to your site the more trust Google is going to give to your site.
  This will help your domain authority and helps you to be found for the particular keywords you are using in your content.

This helps you be found in the 3-Pack, directory listings and organic search results.

On-page SEO strategy is all about relevance.
Topical relevance of your website has to be a priority.

• If your website is about accounting we make sure that the terms “accounting”, “CPA”, “Tax Preparation”, “IRS” etc.. are within the met-tags in the title descriptors.
• On the other hand you don’t want the word “CPA” smashed everywhere on your site and being spammed by Google.
• We make sure that your keywords are located in places that make sense in your website.
• We strictly follow Google’s guidance as far as how many keywords should be listed.

On-page SEO strategy is all about Loading Speed

Behavioral research on internet users shows that most people will leave any webpage if it does not load within 3 seconds.
Google knows exactly how long your page takes to load and it will affect your ranking tremendously.
We can help with that too. We look at the following:

• The Load time of your website with its performance grade.
• If it is Less than 3 seconds, Golden
• If it s between 3 to 5 seconds -> You are still OK but we need to look at it and help you.
• More than 5 seconds -> You are grounded. You are in trouble.
• We look also at the amount of HTTP Requests
• The Compress components with gzip
• the DNS Lookups
  .

On-page SEO strategy is all about website being Mobile Friendly

In 2019 more than half of the internet searches take place on Mobil Devices. Google today is penalizing any websites that is not loading optimally on Mobil devices.
They even penalize websites on desktop that are not Mobil friendly.
Today is the day that you definitely want to make sure that your site is loading properly on smatphones and even tablets.
Yes, you guessed right. We can help you with that and tell you if your website is Mobil Friendly.

We will run a test and even tell you if you have any pages with loading issues.
We run a comprehensive test of your website and give you the following feedback:
1- Is your site Mobile Friendly?
2- If your test Fails:
– Maybe Your text is too small
– Maybe Your text is too large
– Your images are too large
– Your Content is Wider that the screen
– Maybe Clickable elements are too close to each other, etc..
We take out the guess work and save you time.

logging Strategy.

Google is looking at 2 things:

• Authority coming to the websites that are linked to you
• Authoritative content on your website.

That means Blogging! Blogging! Blogging!
Blogging and having authoritative content on your website is the problem with most local businesses.

• They just don’t do it.
• Why would they? It did not make sense before.
  -> But it does now.
• Having traditional on-page SEO is good.
• Having your NAP citations squared away is good
• But it is not going to get you when you need to be in 2020 when it comes to local SEO
• You need to focus on other aspects of SEO.
• You need to focus on Blogging.

Blogging and relevant content are always going to be the most important foundation when it comes to your local SEO strategy.
Why is content so important to your website?

• Because it tells Google what your website is about.
• It shows that you care about your visitors by putting relevant information that they are looking for.
• In fact it makes Google’s job easier to point the right visitors to the right website.
• Google wants the best answer to their users query.
• They are going to point to websites that have a lot of useful information on them.
• In Google’s matrix that means you really care about your customers.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND REVIEWS STRATEGY

1- We optimize all your Social and Review profiles.
Google rewards branding over anything else.

• The more your business shows up in Social Media and Reviews, the bigger your brand becomes.
• And the more Google start seeing you as a brand the more love you’ll get from Google.

2- We make sure that you claim all the best Social Media Platforms like Facebook, Linked, Youtube, Google my Business, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

3- We help you to claim your business on any relevant Review Sites proper to your own business like Yelp, Homeadvisor, etc..

• You should be listed at least in 1 review site for your specific industry.
• We help you with your profile, we make sure it is updated and complete with fresh content, many high quality images and even videos.

Google My Business (GMB) Strategy

This is one of the most important strategies in your Local SEO arsenal.
And yet very few of local business owners use this incredible digital marketing tool.
The irony is that it is completely FREE!

• This is your page on Google that is reaffirming that you exist.
• We put your correct address, your name, your contact information, your website, pictures of your office, pictures of the interior of your business and your employees.
• We post your articles and pictures on a regular basis.

With GMB you show Google that you are really invested in your online presence that means you care more about your users

Reviews Strategy

You are more likely to go eat Sushi to a place with a 5 out of 5 Reviews then a 1 out of 5 Sushi place. Right?
1- Getting Reviews is important but Commenting on the Reviews that you get is even more important. (And I am talking about Good reviews and bad reviews).

• We will help you with all the different responses.

2- GMB Reviews is where your reviews will be showing.
3- Reviews help you to get into the 3-Pack.
4- People like to read reviews before they commit to a product or a service. In fact more than 88% of consumers trust online reviews!
5- You Reviews displayed on GMB is another aspect of Google wanting to give their users the best experience possible on the web.
Google can’t try out all the pizza places or the Sushi restaurants in all the country themselves. So they rely on Reviews.

Regarding prominence and reviews, Google said the following:

Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking…”
”… more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business’s local ranking..” Google.

Based on high number of positive reviews people are deciding which product or services they are buying without even clicking.
So Reviews are extremely important to drive people to your website.
More local traffic, more CTR, better Local SEO ranking.
How do you get Reviews?
Ask your customers for reviews.
Put a Google Review request link into your website (show castlecomplements.com), in your store, in your digital business card, etc..
When someone writes you an email with positive feedback ask them to post their feedback on Google for you. Send them a Google link.
9 times out of 10, people will do that for you.
The more reviews you can get, the better.
Ask for them.
Don’t be afraid to ask!

ontent Strategy.

Content has evolved to a more sophisticated level nowadays.
In the past a targeting key phrase would be “Tax Preparation CPA Accountant Chelmsford, Massachusetts” and another page for “Tax Preparation CPA Accountant company in Chelmsford”. Pages would be stuffed with “CAP Accountant” over and over again.

• Again, today Google is much smarter and can determine quickly the main topic of a page.
• This old way is now considered “spammy” in the Google’s eyes.
• Google knows all the relevant words to be expected for a particular topic.
  For example accountants would create a page for “Tax Preparation” and another for “Bookkeeping”.

Today we use “Tax Preparation” a couple of times per page, that’s it!
* Only once in the headline
* and once as a subtitle in the first paragraph.

• Rather than stuffing the page with tons of similar keywords like before, today we write about closely related keywords like “Tax Help”, “Certified Public Accountant”, “tax return”, “IRS”, etc..
  Google expects to see these words in your content today.
• By using the keywords that everyone would expect to see for a specific topic related to you activity;
• You signal to Google that your content goes deep and is worth reading.
• You are doing a thorough job in covering whatever topic you want to disseminate out there.

Today we help you optimizing your Landing Pages by searches for any Topic that you want to blog about.
We run a comprehensive Keyword analysis for the keyword phrases that you want to rank for.
For that, before writing your article;

• You send us ideas of titles that you want to use.
• We do a multi-level Research to come up with the top volume keyword phrases for the best tile for your article.
• We even do a volume search Analysis on your titles themselves.
  * We don’t guess.
  * This gives a much better idea on the best titles to choose from based on the volume search.

2- Level of Interest Strategy

We also look at the number of impressions for that topic you want to blog for.
We let you know if it is a hot topic, with high level of impressions, or something that very few are interested in.

When all the analysis is done; content, keyword, search volume, and impression;

• Your article gets finally listed.
• Once it is listed we don’t’ want all of our hard work to go to waste, don’t we?
• That is where Listing Presentation comes to place.

3- Listing Presentation Strategy

For each listing on Google there is a Title and a Meta Description.
1- As we talked about earlier we want to make sure that you are using the Keywords or phrases that we came up with after studying the topic you wanted to blog about.
You don’t want to use your business name and the city like “ABC CPA Tax Preparation in Chelmsford, Massachusetts” (Google is smarter now)

• We make your listing title relevant to the searchers.
• You don’t want to waste your title by using the wrong keywords;
• e your city or your business name alone.
• We use power/action words and convey the benefit to the searchers -> the solution to their problems.

4- Dwell Time Strategy (One of the top 200 Search Criteria released in 2019)

Google uses over 200 ranking factors, and Dwell time is one of them.
Google is calling “Dwelling” the amount of time people stay on your page or the amount of time people dwell on your site.
The longer searchers stick around your page or your site, the more you keep people around, the more Google will start rewarding your site with higher ranking in search results.

Quote “Your goal should be that when a visitor lands on your page, the content answers all of their needs, encouraging their next action to remain with you.”  End Quote – Duane Forester, Senior Project manager at Bing, August, 2^nd, 2011

Your visitor’s engagement and their experience they are having while on your site are keys to Dwelling.

1- How do you keep visitors engaged and sticking around?

Well, we make sure that people coming to your site know exactly what you are offering within 3 seconds of landing.
– That means avoid over technical jargon
– Don’t try to be overly cleaver.

• Adopt Clarity (that is where our expertise in UX plays to the max).
  Imagine a visitor coming to your site for the first time knowing absolutely nothing about what it is that you are offering.
  Would you work on your content to be crystal clear right away? Of course you would.

2- How do you improve your UX (or User Experience)?

We make your site very appealing and accessible.
We know that visitors don’t read most of the time when they are looking for a product or service.

• They first scan you site.

So we make sure to add a lot of professional looking images and short descriptive (how tos) video clips.
We make your site fluid, with titles, subtitles, small paragraphs easy to scan, etc..
We use proper and Google required web formatting techniques which involves the following:

• The use of title sizes; H2, and H1
• The use of text broken down in smaller paragraphs
• Limited amount of words in each paragraph
• Bullet list
• Table of contents
• We use bold an italic to highlight important pieces of information.