SEO: Why Your Philadelphia Business Needs it

By Brian Brown / No Comment

Did you know that according to SEO Tribunal, about 78% of location-specific searches made through mobile phones resulted in an offline purchase, and that 97% of consumers learn more about a local business via online channels than from any other medium? If there’s anything that these statistics prove, it is that local searches can potentially bring in a good number of sales as well as serve as an incredible means to boost the brand awareness of a business, provided that you exploit the local market.

The most effective way to tap into your local market is to implement a local SEO strategy in order to make your business more discoverable and accessible to the local people that are looking for it. With that said, this article will walk you through what local SEO is as well as the major benefits of local SEO for businesses in Philadelphia.

Local SEO – What Does It Mean?

Local SEO is an inventive digital marketing tactic that does not have an official definition; however, various businesses and agencies have put forward their own descriptions of this marketing strategy. For instance, Moz describes local SEO as a technique designed and implemented for the sole purpose of increasing the search visibility of business that offer face-to-face services to the people of their community.

It could be a brick-and-mortar business having a physical facility, for instance, or a business and firms operating in a specific geographic region. Another definition of local SEO is a marketing strategy that provides search results that are relevant to a consumer depending on their location.

To put it simply, local SEO is a subset of SEO marketing that focuses primarily on enhancing the local Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking of a business to make the business more discoverable to people located in or near the area where the business is located.

Local search engine optimization is very similar to traditional SEO writing, with the exception that the keywords employed this time are focused more on the location of the business and contain the name of the city, state, or town in which the business is located.

In summary, local SEO employs a variety of tactics to help your company rank higher in local searches. Local searches basically imply the search for any product or business in a specific area. This, for example, applies when a user enters a particular location in their searches. For example, the best digital marketing agency in Philadelphia.

Local SEO Philadelphia – Why Businesses in Philadelphia Should Care about Local SEO

If you already have an organic SEO strategy in motion, you may wonder as to why you should employ a local SEO strategy for your Philadelphia located business. Were you aware of the fact that 46% of all searches made on Google are local searches?

This means that out of an estimated 5.6 billion searches made on Google each day, over 2.5 billion searches are for local businesses and services. This means that by neglecting the implementation of a local SEO strategy for your Philadelphia located business; you’re missing out on nearly half of your potential customers and hence nearly half of the profits.

Still not convinced? Here are some major benefits of implementing local SEO in your business’ marketing strategy:

Enhanced Foot Traffic to Your Physical Outlet, Store, or Facility

A majority of foot traffic that any business gets is from the people that reside in the vicinity of the business or in a close-by area. This means that making your business more discoverable to the people of your locality is one of the most effective ways to get more foot traffic to your physical outlets, storefronts, offices, or facilities.

When a consumer makes a Google search for a certain type of business in their area, the search engine algorithm returns a list of top-ranking companies that match their criteria based on the keyword they entered. This algorithm considers a number of parameters and has a significant impact on what people see in search results.

As a result, the top-ranking companies appear in both local organic search results and Google Maps, where users can click to learn more about the business, get directions to the business, and access more details related to the business, such as the phone number and opening and closing times. The ease of availability of such information familiarizes the consumer with the business making them more inclined towards selecting and visiting such a business over a competitor they know nothing about.

In fact, a business without a local SEO strategy may not even be a consideration for the local consumers as the likelihood of them not being aware of the business increases. To put this into a better perspective, a study shows that 72% of the people who made a local search actually visited a store or business they found within 5 miles of their own location.

In a nutshell, if your business incorporates local SEO in its marketing strategy, you enhance the likelihood of being found by potential local clients who can then use your physical address and other vital information available on Google Maps to visit your facility. The better the strategy, the higher you’ll be ranked, and hence a greater number of people in your vicinity will visit your business.

Excellent Conversion Rates

Having ample online and foot traffic will do you no good if your lead conversion rates are poor. Conversion rate essentially means changing a lead into a sale or a potential customer into a customer by persuading them into buying your product or service.

Needless to say, the profitability of a business largely relies on the traffic it receives as well as how high the conversion rates are. You may be surprised to learn that local SEO strategy offers some of the best lead conversion rates of any marketing strategy.

Speaking in numbers, it has been found that around 28% of purchases are a result of local searches. This can be due to the fact that a majority of people have this pre-programmed belief that any business with a high SERP rank is one that is reliable and an authority in their respective field of business.

This trustworthy and authoritative persona means that consumers are less critical and reluctant toward high-ranking businesses and are, therefore, easier to turn into sales.

Optimized User Experience

The quality of your business’ website is a crucial ranking criterion used by search engine algorithms in determining a SERP rank for a website. According to the Search Engine Journal, evolutions in the Google search engine algorithm have allowed Google to distinguish between pleasant or bad user experiences.

When a user conducts a search, they expect a quick and succinct response. If a user encounters a poorly optimized website, such as mobile incompatibility or never-ending popups, the user is likely to leave the site within seconds. When a user leaves a website too quickly, Google interprets this as an indication of a poor user experience and that the website does not deliver value to its visitors.

As a result, the Google search engine algorithm allocates a low SERP rank to websites with high bounce rates.

Knowing this, one can begin to understand the connection between an effective local SEO strategy and the user experience. Executing a well-crafted local SEO strategy requires you to optimize and improve the quality of your business website in order to achieve a high SERP rank. Doing so directly makes the user experience more fluid and enjoyable, which translates to better value for visitors and, in turn, higher lead conversion rates.

Offers Highly Targeted and Quality Leads

Using generic keywords such as “best digital marketing agency” or “best lawyer” generates not only a high volume of searches but also scales up the competition by biding your business against a greater number of competitors, some of which may even be more dominant and established on the global or national scale.

Furthermore, if you’re a small business offering your services or products in only your area, using generic keywords also means that you could attract irrelevant leads that are situated outside your operational zone.

Therefore, while organic SEO is an immensely effective lead-generating marketing strategy in its own right, it, however, is not suitable for a small business aspiring to compete and capture the relevant market in its own locality.

On the contrary, implementing local SEO by using long-tail, area-specific keywords can help you reach out to a highly targeted audience segment that is relevant to your field of business and is also situated in the close vicinity of your business.

This means lower competition as well as higher-quality leads and hence better conversion rates and profitability.

Helps Form a Community

Having a solid community is one of the best leverages you could have over your competitors. First of all, having a certain number of devoted supporters means that you can count on having a fixed number of sure sales each year and on each product launch.

Additionally, communities are excellent channels for free and effective advertisement in which your supporters promote news and events related to your business, such as product launches and any flash deals or sales you might have out on your services and product line, on their social media profiles.

Not to forget, communities tend to expand over time through word-of-mouth marketing where each community member will introduce as well as put in a good word for your business before their friends, family, and associates leading to increased brand awareness.

Having more local backlinks is not only a wonderful strategy to improve your ranking, but it also paves the way to mutually beneficial professional partnerships.

Local SEO Provides 24/7 Promotion

Local SEO, in fact, SEO in general, is a marketing technique based on search engines. As such, SEO strategies remain effective for as long as search engines are being used, and since we all know that search engines do not have a set number of working hours during which they are active, neither do local SEO strategies.

This means that whenever a consumer uses a search engine to make a search about a business related to your field and located in your area, your local SEO strategy will play its part, whatever time of day or day of the week it is, to help your business rank higher on local search listings.

Furthermore, since local SEO is a free marketing strategy, you don’t have to worry about your marketing budget running dry and terminating your SEO strategy, as would be the case for a paid marketing strategy such as social media marketing. This aspect of local SEO makes it an ideal marketing tactic for businesses in Philadelphia that are low on marketing budget.

SEO is unique in that it allows your business to reach users while they are looking for you, rather than on a billboard on the way in or out of town.

Offers a Great Return on Investment (ROI)

When assessing the viability of any marketing approach, return on investment (ROI) is one of the top considerations, if not the most important.

Being a free marketing technique, local SEO requires little to no investment. Additionally, while results of local SEO may be relatively slow, they are consistent and high-yielding compared to many other marketing strategies.

Reports show that the closing rate for leads generated by search engines is 14.6%. Traditional marketing tactics such as cold calling and direct mailing, on the other hand, only get a 1.7 percent close rate, which is roughly 12% lower than SEO marketing. Moreover, businesses ranked on the first results page on Google receive 33% of the entire search engine traffic.

Increased search engine exposure directly improves internet traffic and net revenue, making ROI one of the most significant benefits of local SEO.

However, businesses in Philadelphia will only be able to reap the benefits of local SEO if they are ranked on the first results page of Google and other search engines. Low-ranking websites that get listed on the second page or after hardly get any leads.

Local SEO Philadelphia – Contact a Professional

The first step to growing your business to a national or even an international scale is to build a solid foundation in your local market. 92% of consumers choose businesses that are ranked on the first page of local searches. This means that a high SERP ranking for local searches is vital, especially for locally operating businesses, to capture a sizeable share in their local market.

It is important to note, however, that local SEO is a constantly evolving marketing technique consisting of a variety of elements, all of which need to be perfected in order to execute a well-crafted strategy. Doing so requires experience and thorough knowledge of the industry, which is why businesses in Philadelphia should seek out the assistance of a professional digital marketing agency in Philadelphia, such as Philly Online Marketing.

They have years of experience helping clients devise custom marketing tactics tailored specifically to their business requirements and niche, and are qualified to provide a range of digital marketing services to all kinds of businesses.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia – Why Businesses in Philadelphia Need It

By Brian Brown / No Comment

There are more businesses in Philadelphia than ever before. In fact, 99.7% of Philadelphia’s economy comprises small businesses. While this means more choices for the consumer, it also means that businesses in Philadelphia have to face an ever greater number of competitors. As a result, businesses in Philadelphia have been employing more and more digital marketing strategies in an effort to gain an edge over their competitors.

Digital marketing is an enormous world consisting of hundreds of different marketing tactics, with search engine optimization (SEO) being one of the most important ones. As a matter of fact, the effectiveness of a large number of marketing strategies largely depends on how good your SEO writing is.

Furthermore, the quality of your SEO can likely be the deciding factor between the succeeding or failing of your business in Philadelphia. Knowing this, it is difficult to describe the importance of SEO for a business in Philadelphia, but we’ll try to do it regardless.

Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia – What Does It Entail?

Search engine optimization, more commonly known by its abbreviation “SEO,” is a digital marketing tactic that involves optimizing your business website and the content published on it in an attempt to make your website more visible to search engines and hence consumers when they search for your business-related services or products.

Making your website more visible to search engines means improving your business website’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking. This is done so that when someone searches for a product or service related to your business, your website is among the first results the person is presented with. This helps direct more organic traffic to your website, which directly leads to better conversion rates and profitability.

SEO for a Business in Philadelphia – How Does It Work?

The search algorithms are designed to present the users with only authoritative, relevant pages and offer them an efficient search experience. Therefore, search engines such as Bing and Google use complex algorithms, also called bots or spiders, to go from one website to another and evaluate the content published on them to determine if they are relevant to the keyword entered by the user.

All the relevant website links are then compiled in an index which can be perceived as a virtual library that holds website links instead of books. Thereafter, the algorithm uses various ranking factors to establish a SERP rank for each website in the index and then lists them on the results page in the order of their SERP ranks.

SEO essentially focuses on improving these rank determining attributes of your website, which a search engine factors in when allocating ranks to websites in the index. Following are some of the ranking factors used by search engines to determine a SERP rank for a website:

How secure and accessible is your website.
How quick is the loading speed of your website. This includes page loading speeds on cellphones as well.
Whether or not your website is compatible with a cellphone, as most of the online searches are made through cellphones. In fact, 61%of organic searches are made through cell phones.
Domain Age, URL, and Authority.
Is the content well optimized with relevant keywords naturally integrated into it.
Technical SEO.
How fluid is the user experience.
Links to other relevant and authoritative sources of information.

Unlike search engine marketing (SEM), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, or any other form of paid marketing strategy, with SEO, you can’t pay the search engines to get a higher SERP ranking, and that is why SEO is known as an organic way of marketing.

This means that in order to get your website in the top result ranks, optimizing your website and its content is your only viable option. Doing so can help your website rank higher in the search results and allow you to reap the many benefits of SEO.

Benefits of SEO for Businesses in Philadelphia

Makes Your Business in Philadelphia Look More Credible

Consumers have this preprogrammed persona that compels them to believe that any website and hence business that ranks high on the results page of a search engine is more credible, authoritative, and therefore reliable.

This helps you earn the trust of your potential customers allowing you to not only get more organic traffic to your website but also retain users. This essentially means that the next time the user needs services, products, or even just information related to your business’s niche, they’ll search specifically for your business instead of doing a general search.

It Is a Highly Cost-Effective Approach

Cost-effectiveness is one of the most significant benefits of SEO for businesses in Philadelphia. As discussed above, a majority of Philadelphia’s economy comes from small businesses that, as knowledge and experience tell us, do not have a considerable marketing budget. As such, paid marketing strategies such as social media marketing or PPC are not always a possibility for many of the small businesses in Philadelphia.

Fortunately, SEO is an immensely cost-effective marketing tactic and can even be free if you do it yourself. As discussed above, SEO largely relies on the quality of your website, which includes everything from the content published on it to its compatibility on cellphones. Provided that you have the required skills and knowledge, you can optimize your website yourself to get it a higher rank on the search engine results page without incurring any cost.

To take fully exploit the potential of your SEO strategy, first, spend some time assessing the content on higher-ranking websites in your field of business and then try to create even better content. However, it is important to note that SEO writing can be a very time-consuming task and is far from being as straightforward as it sounds. Therefore, to effectively execute SEO for a business in Philadelphia, it is recommended to seek professional assistance.

It Supports Content Marketing

The content on your website is a major element of your SEO strategy. As we know, SEO marketing involves optimizing your website’s content in an attempt to make it more discoverable to your target audience through search engines. As such, it is your content into which your SEO writing gets integrated, so this marketing strategy cannot exist without relevant content.

It is clear that content marketing and SEO work hand-in-hand, but how does SEO for a business in Philadelphia support its content? In order to have an effective SEO strategy, having well-written and refined content is mandatory. This means that you cannot improve one without the other, and so your SEO strategy also helps you improve your content marketing strategy. Having good content, in turn, can offer more benefits to your business in Philadelphia.

It is important that the content is interesting, educational, relevant, and not too obvious in its purpose to advertise your business. Some common forms of content include:

Social media posts
Videos
Podcasts
How-to guides
Blogs
eBooks

SEO Offers Incredible ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is typically a top criterion, if not the most essential when evaluating the feasibility of any digital marketing strategy. While SEO strategy can take some time to generate results, a high-quality plan and execution will eventually pay off handsomely.

Leads originating from search engines have a close rate of 14.6%. In contrast, traditional marketing strategies such as cold calling and direct mailing only offer a 1.7% close rate, nearly 12% lower than SEO marketing. However, note that if your website is listed on the second page or after, leads will be scarce.

The first Google result, on the other hand, obtains 33% of all search engine traffic. Greater online traffic and revenue are directly dependent on increased search engines visibility, making ROI one of the most important benefits of SEO for your business in Philadelphia.

SEO Offers High-Quality Web Traffic and Increases Organic Discovery

SEO provides enhanced organic visibility for your business website. This results in greater web traffic and hence increased leads, making it one of the biggest benefits of SEO. SEO marketing is Customer-centric and hyper-targeted strategy. This means that a well-developed SEO strategy will help deliver your website and content to the relevant audience segment.

Organic exposure drives high-quality traffic to your website without having to charm or persuade the user because the customer is already looking for what you have to offer. This means better lead conversion rates and, therefore, greater revenues and profits.

It Maximizes PPC Campaigns

SEO and Paid (PPC) marketing tactics complement each other perfectly. PPC campaigns help your website rank higher among the paid ad search results. Meanwhile, SEO helps your website rank among the top organic search results.

Having your website appear among the top search engine results in both the paid and unpaid categories strengthens your brand’s image and testifies that you aren’t just paying your way to the top. Additionally, using an SEO strategy can help reinforce your PPC strategy as well. For instance, if your PPC campaigns have already placed you among the top ranks of a search engines results page, backing your PPC campaign with SEO may get you to rank even higher.

SEO Provides 24/7 Promotion

Your search engine optimization strategy does not have any specified working hours only during which it will be active. Nor does your website and content stop competing for a high SERP rank when your marketing budget is exhausted, as it does with paid marketing.

On the contrary, SEO rankings advertise your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, taking full advantage of the 60,000 or more Google searches that are made every second. This is especially beneficial for businesses in Philadelphia that are aiming to build a global customer base or community. Once again, SEO is unique in that it allows your business to reach users while they are looking for you, rather than on a billboard on the way in or out of town.

It Helps You Rank Better in Local Searches

With the advent of smart home systems such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa, as well as with the integration of smart assistants into cellphones, local searches such as “locksmiths near me” are becoming increasingly common. According to a report, nearly 60% of searches are made through smartphones, with more than half being local searches.

Furthermore, nearly 80% of local searches made through smartphones result in successful lead conversions. Employing local SEO tactics can assist you in reeling these ready-to-buy consumers. Creating a Google My Business (GMB) account is the first step in implementing a local SEO strategy. Thereafter, request your existing customers and clients to give feedback on your services and products.

Make sure you have the correct name, phone number, and address in your listings. Also, make sure your listing is optimized for voice search, which requires composing rich and interesting content tailored around a conversational tone that answers the typical questions a user might have. Other stages include thinking about your local keywords and creating entries in local company directories.

SEO Optimizes User Experience

User experience is an important part of SEO and a key ranking factor used by search engines. According to the Search Engine Journal, Google acquired the ability to identify a good or unpleasant user experience.

A user expects a quick and concise response to their search. If met with a poorly optimized website, such as never-ending popups or mobile incompatibility, the user is likely to depart from the site within moments. High bounce rates implicate that the website does not provide value to the viewer, leading to a lower SERP rank.

Implementing an SEO strategy requires you to optimize your website’s user experience, which means better value for the viewers, which often leads to better lead conversion rates.

Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia – Call a Professional

The dominance of digital technology in this day and age is irrefutable. Businesses in Philadelphia that want to build a solid brand image must have a prominent online presence. If you’re not on the first page of a search engine’s results page, you’re not winning any clicks and are losing out on a great portion of your market. The benefits of SEO make it an essential element for establishing a brand identity. As such, your business in Philadelphia should employ this tactic at all costs.

However, digital marketing, especially SEO, is a complicated world to navigate without the guidance of experts. There are numerous things that go into an effective SEO strategy, and getting each of them right can be quite difficult, especially for small businesses in Philadelphia. Therefore, you should seek the assistance of Philly Online Marketing they have years of experience serving the industry and therefore have the skillset and expertise to execute a flawless SEO strategy for your business in Philadelphia. Need more info on SEO Click Here

Search Engine Optimization

What Is Local SEO and How Does It Help Your Business?

By / No Comment

SEO marketing is founded on the basis of a few key elements which all work together in helping your business prosper. Among these key elements is a marketing tactic known as Local SEO, which, surprisingly, very few people seem to know about. This article will take you through what Local SEO is and how it can benefit your business.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a branch of SEO marketing that focuses on improving the ranking of your business on the local search results page in order to make your business more discoverable for your local audience. Generally, local search engine optimization is quite similar to your conventional SEO writing, with the exception that the keywords used this time are centered more around the locality of the business.

In summary, this technique employs a variety of tactics to help your company rank higher in local searches. Local searches basically imply the search for any product or business in a specific area. This, for example, applies when a user enters a particular location in their searches. For instance, you search for the best pizza place in Philadelphia.

Why is Local SEO Important?

A major portion of Google and other search engine results are local searches. By not employing local SEO in your marketing strategy, you aren’t even marketing to a huge portion of your relevant audience.

Using this marketing tactic has become ever more important in today’s day and age due to the widespread popularity of smartphones. This is so because searches made using smartphones are mostly local, where the user is often searching for a restaurant, hotel, or hospital in their local area.

Benefits of Local SEO

Builds a Community

Building a community is one advantage you could have over your competitors. Having a solid community means that you can expect to have a certain number of surefire sales. Additionally, communities tend to expand through word-of-mouth marketing, meaning increased brand awareness for your business.

Having more local backlinks is not only a wonderful strategy to improve your ranking, but it also paves the way to mutually beneficial professional partnerships.

Local Return Customers

Residents of your locality are unlikely to travel to a faraway business to fulfill the needs that can be catered to by another business located much closer to them. This means that once your local community becomes aware of your business, they are much more likely to become your regular customers to support the local economy.

Build Trust and Authority

Consumers have this pre-programmed belief that a business ranking high on the local searches will have been evaluated by google and will therefore be reliable.

Gaining a prominent position on the results page will help persuade your audience into trusting your brand. This prominent position also portrays a perception of authority and experience in your field, thereby compelling them to choose you over others.

Reduced Marketing Costs

Organic traffic has surpassed any other type of audience in value and profitability. A well-executed local SEO strategy will bring in large amounts of local organic traffic, eliminating or reducing the necessity of paid advertising. As you improve your ranking, you will be able to use Google as a free advertisement for your business, resulting in more useful hits than a paid ad. This will allow you to save capital that otherwise would have been spent on paid ads.

Concluding Thoughts

There is still much more to be said and discussed when it comes to SEO. However, one thing is quite clear; SEO is a complicated strategy, and therefore to properly execute it, you need the assistance of a professional digital marketing service. Philly Online Marketing is a Philadelphia-based digital marketing service with a team of industry veterans specializing in all things digital marketing. For more details, visit their website.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization – The Backbone of Digital Marketing

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Since the dawn of the digital age, businesses in Philadelphia have been increasingly embracing digital marketing strategies. If you are one of these businesses, you will surely have come across the term SEO marketing. It is a complicated marketing strategy, but one that is crucial for your business to thrive or even survive in this day and age. This article will equip you with all the basics you need to know about this marketing tactic.

What is SEO Marketing?

SEO is a complex and multifaceted marketing process that makes your website more visible on the search engine results page by increasing its SERP ranking. This directly leads to more organic online traffic because naturally, people tend to click on what appears on the first few slots of their search results.

More traffic essentially means more potential customers hence increased profitability. Furthermore, a high SERP ranking also improves your brand awareness. It helps your business appear more of an authority in the industry, thereby allowing you to earn the trust of your relevant audience.

Crucial Elements That Make Up SEO Marketing

Keywords

Keywords can be described as words and short phrases that people use when searching for something online. Keywords are also an effective way for businesses to connect with prospects searching for a product related to their field.

A great SEO practice revolves around well-researched keywords. When looking for keywords, it’s crucial to look for ones with low competition and high search rates. Also, try to integrate all three types of keywords into your content which are as follows:

short-tail keywords (such as socks),
long-tail keywords (such as red stripe Christmas socks)
local keywords (such as Christmas socks for sale in Philadelphia)

Content

To put it simply, SEO marketing can be described as the optimization of your content to make it more discoverable to relevant people through search engines. Your content is what SEO gets integrated into, and so without relevant content, this marketing strategy cannot exist.

For example, a sports shop owner wanting to improve their visibility will publish content covering different topics which are relevant to their business, for instance, best baseball bats or best swimming trunks. SEO will make it so that when people search for anything related to sports, their business webpage is among the first search results that pop up on their screens.

It is important that the content is interesting, educational, relevant, and not too obvious in its purpose to advertise your business. Some common forms of content include:

Videos
Blogs
How-to guides
Listicles
Podcasts
Social media posts

Off-Page SEO

External content optimization that takes place outside of your site is referred to as off-page SEO.

Back-linking is the most common off-page SEO approach since high-quality backlinks make your site appear more valuable to search engines helping you develop authority and improve your ranking.

Local SEO

Local SEO is another important element of SEO marketing that helps your business become more discoverable through a better SERP ranking for local search results. For instance, suppose you’re a restaurant business. When a person searches for restaurants in Philadelphia, local SEO will make it so that your business site is among the first results the user is presented with.

Benefits of SEO Marketing

Following are some of the main benefits of good SEO writing:

More traffic hence better lead conversion rate
Enhanced business awareness
Improved profitability
Authoritative image for business
It helps earn prospect’s trust

Wrapping It Up!

The somewhat complicated nature of SEO marketing makes it challenging for a novice to navigate its waters, and that is why you need the assistance of an experienced digital marketing agency such as Philly Online Marketing. They have been providing digital marketing services in the city of Philadelphia for many years. Their team comprises industry veterans, ensuring you get to avail the very best services. For more details, visit their website.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO Why Your Philadelphia Business Needs It

By creative / No Comment

Did you know that according to SEO Tribunal, about 78% of location-specific searches made through mobile phones resulted in an offline purchase, and that 97% of consumers learn more about a local business via online channels than from any other medium? If there’s anything that these statistics prove, it is that local searches can potentially bring in a good number of sales as well as serve as an incredible means to boost the brand awareness of a business, provided that you exploit the local market.

The most effective way to tap into your local market is to implement a local SEO strategy in order to make your business more discoverable and accessible to the local people that are looking for it. With that said, this article will walk you through what local SEO is as well as the major benefits of local SEO for businesses in Philadelphia.

Local SEO – What Does It Mean?

Local SEO is an inventive digital marketing tactic that does not have an official definition; however, various businesses and agencies have put forward their own descriptions of this marketing strategy. For instance, Moz describes local SEO as a technique designed and implemented for the sole purpose of increasing the search visibility of business that offer face-to-face services to the people of their community.

It could be a brick-and-mortar business having a physical facility, for instance, or a business and firms operating in a specific geographic region. Another definition of local SEO is a marketing strategy that provides search results that are relevant to a consumer depending on their location.

To put it simply, local SEO is a subset of SEO marketing that focuses primarily on enhancing the local Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking of a business to make the business more discoverable to people located in or near the area where the business is located.

Local search engine optimization is very similar to traditional SEO writing, with the exception that the keywords employed this time are focused more on the location of the business and contain the name of the city, state, or town in which the business is located.

In summary, local SEO employs a variety of tactics to help your company rank higher in local searches. Local searches basically imply the search for any product or business in a specific area. This, for example, applies when a user enters a particular location in their searches. For example, the best digital marketing agency in Philadelphia.

Local SEO Philadelphia – Why Businesses in Philadelphia Should Care about Local SEO

If you already have an organic SEO strategy in motion, you may wonder as to why you should employ a local SEO strategy for your Philadelphia located business. Were you aware of the fact that 46% of all searches made on Google are local searches?

This means that out of an estimated 5.6 billion searches made on Google each day, over 2.5 billion searches are for local businesses and services. This means that by neglecting the implementation of a local SEO strategy for your Philadelphia located business; you’re missing out on nearly half of your potential customers and hence nearly half of the profits.

Still not convinced? Here are some major benefits of implementing local SEO in your business’ marketing strategy:

Enhanced Foot Traffic to Your Physical Outlet, Store, or Facility

A majority of foot traffic that any business gets is from the people that reside in the vicinity of the business or in a close-by area. This means that making your business more discoverable to the people of your locality is one of the most effective ways to get more foot traffic to your physical outlets, storefronts, offices, or facilities.

When a consumer makes a Google search for a certain type of business in their area, the search engine algorithm returns a list of top-ranking companies that match their criteria based on the keyword they entered. This algorithm considers a number of parameters and has a significant impact on what people see in search results.

As a result, the top-ranking companies appear in both local organic search results and Google Maps, where users can click to learn more about the business, get directions to the business, and access more details related to the business, such as the phone number and opening and closing times. The ease of availability of such information familiarizes the consumer with the business making them more inclined towards selecting and visiting such a business over a competitor they know nothing about.

In fact, a business without a local SEO strategy may not even be a consideration for the local consumers as the likelihood of them not being aware of the business increases. To put this into a better perspective, a study shows that 72% of the people who made a local search actually visited a store or business they found within 5 miles of their own location.

In a nutshell, if your business incorporates local SEO in its marketing strategy, you enhance the likelihood of being found by potential local clients who can then use your physical address and other vital information available on Google Maps to visit your facility. The better the strategy, the higher you’ll be ranked, and hence a greater number of people in your vicinity will visit your business.

Excellent Conversion Rates

Having ample online and foot traffic will do you no good if your lead conversion rates are poor. Conversion rate essentially means changing a lead into a sale or a potential customer into a customer by persuading them into buying your product or service.

Needless to say, the profitability of a business largely relies on the traffic it receives as well as how high the conversion rates are. You may be surprised to learn that local SEO strategy offers some of the best lead conversion rates of any marketing strategy.

Speaking in numbers, it has been found that around 28% of purchases are a result of local searches. This can be due to the fact that a majority of people have this pre-programmed belief that any business with a high SERP rank is one that is reliable and an authority in their respective field of business.

This trustworthy and authoritative persona means that consumers are less critical and reluctant toward high-ranking businesses and are, therefore, easier to turn into sales.

Optimized User Experience

The quality of your business’ website is a crucial ranking criterion used by search engine algorithms in determining a SERP rank for a website. According to the Search Engine Journal, evolutions in the Google search engine algorithm have allowed Google to distinguish between pleasant or bad user experiences.

When a user conducts a search, they expect a quick and succinct response. If a user encounters a poorly optimized website, such as mobile incompatibility or never-ending popups, the user is likely to leave the site within seconds. When a user leaves a website too quickly, Google interprets this as an indication of a poor user experience and that the website does not deliver value to its visitors.

As a result, the Google search engine algorithm allocates a low SERP rank to websites with high bounce rates.

Knowing this, one can begin to understand the connection between an effective local SEO strategy and the user experience. Executing a well-crafted local SEO strategy requires you to optimize and improve the quality of your business website in order to achieve a high SERP rank. Doing so directly makes the user experience more fluid and enjoyable, which translates to better value for visitors and, in turn, higher lead conversion rates.

Offers Highly Targeted and Quality Leads

Using generic keywords such as “best digital marketing agency” or “best lawyer” generates not only a high volume of searches but also scales up the competition by biding your business against a greater number of competitors, some of which may even be more dominant and established on the global or national scale.

Furthermore, if you’re a small business offering your services or products in only your area, using generic keywords also means that you could attract irrelevant leads that are situated outside your operational zone.

Therefore, while organic SEO is an immensely effective lead-generating marketing strategy in its own right, it, however, is not suitable for a small business aspiring to compete and capture the relevant market in its own locality.

On the contrary, implementing local SEO by using long-tail, area-specific keywords can help you reach out to a highly targeted audience segment that is relevant to your field of business and is also situated in the close vicinity of your business.

This means lower competition as well as higher-quality leads and hence better conversion rates and profitability.

Helps Form a Community

Having a solid community is one of the best leverages you could have over your competitors. First of all, having a certain number of devoted supporters means that you can count on having a fixed number of sure sales each year and on each product launch.

Additionally, communities are excellent channels for free and effective advertisement in which your supporters promote news and events related to your business, such as product launches and any flash deals or sales you might have out on your services and product line, on their social media profiles.

Not to forget, communities tend to expand over time through word-of-mouth marketing where each community member will introduce as well as put in a good word for your business before their friends, family, and associates leading to increased brand awareness.

Having more local backlinks is not only a wonderful strategy to improve your ranking, but it also paves the way to mutually beneficial professional partnerships.

Local SEO Provides 24/7 Promotion

Local SEO, in fact, SEO in general, is a marketing technique based on search engines. As such, SEO strategies remain effective for as long as search engines are being used, and since we all know that search engines do not have a set number of working hours during which they are active, neither do local SEO strategies.

This means that whenever a consumer uses a search engine to make a search about a business related to your field and located in your area, your local SEO strategy will play its part, whatever time of day or day of the week it is, to help your business rank higher on local search listings.

Furthermore, since local SEO is a free marketing strategy, you don’t have to worry about your marketing budget running dry and terminating your SEO strategy, as would be the case for a paid marketing strategy such as social media marketing. This aspect of local SEO makes it an ideal marketing tactic for businesses in Philadelphia that are low on marketing budget.

SEO is unique in that it allows your business to reach users while they are looking for you, rather than on a billboard on the way in or out of town.

Offers a Great Return on Investment (ROI)

When assessing the viability of any marketing approach, return on investment (ROI) is one of the top considerations, if not the most important.

Being a free marketing technique, local SEO requires little to no investment. Additionally, while results of local SEO may be relatively slow, they are consistent and high-yielding compared to many other marketing strategies.

Reports show that the closing rate for leads generated by search engines is 14.6%. Traditional marketing tactics such as cold calling and direct mailing, on the other hand, only get a 1.7 percent close rate, which is roughly 12% lower than SEO marketing. Moreover, businesses ranked on the first results page on Google receive 33% of the entire search engine traffic.

Increased search engine exposure directly improves internet traffic and net revenue, making ROI one of the most significant benefits of local SEO.

However, businesses in Philadelphia will only be able to reap the benefits of local SEO if they are ranked on the first results page of Google and other search engines. Low-ranking websites that get listed on the second page or after hardly get any leads.

Local SEO Philadelphia – Contact a Professional

The first step to growing your business to a national or even an international scale is to build a solid foundation in your local market. 92% of consumers choose businesses that are ranked on the first page of local searches. This means that a high SERP ranking for local searches is vital, especially for locally operating businesses, to capture a sizeable share in their local market.

It is important to note, however, that local SEO is a constantly evolving marketing technique consisting of a variety of elements, all of which need to be perfected in order to execute a well-crafted strategy. Doing so requires experience and thorough knowledge of the industry, which is why businesses in Philadelphia should seek out the assistance of a professional digital marketing agency in Philadelphia, such as Philly Online Marketing.

They have years of experience helping clients devise custom marketing tactics tailored specifically to their business requirements and niche, and are qualified to provide a range of digital marketing services to all kinds of businesses.

Call Us Today at 215-384-4568 – We will provide a free audit to show how you stack up to the competition.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia – SEO

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Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia or SEO Philadelphia is the key to getting your website to generate increased sales. While many will offer such a service no one has mastered Search Engine Optimization or SEO as well as Philly Online Marketing. We use a consultative approach to identify your top business topics, competitors and local areas. We determine your target keywords, and conduct a technical website audit. With all this information we can then develop an SEO plan to implement your custom SEO strategy. We start by optimizing your website’s content, metadata, images and much more to improve your keyword rankings for relevant local searches. We create an internal linking strategy as well as implement technical updates that maximize your website’s visibility to local search engines. You will receive a monthly report with a summary of work completed and an overview of your website. Plus, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of your website’s traffic growth, new visits, page views, top keywords, and online traffic sources. So if you are in need of Search Engine Optimization Philadelphia you came to the right place. While this is all well and good it also takes a highly skilled and trained internet marketing professional to monitor your campaign to make sure all is going as planned and follow up if needed to make sure things flow smoothly.

Take the complexity out of marketing online by providing internet marketing strategies adapted specifically for local businesses. With patent-pending technology, a dedicated local Internet Marketing Consultant (IMC) we’ll handle everything from start to finish by squeezing the most out of your marketing budget and prove it every step of the way. So Call Philly Internet Marketing today at 215-384-4568 and get started!

Brian Brown

Digital Marketing Consultant

215-384-4568

150 Monument Rd. | Suite 207 | Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004

Email: [email protected]

Search Engine Optimization

Importance of Title Tags to Improve Your SEO and Rank Higher in Philadelphia

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Why are Title Tags so important to Philadelphia Businesses? They are one of the most important pieces of information you can provide a search engine(Like Google) as it tells the search engine what the page is about. The Title Tag must be unique to each page of your website just as every page on your website should be unique. The search engines definitely dislike duplicate content. A Title Tag ranges from 55 to 60 characters any longer and it won’t get seen anyway as that’s all the search engine displays. The words in your Title Tag should also consist of top search words that people would use to find your page. These top searched words should also be listed several times throughout the content of the page which gives the Title Tag relevancy to the page content. The Title Tag for your page then gets indexed on the search engine and shows up in the top line of your search(see the red arrows in the above image). Too often businesses will put words in the Title Tag that are not listed on the page content…not good for rankings.

Your Metatag Description is just as important as it gives further details in about 150 characters of what the page is about.

So the Title Tag and Metatag Description are very similar as with both you want to use relevant content from the page and try to use the words that people are searching which are relevant to your page. Remember content is still king in the SEO world so 250 words on a webpage is minimum but 800 words relevant to the Title Tag and Metatag Description will rank even better.

Here is a great article by Christopher Ratcliff that helps to better explain.

How to write meta title tags for SEO

Brian Brown

Digital Marketing Consultant

215-384-4568

150 Monument Rd. | Suite 207 | Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004

Email: [email protected]

3 Ways Combining Search Advertising + SEO Enhances Your Digital Marketing

By Brian Brown / No Comment

By MELISSA WOODRING

Many people look at search advertising and SEO as two separate marketing strategies. And, while they do yield different results and can help you reach different goals, there are many ways that your search advertising and SEO efforts can complement each other and lead to a more successful strategy online. Here are three ways using search advertising and SEO can enhance your digital marketing.

1. Increase Brand Awareness

Combining search advertising and SEO provides extra exposure on the search engine results pages (SERPs), which can increase brand awareness. Even if you rank in the top spot in organic SERPs, a PPC ad at the top of the page can improve traffic by 50%. If you’re dominating both the organic and paid search results page, then your website traffic is more likely to increase.

Additionally, SEO is a long-term strategy, and it can take a little time before you start to notice your efforts paying off. So, running a paid search campaign while you’re building up your organic presence can help you see more immediate results as your ad can show while you’re working to make search engines love your website.

Increases visibility and reach: Search advertising and SEO work hand in hand to increase your online visibility and reach. SEO helps you rank higher in organic search results, while search advertising allows you to place paid ads at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords. By combining these two strategies, you can dominate the search results page and reach more potential customers.

2. Provide Insights to Help You Improve Campaigns

The data you get from your search advertising and SEO campaigns can be analyzed and applied to other aspects of your digital marketing. Through your search advertising campaigns, you can check which keywords and text ads have the highest conversion rate and use that information to improve your SEO strategy. You can also see which keywords or phrases are bringing in the most organic visits, and use those insights to refine your PPC ads. For example, if you’re a mechanic and notice that “Tire Repair Dallas” is your top-performing organic keyword phrase, you can run search advertising campaigns around that portion of your business to attract both paid and organic traffic.

Provides valuable data and insights: Both search advertising and SEO provide valuable data and insights that can help you optimize your digital marketing campaigns. Search advertising allows you to track the performance of your ads, including impressions, clicks, and conversions. SEO provides data on your website’s traffic, user behavior, and keyword rankings. By combining this data, you can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and how they interact with your website.

3. Help You Target the Right People & Try New Things

The data you collect from your PPC and SEO campaigns can also help you uncover details about your target audience, which can help you launch an even more integrated strategy to boost your brand and reputation online. It also gives you the flexibility to try new things. Since search advertising often yields quicker results, it can be a good way to test out a new target area to see if you can draw in customers from a different location. From there, you can implement the strategy into your SEO campaign.

Increases overall ROI: Combining search advertising and SEO can lead to increased ROI (Return on Investment) for your digital marketing campaigns. By targeting both paid and organic search results, you can capture more clicks and conversions. Additionally, optimizing your website for SEO can lead to increased website traffic and improved user experience, which can lead to more conversions over time. By combining these strategies, you can maximize the impact of your digital marketing budget and improve your overall ROI.

A combined search advertising and SEO strategy can help you in many areas of your online marketing. To learn more about how using multiple digital marketing strategies can help you improve your online presence and see more results, visit our Solutions.

Brian Brown

Digital Marketing Consultant

215-384-4568

150 Monument Rd. | Suite 207 | Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004

Email: [email protected]

Digital Marketing – Social Media For Search Engine Optimization

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In speaking with many small business owners I’ve found quite a few are either doing social media marketing or looking to learn more about Philadelphia Social Media. I found a great article by Gareth Owen which I feel can go a long way for improving small business’s Philadelphia social media.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is largely influenced by social media. I’ve put together a list of 13 ranking factors below. Feel free to use these and any others you can get your grubby SEO mitts on!

1. Number of Followers (Twitter)

You’ll need your own corporate Twitter feed, which brings its own problems around brand protection and also the potential for dealing with customer service enquiries, but the more followers you have, the more authoritative your Twitter persona and the more value will be associated with your URL (assuming you have remembered to link to it).

2. Quality of Followers (Twitter)

The best followers are the ones with their own communities of followers. The more high value people who follow you, and retweet your stuff, the better.

3. Relevance of Followers (Twitter)

It’s one thing getting followed and retweeted by Stephen Fry with over a million followers, but it’s also important to get the same response from accounts that are more specific to your industry. Someone with “fashion” in their description who retweets your “20 percent off the new spring collection” offer is equally valuable.

4. Number of Retweets (Twitter)

Most likely as a ratio of tweets to retweets — the more your content is reproduced by others the more authoritative it is. Obviously the more followers you have, the more likely you are to be retweeted. However, it isn’t just about retweeting other people’s content or dishing out promotions. It’s about engaging in conversation with people in the industry.

5. Number of Fans (Facebook)

You’ll need to create your own corporate profile on Facebook, which brings the same potential banana skins as a corporate Twitter feed, only multiplied numerous times due to the sheer level of engagement of people on Facebook. However, if you decide to engage with customers and potential customers on Facebook, the total number of likes your page receives will add value to your URL.

6. Number of Comments (Facebook)

A large number of likes, but little engagement, is a sure sign of someone gaming the system. People will tend to like you if you talk to them. Successful Facebook pages include a lot of content written by other people.

7. Number of Views (YouTube)

An obvious one, but any content you upload to YouTube should link to your site in the description, and the more times it is viewed, the more value will be attributed to your video.

8. User Comments (YouTube)

YouTube is also about engaging with other YouTubers and commenting on popular videos. The more you comment, the more link juice is passed back to your profile.

9. References From Independent Profiles (YouTube)

Using YouTube can bring in some really good authority if done brilliantly — if your link from your video passes some value, imagine how much more value would be passed if you could get other people to parody your work and include links to you from their profiles. The prime example remains the Cadbury’s Gorilla, but there are lots of interesting mini-campaigns trying to leverage the above.

10. Title of Video (YouTube)

Any references to your target keywords in the title of the video will help ensure that any authority passed will be relevant to a specific theme. Keywords should also be in the tags and or transcript where possible.

11. Percent of Likes vs. Dislikes (YouTube)

Easy one. The more liked your content is, the more authoritative it is.

12. Positive vs. Negative Brand Mentions (All Social Media)

Use a tool like Radian6, or a free tool, and ensure that you have significantly more positive brand mentions than negative. It won’t be 100 percent accurat

e as these things don’t pick up on sarcasm. But Google has already made investment in this area in 2011, so it’s well worth monitoring.

13. Number of Social Mentions (All Potential Media)

I see so many Philadelphia area small businesses wasting their time pumping out useless social media. Their target followers clearly have no interest. Be sure to carefully analyze your social media. If people are not liking, sharing, reviewing or following your social media then your doing something wrong.

Brian Brown

Digital Marketing Consultant

215-384-4568

Email: [email protected]

How to Improve your Google Places Listing in Philadelphia, PA

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Google Places listings on Google search results plays a crucial part in how your local customers contact or get in touch with you. Not long ago when you searched for a local business Google would show a map with about 7 businesses listed next to it. Google now moved the map to the top right of your screen and those Google Business listings are getting listed at the top of the search and, quite often, above all that time and effort you spent doing SEO. So your Local Business Listing is now called your Google Places listing and its now more important than ever. Below is a 2 part article that I recommend not only Philadelphia Businesses to read over but all local businesses who find it important to be at the top of the Google search.