Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has more benefits than just increasing website traffic and rankings. It can also improve the user experience, establish credibility and authority, and enhance brand awareness. By optimizing the website’s structure and content, it becomes more accessible and user-friendly, providing a positive experience for visitors. Additionally, appearing at the top of search results can give a sense of authority and credibility to the brand. Finally, consistent SEO efforts can help build brand recognition and increase brand awareness over time.

Here at Bighorn Local, we focus on Local SEO. Local SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website or online presence to rank higher in search engine results for local or geographic-specific keywords. This is particularly important for businesses that serve a specific geographical area, such as a city or region. Local SEO involves a combination of on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and local citation building to improve a website’s relevance and visibility in local search results. The goal is to increase online visibility, improve local search engine rankings, and ultimately drive more targeted traffic to a website.

Our friends over at Whitespark just published this great post about updating your Google listing for the holidays so I’m sharing parts of it here for you. Much of this applies to Yelp too, if Yelp is an important lead source for you. It’s important to stay current on Google & Yelp with holiday hours, Covid updates/attributes, and more. If you need support with these things, let me know.

Adapting Your Holiday Sales Strategy for COVID

According to Google’s latest consumer trend report, half of U.S. shoppers say the pandemic will affect how they’ll shop for the holidays this year. Shopping locally is more important than ever – but everyone’s looking for a deal. What’s a small business to do?

1. Have your sales early

This year, 70% of shoppers said they intend to plan their shopping earlier to avoid crowds, and 80% plan to make fewer trips than they have in previous years. More than a third of U.S. shoppers who normally shop in stores for Black Friday say they won’t this year. It’s also important to keep in mind that postal and delivery services are usually operating above capacity for the holidays and delays are expected due to additional precautions for COVID-19.

As shoppers look to avoid crowds, plan your sales earlier this year to assure your customers that they’re really getting the best deal today from your business. If you anticipate maxed out in-store capacities, line ups or shipping delays, communicate these with shoppers to avoid negative Google reviews this holiday season.

Share your early holiday sales events with searchers with a Google My Business Event or Offer Post.

2. Keep shoppers informed of special hours, services and health & safety measures

Your business is likely operating with additional precautions due to COVID-19 and maybe even new services such as curbside pickup or service-specific hours.

This season, 53% of shoppers said they’ll choose to shop at stores that offer contactless shopping and 47% said they’ll use options like curbside pickup, in-store pickup or buy online.

To ensure a happy customer experience, let searchers know how you’re offering a safe shopping experience and any new services or services during specific hours.

In your Google My Business dashboard, open the Info section and add any relevant attributes, including amenities, health & safety and service options.

In the Info section, also add any special hours (Special hours) or service-specific hours (More hours).

Post your inventory or services on Google My Business with the Products feature. You can include a photo, description and price for every item you add. 

Make Your Business Discoverable Online

You can expect more shoppers to go online this season than in years past. To get ready for the holiday shopping season, make sure your online presence including your Google My Business listing, website, social media profiles, and ads are updated with the latest information.

Again, big thanks to Allie and Darren at Whitespark for posting this original blog post today.

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Some Features & Functions on Google are Delayed or Temporarily Suspended

Many businesses are implementing changes to their business, processes and opening hours, switching to remote work, and delivering their products and services online. Customers are increasingly searching online for up-to-date information about the status of local businesses, and their first stop is often the Google My Business Profile for the business.

If you have any questions or need immediate help with your business, please give us a call.
We’re here to help!

Temporary COVID-19 Updates in Google My Business

1. Businesses can mark their listings as “temporarily closed” You can confirm that your business is closed and then reopen it when you are fully operational again. Alternatively, you can use Special Hours to indicate that your business is closed right now.
2. Restaurants, grocery stores, and breweries are now allowed to add “Delivery Available” or “Take Away” to their business name.
3. Review functionality has been disabled. New reviews will not be published. A user can write a review, but it will not be published publicly and it will only be visible to the user in their contributions section on Maps. The likelihood of these reviews being published once Google enables the review feature is slim.
4. Business owners cannot respond to reviews. Pause any of your automated emails going out to customers asking for reviews on Google until this feature is available again.
5. 🔻 A new Covid-19 Google Post type is now available.🔻This is where you should post related updates.
6. Questions & Answers have been temporarily removed. Any new and any previously added Q&A’s from business owners and users are no longer published on the Business Profile. The functionality has been removed by Google until further notice.
7. Critical health-related businesses get priority. The Google My Business support team has reduced capacity, so any business edits that require review before publication will notice a lag.
8. New listings and verifications are delayed. Suggested Edits to published business listings are now delayed. Photos that are added by users are not being published at this time.
9. Most edits made in the Google My Business dashboard are pending. Things outside of hours, attributes, and business descriptions are not being prioritized.
10. GMB phone support and chat support no longer work. The only way to contact GMB is to send an email.

This awesome Post about Google My Business from LocalU is being updated Daily.

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Temporary COVID-19 Updates in Yelp

Stay tuned to the Yelp Blog for additional updates. Be sure to review/suspend Yelp Ad Budgets accordingly.

1. COVID-19 Messaging is now available! When you log into your Yelp business listing, they will prompt you to make updates. Yelp is much better at this stuff than Google is.

   

2. Delivery / Take Out services may be available in your business category

HERE ARE SOME RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Yelp’s COVID-19 Response and Support for Local Businesses

Updating your Yelp page: changes in hours, temporary closures, and take-out/delivery options

Does your business have different business hours on the upcoming Holidays?

If so, you’ll need to update your hours on each of your primary local/social business profiles. The good news is that Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Facebook make it super easy to do. I just updated my business hours on Google & Yelp. It took 1 minute. Just log in, click on Business Information, then scroll down to Hours where you’ll see “Special Hours”. Click and edit! You can edit each upcoming holiday.

This is imperative if you are a retail business. While signs on the door are nice, and Google & Yelp may alert folks in advance that hours might not be as listed…but you don’t want to disappoint any of your customers – especially on Christmas Eve.

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I wrote a blog post about this last December after such a disappointment with a restaurant on the Oregon Coast. It seems lots of folks just think a crappy sign on the door is all you need. Hmmm.

It’s helpful if you have the business owners apps on your phone so you can manage listings anywhere, anytime. If you get lost with this, give us a call. We’re happy to help you!

STEP 1: Get your Link HERE.

Darren Shaw over at Whitespark created a great tool that generates a reasonable looking link that points directly to where folks just start typing a review for you. The link to my business looks like this – it’s still ugly but it at least it’s accurate:
http://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJ5YH6SASnlVQRabYj7e2ZfH0

STEP 2: Shorten your link.

➤ You can simply embed that link into your text in an email like this – “Please go HERE to write a review for my business“.
➤ You can use a URL Shortner like Bit.ly or Ow.ly or just search on Google for URL Shortener.
➤ You can create a custom URL on your website to look like a Pro!
For example it could look like this:  https://bighornlocal.com/google-review/

If you need help creating your own custom URL on your website, let’s discuss on our next strategy call.

STEP 3: Make personalized requests for reviews EACH WEEK!

You can do it!!

We all know that it’s not easy to solicit Google reviews. Sometimes you must pester, coerce, bribe, or incentivize people to get it done. Creating an attractive link in a personalized email or even on your website can make it that much easier for customers to actually write a review!

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