Got questions about SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a vital tool for any business with an online profile. The goal of SEO is to optimize your business’s content on search engines (Google, Bing, etc). This optimization process includes creating clear written language about your product/services, tagged images, and industry keywords, to name a few. Most consumers search for businesses online to find a specific product or service in their area.

Local SEO markets your local business online. How? SEO uses keywords, locations, and content to promote your products and services to local customers when they search on Google. By utilizing certain techniques and strategies, local SEO can improve your visibility on search engines such as Google. With Local SEO, we can position your business to appear as a top choice for local customers.

An enormous benefit of SEO is that it’s a low-cost option for businesses to develop a reputation online and compete with other similar businesses in their area. Without proper SEO, a company is in danger of falling behind its competitors, losing customers, and giving up profits. Unlike Google Ads, SEO focuses on building you a trusted niche within your business sector, ensuring long-term consumer retention. In the digital world, any business looking to gain traction on its competitors needs to maximize its SEO efforts to see lasting success.

People perform local searches on Google to find local businesses that provide a product or service they need. Local results are vital to these searchers because they want a close, convenient service provider. Local SEO allows nearby businesses to expand their reach to potential customers through higher rankings. Local SEO only works for the city of your business. Your ranking is how high you appear on Google’s search results and map results. The higher up your business is, the more likely customers will choose you. Our goal is to have your business on the top of the list and make sure it’s the first business they’ll see. We’ll help get your services ranking in your city and help establish your business as a local industry professional. 

Our SEO process is a fast and accurate way to track organic, mobile, and local search rankings. Original content goes a long way with Google and your visitors. Copying other people’s content results in a punishment from Google. This can often hurt a business’s visibility. Embedding keywords in your original content is the best way to get your business to the top.

Tracking regular results is how we improve your business ranking. When we find new areas to improve, we’ll make the necessary changes to keep you at the top. We monitor how people find you and how you rank in your area. We can also see who competitors are and tell you what they are doing differently. Instaboost Media values transparency and maintaining constant communication so you are always informed of how your business is ranking. We’ll send you an email alert when there are changes to your SEO rankings and fresh monthly data. Call (650) 383-1865 today to start a new Local SEO campaign.

Local SEO is a long-term investment that will yield more clients in the future. If you're interested in getting more immediate results, see what Facebook Ads or Google Ads can do for you!

Onsite SEO is the part that makes your profile or page “search engine friendly.” This is to benefit the reader and the search engine itself. The most popular search engine, Google, has its own language it uses to understand a website’s content. The more of this language on the page, the more information they can get to understand what your website is about. The clearer your content is, the higher your ranking on Google will be.

Onsite SEO for each page should include the Page URL, Page Title, Meta Description, Alt Tags for images, keywords used in the page copy, anchor text to internal and external pages, and H1 and H2 Header tags. These are the foundations of making sure your website ranks online.

After titles and descriptions are taken care of, Google moves on to the content on the page. This includes headers, image text, and accessibility functions. Like titles, these elements must have relevant keywords included, even images. By explaining to Google why an image belongs to your page, Google can better understand the content. Having no broken links, misspelled words, or unrelated phrases make for great content. 

Images can certainly help with SEO. First, they can enhance the user experience on the web page. Images can contain location information and tags which helps Google identify the content of the image and connect the image to your business. Images can also help new clients get an idea of what you do and what to expect when they work with you.

Adding a lot of images to your GMB (Google My Business listings) will increase actions on your listing easily by a factor of 10. 

Actions = authority, and authority = rankings. 

Images dramatically increase engagement on your local Google business page from mobile devices. People who find your local Google business page via mobile will find it easy to open your photos and swipe through. On mobile, someone can swipe through hundreds of photos on your GMB listing in a matter of minutes.

Becoming the first listing in your area is a difficult task. It greatly depends on your industry, when your business formed, how well your website performs, and what your competitors are doing. You deserve to work with a partner ready to give you tools, technologies, and marketing expertise that will help you realize your goals and drive your business forward. Results might not appear immediately, but don’t fear we are working non-stop to get your business to the top. Every business wants to show up on Google's search results. While other search engines like Bing, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge are used by some people, Google is still by far the most used search engine worldwide. In this article, we'll walk you through the steps on how to make sure your website is correctly structured for Google to rank it. Here's a blog article with a checklist to make sure your GMB profile is set up correctly: Read blog article here.

Google My Business (GMB) is a web page that Google provides for local businesses. It allows you to put your company info on Google +, Google Maps, Google Search, and other Google feature. This verified listing must reflect your business’s address and location to include business hours, local phone number, and link to your website. If you are a restaurant, you can even include links to your menu. If you are a business that accepts appointments, you can include links to where customers schedule appoints. 

The key to a successful Google My Business listing is having complete and accurate information about your business. If the information is not accurate, or your GMB listing is incomplete, then your business presence in search could suffer due to a lack of relevance. 

You can verify your GMB listing via the verification postcard. Google will send a postcard to the location of your business to verify your legitimacy. After this is complete, you can finish setting up your GMB profile.

A Google My Business account lets you show up in search results when people are looking for you online. It’s free, which makes it an affordable marketing tool for small and big businesses alike. To make your Google My Business profile work for you, optimize it. A Google My Business (GMB) account ensures that when someone looks at your company up on Google Search and Google Maps, they find it. Once they do, your listing shows searches where and how to visit your shop, whether you have a web or physical address. Even if you run an old-fashioned brick and mortar shop, your customers and prospects are online. And that’s where they’ll start their search for your company, products, or services. Whether you’re looking for foot traffic or web traffic, Google is the ultimate search referral. 

Your GMB profile contains all the essential NAP information for both Google and potential clients to understand your business. From an SEO perspective, Google My Business ranks well for most industries. Google My Business reviews directly impact how your business ranks on Google Maps. When it comes to local SEO for Google Maps, you can only optimize the locality where you have a verified Google My Business listing. This is the address and city where your physical office is located. But what about getting found in surrounding cities or markets? This is where City Pages come in to help your business get found in surrounding metro areas. City Pages will only apply to the organic search results in Google. However, an overwhelming number of people in any city will still look at the organic search results to find what they are looking for.

Business owners or managers can communicate to their clients via GMB by creating posts. GMB posts will appear in the SERP results along with your Google My Business listing and are a great way to communicate with your audience and customers. One of the most creative ways I’ve seen businesses use Google Posts is by posting reviews from customers. You can simply copy the Google reviews from your GMB listing and republish them as a Google Post. Another great Google Post ideas are to publish events. Although normal Google Posts will expire after 7 days, event posts will live on until the end date of your event. Events are the one exception to the Google Post expiration time frame.

Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) are critical for local businesses. Your NAP information needs to be accurate and consistent not only throughout your website but also anywhere it appears throughout the entire Internet. Your Google My Business listing includes NAP info, business hours, and other essential details. You can post updates to share that you’ve expanded services, temporarily closed, or reopened (a useful feature during emergencies like COVID-19). Google business accounts have strong local SEO, so the information you share will rank above other sites. Misinformation can lead to negative customer experiences and missed opportunities. Imagine the letdown a customer feels when they make a trip to your store only to find that it’s closed. A Google My Business account lets you keep customers informed.

Having strong Google reviews, and fully completing your Google My Business listing – adding photos and videos and selecting correct categories – improve your business’ chances of showing up on Google Maps. The more location authority your GMB listing has, the higher you’ll rank in Google local search results (or Google Maps), and the more productivity you’ll get from your listing in the form of phone calls, direction requests, and visits to your website. Google My Business listings are part of the Google Maps platform. Local SEO strategies are evolving all the time as Google updates their algorithm for Google Maps. We mention Google Maps because local search results are derived from Google My Business listings. The more location authority your GMB listing has, the higher you’ll rank in Google local search results (or Google Maps), and the more productivity you’ll get from your listing in the form of phone calls, direction requests, and visits to your website. 

Yes, reviews are the life of your business. Customer reviews are one of the top-ranking factors for local SEO. They strongly affect how companies are ranked in Google’s local search results. Customer reviews reflect trust, relevancy, and timeliness to both the searcher and the search engine. Need more reviews? We can help you out with stellar reputation management services. https://www.instaboostmedia.com/. Reviews have a particular data format that Google uses to assess your online reputation. The best way to monitor reviews is to implement a review monitoring service. You get immediate notification whenever someone leaves a review so you can respond promptly. It is important to consider responding to all reviews. Every positive review should have a response. Negative reviews can be addressed as appropriate, which can always be to take the follow-up offline.

The more reviews your business has online, the more trusted your company becomes. You can build an online reputation through a collection of quality, informative reviews from your clients. When new clients see your reviews, they think, “wow, this company knows what they’re doing. They seem reputable and well-established. Look at how many people have used them before!” This is great for your business as it generates more clients who already develop trust before even meeting you. 

Instaboost Media specializes in online reputation management to enhance positive content and your business's reviews. We create a dashboard where you can request client reviews and respond to questions. Our system notifies you when you get new customer reviews. More reviews increase your rating online. If you want your business to appear higher in search results and drive more traffic to your website, we can help! Even bad reviews can boost business, respond and monitor any reviews that come in. Learn how to get more reviews for your business by reading our blog article!

A citation is a reference online to your NAP – your company name, address, and phone number, as well as your website URL. Citations are used by the search engines to evaluate the online legitimacy and popularity of your business – the more accurate quality citations your business has the better.

Google evaluates your citations by looking at the volume, authority, and consistency of your citations across the web as a means to determine your rankings in Google Maps / Google local search. A citation is simply a published version of your business name, address, phone #, and website URL. However, the data used in your Google My Business listing is the base citation that Google uses to determine consistency. If you have citations published throughout the web that do not match your GMB listing data, you will be creating large scale inconsistencies that can negatively impact your rankings and presence in local search.

On the other hand, if you distribute an accurate representation of your citations across authoritative channels, you’ll achieve large-scale consistency and authority, which will come back to deliver higher rankings in Google local search for competitive, high-value keyword phrases. In summary, the more authoritative your citation portfolio, the more likely you are to compete and get found in the local search results for high impact keyword phrases.

Websites that are not mobile-friendly tend to not rank as well on Google, especially when the search is from a mobile device. With more than 50% of searches from mobile, it may not be penalized but it is hurtful. Page load speed has become an important factor for SEO because it impacts user experience, especially on a mobile device. Since more than 50% of all searches are done on mobile, slow page load speeds hurt SEO.

We recommend that every page you want to rank has at least 500 words.

Blogs are already well-designed for search engines. Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.

With SEO, patience is key. Most clients start seeing the results within a few weeks and establish a steady stream of business within months. If you'd like to get more calls sooner, check out our pages on Facebook Ads or Google Ads to see how you can generate more business in days!

Results with SEO can take time. It depends on a variety of factors like your industry location, and competitors. The main goal is to establish a long-term presence on the internet and rank up against your local competitors.

No, these two services are quite different. You can run both at the same time though, maximizing your short and long-term growth. 

What does SEO do?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a vital tool for any business with an online profile. The goal of SEO is to optimize your business’s content on search engines (Google, Bing, etc). This optimization process includes creating clear written language about your product/services, tagged images, and industry keywords, to name a few. Most consumers search for businesses online to find a specific product or service in their area. SEO helps local consumers find your business at the same time they’re searching online. The most popular search engine is Google, so that’s what we’ll focus on for now. Most companies have a website or online profile so consumers can easily find a product/service, look up their business information, and engage with them directly.

When customers use Google to search for a product or service, Google shows them different local businesses in their area on the results page. The company with the most engaging content, keywords, and correct contact information will rank higher on these listings and become much more accessible for consumer engagement. An enormous benefit of SEO is that it’s a low-cost option for businesses to develop a reputation online and compete with other similar businesses in their area. Without proper SEO, a company is in danger of falling behind its competitors, losing customers, and giving up profits. Unlike Google Ads, SEO focuses on building you a trusted niche within your business sector, ensuring long-term consumer retention. In the digital world, any business looking to gain traction on its competitors needs to maximize its SEO efforts to see lasting success.

What do Google Ads do?

Google Ads are the most effective way for businesses to increase their online presence and maximize revenue. With Google Ads, companies pay Google to be found by consumers for certain keywords. Keywords are industry-specific words that help consumers find your business on Google. Every time a user clicks on your ad, you pay Google. We call these “pay per click” (PPC) ads. Because businesses pay Google to display their ads, they naturally rank higher on the search results page (usually the top two or three links.) Google Ads are essential for businesses looking to earn revenue in a short amount of time. An advantage of using Google Ads is that you can advertise specific products or services to particular service areas and target audiences. You can also select which phrases you want to be found for and don’t want to be found for. This helps you maximize your budget and find relevant local consumers. Google Ads help businesses earn profits through simple online advertising, regardless of if the business is service-based or product-based. Although SEO and Google Ads serve different purposes, both are essential for businesses to grow and become viable competitors.

How both work together for your benefit.

Local SEO and Google ads are both essential tools for any business online. The goal of local SEO is to help your company improve its reputation online across multiple directories. Google Ads help you advertise your service or product online for specific areas and target audiences. With Google ads, most businesses can see profit returns within a matter of months. Local SEO helps your business achieve long-term growth and improved rankings. Together, they help your business take on local competitors, increase your calls and clients, and reach new leads effectively.

We distribute regular ranking reports to all Local SEO clients so they can monitor their performance over time and see which strategies work the best. This tool is a great way for you to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and see how visible you are to them. We monitor how people find you and how you rank in your area. We can also see who competitors are and tell you what they are doing differently. Your ranking reports update monthly. We’ll send you an email alert when there are changes to your SEO rankings and fresh data.

Google doesn't always say why, but it's usually due to incorrect information with your GMB profile. This can include mismatching business names, incorrect business locations, wrong phone numbers, or misleading photos. Unfortunately, it can take Google a long time to un-suspend profiles.

Here are some points to keep in mind:

If your profile is removed the public can no longer access the profile. Owners and managers can't take actions on its behalf, but they can appeal to have the profile reinstated. 

If your, (the owner) Google Account is removed, all the locations owned by you will likely be removed too. If your account is restored, the other accounts will also be restored. 

If a manager has been removed from the GMB account, your location will likely be unaffected. When Google reinstates the manager, the manager will automatically regain managerial access to the locations. In any case, we'll work hard to get in touch with Google to make sure your problems are resolved quickly and you maintain control of your GMB profile.

For more info, check here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/4569145?hl=en or here: https://www.callrail.com/blog/google-my-business-listing-suspended/

Local competitors can appear above your business for many reasons. Maybe they are older, run ads, have more reviews, or offer unique services you do not have. Whatever the reasons, there are always steps you can take to get a leg up. 

If you're interested in overtaking a local competitor, consider running Google Ads to pair with your Local SEO campaign. According to Google, advertisers earn about $8 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. Google Ads is popular because of local competition. Most businesses have a local competitor, and it’s likely that they use Google Ads. By launching your own campaign, you can use data from competitors to better strategize your own ads and focus on a relevant audience. A company that specializes in Google Ads can check and manage key points that can make your Google Ads succeed.

Google Ads help businesses earn profits through simple online advertising, regardless of if the business is service-based or product-based. Although SEO and Google Ads serve different purposes, both are essential for businesses to grow and become viable competitors.

Home addresses are not recommended for GMB. If you do have a business property or your services don't require you to have one, it's best to leave that area blank to avoid problems with Google in the future.