Online Marketing Ecosystem
We have a system that is called an online marketing ecosystem. This online marketing ecosystem has eight different steps. Number one is your SEO number two is your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, Google Ads or Bing, Number three is retargeting. There are paid online directories such as; pay per lead, the Thumbtack and Homeadvisor, and those kinds of things, maybe even your social media. All the eight steps help one thing, they help you to create the online lead. When we say lead, we don’t mean your referral customers. We mean the people who have had no idea about your business, but they found you online, somehow they saw your ad and clicked on it or they saw you on the map area, they clicked on it and they gave you a call, each of these steps are important.
Another thing in the eighth step is; we call it Super Susan. What’s Super Susan? This is the solution that we created. That’s a marketing automation system, a marketing CRM system. An automation system is needed for all of the Kitchen and Bath companies. If a company has a lead generation system, then this company needs a marketing automation system. Because creating the lead is 50% of the battle. When they send you their contact information you need to contact these people in an effective way. That’s why those automation systems will automate your communication. You will be sending messages to these people, you will be inviting people to your showroom or you will invite them to Zoom virtual meetings. That’s an ecosystem that you need to create, you cannot put all the eggs in one basket, you need to differentiate your online marketing strategy. All these eight steps will help you to create this differentiation.
Typical Serp Example
What happens when your future customers conduct a search on any kind of search engine? For instance, Google offers them like three different types of results; the First one is Pay Per Click results, which will be on top of the page. The second one is the map area that we are focusing on that area on the blog, and the third one is organic.
How do they work with each other? Map area and organic area are the things that you need to be linked to, or that need to be ranked on. These are the things that you need to do pretty much similar to things that you need to do for the organic area. But Pay Per Click is something totally different. It works with an auction, you need to pay your marketing dollars to Google, you need to well-optimize your campaigns and you need another marketing budget to create a lead flow from there.
Let’s focus on the map area, why is this map area important? First, when you put kitchen cabinets in Chicago you will see the name of your future customer, that homeowner can see the name, address, phone number, reviews, and cover photo dimension. The name, address, and phone number are something that it’s important to be consistent with. Also, another important fact is the reviews, how many reviews you have on Google. It’s not the main thing but it’s one of the facts that affect your ranking. Also, if you are mentioning kitchen cabinets and that kind of thing on your Google My Business pages, here you will be listed when your future lead is searching on that area.
Top Three Changes
Google is updating itself regularly and its marketing system as well. There are changes for the map area section also. Let’s dive into the three biggest changes about that map area; these three are relatively little older compared to the other changes. Because there were seven a couple of years ago but right now it’s three. Why it’s three because we wanted to show the top three for you. In specific niche markets, it’s even hard to list seven people. But you can find three easily, and if Google can list all these best three there, that’s going to give Google the best user experience since they’re showing the best three companies on the top. Google Local Services is the most major markets right now. It’s not Google Ads, it’s not Google, this is something totally different. This is a new service, and Google started testing Google local services, as it started in California. Right now they are studying and they are distributed to different major cities. They’re starting to build up, adding up new cities with the new services. The last one is that Google is also serving the paid ads in the map results. We talked about the best three, but if you optimize your Google ads, you can be the fourth one on top of the page, in addition to this, top three. So why this is important, because you may have a hard time ranking in a different city. For instance; We can go to the Local Services and we can check maps right after the locals, you will see that they’re at the top of the page before the Google Ads. We call it traditional, right now this is even older than the Local Services Ads, you will be listed on the top of the page.
Google Local Services Ads
This is really interesting because when you click on one of the Google Local Services, these searches don’t go to your website, they go to Google’s website and it’s a Google’s lead page, and your company name, your logo, your phone number, your services, your reviews are there, you will see the importance of the reviews are there. For example, we have 162 reviews but you will notice something there, you will notice that we are missing the website, we don’t have the website anymore. Google is trying to keep you in the Google system. Google is not sending you to your website anymore with the Local Services Ads and you’re in Google’s system, you’re not leaving Google, you’re with Google. There are some additional navigation buttons on the bottom of the page like, ‘’go back’’, ‘’search for different pros in the area’’ type of thing that you will be able to see at the bottom of the page is a navigation tool. You also need a kind of verification to be up in the listing, Google doesn’t give you the verification and doesn’t put you up in the listings. Google needs a quick check about your company and makes sure that you’re a reliable vendor that is able to put on the Google Services Ads. Google services ads are not really broad at the moment and they’re in all the cities. You can take the test; you can go to Google and have a look at it if Google Services is active in your area. Primarily you can use Countertop and Interior design keywords and secondarily, we have floorings and windows service providers. You see the Kitchen and Bath are not there yet but this is a process and Google likes to test new things and Google is working on that will expand the services, that are going to be expanded in the near future.
Fake Google Listings
Google is in a fight with fake Google Maps listings. Starting with 2015, most of the fake listings are eliminated. Even last February, they eliminated over a million fake Google My Business pages.
What is the fake, what makes the fake? If you’re putting your grandma’s house as a Google My Business address and trying to create a Google My Business listing you may have a problem. When Google sees that you’re trying to trick the system, you’re going to pay for it, they will penalize you for that. If you have different listings in different cities, that may not be the best idea, Google’s artificial intelligence working in the background, and it’s getting smarter every day. This artificial intelligence system identifies the listings that could be faked and then it forwards them to a Google expert. Google hires experts to call companies and give them a business address in order to confirm that they are there, this is that important for Google. If you’re trying to trick the system, you’re making a mistake that you don’t even know that you’re making a mistake, try to avoid those tricks. Because when Google catches you, you’re going to be penalized.
What Is Hurting You?
Focus on the things that may be pushing you back, or holding you back from being more visible. First of all, you need an office or showroom in the city that you are targeting, in order to rank well on Google Maps, you need that. Let’s say your ideal clients are outside of your city, if it’s like 50 miles, this is something that you can always work on. But if it’s more than 50 miles away, it’s really hard to get ranked in that city. Because Google checks proximity, relevancy, and authority. You can build the authority, you can build the relevancy, but you cannot change the proximity, because the proximity means the actual distance between your address and the searchers’ address. But it’s not only one specific thing, there are a few other things related to that, this is the overall authority.
You may think that you are doing everything really well but you don’t get a lot of traffic, that may be because you try to spam Google with the fake locations and you’re getting penalized, you don’t even know because you don’t get any notifications about this penalization. Google algorithm is going to identify that clear fake location are not going to work anymore. Google Algorithm system is getting smarter every day so that you need to clean up your fake listings if you have any.
There are a lot of examples of business owners trying to spam the categories, for instance; in order to put their name, they put the countertops or kitchen cabinets in Houston or New Jersey City. That’s a big mistake, you need to put your name in your real area and you need to optimize your profile using keywords. When Google asks your name and category, you definitely need to give them the correct answer, you shouldn’t put anything else because this is not going to work.
When you’re optimizing your Google My Business Page you need to care about your reviews as well. Do you have enough reviews across the web? Not only your Google My Business reviews also across the web, but reviews are also important and affect your ranking, like Facebook and Yelp. It’s important because those search engines are looking at an overall rating, even some of your directories that you are being listed like Houzz or HomeAdvisor are a source for search engines to give you that authority. Enough reviews mean higher rankings. If you don’t have enough reviews than other people who have small places that have more reviews, they can be ranked before you.
Our Ranking Formula
Our ranking formula is three parts;
- your citations,
- your reviews,
- your on-page SEO
What citation means is something that is mentioned outside of your website. It’s mentioned on another website, it’s a mention on websites like Yelp, Hotfrog local.com, Superpages. There are like hundreds of different sites, citation pages, like Yellow Pages,Yahoo, Facebook is one of them. You need those citations with the NAP consistency. Google is going to check your name, directory, and your visibility with the same name, address, and phone number, that’s why they need to match it. Also, you need to increase the number of citations that you create outside of your website in different cities. Sometimes Yelp or that kind of page grabs your name automatically by using their crawlers. But there are some manual ways to build those citations. Quality is always over quantity, when you have more citations, you will be more voted and you will be more visible. What we are doing here is just trying to understand the most authoritative citation websites for your business in your area and then we build those citations along the way, that’s going to be the best thing.
We mention reviews, and these reviews are also talking about a lot of relative keywords. For example, if you have a Frequently Asked Questions page on your website, that question is going to help you to get ranked. That’s why it’s important because it’s giving you extra keywords, extra reason to get ranked.
Another thing is on-page SEO, all these things run in conjunction with each other. If you have a powerful SEO which means that you already build your NAP consistency, and that is going to compliment you when you are building your citation. We are talking about one thing here, the 80 to 20 formula. What is that 80-20 formula? Let’s say, 80% of the actions that you’re going to take are going to 20% of the actions that you need to take out. The whole 20% is going to create 80% of the results. That’s been used in different industries, for example, in sales, 80% of your sales come from your 20% of your customers, or in customer service 80% of the complaints coming from 20% of the product. It’s almost like the rocks, pebbles, and sand type of approach. If you just focus on the core 20%, you will see that you’re already had 80% of the progress there. Same thing for the SEO if you just create that best 20% then the best practice for the least need to do in your task list SEO checklist. If you just make that 20% of the list, you will get 80% of the benefit out of those kinds of actions.