A business listing on these directories is called a “Citation” and is a key factor in the way that search engines like Google and Bing identify a business’ bona fides. It’s also an IMPORTANT and indispensable part of “off site” SEO.

Below you will find a link to a tool which helps you search your your business listings ( Citations ) and also identifies which ones do not display the correct NAP (https://nobsseo.com/business-website-seo-nap-essentials/).

We strongly recommend that you use this tool to help your business display more prominently online.

https://www.brightlocal.com/free-local-seo-tools/local-listings-health-scanner/

Helpful Tip:  Don’t put this off…. do it today.

Below you will find a downloadable PDF of notes from a February 2020 seminar delivered by senior EMC lawyers at their Sydney offices which was attended by people who were interested in setting up a new business.

In our opinion this advice should be taken very seriously not only by prospective business owners but also by existing entrepreneurs at all levels of business.

Our thanks again to the Eakin McCaffery Cox team for making these notes available to our readers.

Click on the document below to download a copy of the pdf.

So let’s assume that you have a well designed website which represents your business in its best possible light. Now what?

Well now you have to make it easy for people to find you online when they search for the product/service your business provides. This is what we call SEO (search engine optimisation) which by definition is the art of optimising a website to display prominently on search engines (eg Google Bing) for relevant searches. So if your business is a pizza restaurant in Crows Nest called Mario Brothers then your website needs to be displayed prominently when a potential customer searches for “Pizza Crows Nest”. If it doesn’t the customer/user may well patronise a business which does.

Below you will find a list of “essentials” which need to be included as part of every business website’s online marketing strategy. Each point on this list is “essential” meaning that for each item your website doesn’t have completed your online presence suffers. Go through these points in detail and if you need extra clarification contact us via the form below.

1. Https: Your website must have a current SSL Certificate
2. Hosting: Your website hosting should be with a trusted hosting provider
3. NAP: Your business Name, Address and Phone number should be consistent across every directory listing where your business appears
4. Speed: Your website needs to load quickly (4 seconds or less)
5. Phone Friendly: Your website needs to display perfectly on mobile phones and tablets https://ready.mobi/
6. Google My Business / Google Maps: Your business needs to have a completed listing on Google My Business
7. Bing Maps: Your Business needs to have a Bing Maps listing
8. Meta Data: Your website should reflect your targeted search terms via its Meta Data
9. Images: Any images on your website need to be labelled correctly via Alt Text
10. Content: All the content on your website MUST be unique. Don’t copy and paste from other websites.
11. Social Media: Any social media accounts associated with your business must be kept up to date.

Maintaining a high online profile for your business is not easy but also not that hard. It involves time and knowing what to do but it is also essential if you want to keep attracting new customers.

So let’s talk about links and backlinks.

The difference between a link and a backlink is a link is a random url usually found in an email. A backlink though is a url on a website which takes you to another website.

Question: Are backlinks important?

Answer:    Yes they are, but there’s a catch!

Backlinks are a very efficient way of going from one website to another when researching a subject or shopping for goods and services. For example if you were searching for a voIP telephone system for your business and you landed on this page https://mybusinessmaps.com/products/business-telephone-voip-systems/ you would find a number of backlinks to the Cititel website which has a wealth of information on voIP and voIP telephone systems. In this case the Cititel website greatly benefits from the backlink for 2 main reasons:

1. The page with the backlink is all about voIP and business phone systems.
2. The landing page it is pointed at on the Cititel website is has voIP relevant content.

Given that an important factor of SEO is how much time a user spends on your website the fact that the above user may be looking for information / suppliers / prices / availability etc on voIP it stands to reason that they may well take the time to read the Cititel voIP page and perhaps even contact the business for a quote.

On the other hand if the very same backlink to the voIP page on the Cititel website was on an unrelated website (say http://www.suburbanskips.com ) then the chances of someone clicking on it would be remote at best. And IF they did click on it chances are they wouldn’t find it relevant and they would quickly leave the Cititel website thus increasing their bounce rate and potentially harming the perceived importance of the Cititel site which could harm Cititel’s overall SEO.

In summary it’s true that backlinks ARE important but they MUST be relevant and they should ALWAYS be from a reputable website.

Internet security covers us while we are using the internet. Most of us have internet security programs like Norton, McAfee, AVG, Eset etc which do a lot to protect us from internet viruses, malware and other internet nasties.

But what about those of us who have our own websites. Who or what can protect us against website hackers and content spammers? How can we ensure that our website has a). Not been hacked or content spammed AND b). is hackproof.

So, how common is website hacking and what are the consequences for the owner of the website?

This is a very important question because it also has SEVERE SEO ramifications. The sad truth is that hackers and spammers couldn’t care less about the SEO and reputation damage they do to a site as long as they achieve their objective. In the example below there are 2 screenshots. The first is of a reputable and well established US human resources website which specialises in procuring qualified staff for their clients. The second screenshot is a page on that same website which advertises a Russian website which sells discounted NFL jerseys. In this case the hackers have used the good online reputation of the HR company to promote their own products without the knowledge of the website owner.

To make the whole exercise even worse for the website owner the “hack” isn’t visible to them unless they are actually looking for it, unless of course they were on the market for a cheap NFL jersey and saw their website on page one of Google when they searched online.

So, how can you tell if your website has been hacked? There are many ways but in the case above all the website owner has to do is a Google site search (site:elementstaffing.com) which would bring up a results page with 7 results. The last result on the Google results page reads ….

“cheap stitched nfl jerseys wholesale from china
elementstaffing.com/Stats/sitemap.html
cheap stitched nfl jerseys for sale with free shipping from china wholesale authentic nfl jerseys stitched factory.”

Obviously this page does not belong to the website and the website owner may then take the appropriate steps to remove that page and put security measures in place to help stop it from happening again.

Although the above example is NOT one of our clients it is typical of the daily enquiries we get from businesses seeking our expert help to repair the damage done by these bottom dwelling scum sucking leeches of the internet who will stop at nothing to further their own cause.

If you suspect your website has been hacked click HERE to contact us at No BS SEO for further help.

Think back to the last time a telemarketer rang you and actually sold you a product or service over the phone.

Now compare that to the last time you were looking for a product or service online by using Google, Bing or Yahoo. Whether you responded to an online ad, a banner or an organic search engine result, chances are you were far more likely to purchase a product or service in this manner than by answering the call of a random telemarketer.

Obviously there is a place for telemarketing in the advertising spectrum but where or how are you going to get the best ROI (return on investment) on your promotional dollar.

Whilst Online Marketing is almost as varied as the internet itself there is a vital element every successful online marketing campaign must have, and that is…….

An Appropriately Attractive & Optimised Website.

Regardless of what product or service you are marketing the website which you take your potential customers to must be attractive to them. Let’s take 2 completely different entities both of which are successfully sourcing and selling products online.

First Case Study

Colins are a high end Sydney butcher with multiple stores as well as an online store which delivers meat to your door. Their website must not only display a complete range of all the different cuts and prices, it must also quantify the quality of the meat and the service provided by this butcher. In the case of Colins Butchery their website been successful in projecting the desired image which in turn generates a high volume of online sales via a very clever SEO structure which ensures a high level of exposure on Google, Bing and Yahoo for all the keywords and search terms relevant to people searching online for a butcher in Sydney.

Second Case Study

ANPROS is a national laboratory supply company based in Melbourne and marketing nationally to a broad range of customers including schools, wineries and even forensic laboratories. As an ISO 9001 certified supplier the ANPROS site is predominantly a virtual order form for thousands of highly specialised chemicals and laboratory apparatus. The typical ANPROS customer has appropriate technical / academic qualifications and is invariably a high end IT user. In other words as long as the ANPROS website displays the right descriptions, has competitive prices and delivers high quality service and products it is going to satisfy their requirements. All that was left to do then was to ensure that the SEO was set up to give the website maximum exposure on the major search engines.

Conclusion

Both of these businesses have a very successful online marketing profile together with two very different websites. Their target market is poles apart and yet they employ virtually the same type of online marketing techniques to attract the right people to their respective websites. Both businesses have invested in high quality websites with smart SEO and neither business relies on pay per click (adwords) advertising to attract clients. Initially they had to but as the SEO took effect they were each able to reduce their adwords spend to zero.

On the other hand if these businesses were using telemarketing to generate business then they would be obliged to maintain those campaigns indefinitely because the minute they stopped they risked not procuring any new business. Even with a sustained low cost telemarketing campaign based in the Philippines or India it would be highly doubtful that the ROI would even come close to a well planned and executed online marketing strategy.

Let me explain.

In a democratic society where the will of the people rules via their elected representatives in government, there really should be NO place for experts in the political process to be paid by special interest groups to get certain policies pushed through the parliament.

The same can be said for SEO consultants. Search engines like Google™, Yahoo™ and Bing™ have a self set mandate to deliver the most relevant results relating to the billion or so searches performed online each and every day. So why do we “need” SEO experts to show us how we can entice these search engines to display one result ahead of another? The answer……. MONEY.

Almost half of online searches using a search engine involve a user searching for a product or service they wish to purchase. In almost all cases there are multiple suppliers providing those products and services so it stands to reason that the supplier who displays higher in the search results will get more customers. Regardless if you are searching for a business which does Women’s T-Shirts, or does Glass Washer Service in Melbourne or Granny Flats Sydney, statistics tell us that as long as the search engine results are relevant you will probably call the business(s) which display higher first.

Search Engine Optimisation consultants are paid to help your business display higher than your competitors on the major search engines. Just like political lobbyists who know who to approach and what to say, SEO consultants (good ones that is) know what you need on your website to make it more search engine friendly than your competitors website.

There is of course a much easier way of appearing on the first page of the major search engines. Sponsored links can have you on page one within hours BUT there is a cost. Pay Per Click advertising (AKA AdWords) allows you to bid an amount of money you are prepared to pay every time someone clicks on your advertisement.

Many businesses rely on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to generate their online traffic but one must be careful to maintain an acceptable ROI (return on investment). Again, most SEO consultants can help you with this type of online exposure.

As many of you know by now Google have introduced the next stage of their Google Maps development called Google Business View.

Essentially this feature is designed to extend / enhance the user’s search experience by allowing them to virtually enter your business premises and have a look around.

The logic here is both sound and well researched. Imagine if you will walking through a shopping centre with hundreds of shops when a shop which you are interested in catches your attention. What do you do? You walk in of course and have a look around. If you find something you want to buy you buy it and leave the store.

Google Business View allows you to enter a shop and browse around at your convenience. If that shop has something you want to buy AND they also have an E-Commerce facility you may then click through to their online shop and buy your item.

The beauty of the Google Business View system is that it can apply to virtually ANY business, even a home business. It doesn’t matter if you have a mechanical workshop, a car dealership, a restaurant, coffee shop, factory, office or warehouse. A virtual walk-through can increase the appeal of your business exponentially.

I recently spoke to a plumber whose has a small home office and 3 vans. His dilemma was “how can Google Business View benefit me”. Yep, you guessed it I had an answer for him. I suggested he take some photos of recent jobs he has done and get them blown up to poster size. Then put these posters up around his small home office and get the Business View surround photography to include his posters. Genius right?

Obviously Business View is open to cheating and abuse by the wombats who make it hard for everyone else. So to counter this Google have accredited select photographers from all over the world as Google Trusted Photographers. To have the Google Business View feature on your Google Maps listing you MUST contact a Google trusted photographer to do the photography. If you would like us to put you in touch with the nearest one to you then just send us your details via the contact form @ http://www.customonlineshopdesign.com/google-business/

Yes, you have to pay your selected photographer a fee to shoot the photos and that fee will depend on the physical size of the shoot. The fee is also a private matter between you and your photographer and no one else.

So do yourself AND your business a HUGE favor and get Google Business View BEFORE your competitors. If you’d like more information drop an email to theo@nobsseo.com.

You will notice the word RELEVANT is in caps and there is a very good reason for this. Many people are of the belief that any link is a good link and the more links one has the better their website will rank. Not True.

Search engines use very sophisticated algorithms to determine the relevancy of links pointing back to each individual website. Irrelevant links get a very low if not zero score while relevant links get a very high score. For example if you are a Locksmith and your website is linked to by other websites in the security / alarm / lock categories then those links will be seen as high value links by the search engines and in turn will increase the perceived importance of your website.

There are many ways of getting relevant links to your website. For example, if you are in business ask your suppliers to include a link to your website from their site. The same goes for your customers who may have relevant websites to your industry.

Search out relevant Blogs and Forums. Find those which you can genuinely make a constructive comment on and make sure you include a link to your website. Great care should be taken NOT to spam blogs & forums but rather to use them to contribute useful comments. Remember the people reading your comments will soon realise if you are genuine or just a spammer and will judge you and your business accordingly.

Business directories are also a great source of relevant links but make sure your business is listed under the correct category.

Remember the word RELEVANT and always try to secure these types of links.