Google Archives - One to Three Marketing Solutions

Google My Business – The place to be!

October 13, 2017 By Lisa Vassallo 1 Comment

We’ve been advising our clients for years to create a free Google My Business listing (previously known as Google Maps and Google Places). Why? Because you can appear on the first page of Google for local searches, without doing any work to your website whatsoever! It is also a fantastic free tool that helps you to raise your profile online. Now you can add even more information to your listing by adding posts <r ead our blog about Google My Business posts>. In this blog we’d like to share the importance of collecting reviews against your Google My Business listing and how to do this easily.

It takes just a few minutes to create a listing. Go to https://www.google.co.uk/business/go/ and follow the step-by-step instructions. Please ensure that your listing is 100% complete and that you include some photos. Reviews are also really important as they will help to raise your profile and they will also tell other potential clients what to expect from your services.

It’s even easier to ask your clients for a review, simply send them a shortened link, straight through to your listing. Here’s how:

To create a link, you’ll need to get the Place ID for your business. To get your Place ID:

Go to the Google Places API.
Enter your business information in the “Enter a location” field at the top of the map.
Click your business name in the list that appears.
Your Place ID will appear on the map, beneath your business name.

Add your Place ID to the following URL to create your link:

https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=<place_id>

Using our listing as an example, the URL with the Place ID added would be:

https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJj61dQgK6j4AR4GeTYWZsKWw

Now just shorten this URL, so you can easily send this out to clients. Hootsuite has a URL shortening tool built in which is very handy. You can also use the websites tinyurl.com and bit.ly for free. The above link, now becomes: http://ow.ly/KcL930fQYtv. Once you have reviews, ensure you respond to each review (whether it’s good or bad). If you want to remove a review, the best thing to do is ask the person who wrote the review to remove it. You can now click on this link and write a review for One to Three Marketing Solutions!

As Google collects more and more information on Google My Business listings, we really think this is one to watch for 2018. So don’t miss out! Ensure you have a listing, make it as complete as possible and start asking for reviews. Please note that you need to have a Google account in order to add reviews.

How to add a post to your Google My Business listing

June 29, 2017 By Lisa Vassallo 3 Comments

We always recommend that all local businesses should have a Google My Business listing (sometimes referred to as Google Places or Google Maps).

Some new functionality has just been added where you can now add a post to your listing. This is another place to share content, and being Google we believe it could be helpful for SEO too.

Each post can be up to 300 words and you can add a link and a photo. This is a perfect place to add any events too.

Simply login to your Google My Business listing at https://www.google.co.uk/business/. Then you will have the option to add a post:

Add a photo (it must be a minimum of 344 pixels wide and 344 pixels high).

You can add a link to your post by selecting “Add a button”.

You can also edit and delete any posts. The post appears immediately against your Google My Business listing. We say go for it, what have you got to lose?

It’s worth noting that these posts only last 7 days (as of July 2017). Event posts are slightly different, in that they will last until the event date and be removed thereafter.

Are you making the most of Google’s free tools?

September 14, 2015 By Lisa Vassallo Leave a Comment

I recently presented at a networking event and I shared a number of Google’s free tools that some people just aren’t aware of. Most people recognise that Google has the largest share of the search engine market (even my children use the term “just Google it”), but many people don’t have a Google account, let alone use some of the great tools Google has to offer.

Google has had a huge impact on the digital marketing world and it’s something that touches just about every channel us marketers use on a daily basis. In order to make the most of the tools below, you’ll need to get a free Google account – www.google.co.uk. You can sign up on the top right hand side of the screen and it only takes a few seconds.

Here are some of my favourite free tools from Google:

Google Analytics – google.co.uk/analytics
This is my favourite tool! I tell all business owners to sign up to Google Analytics. It’s quick and easy to install on any website. It will then give you all of the information you’ll ever need to know about your website traffic – how your visitors are reaching your site, where they are coming from and more importantly the quality of this data. There’s no point in having a lovely website if you have no idea if your potential customers are accessing it. Google Analytics can measure pretty much all of your digital marketing activity from email campaigns to social media.

Google Alerts – google.co.uk/alerts
You can type in any word relevant to your business and Google will give you a list of the latest press articles and blogs on that subject – perfect for sharing on your social media channels. I use this tool every week. You can even create alerts to send straight to your inbox on a daily or weekly basis.

Webmaster Tools – google.co.uk/webmastertools
This is where you can check the overall health of your site, find out which keywords people are using to find your site and even check the mobile compatability of your website.

Google Places – google.co.uk/places
Here you can add the physical location of your business, including your website and telephone number. Google Places listings often appear on the first page of Google, right under the Ads on geographic searches.

Google Keyword Tool – adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
Want to know what people are actually searching for in Google each month and which keywords you should be using? This tool can you help you plan your keywords for each page of your website and even lets you know how competitive each search is.

Google+ – plus.google.com
Google’s social media platform with over 300 million monthly active users. Adding content here will help your content get noticed and indexed by Google’s searches.

Blogger – google.co.uk/blogger
Google’s free blogging tool which is easy and intuitive to use, again giving you the opportunity to submit fresh and new content to Google.

If you have any questions on any of these free tools or would like to find out more, just get in touch.

Our must have’s when it comes to website content

October 18, 2012 By Lisa Vassallo

OK, a few facts and figures to start…..

Did you know:

The first domain name was registered …….. 1985 (I was 9!!)

There are approximately 150,000 new domain names registered every day!

When I Googled the question how many websites are there on the www….the number was so huge it took me a while to work it out…..let’s just say its billions and billions!

The most Googled search term is…..Facebook!

Google is the 5^th most googled search term……

I think we can all conclude that the internet is HUGE and it should form a huge part of your marketing plan – and of course it’s not just yourwebsite that is important but your presence on social media sites, networking websites….have you ever Googled yourself to see what comes up……it’s a good idea to do it because that is what potential customers will find if they Google your name……

I could write all day about the importance of a general online presence but this blog is going to focus on website copy and will give you our top 5 tips of what content we believe is must have.

1 Now this sounds obvious but you’d be surprised….contact details. Telephone numbers, address, email and also Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn details. People are more and more wanting to find out a bit about you online before they pick up the phone or drop you an email.

2 What do you do? So many websites don’t tell you this vital information. Write this ‘about you’ section as if you are introducing yourself to someone at a networking event for the very first time. Don’t try to be ‘clever’ or too creative here – get to the point!

3 YOU! It is so important to have a personal presence on your website – a bit about you. It doesn’t have to be a chapter and verse life story but an insight into you as a human being is key – I also like to see pictures of the people involved in the business to add a personal element

REAL case studies……show off a bit! Tell the world about your business successes and ask clients for testimonials that can be published online– case studies demonstrate you in action and can be very powerful

Simplicity – don’t use 10 words when 1 will do! Don’t use jargon, don’t use fluff to fill a page – a good image will say far more than ‘gumf’!

Once you have the basics in place it is then important to think about how people are gong to find your website and how you are going to keep it up to date……but that’s a whole other blog which we’ll share with you soon!

Google My Business – The place to be!

How to add a post to your Google My Business listing

Are you making the most of Google’s free tools?

Our must have’s when it comes to website content

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