Drive Local Traffic to Your Business With Google My Business Posts

Google My Business listings are one of the most effective ways for businesses to be discovered and engaged with on Google. We’ve marketed thousands of clients nationwide from apartment communities, senior living communities, auto dealerships, hotels and hospitals, and have seen first-hand how effective GMB listings are for local businesses.

Across a sample of 409 clients, we found that 28% of their website sessions came from GMB listings. These listings don’t only deliver more traffic than the typical organic search listings, they also deliver higher quality traffic. Website sessions coming from Google My Business listings convert 29% more than the average traffic source.

Google gives businesses plenty of opportunities to promote their company and improve their Google Business profile, but most local businesses don’t take advantage of them or don’t know they exist. In this blog post, we’ll explain how Google determines which listing to show to searchers, how you can use GMB posts to drive local search traffic to your website, and how you can use GMB to convert searchers into leads.

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Apartment SEO vs. SEM in 2019

If you took a sneak peek into thousands of apartment websites’ analytics accounts you might find that they tell a similar story. Most of their website traffic is coming from Google. Google is arguably the most important marketing channel for apartment marketers today, but it’s also one of the most difficult to compete in.

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Three Ways to Prepare for Google’s Mobile-First Index

google's mobile first indexGoogle recently announced that it is revamping its indexing criteria to better align with smartphone users. Google’s new mobile-first index delivers more relevant search results and accurate content to searchers.

Google’s indexing process makes up a large part of the algorithm that determines what a user will or will not see. Historically, Google’s index was based solely on desktop websites. Google crawls your desktop site, creating ranking signals and categorizing content. When a user searches Google, the retrieval part of the algorithm looks at the desktop index. It finds relevant results based on this index, then ranks them.

The mobile-first index will look at the mobile version of your website for its ranking signals and fall back on the desktop version when there is no mobile version. This means Google will create and rank its search listings based on the mobile version of content, even for listings that are shown to desktop users. Google wants its search results to reflect the majority of its audience: mobile users. If you want to remain visible and competitive, you need to include relevant, informative content on your mobile site.

How can you respond to make sure you take full advantage of the new mobile-first index?

Create a responsive website: A responsive website serves the same HTML code on the same URL regardless of the users’ device, but will adjust the display based on screen size. When you have a responsive site, the indexing doesn’t change because Google sees the same content.

Create relevant, informative mobile content: When the mobile-first index rolls out in its entirety, Google will search your mobile site and index your site based on mobile content. Creating high-quality content will help Google understand the relevance of your site when searches look for what offer.

Launch a paid search campaign: To ensure that your ads land at the top of search engine results pages despite indexing, launch a paid search campaign. Compel prospective customers to click by exploring all possible keyword angles. Consider connecting ads to specific landing pages on your site to produce the most relevant results and best experience for your potential customers.

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