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Keeping your shop website up to date is very important, join our group and we'll evaluate your website together.
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Google search rolled out an update that now shows a website's favicon next to the search results on desktop, which started on mobile in May. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9290858?hl=en Interesting read: https://www.androidcentral.com/google-search-results-desktop-now-include-favicons What you need to know Google is making some changes to the way search results are shown on the desktop. Starting this week, search results will be displayed alongside icons for the websites they link to. The redesign was propagated to mobile devices last year.
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Interesting article on Search Engine Journal about the importance of business reviews. Your business listing is prompted up with more positive reviews which is especially important for local area search. Google Local Search Study: Businesses on First Page Have an Avg. 4.4 Star Rating Businesses ranking on the first page of Google local search results have an average review rating of 4.42 stars. This information was revealed in a recent study from BrightLocal which examines Google reviews and how they relate to local rankings. A high star rating was found to strongly correlate with better rankings in Google search. Businesses ranking in the top 3 positions are more likely to have an average star rating of 4-5 stars (64% of businesses have 4-5 stars). Out of those ranking in positions 7-10 59% of were found to have a 4-5 star rating. Only 20% of businesses in positions 1-3 were found to have no Google reviews, compared to 26% of businesses in positions 7-10. Those numbers stress the importance of having a favorable star rating when it comes to ranking well in Google local search. Positive reviews send signals to Google that the business is trustworthy and provides a good experience for customers. Therefore, Google will be more likely to direct people toward those businesses when searching for what they offer. Other Key Findings from the Study Only 5% of businesses have an average star rating below 3 stars Photographers, alternative therapy businesses, and marketing services have the highest average star ratings Senior living services, car dealerships, and hotels have the lowest average star ratings Bars, restaurants, and hotels are the industries that are most likely to have Google Reviews Accountants are the least likely industry to have reviews on Google Results from this study are based on the analysis of 93,000 businesses’ Google reviews in 26 industries. Another recent study from Moz further illustrates the growing importance of Google My Business signals in local search results. Article: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-local-search-study-businesses-on-first-page-have-an-avg-4-4-star-rating/279895/
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Website Mobile Friendly Test
Automotive Webmaster replied to Alex's topic in Shop Website Help's Website Tips
It's getting more and more important for websites to render well on smaller screens. Just posted a blog about this topic 😁 -
Automotive Webmaster joined the group
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Improve your local ranking on Google
Alex replied to Alex's topic in Shop Website Help's Website Tips
That's a great tip! https://moz.com/blog/boost-conversions-with-google-posts -
Improve your local ranking on Google
cclub replied to Alex's topic in Shop Website Help's Website Tips
It is also worth mentioning that Google seems to reward businesses that are active with Google posts under GMB. I usually try to post once or twice per week, seems to help. -
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Most websites and website designers these days follow the guideline of 160 characters when writing website page meta descriptions. When they are longer, Google just truncates them to 160...well until December 2017 when Google decided to accept that number to be around 300 with some recommending to make it 320. If your web designer wrote your website page descriptions shorter, you aren't taking advantage of the description tag to better your SEO and possibly your click-through rate. It's time to look at your website pages to be sure. Feel free to join and post in my group and we'll take a peak for you. Good read: https://www.compose.agency/insights/meta-description-length-2018
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Google has a great informational page that outlines best practices to increase your website/business ranking in search results. Can’t find your business? Improve your info. You may find that your business doesn’t appear for relevant searches in your area. To maximize how often your customers see your business in local search results, complete the following tasks in Google My Business. Providing and updating business information in Google My Business can help your business’s local ranking on Google and enhance your presence in Search and Maps. Enter complete data Local results favor the most relevant results for each search, and businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches. Make sure that you’ve entered all of your business information in Google My Business, so customers know more about what you do, where you are, and when they can visit you. Provide information like (but not limited to) your physical address, phone number, and category. Make sure to keep this information updated as your business changes. Learn how to edit your business information Verify your location(s) Verify your business locations to give them the best opportunity to appear for users across Google products, like Maps and Search. Learn more about verification Keep your hours accurate Entering and updating your opening hours, including special hours for holidays and special events, lets potential customers know when you’re available and gives them confidence that when they travel to your location, it will be open. Learn how to edit your hours Manage and respond to reviews Interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business. High-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location. Encourage customers to leave feedback by creating a link they can click to write reviews. Learn more Add photos Adding photos to your listings shows people your goods and services, and can help you tell the story of your business. Accurate and appealing pictures may also show potential customers that your business offers what they’re searching for. Learn more How Google determines local ranking Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might decide that a business that's farther away from your location is more likely to have what you're looking for than a business that's closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results. Relevance Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for. Adding complete and detailed business information can help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. Distance Just like it sounds–how far is each potential search result from the location term used in a search? If a user doesn't specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location. Prominence Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels, or well-known store brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be prominent in local search results. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles, and directories). Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking: more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business's local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization. There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the details of the search algorithm confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone. Source: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en
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Alex, Thanks Scott
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Test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. Just enter a page URL to see how your page scores. Mobile is changing the world. Today, everyone has smartphones with them, constantly communicating and looking for information. In many countries, the number of smartphones has surpassed the number of personal computers; having a mobile-friendly website has become a critical part of having an online presence. If you haven't made your website mobile-friendly, you should. The majority of users coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device. If you don't know if your website is mobile-friendly, take the Mobile Friendly Test now! If you used content management software like Wordpress to build you website, Check out our guide to customize your website software. If you don't use such software, consider hiring a web developer. We have a checklist of things to care about when doing so. If you're technical enough to do it yourself, check our Mobile SEO Guide. If you want to know more about the reasons why you should create a mobile-friendly website, read on! Why make a website mobile-friendly? The desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. The version that's not mobile-friendly requires the user to pinch or zoom in order to read the content. Users find this a frustrating experience and are likely to abandon the site. Alternatively, the mobile-friendly version is readable and immediately usable. In the USA, 94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. Interestingly, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktop computers are likely to be present. Mobile is critical to your business and will continue to be so – whether you’re blogging about your favorite sports team, working on the website for your community theater, or selling products to potential clients. Make sure visitors can have a good experience on your site when they’re visiting from their mobile devices! How do I start? The work involved in making a mobile-friendly site can depend on your developer resources, business model, and expertise. For an example of how a desktop site might be redesigned to work on mobile, see the following diagram: On a very basic implementation level, transitioning an existing desktop site to mobile entails using existing sections of content from the desktop site and organizing them in a mobile-friendly design pattern. For more information on the technical implementation of a mobile site, whether you hire a developer or do it yourself, see our docs on Mobile SEO. How much does it cost to build a site for mobile devices? The answer is... it varies! For example, here are some of the possibilities: Going mobile can be free if you can select a responsive template or theme for your website. A responsive template/theme adapts the display to the visitor no matter if they are using a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. Going mobile can be free if you have the technical skills to build your mobile site. Check out Web Fundamentals! Going mobile will likely cost time and money if you need to hire a developer. Furthermore, if your website was created several years ago, a new developer might recommend starting from scratch (so you'll be paying for a complete makeover). This is because there are new web development techniques and themes (or page templates) that may make it more efficient to re-do -- rather than modify -- your site. This is especially the case for sites: Built with Flash Using outdated e-commerce platforms The good news is that if you start from scratch there may be an existing template/theme that your developer can utilize. You may be able to reuse your existing content which can hopefully save time and money. What are the next steps? If your site was made by selecting a template or theme from third-party website software, check out Customize Your Website Software for Mobile Users, which can be the fastest way to become mobile-friendly! If you're going to hire a web developer, check out our guide for hiring someone If you want more information on the mobile website implementation process, check out our docs on Mobile SEO. If you’re ready to build a mobile-friendly site, choose responsive web design. View our docs on Mobile SEO or go straight to Web Fundamentals and Principles of Site Design. If you’d like to learn more about making your business mobile-friendly, we recommend: The Mobile Playbook, Think with Google for the Mobile Platform, and Google’s Multi-Screen Success Stories. No matter which step you choose next, choose to go mobile!
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Scott, you are coming up on the first page for 2 sites, nice job! I like the design, very cool. Looks like you are really doing some great work. If you want to hide some of the elements like your text box/link on desktops, you can hide it with custom css on certain screen sizes. Check out this tool to see what can be worked on to optimize your site http://nibbler.silktide.com/ since you are working on it yourself. It's not always possible to be perfect on everything but I find that its a good tool to see where improvements can be made with coding, optimizing images, social network ranking, etc.
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Alex, When you get a chance could you try searching Volvo Repair Rockville. I think Ihave made it to the first page. Also I would like your feedback on a design idea I have had for awhile. I have made the site to look like a smart phone. If you click on the icons, a modal box opens to display more info. This way the user does not have to go from page to page and it really works great on mobile devices. Thanks Scott
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Hi Mike, I took a quick peak at your site. Looks like a wordpress site. What are you looking at redoing? On a quick look, there are a few updates I would make. move it over to https:// add more h1,h2,h3, etc tags within the pages clean up some of the html Are you doing this yourself or is Automated Marketing Group listed in the footer managing this for you? Mobile is good, but some of the white text in front of the yellow drowns out a little. I personally prefer the logo more on top and in the header as the first thing the customer sees above the fold. I would make the header darker and move your logo up. Mobile and tablet below. Pages look well linked and you have a good reviews page. What type of traffic/feedback are you getting on your site? Would the second site be the same business name?
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Www.supertechonline.ca looking at redoing my site and adding a second site for general repair. Your thoughts?
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Alex, Thank You. Scott
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Here's what I see on that search term for page 1 Google. I do see your sites on page 2:
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Alex, When you get a chance would you try a search for Volvo Service Rockville and see if we are on the first page. I have been doing some work on my SEO and from the computers I have tested at, I have made it to the first page of results for that. I'm working on consolidating urls to scottsautomotivemd.com but the results may come up with one of my other urls. Thanks Scott
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Sounds good, I look forward to hearing about your results. If you remove those slant pages, i would still redirect the domains to your main site pages so that anything you do get will get redirected.
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Alex, Thanks. I have been working on this the last few hours. I thought I would try eliminating the slant sites creating optimized content pages on my site which is why you are now being redirect from those sites. I did copy the Volvo page for all of these and I am going to start editing them tomorrow. I'm going to focus on building the site to attract owners of European cars since that is what we want the most. I don't see the slant sites doing much for me so I don't think there is any harm in removing them for now. Once I get the site further developed, I'll check back in. I do have Google analytics on the site, and a sitemap which I submit to Googles Search Console. So I will monitor those as well Thanks Scott
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You are on a great start! Good luck with your shop and let me know how you are making out. After you make some updates to your site, jump back into this topic and I'll be glad to take a look again. ☺️
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So first off, I applaud your efforts because it takes a lot to do this and you have a good handle on troubleshooting your results and a good grasp of how organic search works. As far as the slant slides, they are ok as along as they aren't duplicating content and in most cases a one pager doesn't get the weight of a 5-10 page site because of the content. Domain redirects in my opinion are not worth much because Google will index the final destination on the site you redirect to and that will be duplicate content from the domain you are redirecting from. There are mixed feelings on keyword rich domain names where some feel they don;t hold the weight they used to and well optimized and unique content page is better. Some still feel that keyword rich domains are the way to go. I think it doesn't hurt but in the end content is king. http://audirepairrockville.com/ redirects to http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ so you really are only getting indexed for http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ and when I search for "audi repair rockville md" none of your sites come up in Google on the first page. My recommendation would be to heavily optimize this page for audi which I don't really see anywhere: http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/. It's currently listing text for volvo on the page and nothing about audi. List out Audi multiple times along with models and services and go from there. Same thing with http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/bmw/ it's not optimized at all for BMW, it's like a duplicate page with volvo info. Mercedes, VW, and Mini pages on http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com as well. Make it unique and custom content to that manufacturer and you'll get higher rankings. Do the same for your other manufacturer pages and I think you'll see some more clicks. A few other tips: 1. Have Kukui or your host switch to SSL(https) and redirect all http pages to https. Make sure an htaccess redirect is in place. If using webmaster tools in google and bing, update your site to https 2. Have them also create a sitemap for your pages and add it to webmaster tools in google and bing if one doesn't already exist. 3. If you are going to keep those additional domains, consider small (unique) sites for each, 3-5 pages. In the footer of each website, have links to each of the sites so that they link to each other. These sites could be informational with service tips and other content with an appointment for service redirect to your main site. But adding content that is as unique as possible is key to having them picked up by search engines and indexed. Remember, a redirected domain a user would have to type the domain in the address bar because more than likely they will not find it in organic search. With all of your sites, link them from other sites like facebook, twitter, local business listings, etc. External links help with ranking. It's hard to really see where you are with SEO without analytics, so you may know some of this already...Hope this helps and keep me posted on how it goes. Good case study on having additional websites!
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Alex, thank you so much! I only getting started, I still have to have my alignment lift installed! The other lifts are done, it's insane the amount of work that goes into opening a small shop.
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Alex, Thanks for all the feedback. I have some questions but want to give you some history so you better understand my situation. We started in 1989 as a Volvo specialist. I was one of the first adopters of Google pay per click and it served us quite well especially at .10 to .20 a click, that faded as it's popularity as well as the price rose. We still did very well with organic since everything continued to show us as as Volvo Specialist. About 7 years ago we started getting into general auto repair. While we still did pretty well organically with Volvo, not so much with general auto repair as there are a lot of shops in this area. Starting last January, we started direct mail marketing for more BMW customers. In May we bought the customer base of a German Car specialists and did some more direct mail marketing to those customers. The direct mail company created what they call slant sites for many of these marketing pieces. http://bmwrepairrockville.com/ http://audirepairrockville.com/ http://vwrepairrockville.com/ http://volvorepairrockvillemd.com/ earlier this year we had another company create us a 4 page site to see how it would do in organic search as many of the other shops they had built sites for were coming up on the first page. We also got the urls, yelp page, and google business listing for the other business. I started redirecting the urls to a page on our site. From my research, I think there are pros and cons to having all this presence on the web. On one hand it could provide several avenues and gives us a bigger foot print on the web, on the other hand Google may see it as spammy and not get a clear picture of what we do. Since our search results have been dropping over this past year, I have to believe something is negatively affecting us. So a few weeks ago I created the 4volvoservice.com site and linked it up to the Google business page I got from the other business and I started redirecting the other 4 page website to the Kukui site. I also ended up removing the Google business page from the other business because while the reviews were ok, they are related to the other business. I have since recovered it. This in an effort to see if I can bring Volvo Search back up. A big part of my marketing challenge is our split identity. Our business is about 76% European cars and 24% other makes. While we would love for it to be 100% European, we would not survive without the non European. I have read, as you mentioned that it is usually best to optimize one site. So the challenge of that is creating a site that European car owners will not see as just another general repair shop, while not alienating the non-European car owners. As I am writing this, I'm thinking it may be best to create 2 websites. One for the European and one for the general auto repair and take down everything else. Love to hear your thoughts on this. Also, I have a bunch of domain names that are forwarded to my sites. I have heard this can hurt SEO as well. Do you have any thoughts on that? Scott
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Hi Scott, both sites looks good. Your Kukui site should be giving you analytics, so I'd be curious to know how it's performing for you. Your wordpress site (volvo) looks to be running the latest version which is good. Is Kukui doing that one also? When I search for "volvo service Rockville, MD" or "volvo auto repair Rockville, MD" your volvo site does not come up on the first page or in google business listings. Are you listing that site as a separate business listing in google? Your other site does come up (Kukui). Are you getting traffic to your volvo site or is that something you recently put up using wordpress? When I search for your volvo site with "volvo service Maryland, DC" or "volvo auto repair Maryland, DC" your site doesn't come up on the first page of google or business listings. Your kukui site, I like what they do with reviewsyou may want to see about having the phone number clickable, especially in the mobile version. Your wordpress site is mobile friendly, but I would add a clickable phone number and maybe think about adding a volvo logo somewhere on your main image or somewhere above the fold. Without reading the text, i quickly see Scott's Automotive but no images about what you specialize in with this site, that a logo could correct. I do like the idea of branding with multiple websites, especially for niches. However, you can probably accomplish what you want by creating a volvo dedicated section with volvo rich keywords on your http://www.scottsautospec.com/ website. Kukui manages that for you and I would have them add a Volvo Service page under your services tab to test it out. When I search for "scotts automotive rockville md" I get your business listing which includes your volvo website and not your main site. But in the organic search results I get your http://www.scottsautospec.com website results. I would change your business listing to include http://www.scottsautospec.com or add another one and differentiate a bit. Here's what I see: Is Kukui incorporating Google and Yelp reviews or are the reviews on your site generated only from visitors to your site? Looks like you are investing in your online presence, which is good to see. Maybe think about either combining or differentiating more between the two sites as two separate channels.
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Congrats on the new shop! Looks like you are running a wordpress site, which is good and gives you an admin panel to customize content. You still have a lot to work on in terms of content and when you do that, make sure your page titles don't read "auto repair website" but instead auto repair for the area (town/city) you are in or targeting. On large screens and desktops, your header and main navigation bar is floating, which is ok but you've got some image overlap at the bottom and its a bit confusing. You may want to take a look at that and when you scroll, maybe fix your logo to the navigation bar so you are always branding. You site is mobile-friendly, but you seem to have the some header/main navigation overlap which I would take a look at. Your header cuts off your address also on your blogs page and I would consider a link to a map and clickable phone number to your shop. Wordpress has a lot of great plugins and tools but you need to keep the script updated. You can also optimize for search engines with plugins, but think about the sections you want to add and create keyword rich content. Maybe add a services page with some sub-pages, and unless you are planning to write a blog or articles for your customers, I would remove that page. Overall, good start if you are doing this on your own. If not, get your designer/webmaster to complete it and come back and I'll take a look again. It looks like it's not quite finished. 😁
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Our Volvo specific site: http://www.4volvoservice.com/ And Our general repair site: http://www.scottsautospec.com/ Scott
