Is It Important To Display My Business Address?
Citations (online directory listings) play a hugely important role in any online marketing campaign. Not only do they help to provide respected areas of confirmation for your business details, but they also offer new pathways for potential customers to find your business details.
A key part of these citations relates to the NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) of a business but what happens if your company doesn’t tick the traditional boxes of having a physical location where customers can visit you? If this is the case, publishing your address to would-be customers could be an issue.
Why Would You Want To Hide Your Address?
For many businesses with a physical location such as an office or shop, the ability for customers to find them can be crucial. However for other businesses, a driving school for example, that provide their services at other locations, this is not the case.
Our experience tells us that there are typically 5 reasons why a business owner may not want their address published. These are as follows:
- Because they do not serve customers at their location, they don’t want people visiting their business address.
- Their office address is a virtual office. This would mean customers would be unable to drop in.
- Certain businesses (therapists and counsellors) may be considered to be a little sensitive and unsolicited visitors could be an issue
- They work from home and are concerned that this may not create the impression that they are looking for
- Although they are based in a particular location, they may wish to target a completely different area.
Does Hiding Your Business Address Limit Local Ranking Potential?
It’s impossible to get away from the fact it can impact your ranking potential. Web users want the ability to access genuine local results and Google wants you to be happy so that you will keep using your services.
Google strives to serve up businesses that it thinks are high quality and that are local. If you hide your address you make it much harder for Google to determine if you are a genuine local business.
We Can Help
Should you find yourself in this particular position, give the Footprint team a call today on Tel. No. 01883 372488 today to see how we can help you.
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Citations – 4 Key Questions
We’re often asked about the relevance of citations and their importance but there can be no doubt that they are a key component of any SEO campaign.
Whilst citations alone won’t guarantee a number one ranking, it is absolutely essential that you have an accurate and consistent citation campaign if you would like to compete effectively in the local SEO stakes.
Additionally, research undertaken by Bright Local, highlights that citations still provide significant value to both SEO providers and local businesses alike. As such, citation creation remains one of the most common services offered by agencies.
With this being the case, we have identified 3 of the most important questions relating to citations.
Will Citation Building Impact My SEO Rankings?
As with all aspects of SEO, it’s only a combination of SEO factors that will pull together to help improve SEO rankings but without doubt, anyone without a solid base of citations will be at a competitive disadvantage, if you want to try to rank for local searches.
How Many Citations Do I Need To Rank Well?
There are some companies that would recommend the creation of 1000s of citations and whilst we wouldn’t go that far, a large number of high quality, consistent citations will certainly benefit your business.
You don’t need hundreds of citations to rank well but we will choose the most important ones for you to help create the type of profile that will benefit you. Just as important as building new citations, is the need to ensure that all listings contain the correct information, including opening hours, location, contact details).
Duplicate listings are not helpful either. Whilst they should not negatively impact your listings, they may confuse potential customers which is not helpful.
Are Some Directories More Important Than Others?
Yes, it is true that “big” directories such as Yell, Yelp, FreeIndex and others are important but relevance is just as important. Any listing can benefit your business but the more relevant directories you appear on, the better it will be for your business. Not only in Google’s eyes but also in the eyes of your customers.
Is Consistent Information Important?
Submitting different details to different directories is unlikely to have the negative impact that it once had but it is very likely to confuse potential customers again. This should be avoided at all cost wherever possible.
Further Information
If you’d like to speak to us regarding how we can help you to use web design to grow your company, give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.
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3 Reasons Why E-Mail Marketing Offers The Perfect Way To Keep In Touch
Used businesses for many years, e-mail marketing is one of the original online marketing channels and if you want to make the most of it, we’ve outlined 3 reasons why it’s still perfect today.
No. 1 – Perfect For Getting Your Message Across
Whilst this may sound fairly obvious, e-mail marketing should also be concise. People are busy and if they cannot immediately identify the important information contained within the e-mail, there is a very strong chance that they will not take the time to find out what it is.
By ensuring that your customers can easily identify the key areas of interest, you can significantly increase the chances of you generating conversions from your e-mail.
No. 2 – Perfect For Mobile Marketing
There is a very strong possibility that your e-mail will be viewed via a mobile or smart device. As such, the e-mail must be optimised for viewing via these devices.
Our advice regarding creating a mobile optimised e-mail as is as follows:
- Keep the amount of text to a minimum – short snappy messages are the way to go
- Use clear CTAs (Call to Actions) – don’t make your potential customers guess what you want them to do!
- One-click buttons are user friendly and time-saving
No. 3 – Perfect For Projecting An Engaging Message
Things that can wait are often forgotten. As such, creating a sense of urgency is a tried and tested way to engage potential customers in your message.
By injecting a sense of urgency (an expiring offer for example) into your subject line, you can take significant steps towards ensuring recipients actually want to see what is contained within the e-mail.
Let Us Know What You Think
If you struggle to create interesting and informative content for your email subscribers, contact Footprint Web Design today. We can help to create a comprehensive online marketing campaign for your business which will drive the right people to your website.
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