High quality recommendations for small business leaders Canada right now by Tayyab Shaikh ? What Local SEO Looks Like? A better question will be ‘what will local SEO look like in 2020?’ With almost 50% of searches on Google already having local intent, the importance of local SEO is and will be on the rise in the coming years. So, coming to the key takeaways for local SEO 2020, see the listed points: User engagement will always be the topmost factor in local SEO. The businesses with maximum engagement will be the ones prioritized by Google in its SERPs. With voice search getting familiar with smartphone users, it’s essential that you need to go for real-time keywords. Long-tail keywords and the ones in the form of questions will work! Reviews and ratings are another factor that will play a greater role in influencing local SERP rankings.
Are affordable SEO services important? Tayyab Shaikh thinks yes, and here is why : Still not sure about the difference between cheap SEO and (good) affordable SEO? Check out this infographic. With many larger SEO companies charging between $5K and $10K+ per month to optimize and manage clients’ SEO campaigns, many small businesses were essentially left to fend for themselves. The alternative became fly-by-night SEO companies offering cheap SEO packages at cut-throat prices. Forbes reports that a quality national SEO campaign will run you $2K/month on the low-end. After nearly 2 decades of executing profitable SEO campaigns, we can attest to that. Shady SEO companies charge $99/month. So, you have to ask yourself; if someone is selling you a Ferrari for $9,990, is that even remotely close to the same ball park as what you’d expect to pay for a Ferrari?
Tayyab Shaikh on SEO for small business: It used to be that people found local businesses through the printed Yellow Pages directory (to our surprise, they still exist, lol). But in the 21st century, online directories have become the ubiquitous norm. We’ve all used Yelp to find good eats, and there are hundreds more online directories these days. These directories are termed “citations” in the SEO world and are said to account for >10% of local ranking factors. So you definitely want to be listed in as many of these as possible, and more importantly, to be accurately listed in each citation.
Creating video content is more comfortable than ever today. There are online tools to help you create video content for your business. Some tools come with ready-made templates to fit your needs – you can actually create a professional video within a few hours single-handedly. So, come with more video content this year, get more exposure in search engine results. Google has also started showing videos as snippets in answers to search queries. As a result, online businesses must use video content for their SEO strategy. When producing video content, make sure Googlebot can understand what your video is all about. Add a corresponding text reference in all your videos along with relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and titles.
Tayyab Shaikh about marketing for small business: Will Google turn the natural search landscape upside down in 2021? I doubt it. Although change is inevitable, you can survive or even gain an edge with a little vigilance. But don’t expect any relief from the merciless trend of organic results moving way down the search engine results pages (SERPs). Like any good content marketer, Google is focused on the needs of its audience – searchers. Eager to produce relevant results, the search engine constantly enhances its technology and relies on artificial intelligence to support results. Google’s BERT, for example, focuses on natural language processing (NLP), including searcher intent and the context of search queries. Fortunately, marketers still see traffic from Google and other major search engines. Organic searches accounted for 53% of website traffic in 2019, according to BrightEdge data. I don’t expect that number has changed much since 2019. Read more details at Tayyab Shaikh.