Local Business Blog

ADA Website Compliance in 2026: What Local Businesses Need to Know

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:30:30 GMT

If you run a local service business and you've never thought about ADA website compliance, 2026 is the year that changes. Website accessibility lawsuits hit a fresh high last year, and the data says something that surprises most owners: the majority of defendants aren't national retailers. They're small and mid-sized businesses that assumed a lawsuit like this only happens to somebody else.

This isn't a scare piece. It's a plain-English breakdown of what the law actually requires, what's driving the lawsuit surge, why a popular "quick fix" is making things worse for the businesses that use it, and what a realistic compliance path looks like for a local service business — the kind of company we usually talk about here in the context of local SEO ranking factors and website conversion , not courtroom exposure.

1. What "ADA Website Compliance" Actually Means

The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't mention websites by name — it was written in 1990, before the commercial web existed. But federal courts, particularly in New York, have consistently interpreted Title III's ban on discrimination by "places of public accommodation" to cover business websites, mobile apps, and online services. In practice, that means a website with accessibility barriers — missing alt text on images, a checkout form that can't be operated by keyboard, poor color contrast, unlabeled buttons — can trigger the same kind of legal exposure as a physical storefront without a wheelchair ramp.

The technical yardstick courts and regulators point to is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, specifically WCAG 2.1 Level AA — a set of 50 success criteria covering how people using screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, or other assistive technology are supposed to be able to perceive, operate, and understand a website. There's no federal regulation that explicitly writes WCAG 2.1 AA into law for private businesses. But it's become the de facto standard plaintiffs' attorneys cite and courts reference when deciding whether a site is accessible.

2. Small and Local Businesses Are the Ones Actually Getting Sued

The biggest misconception is that this is a Fortune 500 problem. It isn't. There is no small business exemption anywhere in ADA Title III, and UsableNet's 2025 litigation research found that 64% of sued companies had annual revenue under $25 million. If your website is public and you do business online — even just to generate calls and estimates — you're in scope.

E-commerce still draws the largest share of filings, but restaurants, food service, and other local service businesses make up a significant and growing chunk of the docket. And once a business gets sued, the risk doesn't go away: 46% of federal website accessibility cases filed in 2025 involved a defendant who had already been sued at least once before, meaning a one-time fix without ongoing monitoring is rarely the end of the story.

3. The Numbers Behind the 2026 Lawsuit Surge

Seyfarth Shaw, the law firm that tracks ADA Title III litigation most closely, recorded 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025 — a 27% jump over 2024. Once state court filings are added in, UsableNet puts total digital accessibility lawsuits at over 5,000 for the year. That's grown from just 814 federal website-specific filings in 2017.

Most cases never reach a courtroom. They start as a demand letter from a plaintiff's attorney, typically asking for somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000 to settle before a lawsuit is even filed. Ignore it, and a federal complaint can follow within weeks. Beyond that first demand, the cost escalates fast: out-of-court settlements average around $25,000–$75,000, a court judgment averages $85,000, and class actions run into six and seven figures — retailer Fashion Nova settled one for $5.15 million in 2025. None of those figures include defense legal fees, which typically add another $30,000 to $175,000 on top.

4. The April 2026 Deadline You May Have Read About Just Got Pushed Back

You may have seen articles this year pointing to an April 24, 2026 deadline as a major inflection point for accessibility law. Here's the update most of those pieces missed: that deadline applied only to Title II of the ADA, which covers state and local government websites, not private businesses — and the Department of Justice pushed it back before it ever took effect.

The original 2024 DOJ rule set April 24, 2026 as the compliance date for public entities serving 50,000 or more residents, requiring their websites and apps to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. But on April 20, 2026, DOJ published an Interim Final Rule in the Federal Register extending that deadline to April 26, 2027 for those larger public entities, and to April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special districts. The technical standard itself — WCAG 2.1 AA — didn't change, only the timeline.

That rule still doesn't bind private businesses directly. But it matters for a local business owner for one reason: it's the clearest signal yet that WCAG 2.1 AA (and increasingly 2.2 AA) is the standard the government itself treats as the accessibility bar — and that's exactly the standard plaintiffs' attorneys cite when arguing a private business website falls short under Title III.

5. Why an Accessibility Widget Won't Protect You

A lot of small business owners have been sold on a one-line JavaScript "accessibility overlay" widget as an instant fix. The data says otherwise. In 2025, the FTC fined overlay vendor AccessiBe $1 million for misrepresenting its product as a guaranteed path to ADA compliance. In that same year, 22.6% of websites sued for accessibility violations already had an overlay installed when the lawsuit was filed.

Overlays layer a visual interface on top of a site's existing code without fixing the underlying barriers — and screen reader users often report the overlay itself makes navigation worse, not better. Courts and plaintiffs' attorneys are aware of this pattern now. A widget and a disclaimer is not a compliance program; if anything, current litigation data suggests it may make a site a more visible target.

6. A Realistic Compliance Checklist for a Local Service Business

None of this requires an enterprise-scale accessibility department. A defensible, proportionate approach for a local service business looks like this:

Start with a real audit, not just a scanner. Automated accessibility scanners catch roughly 30% of actual issues. A useful audit combines automated scanning with a manual review against WCAG 2.2 AA criteria — the same kind of technical rigor we recommend when reviewing on-page SEO fundamentals for a site.
Fix issues at the code level. Alt text on meaningful images, proper heading structure, keyboard-operable navigation and forms, and sufficient color contrast are the highest-frequency violations, and all are fixable without a full site rebuild.
Publish an accessibility statement. A short public page describing your WCAG target and a contact channel for accessibility issues signals good-faith effort — which matters if a demand letter ever does arrive.
Monitor on an ongoing basis. A theme update, a new plugin, or a marketing team uploading an image without alt text can undo a fix overnight. This is the same reason we tell clients to keep watching Core Web Vitals and site speed after a redesign instead of treating it as a one-time project.
Document the work. Audit reports, remediation tickets, and monitoring logs aren't just good practice — documented compliance effort has been shown to reduce settlement demands by 40–60% when a claim does come in.

For most local service businesses, this pairs naturally with the same technical housekeeping that supports rankings — the kind of work covered in our Google Business Profile optimization checklist and our look at how AI Overviews are changing local search . Accessibility, speed, and structure aren't separate projects — they're the same site working the way it's supposed to for every visitor.

FAQ: ADA Website Compliance for Local Businesses

Does the ADA really apply to a small local business website?
Yes. There is no small business size exemption written into ADA Title III. UsableNet's 2025 data found 64% of sued companies had under $25 million in annual revenue.

What should I do if I get an ADA demand letter?
Don't ignore it, and don't sign anything before getting a legitimate WCAG audit and legal advice. Most demand letters ask for $10,000–$25,000 to settle before a suit is filed; documented remediation effort can meaningfully reduce that number.

Will an accessibility widget or overlay keep me out of trouble?
The evidence says no. The FTC fined a major overlay vendor $1 million in 2025 for overstating what its product could guarantee, and 22.6% of sites sued that year already had an overlay installed.

Is there a hard legal deadline I need to hit?
Not directly — the April 2026 deadline you may have read about applies to state and local government sites under Title II, and DOJ pushed it to 2027–2028 before it took effect. Private businesses aren't bound by that date, but it reinforces WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA as the standard courts reference in private lawsuits, so there's no reason to wait for a private-sector deadline that doesn't exist yet.

Where This Fits Into Your Website Overall

Accessibility compliance isn't a separate checkbox from having a website that works well for your business. It sits alongside the same fundamentals we talk about constantly — site speed, clean structure, and a design that actually helps visitors take action, the same factors that drive conversion rate and search visibility. A site built and audited properly the first time avoids the scramble — and the legal exposure — of fixing it under a demand letter deadline.

If you're not sure where your site stands, that's exactly the kind of question worth a real conversation rather than a guess. Get in touch to talk through what a practical accessibility and website health check would look like for your business, or read more about our approach on the about page .

Core Web Vitals and Local SEO: What Site Speed Costs You in 2026

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:30:30 GMT

Most local service businesses treat their website like a brochure: build it once, forget it exists. But in 2026, Google is grading every page on how it actually feels to use — how fast it loads, how quickly it responds to a tap, whether it jumps around while someone's trying to read it. These three signals are called Core Web Vitals, and they're now a confirmed part of how Google ranks your site in local search.

Here's the uncomfortable part: as of early 2026, only about 42% of mobile websites pass all three Core Web Vitals metrics , according to performance data from Digital Applied . If your site is in the other 58%, you're not just losing a ranking tiebreaker — you're losing customers who never wait around to find out you're the right business for the job.

This guide breaks down what Core Web Vitals actually measure, why they matter more for local SEO than most business owners realize, and exactly what to fix first if your site is slow.

1. What Core Web Vitals Actually Measure

Core Web Vitals are three specific metrics Google uses to score real visitor experience, not just theoretical page speed. Per the technical breakdown from DebugBear , Google evaluates them using the 75th percentile of actual visitor data — meaning three out of every four visits to your page need a "good" experience for the page to pass.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — how long it takes your biggest visible element (usually a hero image or headline) to fully render. Google's threshold for "good" is under 2.5 seconds.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — how quickly your page responds when someone taps a button or menu. INP replaced the older First Input Delay metric in March 2024 because it measures every interaction on the page, not just the first one. Good is under 200 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — how much your page jumps around as it loads. If a visitor's thumb has ever tapped the wrong link because content shifted mid-load, that's CLS. Good is a score under 0.1.

2. Why Core Web Vitals Became a Bigger Local SEO Factor in 2026

Google has treated page experience as a ranking signal since 2021, but the weight it carries changed this year. According to Dotcom-Monitor's 2026 SEO analysis , the March 2026 Google core update increased how much Core Web Vitals influence rankings — sites that already passed the thresholds climbed, and sites that didn't watched positions drop, in some verticals sharply.

Speed doesn't replace the fundamentals covered in our breakdown of what actually moves Local Pack rankings — Google Business Profile signals, reviews, and citations still carry more direct weight. But Core Web Vitals now function as the tiebreaker between two similarly optimized competitors, and per Digital Applied's ranking correlation data, pages ranking in positions 1–3 have a median Largest Contentful Paint of 1.8 seconds, versus 4.2 seconds for pages sitting in positions 20–30.

There's a second reason speed matters more now: it's not just Google anymore. As we covered in how AI Overviews are reshaping local search , a growing share of discovery now happens through AI answer engines. Dotcom-Monitor's research notes these generative engines are just as unforgiving of slow, unreachable pages — if a crawler hits a timeout or a page that takes too long to respond, it quietly stops citing that source altogether.

3. What a Slow Website Actually Costs a Local Business

The ranking impact is real, but it's the conversion impact that should get a business owner's attention. Digital Applied's 2026 performance data quantifies the relationship between load time and lost business:

Every additional 100 milliseconds of load time costs roughly 1% in conversions .
A one-second delay in page response cuts conversion rate by about 7% .
Sites with a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds convert 23% higher than sites over 4 seconds.
Bounce rate jumps 32% when load time goes from 1 to 5 seconds, and 90% when it stretches to 10 seconds.

Think about what that means for a service call worth a few hundred dollars, or a remodel job worth tens of thousands: if a homeowner searches for a plumber, electrician, or contractor at 9 p.m. and your site takes six seconds to load on their phone, they're not filing a complaint — they're already on a competitor's site. This is the same conversion gap we found when we looked at why most contractor websites convert under 3% : speed is one of the fastest, cheapest fixes available before touching design or copy.

4. Where Local Service Business Websites Typically Stand

If you're worried your site might be part of the problem, you're not alone. Digital Applied's industry breakdown of Core Web Vitals pass rates shows real estate sites passing all three metrics only 41% of the time on mobile, and B2B service sites at 44% — both squarely in the range most local service businesses fall into. eCommerce sites trail further behind at 37%.

The pattern holds across platforms, too: sites built on heavier, plugin-stacked systems tend to load more JavaScript than they need, which drags down both LCP and INP. That's not an argument for any one platform over another — it's a reason to actually test your site rather than assume it's fine because it "looks fast" on your own office Wi-Fi.

5. How to Find Out Where Your Site Actually Stands

You don't need to guess. Two free tools give you the real picture:

Google PageSpeed Insights — enter your URL and you'll get both lab data (a simulated test) and, if your site has enough traffic, real field data pulled from the Chrome User Experience Report — the same dataset Google uses to score your Core Web Vitals for ranking purposes.
Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals report — shows which of your actual pages are passing or failing, grouped by issue, so you're not guessing which template needs attention.

Run your homepage and your two or three highest-traffic service pages. If any of them show "poor" or "needs improvement" on mobile, that's the starting point.

6. The Fixes That Move the Needle Fastest

You don't need to rebuild your entire site to see improvement. In priority order, based on what typically moves each metric:

Fix LCP by fixing the hero image. Compress and correctly size your largest above-the-fold image, and avoid loading anything render-blocking before it appears. This is consistently the single highest-return fix for content-heavy pages.
Fix INP by trimming unnecessary scripts. Chat widgets, marketing pixels, and third-party embeds all compete for the browser's attention. Every script you remove or defer is milliseconds back on every single page load.
Fix CLS by reserving space for images and ads before they load. If elements have a defined size before the page finishes loading, nothing has room to jump.

None of this requires a full redesign. It requires actually looking at the data instead of assuming a site is fine because it was fine when it launched.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is website speed really a ranking factor, or just a user experience thing?

Both. Google has confirmed Core Web Vitals are part of its page experience ranking signal. They're not the single deciding factor — content quality and relevance still matter most — but per DebugBear's analysis, Google uses Core Web Vitals as a tiebreaker between pages that are otherwise similarly matched for a search query, and even small ranking gains can meaningfully change how much traffic a page gets.

What's a good Core Web Vitals score for a small business website?

Google's "good" thresholds are the same regardless of business size: Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1 — measured at the 75th percentile of real visitor traffic.

How often should I check my Core Web Vitals?

Quarterly at minimum, and after any redesign, new plugin, or new third-party embed (booking widgets, chat tools, review pop-ups). These are the most common causes of a sudden performance drop.

The Bottom Line

Core Web Vitals aren't a technical curiosity — they're a direct line to how many calls, form fills, and booked jobs your website generates. If it's been a while since anyone checked how your site actually performs on a customer's phone, that's worth fixing before the next slow season, not after you notice bookings have quietly dropped.

If you'd rather have someone else run the numbers, I offer a free website performance review for local service businesses — the same kind of audit behind our free Google Business Profile guide , our Google Business Profile optimization checklist , and our guides on getting more Google reviews and building local citations . Speed is often the fastest of all of them to fix — and for many local businesses, it's the one nobody has checked yet. Every site I build starts with custom website design built around performance from the first line of code, not bolted on after the fact.

Google Business Profile Optimization for Contractors: The 2026 Complete Guide

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:30:19 GMT

If you're a contractor trying to rank in your city, your Google Business Profile is doing more for — or against — you than your website. According to the Whitespark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey — 47 local SEO experts evaluating 187 signals — Google Business Profile signals account for 32% of your entire Local Pack ranking . That's the heaviest single category in the algorithm, ahead of reviews (20%), on-page signals (15%), links, citations, and every other factor combined.

Yet according to Digital Applied's 2026 Local SEO Statistics , 56% of GBP profiles remain incomplete — missing photos, accurate categories, or descriptions. Optimized profiles average 2,700 monthly views with a 41% year-over-year growth in actions (calls, direction requests, website visits, and bookings).

This guide covers every high-leverage GBP optimization step for contractors in 2026 — what to set, what to maintain, and in what order. If you want the broader context on where GBP fits in the full local ranking picture, start with my breakdown of local SEO ranking factors in 2026 .

Why GBP Is the Highest-Leverage Move for Contractors Right Now

The local pack — the map block that appears at the top of "contractor near me" and "[service] in [city]" searches — is where buying decisions happen. Most people never scroll past it. A contractor with a strong GBP who doesn't have a perfect website will outrank a contractor with a flawless website and a neglected profile.

The Whitespark data makes this concrete: GBP signals at 32% of Local Pack ranking is more than double the weight of on-page (website) signals at 15%. What's on your profile matters more than most of your website for showing up in the map results. If you have limited time for marketing, GBP comes first.

The opportunity is real: with 56% of profiles incomplete, fully optimizing yours moves you past a majority of competitors before a single review or post is added.

Step 1 — Primary Category: The #1 Individual Ranking Factor

Your primary GBP category is the single most important individual Local Pack ranking factor in the 2026 Whitespark survey, confirmed by both Whitespark and BrightLocal . Not tied for first. First.

Use Google's own category taxonomy — don't invent a label. Google surfaces the category that most precisely describes your primary service. A roofing contractor ranks better for roofing searches under "Roofing Contractor" than "General Contractor." An HVAC business ranks better under "HVAC Contractor" than "Home Services Company." The more specific the match between your category and what a customer types, the better.

Additional categories: A BrightLocal study found that businesses using four additional categories achieve the highest average local map ranking of 5.9 — outperforming profiles with more or fewer additional categories. Add the additional categories that accurately describe your other services (e.g., "Roof Repair Service," "Gutters Contractor," "Siding Contractor"). Only add categories for what you actually do. Stuffing irrelevant categories dilutes your relevance signals.

Audit this quarterly. Google regularly updates its taxonomy, splitting broad categories into more specific sub-options. A category that was optimal six months ago may have a more precise replacement. The more specific option almost always performs better.

Step 2 — Business Hours: A Top-5 Factor in 2026 (This One Moved Fast)

This is the biggest shift in the 2026 Whitespark data. Business hours moved from position 85 to position 21 in the individual factor rankings — jumping into the top-5 most important GBP signals according to Whitespark's 2026 report and analyzed in detail by Digital Applied's GBP strategy guide .

The reason: Google now explicitly factors in whether your business is open at the time of the search . If someone searches "electrician near me" at 7 PM and your profile says you close at 5 PM, Google deprioritizes you in favor of competitors listed as open. Google is optimizing for immediacy — it wants to show businesses that can actually help the searcher right now.

Set your hours accurately , not aspirationally. If you don't answer calls before 7 AM or after 6 PM, those are your real hours.
Use special hours for holidays and planned closures. Leaving them blank is worse than being listed as closed — it creates uncertainty.
If you offer genuine 24/7 emergency service (plumbing, HVAC, electrical), mark it. Competitors who don't have this set correctly lose to you in evening and weekend searches.

Step 3 — Reviews: 20% of Rankings and Recency Is Everything

Reviews account for 20% of Local Pack rankings per the 2026 Whitespark data. They're the second most important ranking category — and unlike most ranking signals, they directly influence whether a searcher calls you after they find you.

The threshold to look credible in most markets, according to Minyona's 2026 contractor GBP guide : 50+ reviews with a 4.5+ average rating . Contractors dominating competitive local markets typically carry 100–300+ reviews. These aren't vanity metrics — they're the first thing a homeowner checks before picking up the phone.

The 2026-specific nuance is recency. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Customer Review Survey (via Digital Applied ) found that 74% of consumers want reviews from the last 3 months . A profile with 200 reviews and nothing recent reads as dormant to both searchers and Google's algorithm. The operational floor: ≥4 new reviews per month to maintain recency signals.

How to build reviews without violating Google's Terms:

Ask every completed-job client the same day the job closes — satisfaction is highest immediately after delivery.
Send a direct link to your GBP review form. Every extra step you remove dramatically increases completion rates.
Respond to every review — positive or negative — within 48 hours. Response time is tracked as a behavioral signal, and visible responses build trust with prospective customers reading your profile.
Never buy reviews or offer incentives. Google's fraud detection has matured significantly. A suspension deletes your entire review history overnight.

Step 4 — Services List: Jumped 75 Positions in 2026

The GBP services keyword factor moved from approximately position 110 to position 35 in the 2026 Whitespark rankings — one of the largest individual-factor jumps in the entire survey. Most contractors either leave this section empty or write one-line entries like "Roofing." That's a significant missed opportunity.

The strategic move: align your GBP services with your website pages . If you have a dedicated bathroom remodeling page on your site and you list "Bathroom Remodeling" in your GBP services using the same keywords, Google sees a consistent relevance signal across both properties. Whitespark explicitly called out this alignment pattern as significant in the 2026 data.

For each service entry:

Write a keyword-rich description up to 300 characters — not just the service name
Use the language your customers use when searching, not contractor jargon
Add every distinct service as its own entry rather than one catch-all line

This alignment works in both directions — your GBP services should reflect your website, and your website should reflect your GBP services. My on-page SEO checklist for local service businesses covers how to structure your service pages so they reinforce your GBP signals.

Step 5 — Weekly Google Posts: A Free Visibility Signal 40% of Contractors Ignore

According to CSP Marketing's analysis of GBP post performance , 40% of businesses completely ignore Google Posts — a free feature that signals activity, builds trust, and drives measurable actions. For contractors who do post regularly, the interaction breakdown is: 48% website visits, 34% direction requests, 17% phone calls. These are high-intent actions from people already looking to hire.

One important update worth knowing: Google Posts no longer expire after 7 days . They remain visible on your profile indefinitely. Every post you publish compounds your profile's freshness signals over time.

Best practices for contractor posts:

Post at least once per week using the "What's New" format
Include a real photo from an actual project — not stock images
Use a local keyword naturally ("kitchen remodel in Manchester, NH")
End every post with a clear CTA: "Call (603) 821-9533 for a free estimate"

Posts drive traffic to your website — but traffic only converts if your site is built to receive it. I cover what separates high-converting contractor sites from the 97% that underperform in my breakdown of contractor website conversion rates in 2026 .

Step 6 — Profile Completeness: Every Empty Field Is a Competitor's Advantage

With 56% of profiles missing fundamental information, completing every field is a structural competitive advantage before you touch reviews or posts. Businesses with consistent NAP data — Name, Address, Phone, identical across Google, your website, and every directory — are 40% more likely to appear in the local pack .

The completeness checklist:

Business name: Your exact legal name. No keyword stuffing — adding keywords to your business name field violates Google's Terms of Service and can trigger profile suspension.
Categories: Primary + up to 4 additional, accurate and specific (see Step 1).
Hours: Current and accurate, with special hours set for holidays (see Step 2).
Business description: Up to 750 characters explaining who you serve, where, and what makes you different. Plain language, no promotional fluff — it's informational, not an ad.
Service area: List the cities and counties you actually serve. Don't expand beyond your real territory; it dilutes your relevance for the markets that matter most.
Phone number: Match this exactly to your website footer and every directory listing.
Website link: Point to your homepage or the most relevant service page.
Photos: Minimum 10 real project photos. Add new project photos monthly. Include team and vehicle photos — they signal an active, legitimate operation.
Q&A section: Seed it yourself with 3–5 questions customers actually ask, with thorough answers. If you don't, anyone can answer — and they may not get it right.

Monthly Maintenance: Where Rankings Compound or Decay

Setup is a one-time investment. Maintenance is where profiles either compound their authority or slowly fall behind competitors who stay active. The monthly routine that keeps a contractor profile performing:

Earn ≥4 new reviews (ask every completed job, same day)
Respond to all new reviews within 48 hours
Publish ≥4 Google Posts (one per week minimum, with real project photos)
Add 1–2 new project photos from recent work
Verify hours are still accurate — especially before holidays or schedule changes

Quarterly: audit your categories for new Google taxonomy options, refresh your services list to match current website pages, and review your Q&A for accuracy.

If you want help auditing your current GBP profile or building a local SEO strategy for your contracting business, reach out for a free consultation . I help local service businesses get found — starting with the signals that actually move the needle.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the single most important GBP optimization for a contractor?

Your primary category. It's the #1 individual Local Pack ranking factor in the 2026 Whitespark survey — 47 experts evaluating 187 signals. Before spending time on anything else, verify you're using the most specific, accurate category Google offers for your trade. "Roofing Contractor" outranks "General Contractor" for roofing searches.

How many Google reviews does a contractor need to rank in the local pack?

50+ reviews with a 4.5+ average rating is the credibility threshold in most markets. More importantly, you need recency — 74% of consumers want reviews from the last 3 months (BrightLocal 2026). Aim for ≥4 new reviews every month rather than a one-time push followed by nothing.

How often should I post to Google Business Profile?

At minimum, once per week. Use "What's New" updates with a local keyword, a real project photo, and a clear call-to-action. Posts now stay visible indefinitely (Google removed the 7-day expiration), so every post you publish permanently adds to your profile's freshness and activity signals.

Does my GBP profile affect my website's organic rankings?

Not your organic blue-link rankings directly — but it heavily influences the Local Pack above organic, which appears for the majority of local service queries. A strong GBP and a well-optimized website compound each other: on-page signals build GBP prominence, and GBP engagement (clicks, calls, direction requests) reinforces your local authority across both.

On-Page SEO for Local Service Businesses: The 2026 Ranking Checklist

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:30:11 GMT

Your Google Business Profile, reviews, and citations are the external signals that tell Google your business is legitimate and worth ranking. But there's a parallel ranking layer that sits entirely on your own website — and most local service businesses underinvest in it.

On-page SEO accounts for roughly 19% of your total Local Pack ranking weight, according to 2026 local ranking factor research from Digital Applied , which analyzed the full local ranking factor mix across GBP signals (32%), on-page content (19%), and reviews (16%). It's the portion of the equation you control completely, and it compounds with everything else. A well-optimized Google Business Profile pulling traffic toward a weak website is leaving both rankings and leads on the table.

This checklist covers the five on-page elements that move the needle for local service businesses in New Hampshire and beyond — contractors, HVAC companies, electricians, plumbers, roofers, and anyone competing for service-area search.

Why On-Page SEO Is the Ranking Layer You Own

Most local businesses focus their SEO energy on what they can't fully control: getting more Google reviews, claiming directory listings, hoping the algorithm notices. On-page SEO is the opposite — it's your website's structure, content, and schema markup, and it's entirely within your control to fix or improve at any time.

The math is straightforward. Google's Local Pack receives 42% of all local SERP clicks, with the #1 position getting 1.8x higher click-through rate than the #1 organic result below the map, according to the same Digital Applied dataset. On-page optimization directly affects whether you appear in that pack and whether someone clicks when you do. Every element below is an input into that outcome.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Your First Impression in Search Results

Your title tag is how Google categorizes your page. Most local service business websites get this wrong in the same two ways: the title is either too generic ("Home | Smith Plumbing") or so stuffed with keywords it looks like spam. Neither ranks well, and neither gets clicked.

The correct structure for a local service page is [Primary Service + City] | [Variation + City] | [Brand Name] . The city must be embedded inside the keyword phrase — not appended after it. "HVAC Repair Concord NH | Heating & Cooling Concord | Smith HVAC" is correct. "Concord NH | HVAC Repair | Smith HVAC" wastes a title position on geography alone and breaks the keyword phrase Google reads.

For blog posts, the rule relaxes: lead with the primary keyword phrase, include the city only if the post is locally relevant, and put your brand name last. Never lead the title with a keyword that doesn't match what the page actually covers. That's intent hijacking — it undermines both rankings and click-through rate, and it's one of the fastest ways to confuse Google about what a page is for.

Your meta description should open with the primary keyword, include at least one credibility signal (years in business, number of projects completed, certifications), and end with a direct call to action. Google uses meta descriptions for context, not ranking — but they directly affect whether someone clicks your result over the one next to it.

Service Pages: One Topic, One Page, Never a Template

The most common on-page mistake local service businesses make is cramming multiple services onto one page, or building a single service page and swapping city names in and out. Both approaches fail for the same reason: Google needs a dedicated page to associate a specific keyword with a specific intent. When that signal is mixed, the page ranks for nothing particularly well.

Each service you want to rank for needs its own dedicated page. "Bathroom remodeling" and "kitchen remodeling" are different searches with different intent profiles — they need different pages. Each city or service area with meaningful search volume needs its own location page, not a copy of another city's content with names changed.

A service page that ranks for a local contractor includes:

One H1 containing the exact primary keyword phrase — the service plus city you're targeting
At least four H2 sections covering service scope, your process, local-specific factors (permit requirements, climate considerations, local building materials), and social proof
Specific content about what you actually do — not generic "we're passionate about quality" copy that could appear on any contractor's site
Proof elements : photos from real jobs in that area, testimonials that reference the location or project type, and license and insurance information where applicable
A CTA in the first screen — a click-to-call button or estimate form shouldn't require scrolling to find

For contractors specifically, the content depth that separates a ranking page from an invisible one is local specificity: the permit requirements in your county, the soil or foundation conditions common in your service area, the seasonal factors your customers actually face. That same specificity is what drives the conversion rate once someone lands on the page.

Schema Markup: The Language AI and Search Engines Actually Read

Schema markup is structured data code that tells search engines — and AI-powered tools like Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, and Perplexity — exactly what your business does, where it operates, and how to contact you. Without schema, Google infers this from your text. With schema, you're providing the answer in the format it's built to read.

For local service businesses, the schema types that matter most are:

LocalBusiness on your homepage and contact page: your business name, address, phone number, hours, and service area in machine-readable form
Service on each service page: explicitly identifies what you're offering for each page Google indexes
FAQPage on pages with FAQ sections: increases your search result footprint and improves AI Overview eligibility
Article on blog posts: required for blog content to be eligible for rich results and Google News

The CTR impact is documented: sites with properly implemented structured data see 20–30% higher click-through rates from search results, according to ConnectiCall's 2026 local SEO analysis . At the same traffic volume, a 25% CTR improvement is effectively a 25% lead increase.

The AI dimension matters here in a specific way. AI search engines rely on machine-readable data to surface local businesses in generated answers. A human reading your page can figure out you're an electrician in Concord, NH. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's Gemini need your schema to draw that conclusion confidently — which is the same reason local citations have become more important in the AI era, not less. Both citations and schema are about establishing your business's identity with machine readers. Your GBP data, your schema, and your citation NAP all need to say the same thing.

Mobile-First Performance: What Google Actually Indexes in 2026

Google's Search Central confirmed in 2026 that 100% of all newly discovered URLs are processed exclusively under mobile-first indexing, according to research compiled by Amra & Elma tracking Google's indexing documentation. This is not a preference — Google crawls the mobile version of your website as the primary input for your rankings. If your mobile site delivers a degraded experience compared to your desktop site, you pay a ranking penalty at the index level.

For local service businesses, the mobile share of search is significant: 64% of local searches happen on mobile devices, and in home services and local retail specifically, mobile traffic exceeds 75% of total site visits, per WebDesignerFactory's 2026 analysis . The behavior after those searches is where local service businesses win or lose: 76% of people who search locally on mobile visit a business within 24 hours, and 28% make a purchase, according to Digital Applied's mobile SEO data.

Performance matters because slow pages are abandoned before they convert. A one-second increase in mobile page load time beyond the 2.5-second threshold reduces conversion rates by an average of 26.3%, according to a Portent and Deloitte Digital joint study of 11.4 million mobile sessions. For a contractor getting 200 monthly visitors from local search, the difference between a 2.5-second and 4-second load time is roughly 50 additional leads lost per month to a competitor's faster site.

The fixes that move the number most: compress and lazy-load images (the most common source of slow mobile load times), confirm your site is responsive across device sizes, and verify your mobile version contains the same content as your desktop version. Google's PageSpeed Insights gives you a specific, prioritized list of issues to address.

Internal Linking: How to Build Authority Across Your Own Site

Internal links tell Google which pages are important and how they relate to each other. For local service businesses with multiple service pages, city pages, and blog posts, your internal linking structure determines how Google distributes authority across your site — and which pages actually get the ranking benefit.

The standard: a minimum of five internal links per page, with a target of ten or more where content allows. The rule is simple: every time you mention a service or topic that has a dedicated page on your site, link to it — first occurrence only, never the same URL more than once per page.

The linking patterns that drive results for local service sites:

Blog posts → link to relevant service pages and to related blog posts in your cluster
Service pages → link to related subservice pages, city pages, and supporting blog content
City pages → link to the main service pillar page and to adjacent city pages where they exist

Your anchor text distribution should be roughly 30–40% exact match (the service + city phrase), 30–40% partial match ("our Concord electrical team" rather than the full keyword), and 20–30% branded or natural ("learn more" or "see the full guide"). Overloading on exact-match anchors is a signal Google has learned to discount. The right mix reinforces topical relevance without looking manipulative.

This is how a blog content strategy compounds over time: each post links to your service pages, reinforcing the pages you most want to rank. The same way your review strategy compounds with each new five-star review, your internal linking compounds with each new piece of content that correctly points to your money pages.

Putting It Together: The Order of Operations

If you're auditing an existing site or building from scratch, the sequence matters:

Title tags first — every service page and city page should have a properly structured title before you touch anything else. Title tag fixes take minutes to implement and can change how Google categorizes your pages within weeks of reindexing.
Build dedicated service pages — one per service, one per city or service area you're actively targeting, with real content, not templates.
Add LocalBusiness schema to your homepage and contact page; add Service schema to each service page; add FAQPage schema to any page with a genuine FAQ section.
Run a mobile audit — Google's PageSpeed Insights will surface your biggest performance gaps quickly. Fix images first.
Build internal links — once the pages exist and are correctly structured, start connecting them deliberately using the anchor distribution above.

On-page SEO is the part of local search you own completely. Unlike reviews, which you have to earn one at a time, or GBP signals, which require ongoing engagement, your website's structure, content, and schema are permanent investments. Every service page you build correctly, every title tag you fix, every schema block you implement stays working for you without ongoing effort.

The businesses ranking at the top of local search in New Hampshire and across competitive markets have done one consistent thing: their GBP, reviews, citations, and on-page signals all tell the same story about the same business. None of it works in isolation. If you've put in the work on your external signals, your website is what closes the gap — or widens it for your competitor. If you want help making that assessment for your own site, get in touch .

Frequently Asked Questions

How many service pages does a local contractor website need?

At minimum, one page per primary service and one page per city or market area you're actively targeting. A roofing contractor serving three cities with three service types (repair, replacement, commercial) should have at least nine service pages, plus a homepage and contact page. Each needs genuinely unique content — not templated copy with city names swapped in, which Google now reliably identifies and discounts.

Does schema markup directly improve my search rankings?

Schema doesn't directly boost ranking position the way content quality or links do, but it improves how Google understands and represents your pages. The practical effects are significant: 20–30% higher click-through rates for schema-optimized pages, increased eligibility for rich results and AI Overviews, and more reliable inclusion in AI-generated local search answers. For local businesses, LocalBusiness and Service schema are the highest-value types to implement first.

What's the fastest on-page SEO fix for a local service website?

Title tags. Most local service websites have generic or incorrectly structured title tags that are quick to fix without touching any other content. A correctly structured title tag — primary service + city + brand — immediately clarifies your page's intent for Google and typically improves organic CTR within a few weeks of reindexing, with no other changes required.

How does on-page SEO relate to my Google Business Profile?

Your GBP and your website are corroborating sources for Google. Your GBP declares your business identity, location, and services. Your website's schema, NAP information, and service page content either confirm and reinforce those signals or create conflicting information that reduces Google's confidence in your listing. They work together — which is why on-page optimization is the natural next step after getting your GBP right.

Local SEO Ranking Factors in 2026: What Actually Moves the Needle

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:30:03 GMT

Most local service businesses are optimizing the wrong things. They're chasing backlinks when their Google Business Profile is half-complete. They're worried about domain authority when their business hours aren't set correctly. In 2026, those misprioritized efforts are costing them real customers.

The 2026 Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors Survey — based on 47 of the world's top local SEO experts scoring 187 factors — gives us the clearest picture yet of what actually drives ranking in the Local Pack, local organic, and the emerging AI search category. Here's what the data says, and more importantly, what it means for a local service business trying to win more calls and leads.

What the 2026 Whitespark Survey Actually Found

Every year, Whitespark surveys the top local SEO practitioners worldwide and asks them to score hundreds of ranking factors across real search environments. The 2026 edition — published in late 2025 — included a new scoring category for AI search visibility for the first time, acknowledging that platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are now genuine customer acquisition channels for local businesses.

The survey groups ranking signals into eight categories and scores them across three search environments: Local Pack/Maps, local organic, and AI search. The results confirm some things we already suspected — and reveal some specific signals that have moved dramatically up the priority list this year.

The headline finding: Google Business Profile signals account for 32% of your Local Pack ranking influence , making it the single most important factor category by a meaningful margin. That's not surprising at a high level, but which GBP signals moved in 2026 is exactly where the actionable insight lives.

The Big Three: Relevance, Distance, and Prominence

Before diving into specific signals, it helps to understand the framework Google uses to decide which local businesses appear. Google evaluates three core dimensions for every local query:

Relevance — Does this business actually do what the user is searching for? Your primary GBP category and service descriptions are the main signals here.
Distance — How close is the business to the searcher or the location mentioned in the query?
Prominence — How well-established and trusted is the business, based on reviews, links, citations, and overall online presence?

These three pillars haven't changed. What has changed is which specific signals Google uses to evaluate them. According to Local Dominator's 2026 analysis of local search factors , a fourth dimension is increasingly acting as a hard filter: Openness . Businesses listed as open at the time of a search are measurably more likely to appear in results. Getting your hours exactly right isn't a minor housekeeping task anymore — it's a ranking variable.

Google Business Profile Signals — 32% of Your Local Pack Ranking

GBP signals dominate local rankings, and two specific factors jumped dramatically in the 2026 survey that every local service business should act on immediately.

Keywords in your GBP services section moved from position #110 to #35 — a 75-spot jump in one year. This reflects what practitioners have been seeing in the field: Google is actively reading the services you list and matching them to user queries. If you offer "kitchen remodeling," "bathroom renovation," and "basement finishing" but your GBP services section only says "home renovation," you're invisible to a significant chunk of relevant searches.

Accurate business hours moved from #85 to #21 in the rankings. This ties directly to the Openness filter — businesses shown as open at the time of search rank higher. If your hours are outdated, wrong for holidays, or simply incomplete, you're actively suppressing your own visibility on every search that happens when you're supposedly closed.

Beyond these two movers, the fundamentals still apply: a complete profile with accurate NAP (name, address, phone), the right primary category, and consistent posts and photos all feed the 32% of your ranking that lives entirely within Google's own platform. For a step-by-step approach to getting your profile fully optimized, see the Google Business Profile optimization checklist for local service businesses .

On-Page Signals: Why Your Website Still Matters for Local Search

A common misconception is that local SEO is all GBP and reviews — that your website barely factors in. The 2026 data pushes back on that directly. On-page signals are the second major factor category for local organic rankings, and they feed into Local Pack rankings too through the prominence and relevance dimensions.

The signals that matter most for local service businesses:

Location + service keyword in your title tags and H1 — Still the clearest relevance signal your site sends. "Electrician in Portsmouth, NH" in the title of your electrical services page tells Google exactly what you do and where.
Location and keyword in body content — Natural mention of your service area throughout the page, not keyword stuffing, but genuine geographic context.
Schema markup — LocalBusiness schema tells Google — and AI answer engines — the structured facts about your business: category, address, phone, hours, and service areas. Schema is increasingly important for AI search visibility as well as traditional search.
Mobile performance — Mobile "near me" searches containing purchase-intent phrases have grown more than 500% in recent years. If your site loads slowly or breaks on mobile, you're losing customers at the exact moment they're ready to hire someone.

Your website and your GBP are not competing channels — they're reinforcing signals. A well-optimized service page that matches your GBP categories sends a consistency signal Google rewards with better rankings across both Local Pack and organic results.

Reviews: Velocity Beats Total Count in 2026

Google reviews remain a top-tier local ranking signal — but the way practitioners think about them has shifted. Total review count is increasingly treated as a vanity metric. Review velocity — the pace at which you're earning new reviews — is what actually moves your ranking.

According to local search experts tracking this in 2026 , getting two new reviews every month is more valuable for your ranking than getting 20 reviews at once and then going silent for a year. Google interprets consistent new reviews as a signal that the business is active, trusted, and serving customers well — which feeds directly into the Prominence dimension.

And it's not just Google reviews anymore. 74% of consumers use at least two review platforms when researching businesses , and 34% use three or more. Building review presence on Yelp, Facebook, and industry-specific directories strengthens your overall prominence signals and broadens your customer acquisition surface area. For a practical system to earn reviews consistently without being awkward about it, see the guide to getting more Google reviews for local service businesses .

Local Citations and NAP Consistency

Citations — mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on third-party directories — have been a local SEO factor since the beginning. In 2026, their role has evolved: raw citation count matters less than it used to, but citation accuracy and consistency matter just as much as ever.

Google cross-references your business information across multiple data sources to confirm that your NAP is consistent and trustworthy. An old phone number on Yelp, a slightly different business name on Bing Places, an incorrect address on Apple Maps — these inconsistencies create conflicting signals that suppress your ranking across all three core dimensions.

The priority order for citations: Google Business Profile first (covered above), then Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp, Facebook Business Page, and then industry-specific directories relevant to your vertical (HomeAdvisor for home services, Healthgrades for healthcare, Avvo for legal). For the full breakdown of which directories matter most and why, see the complete guide to local citations for SEO .

The 2026 Shift: AI Platforms and Multi-Platform Search

The most significant new chapter in the 2026 Whitespark survey is AI search visibility — scored as a standalone category for the first time. This reflects a genuine shift in how customers are finding local businesses, not just a theoretical future trend.

Perplexity alone processed 780 million queries in May 2025 , and platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others are increasingly being asked "who's the best electrician near me?" or "recommend a plumber in Concord, NH." These AI answer engines pull from structured business data — GBP information, citations, review sentiment, and schema markup — to formulate their answers.

The good news: the signals that feed AI visibility are largely the same signals you're already building for traditional local SEO. A complete, consistent, well-reviewed GBP profile is the foundation. LocalBusiness and Service schema helps AI systems understand what you do and where. Consistent NAP across the web makes it easy for any platform to confidently recommend you.

Google Search still dominates local customer acquisition. But treating Apple Maps, Bing, and AI answer engines as secondary channels is an increasingly costly assumption.

Your Priority Order: Where to Start

Given everything the 2026 data shows, here's the priority order for a local service business doing a full audit — or starting from scratch:

Complete and optimize your GBP — correct primary category, detailed services keywords, accurate hours (including holidays), recent photos. This drives 32% of your Local Pack ranking.
Build review velocity — aim for a consistent cadence of new Google reviews, not a burst-and-stop pattern.
Audit your citations — clean up NAP inconsistencies across Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, and the major directories before building new ones.
Optimize your website's on-page signals — location + service keywords in titles and H1s, LocalBusiness schema, mobile performance.
Monitor AI visibility — verify your business appears accurately when AI platforms answer local queries in your category and geography.

This isn't glamorous work. There's no algorithm shortcut here. But this is what 47 of the world's best local SEO experts say is actually moving rankings in 2026 — and it's repeatable for any local service business willing to execute consistently.

If you're a local service business and want someone to handle this for you, get in touch . You can also learn more about my background and certifications to understand how I approach local SEO for service businesses across New Hampshire.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the single most important local SEO ranking factor in 2026?

Google Business Profile signals collectively account for 32% of your Local Pack ranking influence according to the 2026 Whitespark survey — the largest single factor category. Within GBP, your primary business category, accurate business hours, and keywords in your services section have all moved significantly up the priority list this year.

Does my website matter for local SEO, or is it all about Google Business Profile?

Both matter, and they reinforce each other. GBP is the primary driver for Local Pack/Maps results; your website's on-page signals drive local organic rankings. Service businesses that optimize both consistently outperform those that focus on one channel only.

How many Google reviews do I need to rank locally?

There's no magic number. Review velocity — earning new reviews at a consistent pace — matters more than total count in 2026. Two new reviews per month sustained over a year is more valuable for rankings than 20 reviews earned in a single month and then nothing.

Do AI platforms like ChatGPT affect my local search visibility?

Increasingly, yes. The 2026 Whitespark survey added AI search visibility as a standalone scoring category for the first time. The signals that feed AI recommendations — a complete GBP, consistent citations, strong reviews, and LocalBusiness schema — overlap substantially with traditional local SEO signals, so you're largely building both at once.

How often should I update my Google Business Profile?

Audit hours, categories, and service descriptions at minimum quarterly. Post fresh content — updates, offers, photos — at least monthly. The 2026 data makes clear that businesses with an active, up-to-date GBP consistently outperform those that set it up once and leave it.

Contractor Website Conversion Rate in 2026: Why Most Sites Convert Under 3% (And What to Fix)

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:51:32 GMT

Most contractor websites are brochures with phone numbers. They look presentable, they load, they list services — and then they convert 2 to 4 percent of visitors into an actual call or form submission. The other 96 to 98 percent of every dollar spent driving traffic simply disappears.

This is not a design problem. It's a conversion architecture problem. The 2026 benchmarks are specific enough that you can identify exactly where your site is leaking leads and what the fix looks like — without guessing.

The Hard Numbers: What Contractor Website Conversion Rates Actually Look Like in 2026

PipelineOn's 2026 analysis of home service websites establishes the baseline clearly: the median contractor website converts 2–4% of visitors into a tracked call or form fill . The top 6% of sites — the ones that have implemented conversion architecture correctly — hit 8–12% on identical traffic volume. That gap is not explained by traffic quality, market size, or how professional the site looks. It is explained by execution on a specific set of site elements.

Plumbing and pest control lead the trades at 12–15% site conversion. Emergency-driven demand and short purchase decisions account for most of the difference. Construction and remodeling sites average 3.65–7%, because the buying cycle is longer and a first-visit visitor is often still in research mode. Estatehub's 2026 benchmark study places general contracting at a 2.61% average conversion rate. If you're above that, you're in the top half of your trade. If you're at 6–7%, you're outperforming most competitors in your market.

Zoom out from the website to the full lead funnel and another number clarifies the stakes: phone calls convert at 46%, with 37% of those closing on the first call (Estatehub 2026). Every conversion decision on your site should ultimately point a visitor toward calling you. A form fill with a 48-hour response cycle is not an equivalent outcome.

The cost side adds urgency. LocaliQ's 2025 benchmark of 3,211 US home service search campaigns found that cost-per-lead rose year over year for 69% of advertisers, with a 10.51% average increase. You're paying more per visitor than last year. If fewer of those visitors are converting, the effective cost per lead compounds quickly. Improving conversion is the only lever that doesn't require spending more per month to pull.

Mobile Is Where You Win or Lose — And Most Sites Are Losing

PipelineOn's home service traffic analysis puts mobile at 71% of all website visits in home services. Three out of four people landing on your site are on their phone — often mid-task. A homeowner who just noticed a breaker trip. A property manager who realized the HVAC hasn't been serviced before summer. They're not at a desktop. They pulled up Google, clicked the first relevant result, and are making a snap judgment about whether you're credible enough to call.

If your site loads slowly on mobile, most of them are already gone before the page finishes. Personizely's 2026 mobile optimization research — aligned with Google Core Web Vitals benchmarks — puts the cost at approximately 7% in conversions for every additional second of mobile load time . A 5-second mobile load loses roughly 35% of leads versus a 1-second load on identical traffic. This is not a marginal performance difference.

Sub-2-second mobile load is not a premium feature reserved for large contractors with enterprise budgets. It's the performance floor for a site that intends to generate calls. If you're on a website builder platform optimized for visual drag-and-drop rather than page performance, or if you've accumulated plugins and uncompressed images on a shared hosting plan, you're paying for traffic a slow site can't capture.

Mobile speed also connects to where visitors come from in the first place. As detailed in the 2026 local SEO ranking factors guide , Core Web Vitals — including Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint — are now direct inputs into Google's ranking algorithm. A slow site doesn't just convert less; it ranks lower, which means fewer visitors arriving to not convert.

The Speed-to-Lead Math Most Contractors Never See

A homeowner lands on your site, navigates to the contact form, and submits a request. What happens in the next ten minutes determines whether that lead becomes a job for you or becomes a job for someone else.

CallRail's 2026 home services research, cited in PipelineOn's benchmark analysis, is precise: responding to a website inquiry within 60 seconds lifts conversion by 391% . Waiting five minutes cuts qualifying odds by 80%. Lead Connect research frames the same finding from the consumer side: 78% of customers hire the company that responds first — not the one with the best photos, the most certifications, or the lowest quote.

The missed-call problem layers on top. CallRail reports a 14% missed call rate in home services. That's not voicemail — that's a caller who rang, heard nothing, and moved to the next result in their Google search. Combined with a 2–4% form conversion rate on most contractor sites, the majority of potential lead volume is evaporating before a single conversation has taken place.

Operationally, the fix is accessible. A text-based inquiry option that routes directly to your phone, a live chat widget monitored during business hours, or a defined internal protocol for 60-second call-backs can close most of the gap. The goal is straightforward: reduce the time between "visitor decides to reach out" and "you're in conversation with them" to under two minutes.

Reviews on Your Website — Why Social Proof Converts Differently Than It Ranks

BrightLocal's 2025 survey of 1,026 US adults found that 91% read local reviews before hiring a service business . Most won't consider a business with fewer than 4 stars. That judgment happens in the first 30 seconds on your homepage — and it determines whether they call you or go back to Google to find someone else.

Reviews on your website and reviews on Google serve different functions. Your Google Business Profile reviews determine whether someone clicks your search listing. Reviews embedded on your website — real ones, with reviewer names, dates, and specific service detail — determine whether that visitor, once on your site, decides you're trustworthy enough to call.

Generic five-star badges don't move conversion. Specific, attributable reviews do. "They replaced my water heater on a Saturday, were on time, and cleaned up completely" is a different trust signal than "Great service, highly recommend." Displaying those reviews on your homepage and key service pages — not just on a dedicated testimonials page — puts the social proof in front of visitors at the exact moment of the conversion decision.

The foundation beneath this is local citation consistency . When a visitor — or Google — sees your business name, address, and phone number listed differently across directories, the trust signal is subtly negative. NAP consistency across your citation sources is the background layer that makes your reviews credible and your local SEO coherent.

Five Elements That Separate 8–12% Sites from the 2–4% Median

PipelineOn's analysis of top-performing contractor sites in 2026 identifies five specific elements that consistently move sites from the median into the top conversion tier. None require a full redesign. All are within reach of any local service business that decides to prioritize conversion architecture over visual aesthetics:

1. A sticky call button visible above the fold on mobile. Your phone number is visible at the top of the screen on every mobile page, at all times — it doesn't scroll away with the header. One tap to call. The visitor doesn't have to search for how to reach you.

2. Sub-2-second mobile load time. Measured with a real device on a cellular connection, not a desktop browser with a cached page. Achieving this often requires evaluating your hosting platform, compressing images, and reducing third-party script load — not just resizing a hero image.

3. Source-attributed call tracking. Knowing which traffic source, keyword, or page generated a specific inbound call is what separates contractors who can optimize from those who guess. Tools like CallRail run $45–$75/month and pay for themselves within a single recovered lead in most NH and New England markets.

4. Embedded Google reviews with names and dates. Not a testimonials page with quotes you curated. Actual Google reviews pulled from your GBP and displayed on your homepage and service pages, showing the real reviewer name and post date. Recency matters — reviews from 2021 signal an inactive business to a 2026 visitor.

5. A defined 60-second response protocol for every inbound. This is operational, not technical — but it is the element most directly correlated with actual close rates in the data. A conversion-optimized site that routes leads to an unmonitored voicemail still loses most of those leads to whoever picks up first.

What This Means for NH Contractors and Local Service Businesses

The natural instinct when leads are slow is to think about traffic first: more Google Ads spend, a bigger SEO push, another directory listing. But the benchmarks above show a different sequence. Fixing conversion before scaling traffic is the higher-leverage move. A site that moves from 2% to 4% conversion doesn't require additional ad spend — it doubles the output from every dollar of traffic you're already paying for.

The practical starting point is a mobile walkthrough you can run yourself in ten minutes: load your site on a phone with cellular data (not WiFi), time how long it takes to fully load, find the call button, submit a test contact form, and clock how long it takes someone on your team to respond. That audit tells you more about your conversion problem than most formal reports do.

From there, the local SEO layer compounds what you've fixed. A site that converts at 8–12% and ranks in the Google Local Pack for the right searches generates qualified leads at a long-term SEO cost per lead of $10–$50 at maturity (BaaDigi 2026 trade benchmarks) — compared to $79–$228 per lead through paid search in competitive home service trades. The math for building a well-converting organic presence over 12–18 months is significantly better than indefinitely funding ads to a site that loses 96% of what it gets.

My work as a web designer and local SEO focuses specifically on local service businesses — contractors, HVAC companies, electricians, plumbers, and similar trades in NH and New England. If you're looking at these conversion numbers and want to understand where your site actually sits and what's holding the number down, reach out here . The conversion review is where I start with every client.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good website conversion rate for a contractor in 2026?
The median home service contractor site converts 2–4% of visitors into a call or form fill, per PipelineOn's 2026 benchmark analysis. Above 6% puts you in the top quartile. Plumbing and HVAC sites with a full conversion stack — sticky call button, fast mobile load, embedded reviews, rapid response protocol — regularly reach 8–12%. Construction and remodeling sites average 3.65–7% due to longer purchase cycles and more exploratory initial-visit intent.

What is the most important element on a contractor website?
The data points to two factors above all others: mobile load speed and speed-to-lead response. A sticky, visible phone number above the fold on mobile, combined with a 60-second response commitment to every inbound contact, accounts for most of the performance gap between the median site and top performers in the same trade.

How much does page speed affect contractor lead generation?
Every additional second of mobile load time reduces conversions by approximately 7%, per Personizely's 2026 mobile optimization research and Google Core Web Vitals benchmarks. A site that loads in 5 seconds loses roughly 35% of potential leads compared to a 1-second load — on identical traffic. This is one of the highest-ROI technical fixes available because it costs nothing in ongoing ad spend.

Do reviews on a contractor's website actually improve conversion?
Yes. BrightLocal's 2025 survey found 91% of consumers read reviews before hiring, and most will not consider a business under 4 stars. Embedding real Google reviews — with specific reviewer names and dates — on your homepage and service pages provides the attributable social proof that converts a visitor who is comparing multiple contractors in the same market.

How quickly do I need to respond to website leads to win the job?
Within 60 seconds, per CallRail's 2026 home services research — that threshold corresponds to a 391% lift in conversion rate. Waiting 5 minutes cuts qualifying odds by 80%. Lead Connect research shows 78% of customers hire the first company to respond, regardless of price or review count. Speed-to-lead is the competitive variable most NH contractors are leaving on the table.

Local Citations for SEO: What They Are and How to Build Them in 2026

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 02:32:43 GMT

Local service businesses spend weeks optimizing their Google Business Profile, collecting reviews, and refining their website — and still wonder why competitors outrank them in the local pack. Often, the missing piece is local citations : the layer of your local SEO presence that quietly tells search engines whether to trust your business or not.

In 2026, citations remain a core local ranking signal — and they've taken on new importance as AI search tools like Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT increasingly rely on citation data to verify local businesses. Here's what citations are, exactly how much they matter, and a clear process for building them right.

What Are Local Citations (and Why You Have Them Whether You Know It or Not)

A local citation is any online mention of your business's name, address, and phone number — commonly called NAP data . Citations appear on business directories like Yelp and the Better Business Bureau, data aggregators like Data Axle and Neustar Localeze, industry-specific platforms, social media profiles, local chamber websites, and news articles that mention your business.

Here's what most business owners don't realize: you already have citations out there, created by third-party data scrapers pulling from public records, Google, and other sources. The problem isn't that you don't have citations — it's that many of them are wrong, outdated, or inconsistent with each other. That inconsistency is what suppresses your rankings.

According to BrightLocal's Local Citations Handbook (updated October 2025), citations come in two forms:

Structured citations — formatted NAP entries in business directories (Yelp, Apple Maps, YellowPages, BBB)
Unstructured citations — mentions of your business on news sites, blog posts, local guides, or "Best Of" lists without a standardized listing format

Both types signal to search engines and AI tools that your business is real, established, and operating at a specific location. And in 2026, that signal carries more weight than many practitioners expected — especially with the rise of AI-powered search.

How Citations Factor Into Google's Local Ranking Algorithm in 2026

The question isn't whether citations matter — it's how much, relative to everything else competing for your attention. According to the Whitespark/BrightLocal Local Search Ranking Factors 2026 study , citations are the 6th most significant ranking factor for Local Pack visibility and tied for 4th in local organic search results. The full breakdown for Local Pack rankings, per Digital Applied's 2026 Local SEO Statistics analysis :

Google Business Profile signals : 32% (primary category, proximity, keywords in GBP title)
On-page signals : 19% (NAP on your site, local keywords, domain authority)
Review signals : 16% (quantity, velocity, sentiment)
Link signals : 15%
Behavioral signals : 8%
Citation signals : 7% (NAP consistency, citation volume, aggregator data)
Personalization : 3%

Seven percent sounds modest until you realize it's entirely within your control, requires no ongoing content creation, and is something many of your competitors haven't gotten right. If your reviews are already strong — read how to build a Google review strategy that compounds — and your GBP is optimized, citations are likely the next highest-leverage improvement available to you.

The AI search angle. For the first time, the 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey measured AI search visibility separately — and the results changed the conversation. Citations account for 13% of AI search visibility weight (tied with links for 3rd place, behind only on-page signals at 24% and reviews at 16%). Structured listings on Yelp, Apple Maps, BBB, and industry directories help ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews confirm your business is legitimate and well-established. For a deeper look at how AI is reshaping local visibility, read How AI Overviews Are Changing Local Search in 2026 .

The Citation Hierarchy: Not All Listings Carry Equal Weight

There's a persistent myth that more citations always means better rankings. In practice, it follows a power law: a handful of high-authority platforms drive almost all of the SEO and traffic value, while hundreds of low-quality directory submissions contribute very little.

Research from a 2026 analysis of US business directory traffic patterns found that for a typical local service business with claimed profiles on the major platforms, traffic breaks down like this:

Google Business Profile : 60–85% of all directory-attributable traffic
Apple Maps : 8–20% (second place, growing as Siri and Apple CarPlay usage increases)
Yelp : Under 10% (still material for certain industries — restaurants, home services, personal care)
Facebook, BBB, Yellow Pages, and everything else : Less than 1% each individually

This doesn't mean ignoring Tier 2 and Tier 3 platforms — they contribute to NAP consistency and trust signals even when they send little direct traffic. But it tells you exactly where to focus first.

Tier 1 — Non-negotiable foundation:

Google Business Profile (highest traffic, direct ranking signal — the single highest-ROI citation)
Apple Business Connect (iPhone users, Siri, Apple CarPlay — iPhone holds ~55% of the US smartphone market)
Bing Places for Business (Microsoft/Copilot ecosystem, increasingly integrated with ChatGPT search)

Tier 2 — High authority, strong trust signals:

Yelp (Domain Authority 94, frequently ranks on page one for local searches regardless of your direct ranking)
Facebook Business Page (social signal plus structured citation)
Better Business Bureau (credibility signal, especially relevant for service contractors and B2B)

Tier 3 — Industry and geography specific:

Contractors and home services: Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor
Healthcare: Healthgrades, Zocdoc, WebMD
Hospitality and restaurants: TripAdvisor, OpenTable
Local Chamber of Commerce and business association directories
Local newspaper "Best Of" lists (highly valuable as unstructured citations for AI visibility)

For a complete picture of how citations connect to your overall local ranking strategy, see How to Rank on Google Maps in 2026 .

NAP Consistency: The #1 Thing That Makes or Breaks Your Citations

NAP consistency means your business name, address, and phone number are identical — not just similar, but character-for-character identical — across every platform where you appear. This matters because search engines cross-reference citation data from dozens of sources when assessing a business's legitimacy. Inconsistencies look like separate, unverified businesses to the algorithm, which dilutes the trust signal citations are meant to build.

The most common NAP consistency problems I see with local service businesses:

Street address variations — "123 Main Street" vs. "123 Main St" vs. "123 Main St." — the period and abbreviation both matter
Phone number formatting — (603) 821-9533 vs. 603-821-9533 vs. 6038219533 — pick one format and use it everywhere, forever
Business name drift — using a DBA in one place and the legal name in another, or adding and dropping "Inc." or "LLC" inconsistently
Stale address data — you moved once, updated Google, but 30 other directories still show the old address
Suite number inconsistency — sometimes included, sometimes omitted from the same address

Before you build a single new citation, establish your canonical NAP — the exact business name, address, and phone number you'll use everywhere. Write it down. Then copy and paste it, never retype it. Every listing gets exactly that text.

Alongside your citation work, your Google Business Profile is the master record that other data sources check against. If you haven't fully audited it recently, start with the Google Business Profile Optimization Checklist for 2026 before touching anything else — it's the foundation your citations build on.

How to Build Local Citations in 2026: Where to Start

Most local service businesses don't need hundreds of citations. They need the right 20–30, done correctly, with consistent NAP data across each one. Here's the step-by-step process:

Step 1: Audit what you already have. Search Google for your business name combined with your city, and separately for your phone number. Click every result. Note which platforms you appear on and flag any data that's wrong, inconsistent, or outdated.

Step 2: Define your canonical NAP. One business name, one address format, one phone number. Put it in a document you'll reference every time you create a new listing. Copy and paste — never retype.

Step 3: Claim and fully optimize your Tier 1 listings. Google Business Profile first — it drives the majority of local search results and is your single highest-leverage citation. If you haven't fully optimized yours, see The Complete Guide to Google Business Profile . Then Apple Business Connect (applybusinessconnect.apple.com) and Bing Places for Business — both are free, both take under an hour, and both are routinely skipped by small business owners.

Step 4: Submit to data aggregators. Data aggregators — primarily Data Axle (formerly InfoUSA), Neustar Localeze , and Foursquare — push your business information to hundreds of downstream directories automatically. Getting your data right with the aggregators is the highest-leverage NAP consistency move available to most local businesses. Allow 4–12 weeks for changes to fully propagate.

Step 5: Build Tier 2 and industry-specific citations. Yelp, Facebook, BBB, and then vertical-specific directories relevant to your business type. For each platform: paste your canonical NAP exactly, add photos, complete every available field (hours, description, website URL, services), and complete the verification process.

Step 6: Earn unstructured citations. These are harder to build but carry increasing weight — especially for AI search visibility. Target your local Chamber of Commerce, local business association directories, local news sites, and "Best Of" roundups. A mention in your city's business journal or neighborhood publication carries far more trust signal than dozens of low-DA directory submissions.

Step 7: Skip bulk citation packages. Services that sell 300 or 500 citations at a flat fee are building listings on low-authority directories that Google largely ignores and rarely indexes. Per practitioner consensus from the Local Search Forum's 2026 citation discussion : "The days of buying hundreds of citations have been over for several years. Google trusts the core citations." Quality and consistency over volume — every time.

How to Audit and Fix Citation Problems Hurting Your Rankings

If your local rankings have plateaued despite strong GBP optimization and a healthy review count, citation inconsistencies may be the bottleneck. Here's how to find and fix them.

Tools to use:

BrightLocal Citation Tracker — scans your existing citations across hundreds of directories, flags NAP inconsistencies, and surfaces missing listings from important platforms
Moz Local — similar functionality with strong aggregator coverage and a clean data dashboard
Manual Google search — search "your business name" "your city" and click every result to spot-check NAP data against your canonical standard

What to look for:

Wrong phone number — especially if you changed your number within the last few years
Old address — if you've ever moved, even once, old data lingers across dozens of directories
Duplicate listings on the same platform — two entries for the same business dilute your profile authority; merge them or request removal of the duplicate through the platform's support process
Unclaimed profiles — an unclaimed Yelp or BBB profile can be edited by competitors or flagged incorrectly

Fixing citations takes patience — each platform has its own verification process, some requiring postcards, phone calls, or manual review windows of 4–8 weeks. Start with Tier 1 platforms, work your way down, and track your progress in a spreadsheet. If a citation audit sounds like a project you'd rather hand off, reach out here and we can review what your current citation profile looks like and what's worth addressing first.

Frequently Asked Questions About Local Citations

How many citations do I need to rank locally?
There's no magic number. Most local service businesses in competitive markets are well-served by 20–40 high-quality, consistent citations. NAP accuracy and having Tier 1 platforms fully claimed and optimized matters far more than citation volume.

Will fixing my citations improve rankings immediately?
Not right away. Aggregators take 4–12 weeks to propagate changes through their partner networks, and Google re-crawls citation sources on its own schedule. Expect 60–90 days before you see measurable movement from a citation cleanup campaign — but the compounding effect over 6–12 months is real.

Do citations matter for service-area businesses without a physical storefront?
Yes. Service-area businesses can hide their address on Google and Apple Maps while still benefiting from citations. Focus on GBP, Apple Maps, Facebook, Yelp, and industry-relevant directories. Avoid directories that require a physical storefront address you can't verify — an incomplete or unverified profile does more harm than no profile at all.

What's the difference between structured and unstructured citations?
Structured citations appear in directories with a standardized NAP format (Yelp, Apple Maps, BBB). Unstructured citations are organic mentions of your business on news sites, blog posts, or local guides — no standard format, just a reference to your business name and location. Both contribute to traditional local rankings; unstructured citations from authoritative local and industry sources carry increasing weight for AI search visibility specifically.

Can bad citations actively hurt my rankings?
Yes. Inconsistent NAP data creates conflicting signals that reduce Google's confidence in your business information, typically resulting in suppressed local pack visibility rather than an active penalty. Duplicate listings on Google are especially damaging — they split your profile authority and push down your map ranking. In competitive local markets, the harm from citation problems is measurable.

Google Business Profile Optimization Checklist for Local Service Businesses in 2026

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 02:32:37 GMT

Your next customer just searched for a service you offer. They looked at the Local Pack — the three businesses Google surfaces first in map results — and chose one. If your business wasn't there, what follows explains exactly why, and what to fix.

Google Business Profile optimization is the highest-leverage local SEO activity available to a service business today. According to the 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors data compiled by BrightLocal , GBP factors carry the biggest impact on local pack rankings of any single signal category. Yet BrightLocal's SMB Marketing Report (2025) found that only 35% of small businesses have a Google Business Profile . The opportunity gap is real, and most of your competitors aren't maximizing it.

This checklist covers the five areas that actually move the needle — in priority order — for local contractors, home service providers, and other service businesses. If you're building your local SEO strategy from scratch, you'll want to pair this with my guide to ranking on Google Maps in 2026 , which covers the broader ranking ecosystem your GBP sits inside.

Why GBP Signals Carry 32% of Your Local Pack Ranking Weight

Google's Local Pack — the map and three listings that appear at the top of local service searches — is determined by a weighted combination of signals. According to data compiled from the Whitespark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey and published at Digital Applied's 2026 local SEO data roundup , the approximate weight breakdown for Local Pack ranking looks like this:

Google Business Profile signals (proximity, categories, keywords in title): 32%
On-page signals (NAP, local keywords, domain authority): 19%
Review signals (volume, velocity, diversity, sentiment): 16%
Link signals (inbound anchor text, domain authority): 15%
Behavioral signals (CTR, mobile clicks-to-call, dwell time): 8%
Citation signals (NAP consistency, directory volume): 7%

Your GBP is the single heaviest category — accounting for nearly one third of the relevance decision before any other factor is evaluated. The same dataset shows that businesses with a complete GBP are 2.8 times more likely to rank in the Local Pack than businesses with incomplete profiles.

This is why GBP optimization is always the starting point for any local service business, not an afterthought.

Step 1 — Get Your Name, Primary Category, and NAP Right First

The single most important ranking signal inside your GBP is your primary business category . BrightLocal's 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors data identifies it as the #1 Local Pack ranking factor — ahead of reviews, photos, or any other profile element. Choose the most specific category that accurately describes your core service. For a plumber, that's "Plumber" — not "Contractor" or "Home Services Company." Secondary categories for specializations (water heater installation, drain cleaning) add useful signal without diluting your primary.

Your business name must match your real-world name exactly — what's on your signage, invoices, and legal registration. Google's guidelines prohibit keyword stuffing in the business name field (e.g., "Smith Plumbing — Best Emergency Plumber Concord NH"). Violations result in profile suspension or removal from the Local Pack. The keywords belong elsewhere in your profile; the name field is not the place for them.

NAP consistency — Name, Address, Phone — is a citation signal that compounds with your GBP. According to the Digital Applied 2026 dataset, businesses with consistent NAP across 40 or more directories achieve a 4.1x ranking improvement over those without. For service-area businesses that operate without a public storefront, set your service area in GBP and hide your address. Inconsistent or duplicate address information across the web is one of the most common, most damaging local SEO errors a service business makes.

Step 2 — Write a Business Description That Works for Searchers and Google's Algorithm

Your GBP description allows up to 750 characters, but only the first 250 or so are visible before the reader clicks "More." Those first 250 characters should carry your primary service type, your location, and your clearest differentiator — what makes your business the specific right choice rather than the generic option.

Avoid: links (they won't be clickable and violate GBP guidelines), promotional pricing claims ("20% off this month"), phone numbers, and keyword repetition that reads like stuffing. Google reads the description for entity context and relevance — write it for the customer first, and the algorithm benefits as a result.

A strong description for a Concord, NH electrician might read: "Licensed master electrician serving Concord and Merrimack County for 15 years. Specializing in panel upgrades, EV charger installation, and whole-home rewiring for residential and light commercial clients. Free estimates. No trip charges within 30 miles."

That 218-character description establishes trade, geography, tenure, specific services, and a commercial differentiator — all factual, all scannable, none of it promotional fluff.

Step 3 — Add Every Service, Secondary Category, and Attribute You Qualify For

Google uses your listed services to match your profile to search queries your primary category alone may not capture. A roofing contractor whose primary category is "Roofing Contractor" should list individual services: roof inspection, emergency roof repair, gutter installation, skylight installation, and so on. Each service you add is a potential keyword surface your profile can rank for.

Attributes are equally important and routinely ignored. Depending on your category, GBP surfaces attributes such as:

Free estimates
Emergency services available (24/7)
Veteran-led / Women-owned / Family-owned
Licensed and insured
Appointment required / walk-ins welcome
Financing available

These attributes appear directly on your profile in search results. A homeowner searching for an "emergency electrician near me" at 10 p.m. is filtering for exactly that attribute. If your profile doesn't have it checked — even if you genuinely do offer emergency service — you may not appear in those results. Google adds new attributes regularly; check your profile monthly for options your category now supports.

BrightLocal has found that 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online . Attributes are part of that accuracy picture: don't list "free estimates" if you charge for them, and don't check "24/7 availability" if you don't answer calls after 5 p.m. Accuracy is a trust signal, and it's also a liability.

Step 4 — Photos and Google Posts Signal Profile Activity to the Algorithm

Many service business owners treat GBP photos as a one-time setup task — upload a few images at launch and forget them. This misses a significant ongoing ranking signal. Profile activity (new photos, new posts, review responses) signals freshness and engagement to Google's algorithm, not just visual quality to customers.

For photos, the practices that matter most are:

Upload new photos at minimum monthly — exterior, interior, team, and active job-site or work-in-progress photos all contribute.
Use descriptive filenames before uploading (e.g., "concord-nh-roofer-shingle-installation.jpg") — Google reads file metadata for context.
Avoid stock images. Google's systems can identify generic stock photography, and customers trust authentic photos far more.
Photo volume matters: businesses with 100+ photos consistently outperform those with fewer than 10 in competitive local searches.

Google Posts are a direct mechanism for demonstrating profile activity. Publishing updates, service announcements, or local offers two to three times per week signals that your business is active and engaged. Standard posts expire after 7 days, so a regular cadence also keeps your profile looking current to every customer who visits it. Keep posts short, specific, and action-oriented — a phone number or booking link converts better than a long announcement.

For how this profile activity interacts with AI search — including AI Overviews and Google's AI Mode — see my guide on how AI Overviews are changing local search in 2026 . The signals that build traditional Local Pack visibility increasingly overlap with the signals that AI search draws from.

Step 5 — Build Reviews at Consistent Velocity — They're 16% of Your Local Pack Weight

Review signals — volume, recency, velocity, and owner response rate — account for 16% of local pack ranking weight. Among the top Local Pack positions in competitive markets, 62% of businesses have 100 or more Google reviews . If you're watching competitors outrank you despite your business being older or better-established, review volume is frequently the gap.

The most effective review strategy for a service business is simple but demands consistency:

Ask at the moment of highest satisfaction — right after a job is completed, not three days later. A text message with a direct Google review link eliminates every step of friction. The request-to-review conversion rate drops sharply with delay.
Respond to every review, positive and negative . For positive reviews, thank the customer and mention the specific service or location by name. For negative reviews, acknowledge the concern and invite them to contact you directly to resolve it — never argue in the public response.
Prioritize recency and velocity over total count . Four or more new reviews per month signals ongoing relevance more effectively to Google's algorithm than 50 reviews from 2022 with nothing recent. Consistency matters more than bursts.

Owner response rate is tracked as a behavioral engagement signal in the local ranking algorithm. Beyond the ranking impact, responding to reviews is one of the clearest signals to prospective customers that your business is professional and accountable — which affects conversion rate independent of any ranking benefit.

What a Fully Optimized GBP Can and Cannot Do for Your Rankings

When your GBP is complete, active, and accurate, the results are documented. According to data Google has shared via BrightLocal , customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable if they find a complete Business Profile on Google. They're 70% more likely to visit that business and 50% more likely to consider purchasing than they are with an incomplete profile.

But there is an honest ceiling. GBP accounts for 32% of the local pack decision. The remaining 68% comes from your website's on-page strength (19%), your review portfolio (16%), your link signals (15%), your citation consistency (7%), and behavioral engagement (8%). An optimized GBP sitting behind a slow, thin website, or a business with no consistent directory presence, will lose to a competitor whose entire local SEO ecosystem is working together.

GBP optimization is the starting point — the fastest, highest-ROI first move for a local service business with no local search presence. But it's not the whole game. Your profile drives the impression; your website earns the trust and converts the call.

If you're working through your local SEO from scratch — or you want a professional to identify what's specifically holding your business back from the Local Pack — I work with service businesses across New Hampshire and nationally to build this system. Learn more about how I work , or reach out for a free consultation . The audit takes about 20 minutes and usually surfaces three to five specific, fixable issues.

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Business Profile Optimization

How often should I update my Google Business Profile?

At minimum, add a new Google Post every week and upload new photos once a month. Update your hours, services, and description any time anything changes. Profiles that show consistent activity over time — not just a one-time setup — tend to rank and convert better than those left untouched after launch.

Does responding to Google reviews help your ranking?

Yes, indirectly. Owner response rate is tracked as a behavioral engagement signal in Google's local ranking algorithm. More importantly, how you respond to reviews — especially negative ones — directly affects how prospective customers evaluate your business, which influences the clicks, calls, and visits that feed back into behavioral ranking signals Google observes.

Can a service-area business appear in the Local Pack without a storefront address?

Yes. Service-area businesses — contractors, mobile services, cleaning companies — can use GBP by configuring their service area and hiding their physical address. However, proximity to the searcher still factors into Google's ranking algorithm, so defining your service area accurately is important. Do not use a P.O. box or virtual office address; Google's guidelines prohibit this for service-area businesses and can result in profile suspension.

What is the single most important Google Business Profile optimization?

According to the 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, your primary business category is the highest-weight single signal for Local Pack rankings. If your category is wrong or too broad, even an otherwise well-optimized profile will underperform. Set the most specific, accurate category first — then work through the rest of this checklist.

How to Get More Google Reviews (And Why They're Your #1 Local SEO Asset in 2026)

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 02:32:31 GMT

Most local service businesses treat Google reviews like a nice-to-have. The ones ranking at the top of Google Maps treat them like infrastructure.

The gap between those two groups is mostly systematic, not accidental. 97% of consumers read online reviews before choosing a local business , according to BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey — and 88% trust those reviews as much as a recommendation from a friend. Every week your review system sits idle, competitors are compounding an advantage that becomes genuinely hard to close.

Here's what the data actually says about how reviews affect your rankings, which thresholds matter, and how to build a review strategy that generates results without chasing every customer down personally.

Why Google Reviews Are Your Most Powerful Local Ranking Signal

Review signals account for roughly 16% of the weight behind Local Pack rankings , per Moz's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors data . That makes them the third most influential factor in the Local Pack, behind Google Business Profile signals and on-page signals — and unlike your website, which changes infrequently, reviews compound automatically when you have a consistent system in place.

The visibility gap is measurable. Businesses with 50+ reviews are 266% more likely to appear in the Local Pack than competitors without them. The Local Pack captures 42% of all clicks on local search results, with the top position alone getting a 17.8% click-through rate. Not appearing there means most searches that could be leads will never reach you.

This is why a complete local SEO strategy for any service business has to treat reviews as a live, ongoing signal — not a one-time cleanup task.

What Actually Moves the Needle: Rating, Velocity, and Review Text

Not all review activity carries equal weight. Three factors determine how much your reviews actually help you.

Star Rating: The 4.5–4.9 Sweet Spot

The research from ReviewTrackers and BrightLocal is consistent: 4.0 stars is the floor . Below it, most consumers simply choose a competitor. A perfect 5.0 actually performs slightly worse in click-through than 4.5–4.9 — consumers tend to distrust it. The 4.5–4.9 range delivers the highest CTR and a +270% conversion lift versus businesses with no reviews at all . That's the target.

Review Velocity: The 18-Day Rule

One of the most important findings from Sterling Sky's 2025 case study on review count and Local Pack rankings is what happens when reviews stop. A business that had been dominating its market paused its review-gathering efforts. Within 18 days of receiving no new reviews, its rankings dropped — while competitors maintaining a steady flow moved up to fill the gap.

Velocity matters more than total volume. A business with 40 reviews and 4 new ones this month will typically outrank a competitor with 200 reviews and none in the past 60 days.

The 10-Review Threshold

The same Sterling Sky research identified a consistent ranking boost when businesses cross 10 Google reviews. In 2025 testing across three separate businesses with 9 reviews each, adding one more produced a measurable Maps ranking improvement in all three cases. Beyond 10, diminishing returns set in quickly. Get to 10 first, then focus on maintaining velocity.

Text Reviews Beat Star-Only Ratings

Google's algorithm reads the content of reviews to understand what your business does and where it serves. A star-only rating with no text barely registers compared to a written review that mentions your service and city. When you ask customers for reviews, ask them to share a little about their experience — not just tap a star. One well-written, specific review is worth more to your rankings than several star-only submissions.

How to Ask for Google Reviews the Right Way

Most businesses have a satisfied customer base. What they're missing is a reliable system for converting that satisfaction into public reviews. The ask is the bottleneck — and fixing it is simpler than most business owners expect.

Get Your Review Link

Log into your Google Business Profile , click "Read Reviews," then "Get More Reviews." Google generates a short link and QR code you can share anywhere. Without a direct link, you're asking customers to find your review page on their own — most won't.

Timing and Channels That Work

The right moment to ask is immediately after a positive interaction — when the job is complete and the customer is satisfied. Research from Trustmary confirms that personalized requests — using the customer's name and referencing their specific job — significantly outperform generic "please leave a review" messages.

Channels that convert well for local service businesses:

In-person ask at job completion, followed immediately by a text with the direct link
Email follow-up within 24–48 hours with a one-click link and a brief personal note
QR code printed on invoices, thank-you cards, or vehicle signage
Text message for businesses where you have the customer's number

One policy update to know: As of November 2025, Google requires businesses to disclose when a review was incentivized in any way. Don't offer discounts or gifts in exchange for reviews — it violates Google's guidelines and puts your entire Business Profile at risk. Ask genuinely, ask consistently, and make it easy.

What to Avoid

Don't send bulk requests all at once. Sending 50 review requests in a week after months of silence looks like manipulation to Google's filters and often results in reviews being removed. A steady pace of 2–5 new reviews per month looks natural and is more effective long-term than any sprint.

How to Respond to Reviews — The Ranking Signal Most Businesses Skip

According to BrightLocal research , 89% of consumers are more likely to choose a business that responds to all reviews — positive and negative. Google has also confirmed directly that responding to reviews improves local search visibility: it signals engagement, trustworthiness, and active management, all of which the local algorithm factors in.

Respond to every review within 24–72 hours. For positive reviews, be specific: acknowledge what the customer mentioned, use their name where possible, and include a natural service or location reference where it fits organically. "Thanks for trusting us with your electrical panel in Concord, NH — we're glad everything's running safely" reinforces local relevance without keyword stuffing.

For negative reviews, don't argue. Acknowledge the experience, apologize where warranted, and offer to resolve it offline. A professional, measured response that shows you take service seriously is far more valuable to future customers than ignoring the review or getting defensive.

Moz's guidance on star-only ratings with no text: respond by inviting the reviewer to contact you directly to share their experience. It demonstrates attentiveness even when there's nothing specific to address.

Building a Review System That Doesn't Depend on Anyone Remembering

Businesses with strong, consistent review velocity don't rely on someone remembering to ask. They build the ask into the workflow so it happens after every job, regardless of who's on site.

A practical system for a local service business:

Add the review link to every post-job email template
Print the QR code on the last page of every invoice
Brief field staff to mention it verbally at job completion: "If you're happy with the work, a Google review goes a long way for us."
Set a weekly calendar reminder to check for new reviews and respond the same day

Target 2–5 new reviews per month. That's enough velocity to maintain competitive Local Pack rankings in most markets without triggering spam filters. For highly competitive niches you may need more — but most local service businesses aren't consistently hitting 5 per month, and getting there puts you ahead of the majority of your market.

Reviews Are One Part of Your Local Visibility System

A strong review profile does real work — but it operates within a larger system. Your Google Business Profile needs to be fully built out and maintained. Only 44% of GBPs are fully optimized, which means a complete, active profile already puts you ahead of more than half your competition — and a complete profile gets 7x more clicks than an incomplete one.

And when someone clicks through from your GBP to your website after reading your reviews, that website has to convert. If the page they land on isn't built to turn interest into contact, you've done the hard work and handed the lead to your voicemail. That's the full picture I cover in how to rank on Google Maps in 2026 — reviews are the fuel, but GBP optimization and a conversion-ready website are what turn ranking into booked jobs.

It's also worth noting that AI tools are increasingly drawing on review data. ChatGPT recommends local businesses averaging 4.3 stars; Perplexity averages 4.1 stars in its recommendations, per BrightLocal's 2026 Consumer Review Survey. As I covered in how AI Overviews are changing local search , your review profile now influences visibility across multiple platforms — not just Maps.

If you want help auditing your current GBP or building a review system that generates consistent results, book a free consultation and we'll look at exactly what's working and where you're leaving leads on the table.

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Reviews and Local SEO

How many Google reviews do I need to rank in the Local Pack?

There's no fixed number, but Sterling Sky's 2025 case study identified a ranking boost at 10 reviews. Businesses with 50+ reviews are 266% more likely to appear in the Local Pack. In competitive markets, most top-3 listings have 25–50+ reviews. Review velocity — consistent new reviews each month — matters more than hitting any specific total count.

Does responding to Google reviews help SEO?

Yes. Google has confirmed that responding to reviews improves local search visibility. Responding signals that your business is active and engaged, and it gives you a natural opportunity to reinforce location and service relevance in your replies — without keyword stuffing.

Can I ask customers to leave a Google review?

Yes, and you should. Google explicitly encourages businesses to ask customers for reviews. What you cannot do is incentivize reviews with discounts or gifts (as of November 2025, Google requires disclosure for any incentivized review), selectively ask only happy customers, or post fake reviews. Ask every customer, every time, with a direct link that makes it easy.

What's the ideal Google star rating for local search?

The 4.5–4.9 range delivers the highest click-through rate and a +270% conversion lift versus businesses with no reviews. A perfect 5.0 actually underperforms slightly because it appears less credible. A rating below 4.0 stars causes most consumers to choose a competitor instead, per ReviewTrackers 2026 data.

How often should I get new Google reviews?

Aim for 2–5 new reviews per month, minimum. Sterling Sky's research found that rankings can decline when reviews stop for roughly 18 days — even when the total review count is high. Consistent monthly velocity is the goal, not any single sprint.

How AI Overviews Are Changing Local Search in 2026 (And What to Do About It)

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:00:35 GMT

Something significant has shifted in how people search for local businesses in 2026. AI Overviews — Google's AI-generated response summaries that appear at the top of search results — now show up in roughly 25% of all U.S. searches , with some high-traffic keyword categories reaching as high as 48% AI Overview coverage. More important for local businesses: research from Rio SEO published in 2025 found that 60% of consumers click on AI Overview results rather than scrolling past them to the traditional organic links below. This is not a small or gradual change. It's a restructuring of how attention flows through search results pages, and local businesses that don't adapt to it will lose visibility they currently take for granted.

This post explains what AI Overviews actually are, how they're affecting local search specifically, and the concrete steps local businesses need to take to stay visible as AI-generated responses become the primary way consumers find services in their area.

What AI Overviews Are and How They Work

AI Overviews (formerly called Search Generative Experience or SGE during Google's testing phase) are AI-generated summaries that appear above or at the top of traditional search results. When a user searches for something like "best electrician in Concord NH" or "how much does interior painting cost in Massachusetts," Google's AI may generate a direct answer or summary — pulling from multiple web sources — rather than presenting the traditional list of results.

The key phrase is "pulling from multiple web sources." AI Overviews are not replacing search results; they're synthesizing them. The pages cited in an AI Overview still receive traffic — in fact, pages cited in AI Overview responses see approximately 35% higher click-through rates than organic listings at the same position that are not cited. Being cited in an AI Overview is a meaningful visibility advantage, not an alternative to organic ranking. It's an additional layer of prominence that rewards content meeting specific criteria.

For local search specifically, 46% of all Google searches have local intent — people looking for businesses, services, or information tied to a geographic area. AI Overviews that answer local questions (service availability, pricing, comparisons) are appearing with increasing frequency for exactly these high-commercial-intent queries. The local businesses most likely to be cited are those whose web presence communicates authority, specificity, and trustworthiness in the signals that inform AI training and retrieval.

How AI Overviews Are Reshaping Local Search Specifically

The local search market is undergoing a specific version of the AI Overview impact that differs from general web search. Several dynamics are worth understanding:

Higher engagement with AI results for local queries. Research confirms that 60% of consumers engage with AI Overview content when it appears. For local queries — particularly service comparison and pricing queries — consumers are using AI summaries to shortlist options before engaging with individual business websites. Being present in those summaries, rather than below them in organic results, is a meaningful competitive advantage.

Domain volatility in local AI results. Analysis of local AI Overviews shows approximately 85% domain volatility — meaning the specific pages and sources cited in AI responses change frequently. This is different from traditional organic rankings, which tend to be more stable. The implication is that local businesses need to maintain consistently authoritative, up-to-date content rather than assuming a single high-ranking page will hold its position indefinitely.

84% of consumers search for local businesses daily. The baseline volume of local search is enormous, and AI Overviews are now appearing in a growing fraction of those searches. A local business not represented in AI Overview responses for its key service categories is missing a meaningful and growing portion of its potential audience.

The Rise of GEO: Generative Engine Optimization

The SEO industry has coined a term for the discipline of optimizing content to appear in AI-generated responses: GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. While the acronym is new, the underlying principles overlap substantially with what good SEO has always been — the difference is in which specific signals matter most for AI retrieval versus traditional ranking algorithms.

GEO for local businesses concentrates on several factors: structured data markup that communicates facts clearly (business name, address, phone, service categories, service areas), page content that directly and specifically answers common service-related questions with verifiable facts, authority signals from credible citations and links, and a consistent digital footprint across Google Business Profile, directories, and the website itself. AI models selecting content for Google's Overview feature prioritize content that is factually reliable, well-structured, and authoritative — the same criteria that define high-quality SEO content, but with increased weighting on specificity and direct answer formatting.

For local businesses, the practical entry point into GEO is ensuring your website has dedicated pages that directly answer the questions your customers are searching. Not just generic "services" pages — specific, substantive content that covers pricing ranges, service area details, process explanations, and comparison information that a consumer would want before calling. My guide to local SEO for service businesses covers the foundational content architecture that supports both traditional ranking and AI retrieval.

What Local Businesses Need to Do Right Now

The businesses that maintain and grow local search visibility through the AI Overview transition will be those that take their digital presence seriously as a communication channel, not just a business card. The specific actions that matter most in 2026:

Optimize your Google Business Profile comprehensively. GBP remains the primary data source for local AI results. A complete, accurate, regularly updated GBP profile — with full service categories, service areas, high-quality photos, Q&A content, and regular posts — is the highest-leverage action most local businesses can take. My complete Google Business Profile optimization guide covers every field and what it affects.

Build structured, question-answering content. AI models retrieve content that directly answers specific questions. Blog posts and service pages that address "how much does X cost in [city]," "what's the difference between X and Y," and "how do I choose a [service provider] in [area]" are exactly the format that AI Overview retrieval rewards. This is also the content that ranks well for traditional long-tail search — it's aligned investment, not a distraction.

Dominate your Google Maps presence. Google Maps results directly inform local AI Overviews for location-based queries. My guide to ranking in Google Maps covers the specific signals that determine map pack visibility, which is now connected directly to AI Overview content selection for local queries.

Pursue authoritative local citations. AI models weight content from authoritative, trusted sources. Being cited or mentioned on industry directories, local business associations, regional news sites, and established review platforms builds the reference graph that AI retrieval uses to evaluate which businesses are trustworthy information sources. This is where traditional local SEO link building intersects directly with GEO strategy.

The Bottom Line for Local Businesses in 2026

AI Overviews represent a durable structural shift in how search results pages are organized and how consumer attention flows through them. The research consensus is clear, and the consumer behavior data is already reflecting it. Businesses that invest in the digital infrastructure to capture AI-driven visibility will gain ground on competitors who are still waiting to see how it plays out.

The good news is that the actions required to perform well in AI Overview results are exactly the same actions required to build a strong, durable local SEO foundation: a complete GBP, authoritative web content, consistent local citations, and a well-structured site. You're not choosing between traditional SEO and GEO — you're doing both, because they're increasingly the same discipline.

If you're a local business owner trying to understand where your local search visibility stands and what to do about it, I'm glad to help. Learn about my local SEO services or get in touch directly to discuss your situation. I've been doing this work since 2019 and have seen firsthand what actually moves the needle for local service businesses competing in AI-influenced search. View my full range of digital marketing services if you're starting from scratch with your online presence — the window to build a strong AI-era foundation before your competitors do is still open, but it's narrowing.

How to Rank on Google Maps in 2026: A Local Business Owner's Complete Guide

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:24:45 GMT

If your business isn't showing up in the top three results on Google Maps, you're invisible to a significant portion of your local market. 42% of all clicks on a local search results page go to the Local Pack — that three-result map box that appears before any organic results. And 93% of Google searches with local intent trigger a Local Pack. If you're a contractor, electrician, dentist, or any local service business, those numbers are your market share calculation.

The businesses sitting in those top three spots didn't get there by accident. They earned it by understanding exactly which signals Google weighs — and then systematically building those signals. This guide breaks down what actually works in 2026, including the AI search layer that's reshaping local search and that 56% of small businesses still haven't addressed.

If you're new to this topic, read my overview of local SEO for small businesses first — it covers why this investment pays off before we get into the how.

Why Google Maps Rankings Are Business-Critical in 2026

Google Maps surpassed 1 billion monthly active users in 2026. Sixty-seven percent of consumers use it to discover new businesses, and 86% look up a location on Maps before visiting. The Local Pack is the front door to your business for a massive share of your market — and it's a front door you can earn your way into.

What makes the Local Pack especially valuable is that it commands disproportionate attention. Local Pack results generate 5x more visibility than standard organic listings at the same position, per Digital Applied's 2026 local SEO statistics report . The #1 position in the Local Pack has a 1.8x higher click-through rate than the #1 organic result below the map.

The practical implication: for most local service businesses, earning a spot in the Local Pack is more valuable than ranking #1 organically. The map box is where the clicks actually go.

The Three Factors Google Uses to Rank Local Businesses

Google's local algorithm is built on three core factors: Proximity , Relevance , and Prominence . In 2026, that framework still holds — but each factor has evolved, and for the first time, a separate AI Search Visibility layer has entered the picture. Understanding the weight of each signal tells you exactly where to invest your time.

Proximity

Distance from your business to the searcher remains the single largest factor for most local queries. Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors report, cited by Localo's 2026 analysis , puts proximity at roughly 55% of ranking weight for the standard Local Pack. You can't move your address — but if you're a service-area business (plumber, HVAC, landscaper), correctly configuring your service area in Google Business Profile matters. Listing specific service regions ranks better than a single broad geographic polygon.

Relevance

How well your profile and website match the searcher's query. Your primary business category is the most powerful lever here. According to the BrightLocal 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey , primary category is the #1 ranking factor for the Local Pack. Choose the wrong category and no amount of review-gathering will fully compensate.

Prominence

How trusted and well-known your business appears across the web — reviews, backlinks, citations, and your website's authority. This is where most of the actionable work lives, and where you can move rankings meaningfully within 90–120 days of consistent effort.

Here's how the full Local Pack ranking weight breaks down, per 2026 ranking factor data :

Google Business Profile signals (categories, completeness, keyword in title): 32%
On-page signals (NAP on-site, local keywords, domain authority): 19%
Review signals (quantity, velocity, diversity, sentiment): 16%
Link signals (inbound anchor text, local backlinks, domain authority): 15%
Behavioral signals (CTR, mobile clicks-to-call, dwell time): 8%
Citation signals (NAP consistency, citation volume): 7%
Personalization signals : 3%

Optimizing Your Google Business Profile: The Highest-Leverage Action You Can Take

Businesses with complete Google Business Profiles are 2.8x more likely to rank in the Local Pack than those with incomplete profiles. That single data point is the most actionable thing in this guide. Complete profiles rank. Incomplete profiles don't.

For the detailed setup walkthrough, I've covered how to optimize your Google Business Profile step by step. For rankings specifically, focus on these areas:

Primary and Additional Categories

Primary category is the #1 ranking signal. Choose the most specific category that accurately describes your business. Beyond that, a 2023 BrightLocal category study found that businesses using four additional categories alongside their primary category have the highest average map ranking of 5.9. Adding relevant secondary categories signals broader relevance without diluting your primary focus — but every category must be accurate. Adding categories that don't fit your business risks a suspension.

Business Description

Write a description that uses your primary service keywords naturally. Keep it factual and informative, not sales-heavy. This field feeds the Relevance calculation and, as discussed below, is one of the specific data points Gemini reads when determining AI Overview citations for local businesses.

Photos and Google Posts

These drive behavioral signals — 8% of ranking weight. Profiles with recent photos and active Google Posts show higher engagement in Maps, which Google treats as a relevance and trust signal. Post at least once per week. Photos should show actual work, real team members, and real locations. Stock photos don't move the needle here.

Reviews: A Ranking Signal and a Conversion Signal in One

Review signals account for 16% of Local Pack ranking weight, making them the third-largest factor. And they do double duty: they rank you higher, then convert the searcher once you appear in front of them.

62% of top Local Pack results have 100+ Google reviews. But total count is only part of the story. Review velocity — consistently collecting new reviews over time — signals to Google that your business is active. A business sitting on 200 old reviews that hasn't received one in 12 months is less credible to the algorithm than one with 80 reviews getting 10 per month.

Responding to reviews also matters. It reinforces the social proof signals that convert browsers into callers, and it demonstrates to Google that you actively engage with customers — a behavioral signal Google values.

The practical step: systematize your review requests. After every job or completed service, send a single-step link directly to your Google review page. The businesses with 200+ reviews didn't accumulate them passively — they built a process.

On-Page SEO and Citations: The Supporting Structure That Most Businesses Ignore

On-page signals on your website drive 19% of Local Pack rankings — and 36% of the organic local results below the map. Your website and your GBP are not separate assets. They're a system, and they need to work in sync.

NAP Consistency

Your Name, Address, and Phone number must be exactly identical across your website, your GBP, and every directory where your business appears. Even small differences — "Avenue" versus "Ave," "LLC" included or excluded — dilute your citation signals. Businesses with consistent NAP across 40+ directories see a 4.1x ranking improvement compared to those with inconsistent listings, per Digital Applied's 2026 analysis . Start with Google, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, and Facebook. Then tackle industry-specific directories for your vertical.

Location and Service Pages

If you serve multiple cities, create a dedicated page for each service-city combination. A page built for "electrician in Boca Raton FL" outperforms a generic "services" page for that query. Each page needs your NAP, locally specific content, and the core on-page SEO elements — proper headings, meta title with your keyword, internal links.

LocalBusiness Schema

Add LocalBusiness structured data to your website. This markup tells Google and other search engines exactly who you are, what you offer, where you operate, and how to contact you. It feeds your prominence calculation directly — and as you'll see below, it's a critical input into the new AI search layer that's now part of local ranking.

The AI Search Layer: The Change 56% of Local Businesses Are Still Missing

Here's what's new in 2026 — and what most local businesses haven't acted on yet.

Google's AI Overviews now appear on 15.69% of all queries, per Localo's review of Semrush's study of 10 million+ keywords . When an AI Overview appears above the results, organic click-through rates fall sharply: Seer Interactive's 15-month analysis found a 61% CTR decline — from 1.76% to 0.61% — on informational queries. Pew Research, analyzing 68,879 real U.S. searches, found that when an AI Overview is present, users click a classic result only 8% of the time versus 15% without one.

For local businesses with commercial-intent queries ("plumber near me," "best HVAC company in Tampa"), AI Overviews are increasingly in the mix. The businesses that get cited inside those AI Overviews capture traffic regardless of what happens to traditional organic results. Those that don't get cited lose a growing share of local search clicks.

What makes AI Search Visibility different from classic Local Pack optimization: the signal weights invert. The same Whitespark 2026 report cited by Localo shows that for AI Search Visibility, on-page signals now carry 24% of the weight — versus only 12% for GBP . In the classic Local Pack, GBP was 32% and on-page was 19%. Under AI Visibility, your website content matters more than your GBP.

The practical upshot: the question of custom website vs. a template is no longer just about design — it's about whether your site can carry the structured, authoritative content that AI systems read and cite. FAQ sections, clear service descriptions, LocalBusiness schema, and well-organized pages that answer real customer questions are the input Gemini pulls from when generating AI Overviews for local queries.

Fifty-six percent of businesses have not yet adapted their local strategy for AI search. That's a wide-open competitive window for the businesses willing to close it now.

Your 2026 Local SEO Action Checklist

You don't need to do everything at once. Start with the highest-leverage actions and build from there:

Complete your Google Business Profile. Every field. Every section. Incomplete profiles lose to complete ones consistently.
Audit your primary category. Is it the most specific, accurate category available? This is the single most important ranking signal.
Add 3–4 additional GBP categories that accurately describe your secondary services.
Verify NAP consistency across Google, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, and your top industry directories.
Build a review collection process. Target 10+ new reviews per month. Respond to every review — positive and negative.
Add LocalBusiness schema to your website. Low implementation effort, high signal value for both traditional and AI rankings.
Add a FAQ section to your website answering the questions your customers actually ask. This feeds AI Overview eligibility directly.
Create location-specific pages for every service-city combination you want to rank for.

Need help auditing where you stand or building this out properly? Get in touch — I work with local service businesses to make this strategy systematic, not theoretical.

Frequently Asked Questions About Ranking on Google Maps

How long does it take to rank in the Google Local Pack?

Most local businesses see meaningful movement within 90–120 days of consistent optimization. The fastest-moving levers are GBP completeness, primary category accuracy, and review velocity. In competitive markets, expect 6+ months of sustained effort before achieving stable top-three placement.

Does my website matter for Google Maps rankings?

Yes — significantly. On-page signals account for 19% of Local Pack ranking weight and 24% of AI Search Visibility weight per the 2026 Whitespark report. A strong GBP paired with a weak website leaves ranking equity on the table. They must be optimized together.

How many Google reviews do I need to compete?

Sixty-two percent of top Local Pack results have 100+ reviews. But velocity matters as much as total count — consistent new reviews signal an active business to Google. Build a systematic process to collect reviews from every customer, not just the satisfied ones who volunteer feedback unprompted.

What is the biggest Google Business Profile mistake local businesses make?

Choosing the wrong primary category is the most costly and most common mistake. It's the #1 ranking factor for the Local Pack per BrightLocal's 2026 survey. The second-most common mistake is leaving the profile incomplete — photos, hours, description, and service details all contribute to the 2.8x ranking advantage that complete profiles hold over incomplete ones.

Will AI Overviews hurt my local business traffic?

AI Overviews reduce clicks to non-cited results, but businesses cited inside an AI Overview often see stable or improved visibility. Getting cited requires the same signals that drive traditional rankings: complete GBP, authoritative website content with structured answers, reviews, and schema markup. The businesses that get cited aren't special — they simply have better-built local presence signals than their competitors.

Custom Website Design vs. Templates

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 16:24:24 GMT

When designing a website for your business, you have two main options: custom web design or using templates.

Custom web design allows for more flexibility and specific features that cater to your needs. At the same time, template websites are easier to get up and running fast.

Which choice is best for you? That depends on your budget, timeline, content, features needed, and other factors that are specific to your business needs.

Templates are a great way to quickly get a basic website up and running. They often offer pre-defined layouts and designs with text, images, and other content that you can easily change. Templates are also more economical than custom web design. However, suppose you want a website that is uniquely yours and tailored to your specific needs. In that case, custom web design is a better option.

Custom websites are built from scratch based on the content that you provide. You can choose which features and functionality your website needs, including contact forms, membership areas, blogs, social media integration, mobile-friendly designs, eCommerce capabilities, and more. Let's take a deep dive into a comparison and find out which option is best for you!

Custom Web Design

Custom web design is a process of designing a website from "scratch" based on the specific needs and requirements of the client. The designer will work with the client to develop a design that meets their needs and then will build the website using code or (more likely) a website builder. This planning often results in a website tailored to the client's business. It is unique from any other website on the internet.

It would not be uncommon for the web designer to start with a template and build from there. But, the finished product should not look like it a template. The template can help get some elements in place and reduce the time spent doing the little things. The designer should work with their client to find a design they like, and if it draws influence from a template, so be it.

The benefits of custom web design

When you choose custom web design, you get a website specifically tailored to your needs and your business. You can select the features and functionality your website needs, and you can be sure that it will look unique and professional.

Custom web design also allows for more flexibility and creativity, so you can make your website stand out from the competition. However, it can be more time-consuming and expensive than using a template.

Advantages of custom web design

You get to choose which features you want your website to have
Your website is truly unique and tailored to you and your business
Your website will be highly flexible and creative

Cost of Custom Web Design

Custom web design isn't cheap, and it will cost more than website templates. However, the cost of custom web design may vary greatly depending on your specific needs. It's important to discuss the price with potential designers before hiring them. Create a clear scope of work so expectations, pricing, and timing are all agreed upon before working together.

Factors that can affect the cost of custom web design include the number of pages you need, timeline, how much custom coding is required, etc.

According to Freshbooks , the average cost to flush out a full website, including content, is $6,760 . That is pretty steep for most small businesses, and you can certainly find it cheaper than that.

For a basic website for a service-based small business or restaurant, you can get a quality site built for between $1,000 and $2,000 .

Again, the price will vary based on what features you need. Are you providing content, or will the designer have to either write it or outsource it themselves? Many factors come into play when it comes to pricing out custom websites.

I try to keep my pricing pretty transparent. I even have a calculator on my custom web design page that gives clients an estimate of what it will cost them before we meet. Some might say that is a bad idea, but I like being upfront with cost, so no one is surprised when it comes time to discuss pricing.

Website Templates

Website templates are pre-built designs that you can pick from to create your website. They have the basic design already in place, and you can choose elements to add to it, such as text, images, buttons, etc.

Template providers often provide hundreds of options for you to choose from so you can easily find one that fits with your business or industry. You do not need any coding knowledge to get a template up and running quickly.

Below you can scroll through my collection of templates for my DIY Website Membership .

The benefits of website templates

Website templates can provide a website that is quick and easy to build. You don't need coding skills, design knowledge, or website building experience. The website should already be mobile responsive, so it will look good on all desktop to tablet to mobile phone devices.

You can find templates that fit your budget. Most website builders will have free website templates to choose from, with the option to purchase premium options.

Starting with a template can be a great way to get your business off the ground for new business owners. Later down the road, you can always upgrade your website design by hiring a web designer when your business starts to get more cash flow.

Advantages of Website Templates

Website templates are quick to get up and running with little to no experience.
Website templates are affordable. You can save $1,000s upfront by not hiring a web designer.
Website templates are easy to use. Since the site is premade, all you have to worry about is updating the content, including headers, photos, and text.

The cost of website templates

Most website builders will have a variety of website templates to choose from, and the cost will vary depending on the template you select. Website templates are much more affordable than custom web design. You can find website templates for free or purchase premium options depending on the website builder you are using.

According to WebsiteBuilderExpert.com , templates or themes can cost anywhere from $0 to $200 . That will typically be a one-time cost that does not include the site's hosting.

When it comes to the price, the more you are willing to spend, the more complex the design and uniqueness of the site will be.

Should You Choose Custom Web Design or a Website Template?

The answer to this question depends on where you are as a business.

Suppose you are just getting started and need to get a website up and running with a limited budget. In that case, I highly recommend a website template. Find yourself a modern, professional template that fits your vision and go from there.

Pro Tip: Make sure to update everything and not leave placeholder content behind on the templates.

On the other hand, if you have been in business for years and find that your online presence has plateaued, it may be time to upgrade your website to a custom design.

You can bring your brand to life with custom design, add all the features you want on your website, and drive more conversions. Find a web designer who will share your vision to work closely with you to create the perfect website for you.

If you would like to learn more. I offer custom website design to small businesses and a DIY Website Membership to help small businesses launch their websites quickly and affordably!

Contact me today with any questions!

What is social proof and how can it help my business?

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 01:54:08 GMT

Most people are at least a little bit influenced by the actions of others, especially when it comes to making decisions. Humans have evolved to be social animals, and as a result, we tend to look to other people for cues on how we should behave. This tendency is known as social proof.

What is social proof, and why is it important?

In essence, social proof is the idea that if many other people like something, it must be worth trying out.

This principle can be highly effective when used in marketing. It is one of the easiest ways to motivate potential customers to purchase your products or services. There are many different ways to use this principle in your business. This article will explore a few examples of social proof that you can start using in your business today!

How can you use social proof on your website to increase conversions and sales?

Social proof is one of the most important psychological concepts to understand regarding website design and online marketing. This principle can be highly effective in motivating potential customers to purchase your products or services. There are many different ways to use this principle to your advantage, and in this article, we will explore a few of them.

Customer Testimonials

One of the most effective ways to use social proof on your website is to showcase customer testimonials. This can be done in the form of a video or written testimonial. Doing this can show potential customers that other people have had a positive experience with your product or service and that they will too!

Where can I get testimonials?

You have a few options when it comes to getting high-quality testimonials. Ideally, you will have a steady stream of reviews coming in through your Google Business Profile and Facebook account that you can share on your homepage. These are great social proof because people are familiar with Google and Facebook.

For some business models, that is not so easy as you may be working with fewer clients in a service-based industry. In that case, you will have to ask your clients if they would be willing to give you a testimonial. There are some great tools out there like testimonial.to that can help you manage your testimonials, easily request them, and aggregate to a "wall of love."

Partner Logos

Many businesses also use social proof by showcasing their client logos on their website homepage. This is another great way to show potential customers that other people have successfully used your product or service. It can also help to build trust and credibility with your audience.

It is important to highlight these logos on your homepage because you want your site visitors to trust you. Seeing a familiar logo to them starts to break down that trust barrier and makes site visitors willing to learn more. There are a few different ways to showcase client logos on your website. One of the most common ways is to list them in a grid or carousel format.

Another example of where a logo will help you gain some trust is with certifications or partnerships with larger companies. For example, the illustrious Google Partner badge on the homepage of a marketing agency instantly builds its credibility and trustworthiness.

Awards & Recognitions

Finally, you can also use social proof on your website by sharing awards, recognitions, featured articles, and other achievements. This will show potential customers that your company is trusted by various institutions, which will make them feel more reassured in their purchase decision!

Even thinking locally, if you can talk to a journalist and get featured in the local news, that recognition will certainly bolster your credibility to the community.

Final Thoughts

Social proof is the idea that if many other people like something, it must be worth trying out. Using this type of marketing strategy, you can convince your customers that they will get the same satisfaction and quality from your product or service as others did!

Social Proof can come in a few different forms, such as customer testimonials, logos on your website homepage to build trust with visitors, and awards & recognitions for achievements made by your company. These are just some examples of social proof you could use on personal and corporate websites to increase conversions and sales.

Start implementing social proof on your website today! Get started for free .

Restaurant Marketing Guide: Get Your Restaurant Found Online

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 19:30:02 GMT

As a restaurant owner, you know that attracting new customers is key to your success. But how can you make sure that hungry diners find your restaurant? Using online marketing tools like search engine optimization (SEO) and social media can reach more potential customers and bring in more business. Keep reading to learn more about how SEO and social media can help your restaurant thrive.

Create a Website for Your Restaurant

Your website is one of your most essential tools when it comes to online marketing. Creating a website and optimizing it for search engines can reach more potential diners and bring in more business.

Your website is the central hub for your business online, so be sure to include all of your restaurant's information. This info includes location, hours, menu, and most importantly, a call-to-action that gets visitors to order online or book a reservation.

There are three important uses for your restaurant at the early stages of your business:

Collecting Email Address

If your restaurant is just getting started, the main purpose of your website should be collecting email addresses for future customers. These are people who are genuinely curious about your restaurant and can be immediate customers when you do open.

I like to put email subscriber forms in a pop-up on the "Order Online" button because that captures individuals who were already looking to order from you.

Once you have email addresses, you can contact these individuals when you open, send coupons, and give them exclusive offers for supporting your business from the start.

Let Visitors Know What to Expect

Your website should also help visitors know what to expect from your restaurant. If you're a new, unknown restaurant, potential diners will want to see your menu, along with high-quality photos of the interior and food on the menu.

Make sure that all of the information on your website is up-to-date and correct. This includes hours, location, menu, and contact information. The more accurate and reliable your website appears, the more likely potential customers will trust you.

Use SEO to Rank Higher in Google

One of the most important things you can do for your restaurant is use SEO to rank higher in Google.

When people are searching for a local restaurant online, they often use Google. By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can make sure that your restaurant is one of the first results that pop up.

Remember, you are looking to rank highly for your local area, so you want to include keywords related to your location, like town and landmarks.

Claim Your Google Business Profile

Another important way to make sure that potential diners find your restaurant is to claim your Google Business Profile .

This free tool from Google allows you to control what information about your restaurant shows up on Google Maps and in search results.

Make sure to fill out all of the information on your profile, including hours, location, and contact information. You can also upload photos of your restaurant and menu.

Your Google Business Profile is often the first impression diners will see when searching for your restaurant, so make sure it's accurate and up-to-date.

A few tips to help your Google Business Profile stand up are:

Order Online with Google

Google lets businesses update their Google Business Profile with a link to their online ordering or reservation platform. This helps potential customers searching for your restaurant find out how to order online or book right away and remove any friction that may come with them clicking on your website.

You can either connect your online ordering platforms to Google Business Profile so users can order directly through Google or add your online ordering link to a Place an Order button.

Secure Reservations through Google

Another great way to reduce friction for hungry diners is connecting your reservation system with your Google Business Profile.

Connect your Open Table, Resy, or any other reservation management system you have to your account and let users make reservations right on Google.

Include High-Quality Photos

Google Business Profiles with high-quality photos stand out from the rest.

Photos are a great way to show potential diners what your restaurant looks like inside and out. They can also help showcase your menu items. Make sure to upload photos of your restaurant that are high resolution and accurately reflect your business.

Google even offers a section where you can include pictures of your menu which users can find in a tab under your profile for easy navigation. Again, this can help reduce friction for users who may be searching your business before reaching your website.

Show Off Your Menu

Within your Google Business Profile, you can submit your entire menu to Google so diners can see your menu without leaving Google.

No, I'm not talking about a picture of your menu! You can actually include every menu item into Google, so it shows up on your Business Profile page.

I don't see many restaurants doing this, but you may want to give it a shot and see if it helps!

Social Media

Social media is a great way for restaurants to connect with potential customers and promote their business.

There are a variety of social media platforms that restaurants can use, but some of the most popular ones for local businesses are Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook

Facebook is a great platform for restaurants because it allows you to post longer updates and photos. You can create a page for your restaurant and add information like hours, location, and contact information. In some ways, it can act similarly to your Google My Business profile to help patrons quickly get the information they need.

For a local restaurant, you really do not have to pay for any Facebook ads to get results. You can post organically, interact with customers, show off menu items, and get involved in local Facebook Groups to gain a following.

You should also pay attention to Facebook groups that are related to the type of food you serve. If you are from Central Massachusetts, you may have heard of ChewOnThis , a local restaurant group that has a huge following. Through this group, many restaurants have been able to promote their business and generate a following of their own.

Instagram

While Instagram is not as important for local restaurants as Facebook, it still serves an important purpose.

Think of it as a gallery to share your restaurant's best photos. It can be a great way to share your menu items, offer discounts, show off the environment of your restaurant, and get potential visitors excited about what you have to offer.

Citations/Business Listings

When you are trying to build up a reputation online, it is important to make sure that you have your business listed in the proper directories.

Yelp is probably one of the most important listings to control because it has a large consumer user base. It ranks incredibly high on almost every Google search related to a restaurant, so it is always in sight.

Other Citations include Yahoo Local Business Listing, Bing Places for Business, Apple Maps, Better Business Bureau, and more.

One way to manage multiple citations from one platform is with a tool like Brightlocal .

Your information must be accurate across the board. Google will penalize you for having listings that are not accurate. At the same time, you will want to make sure that you don't use the same descriptions for each one either.

There are some dissenting opinions on this, but it makes sense. If Google sees the same description across multiple business listings, it will penalize you for duplicate content. The best method is to put in the extra work and create unique listings for each citation. That will require claiming each one and not using an aggregating tool like Neustar Localeze .

In my opinion, using a citation aggregating tool is better than nothing at all, but if you have the time and bandwidth to do so, you should claim all of your listings yourself.

Get Your Restaurant Found Online

A restaurant's success is dependent on how well it can reach its customers. Whether you're trying to rank highly in Google, using social media to drive traffic into your website, or claiming citations and listings for your business - it all starts with a high-quality website that showcases what makes your venue unique.

If this sounds like something you are interested in for your restaurant, contact me today!

Are you interested in a free website mockup? Inquire here .

The Ultimate Business Tool: A Guide to Google Business Profile

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 15:52:15 GMT

Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business, is an essential tool for local businesses.

If you're a small business looking to stand out, chances are, you're not alone. The period between March 2020 and June 2021 marked a record high for the number of business startups created.

So how do you differentiate your business from millions of competitors?

Enter Google My Business: a very effective business tool for giving small businesses visibility. With GMB, your small business can have the same local competitive edge as a larger business nearby spending significantly more on advertising.

I've created the following guide explaining how GMB works and why it's crucial for your small business to have a Google business listing.

The Basics

Before you create your Google My Business listing, you'll want to have an understanding of how to create and optimize your profile for the best results. If you're not familiar with Google My Business, here's a brief overview.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free tool designed for local businesses to be more visible in the Google search engine. With a GMB listing, businesses can be found on Google Maps and Google Search with all of their relevant information listed below.

A GMB does more than just position your business in front of more potential customers. It also provides insights into your digital presence. You’ll learn about how users interact with your business online and how they find you.

Why Does My Business Need a Google My Business Page?

Whether you’re a frequent Google user or not, your customers and potential customers will be using Google to look for your business. Google is the most popular search engine, processing over 1 trillion searches per year worldwide.

When your business is registered and optimized on Google My Business (GMB), users will be able to find useful information like your business hours, where you’re located, and directions to get there.

Keep in mind that anyone can enter your business name and register it with Google. Once this happens, a Google My Business profile will appear on Google Maps and the Google Knowledge Panel .

If you register your business and manage your listing, you can be sure that all information is accurate. A random person who manages your listing may hurt your business if they upload incorrect business hours, the wrong address, or unflattering pictures.

Your account will also provide you with helpful business analytics, including how customers search for your business, which phrases they use to find you, and how they interact with your business listing.

Most importantly, having a Google My Business profile will make your business more visible, even if it’s a smaller business that isn’t spending money on ad services. A Google business listing is the best tool to ensure that any size business can be found.

Which Businesses Qualify for Google My Business?

Any business that involves a physical location can create a Google My Business Listing. This could mean a business with a visitable storefront or a business that has a physical location to offer products or services.

According to Google , “To quality for a Business Profile on Google, a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours.”

Businesses that don’t serve customers at physical locations, therefore, can’t qualify for a listing. Stores that operate entirely online, like an e-commerce store or digital service, can’t create a Google My Business Listing.

Can I use Google My Business Without an Address?

Yes!

Even if your business doesn’t have a storefront or physical address, you can register your business as a service business. This means that your business provides services to homes or other organizations around you. A service area business listing will let you set the radius of the area in which you provide services.

Is Google My Business Free?

Yes!

It’s free to create your Business Profile. Free features include optimizing features of your profile and managing your business from Google Search and Maps.

Claiming Your Google Business

First, you’ll want to claim and verify your Google My Business account.

Since anyone can make a GMB listing for a given business, you may already have a business listing created that was uploaded by someone else.

To find out if a listing already exists for your business, look up your business name on Google Maps. If it’s not claimed, claim it and verify it with a phone call. If you see the text, “Claim this business,” your business can be claimed.

If you don’t see your business at all, add it by inputting information. Then claim it by using the step above.

Accessing Your Previously Claimed Business Listing

What if your business listing has been verified, but you can’t access it?

In some cases, someone may have already claimed your business with an email address that you don’t have access to. It could be a previous team member who created it with a private email.

Should this happen to you, don’t create a new account. First, try to get access by using the “Request Ownership” feature . Google will send an email to the current owner’s email on the account.

You’ll be notified by email if your request is approved or denied. If denied, you may be able to make an appeal. And if you don’t hear back within three days, you may be able to claim the profile yourself.

Modifying Duplicate Listings

In some cases, you'll see more than one listing for your business. Sometimes this can happen if there’s confusion about slight differences in your name and address, and people may upload listings for you based on the information they believe to be accurate.

When this happens, you’ll want to take the proper steps to only list the proper one. Data confusion from duplicate listings can lower your search rankings.

See if you can claim a duplicate. Once it’s added to your account, go to your “Account Summary” and click Duplicate Locations . You’ll be able to click on the location you want to remove and delete the listing.

If you can’t claim the duplicate listing, use the request ownership feature as mentioned above. In the meantime, you can report a duplicate listing on Google Maps.

Find the location you want to report and click “Suggest an edit.” Mark the location as “Place is permanently closed or has never existed” and select “Duplicate” as the reason. You may even be able to select the right location for the business.

Optimizing Your Business Listing

After verifying your listing, the next step is to optimize your profile by filling out as many details as possible. Don’t skip this step - the more complete you are, the more visible your business profile will become.

Use only the official name you operate under as your business name. You can add important information like location, keywords, and products within the numerous options that Google provides for completing your account.

Hours

First, enter your regular hours. You’ll also have the option to add specific hours under the “more hours” section. This includes happy hours, delivery availability, or other events that have additional times.

To add times for holidays, special events, or any other time period that will affect your opening hours, use the special hours feature.

Phone Number

Here you should add your primary business number. Use the number that matches all other listings of your business. Opt for a local phone number rather than an 800 number, as 800 numbers don’t feel legitimate to users.

Website URL

Add your company’s website URL to your Google Listing. If you have more than one location, make sure your website URL takes users to your location’s page rather than a generic home page.

Take your website URL up a notch by implementing a website tracking URL onto your listing. That way, you’ll be able to see how many times your website is clicked from the GMB listing vs. from organic results.

You can create one with Google’s Campaign URL Builder , and you’ll be able to analyze specific clicks on your home page from your knowledge panel.

Appointment URL

If your services are primarily offered through appointments or reservations, you can add a URL that links to your scheduling software using the appointment URL feature. Users will be taken directly to your booking website, significantly streamlining the process of signing up for products or services.

Google supports hundreds of planning software options, including Books, Square Appointments, and E-table. View Google’s full list of supported scheduling partners here .

Short Name

Your short name is a custom name associated with your GMB profile. It’s an easy way for users to find your listing easily. The short name can be up to 32 characters and is unique, so no other listing will be confused for yours.

Google explains it like this: “When you share your short name, customers can enter the name’s URL in the browser’s address bar to go directly to your Business Profile. For example, customers can search for g.page/[yourcustomname] in the address bar to find your business.”

Products

Depending on what you sell, your GMB page may be able to list your product. Many business categories allow you to upload product listings. If you have this feature available to you, it’s a good idea to upload a few of your products.

Add a product to your GMB listing in seven simple steps.

Within your Google My Business Account, go to the “Products” tab and then click “Add Product”
Upload a photo
Name the product and select the product category (create a new category if necessary)
Set a price
Create a description
Add a “learn more” button option
Save!

With featured products listed, your Google business listing will be a step above that of your competitors. Having a solid number of products completes your listing and adds visual appeal, too.

Services

GMB also gives the option to break down the services you offer in detail. You can add your own pricing and information. Keep in mind that listing your service won’t help you rank for those keywords, but it will help users learn more about you and potentially generate more customers.

Business Description

Share a bit more about what makes your business unique here. What's your mission? Who is your target customer and how do you make their lives better?

This is the part of your listing where you can be creative and write like your authentic self. Write in a friendly tone that sounds like human language. Don't overstuff with keywords or include too much jargon - look for a more natural communication style.

Attributes

Attributes are the most frequently changing and timely elements of your Google My Business profile.

For instance, 2020 brought social distancing to businesses and organizations. Google introduced health attributes like "staff wears masks,” “curbside pickup available,” and “online classes,” to help businesses communicate their safety measures to users.

Attributes can be added by the business or suggested by users. The attributes you’ll have available will depend on the type of business you run.

If you have a physical location, consider including accessible attributes like “wheelchair friendly.” Storefronts that don’t accept digital payments should make note of this by selecting the “cash only” attribute.

Attributes can also be chosen based on the communities served and represented by the business.

For instance, “LGBTQ-friendly” is an attribute that businesses can select to showcase that their business is a safe space for these individuals. “Woman-led,” “Veteran-led,” and “Black-Owned Business,” are also popular attributes that have been added in recent years.

Messages

Move to the “Messages” tab on the left-hand side of the menu to access the messaging feature. Customers can communicate with you directly through your GMB listing by reaching out with the messaging feature.

After you enable it, a “Message” box will be visible on your page when viewers access it from Google Maps.

Keep in mind that Google has its own sets of guidelines you need to follow. Google expects you to respond to all messages within 24 hours. If you don’t, you may be banned from GMB messaging.

Photos

There are three types of photos to upload to your GMB account: your logo, cover photo, and other images.

Your logo should be a high-resolution, square JPG or PNG with a file size between 10KB and 5MB.

Your cover photo should be a high-quality image that represents your business, whether it’s a picture of your team or of a product you offer. GMB cover photos are 1080 x 608 pixels and should be a JPG or PNG between 10KB and 5MB.

Other images will give searchers a better understanding of your business. What does the outside look like? Could you upload map directions that are more helpful than using Google Maps?

Add photos of both the inside and outside of your business. Displays, seating, and unique decor pieces will add character to your listing.

Customers can add their own images, too. Any images added by customers will appear under the “by customer” tab on your listing. Keep up to date with these to ensure that they’re flattering and accurate.

Video

Video is one of the most underrated and underused tools on GMB pages. Incorporate video into your listing, though, and expect your visibility to skyrocket.

In 2022, video traffic is expected to reach 82% of all online traffic, with 78% of people watching videos online each week and the majority of people watching at least one on a daily basis.

Adding video to your Google listing puts you on the right side of video consumption trends, making your business seem more tech-savvy.

Users

If you’re a one-person operation, you’re likely the only one who will be using your Google My Business Account. But if you’re working with a team, you may want to grant access to other users.

Add managers to your GMB page under the Users section. They’ll gain editing access, but you’ll retain ownership.

Staying Up-to-Date

Once your listing is active, it will require regular maintenance to keep it optimized. Regularly take a look at data insights and stay in touch with your users to make the most from your listing in the long term.

Google My Business Posts

Maintain a line of communication with your listing viewers by uploading Google My Business Posts. GMB posts allow you to add updates, events, and sales to your listing. You can even include Covid-19 updates and information.

GMB posts are similar to social media posts. They’ll appear in chronological order within your profile and can be viewed from the search results page.

Posts often encourage visitors to act, using phrases such as “Learn More,” "Order Online," and “Sign Up.”

Like social media, remember that your GMB posts are optimized for certain visual standards. Images appear in a 4:3 ratio, so crop them accordingly. Posts only last 7 days, and only the first 100 characters of a post will appear in the knowledge panel visible from the search results page.

A new GMB post could be added to your listing every day, since you can have up to 10 posts at once. The two most recent will be viewable to a user on the search results page.

Reading and Responding to Reviews

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to generate trust and support among customers. Show your customers that you appreciate their feedback by responding to all reviews in a timely manner. Thank individuals who have left positive feedback and do your best to make it right with customers who didn’t have a great experience.

Google even explains that businesses should respond to all reviews since “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.”

By responding to reviews, you show your audience that you care, encouraging people to leave more positive reviews. And the more positive feedback you receive, the better your Google ranking will become.

Reviewing Insights

Your GMB offers insights into your last quarter’s performance, so you should check them at least every few months or so to get access to the most relevant information.

You can see information on impressions, or the number of people who search for your business. Insights will show you the number of people searching for your business by name, the people searching by categories who see your listing, and the people who look for brands or products you sell without directly looking for your business.

Other sets of data look at the platforms your customers use to view your profile, the actions people take when they click on your profile, and common trends.

Google Business Profile: The Ultimate Business Tool

Google My Business has become a helpful business tool and a necessary one for growing businesses. With a GMB account, you’ll not only become more visible to customers, but you’ll also seem more trustworthy.

You don’t have to get started with your Google business profile alone - together, we can optimize all aspects of your business’s online presence.

Get in touch with me to find out how you can transform your company into a strong digital player.

What is a Unique Selling Proposition?

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 00:51:00 GMT

If a company wants to survive in today's competitive market, it must have attributes that stand out from its competition. These attributes can come down to various factors such as price, quality, customer service, and much more. When you identify which of these factors your business excels at, it becomes your Unique Selling Proposition or USP.

The USP will give you an advantage that will encourage customers to buy from you over your competition.

The Purpose of a Unique Selling Proposition

When you think about advertising, think about all of the commercials you see during television shows and how each tries to capture your attention in just 15-30 seconds. How can these companies stand out amongst their competitors and have everyone choose them?

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way that could focus on just part of their business that makes it different than everyone else's? That is what the purpose of a USP is.

How To Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition

Coming up with a good USP isn't always easy, but there are ways to identify it. As you are going through the process of analyzing your company and comparing it to other businesses in the industry, make sure to focus on these four main points:

Product Features

If you are selling a unique product, determine which features sets your product apart from the competition.

Customer Benefits

What does this mean? This refers to those advantages or valuable aspects of your business that customers will benefit from when they purchase from you.

Alternative Options

What else do people have access to if they decide not to buy from you? Is it only you?

Cost Factors

Why should people choose your product or service over everything else? If they are already purchasing from someone, why should they change vendors? Pricing is a significant aspect of this.

Communicating Your USP

There are many ways to communicate your USP to your potential customers. Some companies use a slogan that will remind people of their product's benefits and why they should purchase from them. Others decide to create a catchy jingle or advertisement with images that show off the USP in any way possible.

On your companies website, your USP should be front and center. If possible, you should reference it on the hero section of your website so customers cannot miss it. For many companies, it may be too lengthy to include in that section, so you should include it in the intro section of your homepage, right underneath the hero section. Putting it any lower than that may risk having potential customers miss it.

Conclusion

Having an excellent USP can be one of the most critical factors in marketing any business. No matter what industry you are in, having something unique will make your company stand out amongst competitors. When you know exactly what makes your service or product different from others, customers will be able to choose whom they buy from easily.

Have you identified your Unique Selling Proposition for your company?

Share your USP with us in the comments section below!

5 Ways to Utilize Technology for your Small Business

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 01:48:33 GMT

Technology has been a significant factor in the business world for many years now. It's become so prominent that people can't imagine running a company without it. But how do you know which technologies are right for your small business? This article will look at 5 of the most popular uses of technology in today's small businesses and some tips on how to utilize them effectively.

Benefits of Technology for Your Small Business

Countless benefits come from using technology for your small business. Things have changed significantly since the days companies needed to invest in a computer and software just to be able to send out a mass email. Today, businesses can utilize all sorts of apps and programs to enhance their bottom line and increase productivity.

Every day, new technology emerges to help make businesses run more efficiently, boost productivity and make life easier. When utilizing this new technology, the ultimate objective is to increase productivity, streamline workflow, and save time and money through automation. Let's take a look at some of the most popular uses of technology in the workplace today.

Productivity Tools

Using productivity software is a great way to keep track of your work schedule and deadlines. By keeping everything organized in one place, you can avoid the stress of trying to remember everything.

There are a number of different productivity software programs available, so it's important to find one that best suits your needs. Some programs allow you to create to-do lists, set reminders, and track your progress. Others provide features such as time tracking, invoicing, and project management.

No matter which program you choose, it's important to use it regularly and update it accordingly. This will ensure that all your information is current and easy to access.

Tips for Using Productivity Tools

Make sure to use the software regularly and update it accordingly. This will ensure that all your information is current and easy to access.
Find a program that best suits your needs and stick with it.
Utilize the different features of the program to their fullest potential in order to increase productivity.

Utilize Online Payment Systems

The intent of utilizing an online payment system is also to increase productivity, as it is a time-saving and money-saving tool.

Several benefits come from utilizing an online payment system. For example, you can streamline your billing processes by paying all of your employees with one click on a computer or mobile phone. These instant payments can also help you keep track of your finances because you won't have to wait for your employees to deposit their checks on a weekly basis. If you're a small business owner, then I'm sure you have had those employees who hoard checks for weeks and hit you with a large, unexpected payment at once.

You need to consider a few things when using an online payment system for the first time, so you don't run into any issues. There are dozens of systems out there, so you want to make sure that the payment systems integrate with your POS system, your online store, invoicing, etc. You should aim to have one cohesive system and not collect money through multiple applications if possible.

Tips for Utilizing an Online Payment System

Make sure that the payment systems integrate with your POS, online store, invoicing, etc.
Utilize instant payments to streamline billing processes and eliminate the need for employees to deposit their checks on a weekly basis.
Create online subscriptions or automatic ETFs so you streamline the billing process for recurring payments. You will enjoy that much more than chasing down payments from clients.

Use A.I. to Your Advantage

Artificial Intelligence has become a lot more accessible over the past few years. Now, almost any business can utilize A.I. at an affordable cost to help with a variety of tasks, including marketing, customer service, and sales.

A simple search on AppSumo can help you find dozens of emerging A.I.-focused companies that can help you with almost every aspect of your business.

For example, A.I. can help you write content , create videos in a snap , respond to customers through chatbots , and do any number of things you can think of. The possibilities are endless.

Most of the tools you will find on AppSumo are affordable and straightforward to use. Most can be installed in a matter of minutes, so you don't have to worry about the learning curve that comes with other marketing software.

Tips for Utilizing A.I.

Do a simple search on AppSumo to find dozens of emerging A.I.-focused companies that can help you with almost every aspect of your business.
Automate the tasks you HATE. The best part about A.I. is that it allows you to focus on the things you love to do and hand off the things you don't like.
Double and triple-check the output of your A.I. While the technology has come a long way, it is not perfect. Make sure that your outputs are factual, accurate, and represent your business; otherwise, it may add more work for you.

Automate the Tasks You Hate

Similar to the benefits of A.I., there are a number of tools out there to automate some of the tedious tasks you hate.

I have written previous articles on using Zapier , but it is worth talking about the benefits again.

There are a few tools out there like Zapier, IFTTT, and Integromat that can create mini-apps with no-code that can automate certain functions of your business. These mini-apps can be anything from adding contacts to your CRM, creating new customers out of leads on social media, and instantly importing chat transcripts into Google Docs.

Tips for Automating Tasks

Evaluate the tools that you use and see if they are compatible with Zapier, IFTTT, or Integromat.
Identify tedious tasks that are heavily data-entry or follow a simple process; it is very likely these can be automated.
Make sure to test the outputs of your automation to ensure accuracy.

Social Media

Social media is a great way to stay connected with your customers. It is also easy to share content and get feedback from people online.

Maybe even more so than your website, your social media pages are one of the first impressions of your business. It is important to make sure that they are well-maintained and represent your brand in the best way possible.

A lot of small businesses owners are hesitant to start focusing on social media, whether it be because they don't have the time or they're not sure how to get started.

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to make sure that your social media presence is effective. With free programs like Canva or Adobe Stock, or cheap options like Glorify , you can create stunning visuals with ease using their pre-built templates.

You can post about the latest offers you have, share new blog posts, and keep your audience engaged by asking questions.

Once you have a good amount of content created, use programs like Buffer or Hootsuite to post at specific times throughout the day. You can even schedule posts ahead of time so that they go out automatically for you.

You can even use apps that will curate content for you based on your industry, news, and other factors using apps like UpContent .

Tips for Using Social Media

Post regularly, but not too often. You don't want to overwhelm your followers with posts, but you also don't want them to forget about you. Try to post a few times a week.
Be interesting and relevant. Make sure that your posts are interesting to your followers and contribute to the conversation.
Engage with your followers. Respond to comments and questions. This will help build customer loyalty and foster relationships with customers.

In the article, I have discussed a number of ways that you can utilize technology in your business. I covered how to use A.I., automation tools, and social media for marketing purposes. These are several of the best ways to get yourself up-to-date with what's happening in technology and to boost productivity within your company.

As always, if you have any questions or comments on this article, please feel free to leave them below!

Top 5 Benefits of Local SEO Marketing

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 01:34:19 GMT

When you are a business that serves a specific area, the competition is fierce. It would help if you could separate yourself from other local businesses. Local SEO marketing can have a tremendous impact on your phone call and walk-in traffic.

You've probably tried traditional marketing methods such as print and radio advertising or roadside signs, but are you getting the return you need? When people want information on businesses, they don't listen to the radio; they look it up online.

Your ranking on Google is crucial to getting the most traffic possible to your website. Is your business the first one they see, or is it your competitor? Appearing on the first page of Google is vital, especially getting in the local 3-pack through Google Maps.

Let's look at the five most significant benefits of Local SEO and how it impacts your business.

Reach More Customers with Local SEO

The key to success for a brick and mortar store or a business that serves an area like heating and cooling repair is reaching the right people. Traditional marketing sends out a wide net. Only a small fraction of the people who see your advertising are interested in your service. That's a waste of money.

When you optimize your website for search engines, you attract traffic specifically looking for your goods and services. That creates the best opportunity to convert site visitors into customers.

Focusing on Local SEO improves your chances of being in the local 3-pack at the top of the search results and in the top search results themselves. This is valuable online real estate and the first thing people see when looking up information.

Google 3-Pack

The Google 3-pack lists businesses that Google feels best represents a location. The top listing in the 3-pack for a local search receives 44 percent of clicks , according to Moz.

This slight nudge from Google, telling searchers that these are the three most relevant businesses in the area, plays a major role in influencing searchers click.

Take a look at my Guide to Google Business Profile to learn how to optimize your listing and have the best chance of winning those 3-pack results.

SEO Marketing Improves Brand Awareness

There's likely a lot of competition out there in your business niche. How can you get the word out about your business with all the competition out there? The best way is through brand awareness. If people know and trust who you are, they are more likely to choose your business.

If you offer a service or product that people have never heard of, you will have a hard time competing with the businesses that have been around for 25 years.

Local SEO helps create brand awareness by putting your site on the first page of Google for related keywords. By climbing the search engine rankings, you start to bring more credibility to your business while bringing more awareness through increased website traffic. Your customers have a better chance of finding you when you appear on the first page of search results.

SEO through Social Proof

A great way to improve your brand awareness is through reviews from customers. Many review websites such as Yelp allow customers to discuss their experiences with your business, both good and bad.

These reviews give people a better understanding of the quality of your business. The more positive reviews you get, the more comfortable customers become with your business.

Positive reviews on these third-party sites help build trust and improve consumer confidence in your brand. This can lead to increased sales for your business, all thanks to the social proof.

Unfortunately for us, small business owners, these review sites rank highly on Google. Usually, higher than most small businesses for certain keywords. So, we need to use this to our advantage by garnering great reviews to act as testimonials for our businesses.

I talk a lot about the impact of social proof on your website in another article, but social proof also applies to reviews and testimonials across the web.

Reduce Your Marketing Costs

Promoting your business through paid advertisements can be expensive, especially if using an agency to manage your ads. Local SEO marketing offers a great way to reduce your marketing costs.

You control everything, the keywords you want to rank for, what information appears on your website and in which order, etc. This gives you the ability to spend less money for better results.

Digital advertisements also cast a wide net. You may be targeting Facebook Ads to your specific niche, but you can't be sure that the individuals seeing those ads are interested in buying at the moment.

With local SEO, you know that the searchers are in the market to buy your product or service. Again, this increases conversions and saves you money in the long run.

Local SEO Tools

Google provides all the resources you need to rank highly in search results. Focus on your primary and secondary keywords on your website. Google will give you the insights you need to track and monitor how you are performing.

If you want to take your local SEO to the next level, below are some tools for your to check out today!

Receive More Targeted Traffic

Finally, local SEO helps you receive more targeted traffic to your website.

Local SEO only brings in traffic from a specific area. Local SEO customers not only want your service but are located within your service area. This is done through careful keyword research and content creation. Targeted traffic leads to more conversions and a better return on investment.

Think of it like this, are you more likely to buy from a stranger who pops up in a paid advertisement or the local business down the street who pops up for the exact thing you are looking for? That's the benefit of local SEO, the user's intent is to buy or learn more about that particular product or service, and if your business can appear at the top of those results, your website traffic and conversions will start to increase!

Start Marketing Your Business with Local SEO Today

Local SEO marketing is a must for today's small businesses. It is the only advantage small businesses have against Amazon and the other major retailers if they do it right.

If you serve a specific area and need new customers, this is the best way to make it happen. While you don't have to abandon traditional marketing, you need to realize that local SEO is how small businesses are winning in today's society.

If you want more information about local SEO and how I can help, then please contact me today .

How to Start Thinking About Marketing Your Small Business

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 04:49:49 GMT

Lately, I have seen a lot of small businesses that don't realize the importance of marketing. Perhaps they do not know how to start, or they are afraid it will cost too much. I'm here to tell you that getting started is easier than you think, and it does not have to cost you anything.

To market your small business, you need to find out what makes your company special and unique. What is the one thing you can offer that no one else can? Once you figure this out, you need to make it clear to the customer how they can experience this benefit.

The thing that makes your business special or unique is considered your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It's the one thing (or multiple) that makes your company unique that nobody else can do. Once you have identified this, the next step is making sure customers know about it. The message should be clear for customers and present across all of your marketing platforms.

The Importance of Marketing Your Small Business

Marketing your small business is crucial for its growth and sustainability. To be discovered among the many other businesses out there, you need a strong marketing plan that can grab people's attention.

Customers these days are bombarded with commercials, Facebook ads, and pop-up ads. They need to be shown how your business will offer them something they can't get anywhere else. Make it clear what peace of mind or happiness you offer when they choose your company over a competitor's.

Marketing may seem like a costly endeavor, but you don't have to spend a lot of money to market your business and be successful. Simple marketing tactics will work like magic for your small business and won't break the bank. More on this later, let's get back to your unique selling point.

Find Your Unique Selling Point

So how do you find this magical USP? It could be anything from offering the lowest prices on a particular product, being the only one in your area offering the service, uniquely treating customers, providing exceptional work, or even including attractive incentives with their purchase. Every business should find this one thing that makes them unique and stand out.

Finding your USP is not always easy. You might need to do some research, talk to customers and employees, or even try out a few different things before you can identify what makes your business special.

In my opinion, your USP is something that you discover along the journey of your business venture; it is not something you determine from the start. Of course, you can focus on a USP from the beginning, but as you learn more about who your customers are and how they feel, your USP will likely change along the way.

Affordable Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses that Work

If you have already determined your unique selling point, then great! You are on the right track. Now let's discuss some marketing tactics that will help market your small business to potential customers.

Marketing your small business should be a balance between being unique and getting the word out. Here are some ideas to help you put together a marketing strategy:

One of the most effective ways to market your business is simply word of mouth. Make sure you always provide exceptional service, so your customers will recommend you to their friends and family.
Make sure your website is professional. Your website is where your USP should be front and center for everyone to see. Make sure it is easy for customers to contact you, buy, or schedule your service.
Settle on a social media platform to focus on, whether Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Spend time improving how this looks and developing an audience on it. Your choice of social media likely will be determined by your product or service.
Market yourself as an expert in your industry by writing articles and offering tips online. You can do this in local Facebook groups, niche groups, and on your blog.
Create and update your Google My Business account. GMB is arguably the easiest way to get found online locally. Plus, it can often be the first impression of your business.

There are dozens and dozens of other options to market your business; these were just a handful of practical, affordable ways to get started marketing your business.

What other options can you think of? Leave a comment with your own ideas.

Happy Marketing!

The 6 Website Tips Every Small Business Should Know

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 23:42:27 GMT

A website - and a great one at that – is essential for any small business.

Whether you are an entrepreneur who wants to sell products online or a local service provider hoping to attract new customers, having a well-designed and optimized site will make all the difference in the success of your business.

This post walks through 6 tips that every small business should know when designing their website. I'll discuss purchasing secure hosting, writing the content yourself, optimizing for search engines, and more. This article aims to help give you ideas on how to build out your next big project for your company!

Pick a Good Domain Name

Your domain name is the web address for your website. It needs to be short, easy-to-remember, and relevant to what you do in order to maximize its chances of being found by search engines and remembered by customers.

If you already have a domain name, congratulations! You can skip over this tip.

Otherwise, you'll need to register with a service such as GoDaddy or Name.com to start your website project.

What if the domain I want is taken or too expensive?

It is very common to have your business name taken as a domain, so don't be discouraged if this happens to you.

If the domain is taken, try this:

Check out domains like .co or .net which may have names available.
Consider adding a verb before your name, such as "join" or "try."
Add your town/city to the end of your business name.

For a domain name to work, you need to set up DNS records.

DNS records are the information that tells other computers on the internet where to find your website. The process of getting DNS records set up can be complicated and time-consuming, but if you have a hosting provider, they will typically provide this for you when signing up for their service. They'll also handle transferring current domains over if needed!

You'll want to make sure that everyone involved in running the website knows how it works and has access. The number of people who need access will depend on each specific company's needs and goals - some might only need one person while others may require many employees' input. In either case, it's critical not to allow too many people into the website's backend.

Ensure your website has a clear objective

An objective is probably one of the most important steps in starting your own business and creating your website. You need to know what your business does and who it's for before you begin. Knowing this will help determine the type of content you put on your site, how much time is needed for upkeep, and more.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when coming up with a goal:

What is my target audience?
How often do I want to update the website? (daily, weekly, monthly)
Do I need any partnerships or other outside help for this project and site (i.e., working with a freelancer or agency)

Once you have these answers down pat and know what type of content will be necessary for maintaining your goals, you can start to plan out the different sections of your website and how they will interact with one another.

I'll cover the different elements of your website that contribute to these goals in a future blog post.

Use a Reliable, Secure Hosting Provider

As you might have guessed, website hosting is an important part of a business's online presence. As such, it should not be taken lightly when selecting web hosts for your small business.

A good web hosting provider will offer customer support, which is essential for your business. They should also show that they understand their products and services by providing you with a clean website interface with high-quality information to use on your site.

Some examples of some hosting providers are:

Bluehost
HostGator
Inmotion Hosting
SiteGround.com
Dreamhost

When choosing a web hosting company, it is important to know what you are looking for.

The most crucial factor to consider when choosing a web hosting provider is their uptime. Uptime is the amount of time your website, blog, or store will be available to visitors to your site. In addition, uptime takes into account when there are network outages in either their data centers or on a particular server where you have placed one of your websites and when scheduled maintenance occurs.

The second most important factor is the bandwidth, which measures how many visitors to your site can access it simultaneously. The more people who come visit your website at once without crashing it for other users, the better.

Optimize your website for search engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can, and does, have a whole blog for itself. With that said, I wanted to touch on it quickly because it is an important thing to think about when creating your website.

There are many tools, strategies, and tricks that can help your website rank higher on Google Search.

Because this can all be very overwhelming, I would recommend starting with three key things:

Focus on writing your own original content.
Include keywords in the page titles, sub-headings, and throughout your content.
Make your site mobile-friendly

There are, of course, many other ways to enhance your SEO. Here are five tips from me .

Focus on Mobile Website Design

Mobile browsing has surpassed desktop and laptop web surfing in popularity . As a result, more and more people are browsing the internet on their smartphones.

The key to tapping into this trend is designing a mobile-friendly website that will make it easy for your customers to find what they're looking for.

To make sure that your site is always looking its best, you should invest in a responsive web design, which automatically reconfigures itself as needed depending on whether someone is viewing it from their desktop computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet.

A responsive design is one that reacts to the device that it is on. It reorganizes the content on the page based on the size of the device or window that the website is shown in. This can be critical for attracting customers because your website is often a first impression, and no one wants to navigate on a site where the content is condensed or distorted in any way.

Once everything is set up, run your URL through Google's Mobile-Friendly Tes t to see if your site is ready to go.

Find the Right Website Builder for You

I'm presuming that most readers out there are not going to code their websites from scratch. That would mean that the majority of you would need a website builder to create your website.

The question is: Which one should you choose?

There are many different types of site builders out there. I will not describe every one of them (in this blog post), but I wanted to touch on two variables: Website Builders vs. CMS.

The big difference between a Website Builder and a CMS is that one allows for more creativity on the front end, while the other is easier to manage on the backend.

Website builders are really focused on the front-end, meaning they allow you to build your site more visually.

One example of this would be Wix or Duda - where you can drag and drop elements onto the page as desired. Drag and drop might sound straightforward, but it can be challenging to create your site's preferred design and functionality. In addition, with the freedom to create the design of your site, you need to make sure that every decision you make is going to be of high quality.

A CMS is focused on the backend, meaning that it's easier to manage your site and update content from a software program like WordPress or Drupal. These programs are easier to use, and they also provide you with a set of standards for designing your site.

Deciding on how you are going to build your site is up to your personal preference. I may be biased, but I do think that most small businesses could benefit by connecting with a local web designer and having them bring your vision to life.

Final Thoughts

If you are a small business owner and have struggled to build your website, the six tips I've shared should provide some direction. I know how hard it is to find time outside of running a business to build a site.

Connect with me any time if there are questions about how I can help create your new site - I am here for anything!

11 Ways for Small Businesses to Compete in the Age of Amazon

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 02:25:55 GMT

Small businesses owners are facing a historic challenge, but I believe it is one they can win.

It is no secret that Amazon has become a massive player in the retail industry. It is now worth more than Walmart and Target combined! Not only that, but large corporations in general are making it harder and harder for small businesses to compete.

As small business owners, we all feel the pressure of these major online retailers and service providers. It may seem like there is nothing we can do to survive this onslaught of big corporations; however, there are many ways for smaller companies to thrive even when faced with competition from Amazon or other large companies.

This blog post will share my insights on some tools and strategies you can use to fight back against these giants. Read on to find out how you can stay afloat!

1. Think Local

While winning the SEO battle against these corporations will be nearly impossible on a national level, you have the advantage of a more localized audience.

Local SEO is your friend. When a customer searches for *insert product here* in the town you do business, you want to make sure you appear in those search results.

If you have more questions about SEO for your small business, read my article for some tips .

Investing in your local community and focusing on providing excellent customer service will keep you afloat even when facing competition from larger companies with a national reach.

2. Focus on Products and Services

There is no better way to stay competitive than by creating products that people want right now! If you can create something new or improve existing product lines, this will help improve your business's chances of success. Keep up-to-date on what customers are asking for so that you know how to take advantage of changing trends in the marketplace.

For example, if you have a bakery and people are requesting more vegan or gluten-free options, you could start exploring how to expand your offerings so that they will be able to fill the needs of these customers.

Updating and expanding your product line will help increase customer satisfaction and give you a competitive advantage in the field.

3. Providing Excellent Customer Service

If you offer excellent customer service positively and professionally, people will be more likely to return.

Good customer service might seem like a no-brainer, but people are so used to receiving poor customer service that if you go out of your way to create an environment where customers feel taken care of, they will likely come back.

For example, if a customer comes into your store and doesn't find what they are looking for, you can offer to order that product for them. An act like this is especially helpful if the item that the person wants isn't in stock, or there's not enough of it.

Offering this service will make people feel like their business matters, creating loyal customers who keep coming back and refer others.

Customer service counts for so much more than just your experience in person. Technology has completely changed the way people shop. It interacts with companies, making it so that you need to make sure your business is represented well on your website, Google Business Page, social media, and other online listings.

4. Keeping Up with the Latest Technology Trends

Technology has made it easier than ever before for small business owners but at the same time added a whole new set of challenges.

Technology can be a precious tool for small business owners, but it's essential that you know what's out there and how to use it in your favor.

It may seem like a lot, but luckily many resources exist to help educate business owners on ways they should stay ahead of the game.

I recommend getting proper professional advice from someone specializing in this field, such as a web designer*Hyperlink* or IT person, so you know exactly where your money is going and if these new investments will pay off.

Without getting too technical, some examples of technology trends you should be aware of are:

Payment systems (updating to Square, Stripe)
Virtual Offerings - if applicable (Zoom, Google Meet)
Simplifying appointment scheduling (Calendly, Square Appointments)
Online advertising (Facebook, Google Ads)
E-commerce (selling your products on your website, through Amazon)
Cloud storage and backup (Google Drive, Dropbox)

To be successful in the digital age, we must stay on top of these trends and make sure our business stays up-to-date with them.

5. Consider Outsourcing Some Functions to Save Time and Money

There are many options for outsourcing functions to save your business time and money.

A couple of common examples of functions you could outsource our customer service and marketing departments.

You could hire an outside company to handle customer service and another for marketing.

Many small business owners have found this type of outsourcing is not only much less expensive than hiring new employees-- it's also more effective because they are focusing on what their business does best while the outsourced department handles everything else.

Small business owners also have the option to hire virtual assistants. With freelance marketplaces like Upwork, businesses can find a virtual assistant to handle their daily tasks and work for them remotely.

The expensive cost of hiring full-time employees is eliminated in this outsourcing because the company doesn't need benefits or provides salaries with each VA they hire. Plus, you don't have to worry about office space when your entire team lives elsewhere.

Virtual Assistants sometimes get a bad reputation, but in reality, these individuals are often just as qualified, if not more so, than on-site assistants.

Bonus : if you are looking to outsource your customer service, check out tawk.to. It is a free chat box for your website and offers customer service representatives starting at $1/hour!

6. Digital Advertising

While this might not be your area of expertise, it's still important to know digital advertising basics.

Digital advertising can be essential for small businesses due to the low costs and the considerable reach they can achieve. You can also get hyper-focused on the demographic and your targeted ads' location to reach local customers who may have an interest in the product or service you offer.

The cost of Facebook advertising will depend on your budget, with options for as little as $0.0025/day and up.

The positive thing about digital advertising is that you no longer need to wait for a printing company or the newspaper to publish your advertisement, as it's now possible to upload an advert from anywhere in the world and have it published online.

Digital ads are also easy to track, so there's no need for expensive marketing research techniques like focus groups or surveys - look at how many clicks on your adverts you're getting!

It's no wonder why some people say traditional ads don't work anymore either - most customers search online before buying anything!

Some examples of digital advertising platforms you could use are Google AdWords, and, of course, Facebook.

7. Be the Face of the Brand

As a small business owner, you can become synonymous with your brand in your customer's eye.

A more personal connection to your customers is one of the best ways for you to stay on top of their minds!

People are so used to seeing advertisements and logos that they often find themselves turning them out. But if it's a small business owner who has been advertising, then people will be able to recognize an ad from someone they know better than someone cold selling them something off the street corner.

Being one with your brand highlights that you should build your personal brand while building your business. Your personal brand will differentiate you from your competitors and make people want to do business with you.

8. The Power of a Good Reputation

Another excellent way for small businesses to survive in the age of Amazon is by utilizing their past experiences and being transparent with customers about any previous complaints made against them.

You inevitably will get reviews online. How you handle those reviews will significantly affect your reputation.

If you have many negative reviews, it is vital to take the time and effort to respond to those customers. You can handle responses in many ways, such as sending them an email or reaching out on social media/phone.

Responding to the positive reviews and reviews with constructive criticism is also important. You should respond to these reviews by thanking the customer for their review and any recommendations they made to improve your brand or company and respond promptly, which shows that you are dedicated to providing excellent service.

9. Unique Marketing Strategies

When you have a business competing with these big companies, it's a good idea to come up with creative marketing strategies and make your marketing more appealing.

I've already mentioned the benefits of digital advertising through Facebook and Google Ads, but you have many other options as a local company.

Some marketing strategies you can implement to make your company stand out are:

Offering discounts for loyal customers: you can do this through a loyalty card or an email list.
Offering a personalized experience: this could be through goodies like free samples, customer service representatives with knowledge of the company's product on hand, or social media contests.
Employing guerrilla marketing tactics and using unconventional methods to get your brand out there. (I've always joked about dropping branded pencils at a high school on "accident" ;))
Sponsoring events or programs for non-profits: this not only brings brand awareness, but you are also helping a good cause.

The list above isn't exactly "unique," but every company's situation is different.

The best way to succeed is by implementing a strategy (or strategies) that make sense for your business.

10. Social Media

This point might go without saying, but social media can play a crucial role in giving your small business the exposure it needs to attract new customers.

Engaging with your followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can help you connect with people interested in what you have to offer.

These social media platforms can also be a valuable tool for gathering feedback from customers, which will only allow your business to improve over time. Small businesses must focus their efforts on providing outstanding customer service through these channels as well - this is one of the most effective ways to build trust and establish rapport with clients looking for somewhere new to buy products or services.

Readers might not see every post right away, but they may come back later and end up seeing something worth checking out!

Before going crazy with posting non-stop on social media, consider your social media strategy.

Some business models are easier than others to generate content.

For example, if your business offerings are pretty much the same year-round, your social media strategy might want to be more educational. You will want to educate the public on the benefits of what your business offers.

On the flip side, if you are in a service business or sell various products, you should use social media as your work portfolio or a catalog for your products.

With all of that being said, I would recommend researching what other businesses are doing in your industry and identify if those tactics could work for your small business.

11. Google My Business

Google My Business is a service offered by Google to make it easier for businesses to manage their online presence across the web.

The benefits are that you can use this as one place to claim and update your business information, including photos of your products or services. It also enables customers who need customer service to contact you through the available channels on Google Maps (i.e., phone number).

Google My Business is a way to save your customers time and provide them with more information about who you are.

You can also get a lot of great data analytics from Google My Business, which will help you understand what customers are looking for and how they find you.

The tool is also free and easy to use. It won't take up a lot of your time and allow you to get more customers!

There are, of course, many other tools offered by Google that can help your small business, too.

Thanks for taking the time to read 11 of my tips for helping your small business compete with Amazon and other large corporations. It might seem like you're going up against a giant, but it's possible!

I hope you found these tips informative and helpful as you seek to survive in this new business age.

If you are looking for help competing with these large corporations, I'd be happy to connect with you on some of your web design and content needs.

5 SEO Tips for Small Businesses

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 20:59:35 GMT

Do you have a small business? If so, it's essential that you know the basics of SEO.

Many people see SEO as an unnecessary expense for their company or don't understand its importance. However, search engine optimization can be hugely beneficial to your business to help generate more revenue.

5 tips to improve your small business SEO include:

Use keywords (Everywhere)
Create a blog
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
Update your website regularly
Upload your site map into Google Search Console

Achieving good SEO is a competitive advantage that can help you grow your business. With the right techniques, any company no matter how small or large will be able to improve their visibility in search engines and increase profitability.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of improving your website's ranking on search engines. It's a way to increase the visibility of your business through search results.

You may hear marketers refer to "organic reach" which is a way of saying that they are earning the position in search engine results without paying for ads.

Search engines rank your business based on relevance, trustworthiness, and authority, while best matching user intent.

Your ranking is incredibly important, but your SEO also refers to the quality of the user who is finding your site. Your content should be results-driven to drive more leads, sales, subscribers, etc. to your site.

I'll have more content on SEO, but for now, let's dive into some quick tips to help your small business.

Use Keywords (Everywhere)

One of the most important things you can do for SEO is to use keywords in your content. This includes adding them into headlines, titles, and body text. This way, you are telling search engines what your business is about and lets them match it with user intent.

Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to find information on the internet. Therefore, every company must identify the keywords that will bring the best traffic to their site. Typically, those keywords will be the service(s) that your business offers.

If you serve a local community, make sure to include the name of the town that you service. Including the town you service can be consider using a "long-tail keyword."

Long-tail keywords are often used in search engines when a person is near to making an actual purchase. These phrases can be more specific and lengthy, which means that they will have higher rankings than more broad terms.

You should always include your keywords in all of your meta-descriptions. Search engines read meta-descriptions to decide how to rank your website and which information is most relevant. Users will also read your meta-description on the search engine results page under the title of the page.

The best way to find new keywords for SEO purposes is by doing keyword research, which includes examining the words that people use in search engines when they are looking for businesses like yours. This will help you identify what phrases resonate with customers so that you can include those terms on your site.

Create a blog

One effective way of driving traffic to your site is through a blog. You can post content about anything related to your business, and it will show up in search results for that topic.

A blog also allows you to include keywords throughout the posts, improving your website rankings on those terms. There are many different online services where you can create a basic blog with minimal effort, including WordPress or Blogger. You could even use Google's new Posts function!

You could also hire a freelancer to write those blogs for you at pretty reasonable prices.

You might be thinking, why should I go through the trouble of writing a blog when my business serves a local community?

That's a fair point, but blogging has so many benefits that you may not have considered. For one, a blog helps bring credibility to your business and establish your brand. It is a direct way to talk to people who are actively interested and searching for things in your industry. Your site will also rank higher for keywords related to those topics in search engines, which means more people can find it without knowing about your business!

Also, suppose you offer a service or sell products to other businesses in your area. In that case, this is the perfect way for them to find out about what you do. You could even use these blogs for advertising and promoting different offers on your website.

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

Your site should be mobile-friendly so that people can visit it no matter what device they're on, but that is not all.

Google doesn't rank websites well if the site is not optimized for smartphones and other devices. The search engine uses a mobile page's load speed as a key metric for search results. So not only is this good for increasing traffic in general but especially for those who are searching using a smartphone!

How can you make sure your site is mobile-friendly? Well, you should focus on building a website with a responsive design.

A responsive website is one that automatically adjusts the content on a page to make it more readable. It does this by shrinking and compressing images, text, and other media, so they look good across multiple devices with different screen sizes.

When people search using their smartphones, they might not find what they're looking for if the website isn't compatible and optimized for smartphone users!

To test how mobile-friendly your website is, try using Google's mobile-friendly test .

Update your website regularly.

Google has mentioned how important it is to make sure a website's content is up-to-date, claiming this will result in higher rankings on the SERPs.

SERP = Search Engine Results Page

A few ways to ensure that you are constantly keeping your site updated is by consistently doing keyword research and adjusting copy. Small business owners should also focus on resolving any broken links and updating their blog's content regularly to add new information or relevant articles.

The more time spent regularly updating site information will result in higher rankings down the road. It shows Google that visitors want what is being offered there right now.

Adding fresh content ensures relevance which keeps traffic coming back.

Upload your site map into Google Search Console

Before diving into this tip, I should first explain a couple of things.

A site map is a list of links that shows a website's content organized in hierarchical order. The site map is important because Google can use it to improve search rankings for your site or even add it to their index (a database of websites).

For an example of what a site map looks like, here is mine: www.garretthandley.com/sitemap.xml

Once you have found your site map (or created one), you should upload it to Google Search Console.

Google Search Console provides you with valuable insights about your site's performance and tools like crawl errors, which will help you identify and fix any problems on its way.

To find out more about Google Search Console, watch this video below:

In conclusion, it's important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly. The five SEO tips for small businesses in this article are a great way to get started and can be used by anyone who wants their business' website to rank higher.

Creating and optimizing content can be a bit daunting for small business owners, but with the help of these tips you'll be on your way to being #1 in no time.

As always please feel free to contact me if you need any assistance in developing an effective strategy for your business' digital marketing needs. Whether you are looking to create a website that drives traffic, or simply looking for written content, then I would be happy to help.

5 Free Appointment Scheduling Tools to Help Your Small Business

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 02:50:09 GMT

Save time and effort scheduling appointments, and gain more leads with any of these five (free) appointment scheduling tools.

If your small business offers some sort of service, then you have probably felt the stress of scheduling an appointment. For years people had to schedule these appointments over the phone or even via email, but now this process can be automated seamlessly to save you time and frustration. There are dozens and dozens of tools out there to schedule appointments, but I will be highlighting five tools that I think are the best options to book appointments for FREE. As always, I'm looking for the best resources for you to save time and money using automation tools to help your small business.

Before diving in to the list, one thing to be clear: I am just focusing on the free plan for all of these services. As with most free plans, their branding will likely be visible and you will have limited features. This list is just to help you identify what scheduling tool is best for you while you get started booking appointments for your small business. For the best experience with any scheduling tool, I definitely recommend making the investment in one of their paid plans.

Calendly

This tool has grown tremendously in popularity recently, and is one of the first that I can recall of its kind. It is an industry leader and has the specifications to prove it. Calendly makes appointment scheduling easy with dozens of integrations, flexible scheduling for you and your team, billing, and more, but many features you do have to pay for.

While offering a free plan, Calendly's paid versions are incredibly cheap with $8/month per user for Premium and $12/month per user for Pro. We will just focus on the free version today.

With their free version, you get access to the essential features that you will need to schedule appointments for your business. You can integrate Calendly on any of your calendars including Google Calendar and Outlook, and schedule unlimited events. Below you can find the Pros and Cons of the free Calendly plan:

Pros

Unlimited Scheduling
Customizable Sign Up Form
Automated Notifications
Zoom Integration
Custom Workflows

Cons

No option for group events (classes, webinars, etc.)
No Zapier integration
No CRM integration (HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, etc.)
Can't collect payments
No Analytics

Overall, Calendly is an awesome tool to get you started with scheduling appointments. Their free plan is lacking some tools that I would really like to see, especially the Zapier integration, but what they do offer can absolutely get the job done for you and your small business if you need to schedule meetings, appointments, demos, etc.

Square Appointments

Seriously, what doesn't Square do for small businesses? Between websites, marketing, payment processing, and now scheduling, you really can have a complete solution with them. Today we will just focus on Square Appointments, a great feature for individuals to schedule meetings, demos, and any other one-on-one appointment you can think of.

This tool is perfect for salons, barbershops, trainers, and any service-based business. I actually have personal experience using Square Appointments when I was a competitive axe throwing instructor for a summer (but we don't need to get in to that).

With their free version, you get an abundance of tools at your disposal, but only for one individual calendar. If you add any additional calendars to your plan the price skyrockets:

As you can see above, the prices are pretty steep once you add any additional staff calendars. Luckily, if you are the only employee, or you share a calendar with your team and don't need to add additional calendars then you can get what I think is the best appointment scheduling tool for free. Below you can find what I think are the Pros and Cons of Square Appointments:

Pros

Scheduling website
Automated email and text reminders
Collect payments
Customer profiles and importing customers
Can combine services and retail sales (if you have a square website)
App & POS available

Cons

Limited integrations
Sign up forms
No classes/group sign ups

You can see I did not have much negative to say about the Square Appointment scheduling tool. The one thing I will say is that if you are a business that is looking to schedule demos with leads to sell your product or service, this might not be the best option for you with the limited options for lead generation forms. In some cases, you might need to collect more information from your leads/prospects before scheduling a demo, but honestly it is not that much of a deterrent for me. If you are looking for a tool to schedule appointments like a personal trainer, hair salon, or any other service than I would say Square Appointments is the best way to go for you and your small business.

Setmore

Unlike my first two reviews, I feel like Setmore flies under the radar compared to the others but it really shouldn't. Setmore makes appointment booking extremely easy with integrations just about everywhere, and the ability to add more than one calendar on their free plan.

Without wasting any time, the huge value-add that Setmore offers on their free plan is the ability to add 4 calendars to one plan. This makes Setmore the best appointment scheduler for any small business that needs to include more than one calendar on their appointment scheduler.

Another feature that I love is the ability to customize the branding even on the free plan. This makes the scheduler look professional even under a free plan. Tools like Calendly and Square Appointments have their branding all over their free plan.

Below you can find the pricing for Setmore Appointments for annual plans.

The pricing for Setmore is pretty cheap for their Premium and Pro plans, but like I've said, we are focusing on the free plans today.

The best feature for Setmore is clearly their "Free up to 4 Users" offer, but below you can find the Pros and Cons that I have found for Setmore:

Pros

Free up to 4 users
Countless Integrations
Automated Email Notifications
Customer Reviews
Collect Payments with Square
Group Classes
Zoom & Teleport Integrations

Cons

Limited Payment Processors
Sign Up Forms
No Custom Branding

Setmore allows you to customize your appointment page, add a separate section for classes, create different names for your "appointments," and more. It is very user friendly for both you as the small business, and your potential customers. I do wish that the landing page was a little more aesthetically pleasing, but for a free plan it is good enough for me. Overall I highly recommend Setmore as a free solution for your appointment scheduling needs.

JotForm

Now this is one that you definitely did not see coming. JotForm is a tool that your small business should absolutely look in to for a number of reasons, but appointments is one of the many. I'll have another article on the many uses of JotForm in the future!

If you haven't used JotForm before, they basically have a widget for everything all packaged nicely in an incredible form builder with integrations to almost any app you can think of. You can have a multi-step form or a one pager, you can create a fillable PDF, and you have complete customization with the style and color of your form. Their free plan has some limitations, but they give you a lot more than most free plans. You can even process payments through your form, create recurring subscriptions, and calculate pricing based on a factors like length of time.

As I've explained in this list, we are going to focus on the free plan but I do want to include the pricing:

As you can see, there are some limitations with JotForm. The most glaring limitation is the number of submissions. This means that you can only accept 100 form submissions per month. If you business relies on multiple appointments per day, the free JotForm plan would not be for you based solely on the fact that you would likely run out of submissions by the end of the month.

JotForm is the perfect appointment scheduler for a company that needs to book demos for a high ticket product or service, specifically ones that need to collect a lot of information from their clients. Somethings that comes to mind would be a web design company or IT services.

To focus specifically on the appointment widget, you are able to schedule one-on-one appointments and group appointments. You can only have one calendar which is not great, but pretty common for free plans. You have a lot of flexibility on the availability section, even providing a "lunch break" and a "vacation" option so you can easily block off your calendar when you don't want to schedule an appointment.

Pros

Unmatched Integration Possibilities
Customizable Form
Style and Branding
Multiple Payment Processing Options
Zoom Integration

Cons

Submission Limit
Only One Calendar

Depending on your business model, JotForm could be the best appointment scheduler for you. If you don't rely on multiple appointments per day, then you likely won't hit the submission limit and you have access to the dozens of additional features that JotForm offers that the others don't. You can collect more information from your clients, create impressive workflows, collect payments and create Stripe subscriptions all in one place. There are a number of other things JotForm can automate for your business, as well. If you couldn't tell, I highly recommend JotForm for all small businesses.

Facebook

Whether you are a small business, a solopreneur, or (who am I kidding) one of 2 billion people on earth, I'm assuming you are on Facebook. The social media giant has a ton of tools to help your small business, but did you know that you can schedule appointments with clients right through your Facebook page? Well, this feature is included with your Facebook Business account and is a great tool for businesses or entrepreneurs starting out before committing to a scheduling tool.

Before diving in to this feature, I will mention that the Facebook appointment tool can integrate with a number of the appointment schedulers, including some I mentioned above. In that case, when clients schedule an appointment with you on Facebook, it would process through your scheduling app. If you do not want to commit to a more robust scheduler, you can just use Facebook and keep track of appointments on the app.

The Facebook scheduler actually is more robust than you might think. The app can sync to you Google Calendar, can send SMS or Facebook Messenger reminders to make sure clients don't miss an appointment, and you can customize your list of services. You are able to copy an appointment booking link to send to customers who might not be on Facebook, similar to how you would send your appointment link with any of the other appointment schedulers I've talked about.

Where I think this really comes in handy is as your call to action on your Facebook Business page. If you have a strong presence on Facebook, this could be a great way to generate leads. You can also promote your appointment scheduler in your Facebook Ads.

Pros

Convenience
Usability
Syncs with Google Calendar
SMS & FB Messenger Notifications

Cons

No Group Scheduling
Customization/Branding
Sign Up Form

As with most things in business, you want to make life easy for you customers. Having an appointment scheduler built in to your Facebook Page (a place they trust) makes it extremely easy for customers to book an appointment with you.

It might not be the best appointment scheduler out there, but it might be the most convenient and a great place for you and your small business to start taking appointments.

While these are a handful of tools to schedule appointments online, there are dozens of options out there for you or your small business. From the research I've done on these tools, I'd recommend all of them depending on what your business needs are. I hope you found the analysis helpful!

Thank you all for reading this post. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message via email or LinkedIn . If you found this helpful, please consider subscribing for more resources and automations to help your small business succeed online!

How to Automate Your Instagram Content for Free

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 22:27:48 GMT

Create automated content for Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more using a simple automation!

In today's day and age, content is king. The more content you can produce the better off your business is going to be online. What if you had a way to produce relevant content on your social media feeds for free? Well I've found a simple automation using Zapier and RSS feeds that can do just that!

Before reading this article, please note: This is not meant to replace your social media strategy. Producing your own original content is always the best thing for your business's online image. This automation is to help people who need consistent content related to an industry, who don't have time to get that information daily. This can also help increase the amount of content you produce to enhance your social media presence. Creating specific content related to your business can only be done by you or your team.

This simple automation uses just three things: an RSS feed, Zapier, and the social media of your choice.

To get started, let's first understand what an RSS feed actually is. An RSS feed could stand for a few different things, some say it stands for Really Simple Syndication, others will say it stands for RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary, but we all can agree it is called an RSS feed. It essentially is a free source for a sites content, all stacked in to one place. When a blog makes a post, or a news source produces an article it will get added to their RSS feed. Using an RSS reader, you can display the article, it's photo, headline, and short summary practically anywhere you want on the web. In the past, RSS feeds were a lot more useful, but with the rise and takeover of social media there is less of a place for RSS feeds. With this automation, you can actually leverage both the power of RSS feeds and social media at once.

When you find an RSS feed, you can't just copy the URL and paste it in to a browser. If you were to just paste the URL in to your browser it will display a long, ugly plain text code that is not very useful . You can use an RSS reader to display the RSS feed the way it is meant to be. Most, if not all website builders will have a widget to display RSS feeds correctly.

What I have found is that when you use an RSS widget the reader only shows a very simple version of it. Mainly missing the photo that catches the readers attention. For this automation, you will need to create a new RSS feed that contains the photo because that is what you are going to use to create a post on social media. You can do this by using one of the many RSS apps out there. The one that I use is RSS.app . There are free plans for this, or pretty cheap ones if you plan on using many RSS feeds.

Using a tool like RSS.app you can also combine multiple RSS feeds in to one, so you can have multiple streams of content published to your social media!

With this new RSS feed, equipped with the style information that you need and whatever content you want to include, you are ready to start using Zapier to create your automated content!

RSS Feed

RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. These feeds can, for example, allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator. The news aggregator will automatically check the RSS feed for new content, allowing the list to be automatically passed from website to website or from website to user. This passing of content is called web syndication. Websites usually use RSS feeds to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, or episodes of audio and video series. RSS is also used to distribute podcasts. An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author's name.

Definition provided by Wikipedia. Click here to learn more .

Step One: The Trigger

Once you jump over to Zapier with your new RSS feed, you really only have to set up a simple trigger and action. In this case, your Zap will trigger when a new item is add to your RSS feed. This means that when the blog or news site that you want to share posts a new article, that article will get added to your new RSS feed and trigger the Action for your Zap, which will be making a post.

The app that you will be using as the trigger is called "RSS by Zapier." This is one of the many prebuilt apps that is included in Zapier that you get with your membership. When it asks you what you want the Trigger Event to be, you need to select "New Item in Feed."

After you paste your RSS URL in to the top field of the set up section, feel free to leave the other sections untouched. For this automation, you can leave them as-is and everything will work fine.

Check out the photos below to reference how to see up your Zap.

Click on the photos above to enlarge if necessary.

Step Two: The Action

As you can see in the photos above, the action for this Zap will be to publish a photo or make a post depending on what social media app you are connecting to. In my example below, I connected to Instagram for a stock market news account that I created using this automation. Make sure that your Instagram account is set to Professional so Zapier can actually connect to it. When setting up this action, you have a lot of freedom for how creative you want to get. The most important thing you want to do is connect the photo section to the "Raw Content @url" so Zapier sends the URL of the hosted photo to Instagram. You may run in to some trouble at times with the photo being the wrong dimensions and not posting. There is not much you can really do to work around that.

The caption is the next important thing for your social media post. You can see below that I started my caption with the title of the article, followed by the description which is a short summary, and then I told put "Read the full story through our link in bio!" followed by relevant hashtags to try to gain more of a following.

Since I am directing people to my link in bio, I created a page on my website with the full RSS feed that users can click on to read the full article. When users click on the articles in the RSS feed, it will direct them to the website with the original article. That way you are not taking credit for the article, just aggregating the information so interested people can find it. It is a win-win for you and the blog/news site posting the article.

I did try adding a location on Zapier, but for some reason it was unable to recognize it (I tried New York, New York if you were wondering).

Check out the photo below to reference how I set up the Action step of this Zap.

Keep in mind, this process can be done on any social media site. I have set this up for a client on LinkedIn sharing relevant industry news to their feed, I've set this up on Facebook, and on Instagram. It is actually better with Facebook and LinkedIn because rather than directing people to a link in bio, you can include the link to the article right in the caption so it's easier for your followers to get the full story.

Summary

Those two steps are all you need to start automating your content using Zapier! This can help you post consistent, relevant content without having to spend hours developing it at no cost to you (if you stay on Zapier's free plan). Depending on how much content is being produced, you might get a notification that a Zap wasn't able to process. Instagram protects its users from spam by not allowing you to push so many APIs in a certain period of time. I've run in to this problem with my stock market news feed so I actually set up an additional step to delay posting every few hours so it doesn't get overwhelming for my followers or Instagram. You can only add the additional step with a paid plan on Zapier.

Using those RSS feeds that you created you can get even more creative by automating newsletters with Mailchimp or creating pages on your website that are dedicated to aggregating some of the best industry news.

If you have any questions about how to automate your content using Zapier and RSS feeds, send me an email or message me on LinkedIn

I hope you found this information help! If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing for more articles on how to help your small business!

How to Create Your Own Instagram Publisher Like Hootsuite Using Zapier

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 16:35:59 GMT

Post and schedule on Instagram from your own website!

For years it has been difficult for businesses, small or large, to post content from their desktop on Instagram without help from an outside tool. There are a few tools out there that can help you, including Creator Studio , Hootsuite , and now (after a recent update) Instagram has been added to the list of over 2,000 apps within Zapier. This solution is for photos only, and you can only post one photo at a time. It does not have the "Mobile Notification" option like Hootsuite does, but I will try to create that solution soon (I'm sure there is a way using SMS by Zapier).

You might be wondering why this is useful for you and your team. The situations that make sense for me include:

You are a web designer and you want to add a social media publisher to the list of resources you offer your clients.
You already use Zapier to automate some work flows and want to automate your Instagram without creating a new account on a different app.

This publisher will require a form builder on your website, a Google account, Instagram, and of course a Zapier account. Below I will break down the two Zaps you need to create your own Instagram Publisher!

To summarize what you will need to accomplish to make the Instagram Publisher work, you will essentially be creating an "Event" on your Google Calendar via a form submission, and then triggering an Instagram post when the calendar event starts. There will be two Zaps that you need to create, so if you are using Zapier's free account you should be able to get 50 posts a month out of this app as long as you do not have any other Zaps active. If you do have multiple Zaps and still want a free account, I would recommend creating a new Zapier account for the Instagram publisher like I did!

Step One: Create a Google Calendar

To get started you will need a Google Calendar that you want to dedicate as your Instagram Publisher. This is important, because your Instagram post will trigger from an event on this calendar, so you don't want to waste tasks by having events trigger a post on Instagram. I created a new calendar that I titled "Instagram Publisher," and I recommend you do the same so there is no confusion. With a unique calendar you can also embed it on to your site so you or your client can keep track of their scheduled posts on the same page they are scheduling them!

Step Two: Create a Form

In a perfect world, a Google Form would work to collect the information that you need to create an Instagram post. Unfortunately, the way that photos are hosted from the Google Forms does not work for their Zap because they are hosted in Google Docs rather than a CDN. In this case, you will want to create a form on your website builder. My favorite website builder is Duda , so that is what I used!

The fields I used were pretty simple:

File Uploader to collect the photo
Long Text to collect the caption
Date
Time

You can add other fields if you want to collect other information, but these four fields would be the only ones you need to make the Instagram Publisher work. My form looks like this:

Step Three: Creating the Calendar Event

Now it is time to jump over to Zapier to create the calendar event that will trigger your Instagram post. The goal is to connect the fields from the form to the fields in the Google Calendar event. This is not the most practical thing, since Google Calendar events don't have a spot for a photo or a caption, but with Zapier we can make it work.

It doesn't necessarily matter what field you choose, but the calendar event gives you the option to populate the "Summary" field and the "Description" field. I chose to connect the photo to the summary section and the caption to the description. The reason that the summary field works even though it seems like a text field is because the Duda form creates a URL for the hosted photo on AWS, and that is what is tranferred via Zapier. That is why a Google Form doesn't work because that URL is not hosted correctly to be transferred via Zapier.

Take the Date & Time sections of your form and put both in the "Start Date & Time" field and the "End Date & Time" field. Be sure to add a space in between the Date and Time entries because otherwise Zapier will read it incorrectly.

You can reference the photos below to make sure that you have everything set up correctly:

You can click to enlarge if that will help.

Step Four: Scheduling the Post

After you test to confirm that your form submissions are creating a calendar event, you will now need to create another Zap that triggers the Instagram post. Your trigger for this Zap will be the Event Starts and the Action with be to publish a photo on Instagram.

Make sure when you are setting up the Trigger for this Zap ( Event Start in Google Calendar ) that you select the right calendar that you are dedicating as your Instagram Publisher, and set the "Time Before" section to zero. If you don't edit the Time Before section it will default to fifteen minutes early meaning that your post will go out 15 minutes before you want it to.

When you are setting up the Instagram portion of this Zap, you simply have to match the "Summary" section which contains the photo URL and the "Description" section which contains the caption and you should be good to go.

Important : In order to use Instagram, make sure that you make your account a Professional Account otherwise this Zap will not work.

Here are some photos to help you reference everything I just mentioned.

You can click to enlarge if that will help.

Wrapping Up:

Once you have your two Zaps set up, you can begin scheduling your Instagram posts from your own website! Like I mentioned earlier, I embedded my Google Calendar underneath my scheduling form so I had my own "Hootsuite-like" Instagram publisher where I can schedule and keep track of my posts on one page. You could take this even further if you wanted, but I just wanted to explain the simple Instagram Publisher that I mentioned in my previous blog post .

Important: If you ever need to delete a scheduled post, you can only delete it from the Google Calendar to ensure it does not post.

Thank you all for reading this post. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message via email or LinkedIn . If you found this helpful, please consider subscribing for more ways to make you and your team more efficient with Zapier.

Tracking Your Stocks with Google Sheets & Zapier

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 04:31:35 GMT

Easily keep track of your portfolio with the help of Google Sheets, while automating notifications!

Keeping track of your favorite stocks can be hard without some help. Whether it is a stock in your portfolio, or one that you are just waiting for the perfect time to buy, wouldn't it be nice if you had someone to tell you exactly when you should buy or sell? Well I have an automation for you that can do just that. All you need is the Google Sheet provided below, and a simple Zapier integration.

This automation is going to make sure you never miss the right time to buy or sell stocks on your list. First I will explain the Google Sheet aspect of this automation, and then break down step-by-step how the Zapier integration will work to notify you exactly when you need it.

To get started you are going to want to copy & paste my Demo Portfolio in to your own Google Sheet, which you can access here:

Once you copy and paste the sheet above to your own Google Sheet, you will need to update a few things.

First, if you are tracking your portfolio, you will need to update the "Ticker" column with all of your stocks. The Ticker symbol will tell the rest of the row what stock you are tracking. This is all done through the Google Finance function in the other columns that pulls directly from Google Finance's database of stocks.

For the stocks that you own, input your average costs in the next column. This will keep track of the "Total Change %" in the fifth column so you can see how well your stocks are performing.

The other two columns you need to worry about are of course the number of shares you own, and then your Sell Price." The "Sell Price" column is the most important for this automation. That is because the "Action" column is triggered based on that price. You can also use the "Sell Price" column as a "Buy" column for stocks that you don't own, given that our automation will be triggered based on any change in the "Action" column. What I mean is, set that number at whatever you are either looking to sell at for stocks you own, or buy at for stocks you are just monitoring. Currently, the template uses "Hold" and "Sell" as the two actions, but you can replace "Hold" with "Buy" if you intend to use this automation as an indication on the right time to buy.

Now let's get to the notification. Let me explain with the following steps:

Step One: The Trigger

After you hit "Make A Zap" to initiate the integration, you will want to select the Google Sheets App. As you can see in the photo above, you will want to select "New or Updated Spreadsheet Row" as the Trigger Event. This means that your notification will be triggered based on a new or updated row in the spreadsheet. We can get even more specific in the next step.

Step Two: Set Up

Now you will want to get even more specific with your trigger. You will want to select the Spreadsheet from your Google account where you pasted the portfolio template and select the correct Worksheet from within that Spreadsheet.

The Trigger Column is the most important part of the set up. Remember earlier when I mentioned the "Action" column will trigger the event? Well this is where you can set that up. When you click on Trigger Column, it will launch a dropdown with all of the columns in your spreadsheet. Realistically, you could set it up to get notifications based on any change, but that would be a lot of notifications given the volatility of the stock market. The Action column will notify you at the best time to buy or sell, which is what you really want to know.

Step Three: Action

This step is how you would like to be notified. You can see above that I chose to be notified via SMS (text message), but you could really set it up however you would like. You could get an email, a Facebook Message, WhatsApp, or any other way you would like to receive a notification. With SMS, you have to register your number with SMS by Zapier, and they will send a few test messages to make sure everything works.

Step Four: Set Up Action

Finally, you just need to set up your action. I chose to have the "From Number" be one that Zapier provides, but they do have the option to choose Random if you don't mind it coming from different places. One number seems more logical so you can create a contact with that number as long as it remains available.

The content of the message is at your discretion. You can see above that I chose to do the Ticker Symbol with the Action Column, followed by the percent change that day, with the current price. You might even want to add a link to your Robinhood account or wherever you do your trading so you can quickly jump over and buy or sell your stock.

Once this is set up, you can run a test message, and as long as everything checks out okay you can turn on your zap and it is ready to go!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, I hope you found this automation as helpful as I do. It's like having your own financial assistant to help you find the best time to trade for FREE.

If you found this helpful, please consider subscribing for more articles on automating some daily tasks, and other fun business-related articles. For example, here is an article breaking down three ways Zapier can help your small business ! Please reach out via email or LinkedIn if you need help with any of your Zapier integrations!

3 Automations to Help Your Small Business with Zapier

contact@garretthandley.com (Garrett Handley) — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 23:41:32 GMT

Zapier really does make you happier. Check out these 3 automated tasks on Zapier to help your small business.

Before we dive in to these three tasks, let's make sure we are all familiar with what Zapier actually is. Zapier connects different applications through what is called an API (application program interface). This usually complex process, capable only by years of learning complicated programming, is now possible by anyone with Zapier and is as easy filling out a form (basically). Essentially, Zapier can combine 2 or more apps to perform a certain task. The possibilities are practically endless with your combinations, so you can create some really great outcomes based on the apps that you connect.

You can't fully understand what Zapier does without have a modest understanding of what APIs are. APIs are a means of send information from one app to another, in order to get a desired response back. The internet is full of APIs that make our lives better everyday without even knowing it. Hang with me here: so a good real-life metaphor of what an API can do can be seen in waiters/waitresses. Your menu is one application and the delicious food in the kitchen is the other application. As an "API" your waiter collects information from you (your order) and brings it to the kitchen. The kitchen processes that information and returns your desired results (the food). Without the waiter, this information could not go back and forth smoothly or successfully. This is the same idea as Google and Facebook communicating with each other, or any other app that you can think of.

Okay, that's enough talking about the technical stuff, let's get in to the fun stuff!

As a small business owner, there are many reasons why you might want to look in to using Zapier for your company. The biggest reason is that it saves you time. Automating tasks gives you more time to focus on the "money-making" activities for your business. Instead of spending hours updating spreads sheets or emailing customers, let Zapier take care of that for you.

Another reason I think you will find Zapier is great is that even non-technical people can create workflows that mimic some of your favorite apps that you are already using. You would actually be amazed at what you can do with a Google Sheet and a few "Zaps."

With that being said, let's dive in to three tasks you can automate using Zapier!

Automating Emails

Now there are a few tools out there to help you automate your emails to clients, whether it be Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or another mailing provider, but if you are looking for a simple solution you can use Zapier. The other providers are definitely recommended if email marketing is a big part of your marketing strategy, but if you are looking to just set up confirmation emails, emailing coupon codes, or sending automated responses for contact forms on your site, Zapier is a very easy solution. The best part is, you can use your Gmail, Outlook account your already are using, or use the built in Email by Zapier app.

One thing I would like to clarify is that these "Zaps" are all possible on other apps, but the key with Zapier is that you can do more with the info and most times it costs you much less. For example, if you wanted to conduct a survey to get some customer feedback and you wanted to offer a coupon code for participants, you have a number of options to send that automated email with the code. You could use a Google Form, you could create a form through your website builder like WordPress, Squarespace, Duda, etc., or use a form builder like JotForm or TypeForm. You can automate the collection of the responses to wherever you want to store the data, like Google Sheets or AirTable. You can also automate a thank you email with a discount code using Zapier's built-in email tool, or by using your own Gmail or Outlook account.

Social Media Publishing

This is by far my favorite task to automate with Zapier, and there are a few variations that can really help your business. In fact, I plan on creating a whole blog post on a few variations of publishing photos/captions to social media using Zapier.

The first method you can automate is scheduling posts. Of course there are apps out there already that can do that for you, like Hootsuite or Buffer, but if you are an agency or web designer I think this is a huge value-add to your clients if you can create a social media publisher hosted on your client's site.

I will create a whole blog post on how this process works, but basically you can do this by combining a couple everyday apps you probably are already using. The first thing you will need is a form. In this case, you can't necessarily use a Google Form because of how it hosts the photos, but if any form on your website builder should do. In my case, I used a Contact Form in Duda.

You will then want to create a Zap that connects this form to a Google Calendar. I recommend creating a new Google Calendar and calling it "Instagram Publisher" or something along those lines. This Zap will create a meeting on your Google Calendar based on the information from the form.

Next you will need to create a Zap that connects your Google Calendar to Instagram. Make sure that you align the information from the form to Instagram correctly. It gets tricky because a Google Calendar isn't set up to necessarily feed in to Instagram, but match up "caption" with "meeting description" and "photo" with "summary" and you should be good. I'll explain that more in my other blog post.

That is all you need to do. When set up correctly, Zapier should trigger an Instagram Post when the meeting time starts. You can then embed you Google Calendar to your website under your form and you have yourself your own DIY Hootsuite-like publisher on your own site. Check out the pictures below for a basic version. Feel free to get more creative!

By the way, this process can be done for LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Instagram is just the best in my eyes because you can't publish photos from their desktop version, and as a business that is much more efficient.

The other element to social media publishing that I will mention is the ability to automate content. For one, you can automate social media post and email blasts to your subscribers. You can also aggregate relevant news content, as well. This is for someone who maybe doesn't want to spend all their time coming up with content to post on social media. Maybe you just want to post relevant things about your industry and want consistent content.

Well, Zapier allows you to automate social media posts using an RSS feed. An RSS feed is free content from blogs, news articles, and even Google search results.

You can create your own RSS feed based on feeds from relevant news sources from your industry, or certain search results on Google News. For example, if your in the business of selling skate boards, you can aggregate content from the best skate boarding publications and share those posts on your Instagram feed. Don't take credit for the content, just share the information with your followers and gain more followers from people who are interested in the industry, potentially your customers.

Managing Tasks on a Kanban Board

One popular way to manage your team's tasks is on Kanban boards. You may have heard of some popular task boards to manage projects like Monday.com, Trello, or Asana. In the traditional use, people (or their supervisors) can update a new task on the board and work to check them off of the list. It is a great way for teams to collaborate on projects and get things done together.

Using Zapier, you can automate a number of different tasks with Kanban boards to help you and your team work efficiently. Here are a few cool examples:

Create follow-up tasks for "Starred" or "Flagged" emails. This tool can help you stay on track with your busy work schedule, balancing hundreds of emails so you never let anything slip through the cracks. I find this particularly helpful for emails that I need to do a little bit of research for before answering.
Support tickets. Whether you are using a form on your site, or an advanced feature like Zendesk, you can create cards on your Kanban board to keep the team on track with your client support tickets. In fact, by using Zapier you could actually save your team money on using a support by not needing an expensive app like Zendesk. You could use a free widget like Tawk.to to collect tickets from your website, or a form built in to your members-only pages, and have those submissions sent to your Kanban board at no cost if you stay on the free Zapier plan.
Project Management. These Kanban boards were made for project management and Zapier can help enhance their capabilities. Whether you want to automate email reminders based on changes in an Excel document or Google Sheet, or send notifications to supervisors when a task is marked complete, Zapier can make your project management much more efficient with the use of Kanban boards. When a task is overdue, you can create notifications in advance to not lose sight of any assignments.

I hope you found these automation tools helpful. The capabilities with Zapier are endless, so have fun exploring what other automations you can find to help make you and your team more efficient.

If you found this helpful, please consider subscribing for more ways to help you and your team maximize your efficiency using Zapier and other automation tools. Plus other fun business-related articles!