Walk and Sit

04/18/2018

Who's here at the NAPPS conference? Stop by my table and say hello!

09/18/2017

It's just about expo time at Pet Sitter World!

With Pet Sitters International

08/28/2017

Citations of your business information mean better rankings in Google:

Citations, or other sites mentioning your business, can help your local rankings. Make sure you get the right ones. David Mihm shows how.

08/23/2017

Lots of free clicks going away in the local space - but nothing has rolled out to the pet services industry. Probably still 2-3 years away from impact there, so plenty of time to make the most out of Local SEO.

In most ways, this is good for average business owners because they are not capitalizing on Local SEO, and Google My Business is too complex to them. Paying for placement is easy to understand and act on. However, for those embracing Local SEO, this will be a shift to paid listings.

08/05/2017

Google continues to push Google My Business engagement. With so much effort around reminding business owners to engage with their Google My Business listings, you can bet that your competition will start to catch up to you or pull further away if you aren't active already.

Advice for Google My Business:
-Get customer reviews,
-Use the new Posts feature,
-Update photos frequently,
-Make a routine to check the accuracy of your business information.

Have questions about how to get started? Message us!

In June we reported Google began testing in search mini Google My Business dashboards that let business owners see their business profile and edit a lot of their local information right in the search

08/01/2017

Sponsored listings continue to gain share of the Google search results page (SERP stands for "search engine results page").

Traditional organic search results are losing their space. But good news for small business is that local results are featured prominently and on the rise.

Rob Bucci has called the study of Universal Search features “SERP topology.” Taking his brilliant insights as a cue, I hope this graphic helps at least directionally summarize my search worldview when it comes to where local search has been and where it's headed in the future.

08/01/2017

You should monitor your Google My Business visibility and accuracy. Different from your website rankings in search, GMB listings are even tougher to track. However, small businesses can see 10x more new customer clicks on their GMB listing versus their regular website search result in Google.

GMB is a critical element of digital discovery for any small business, but it's also complex to manage.

Walk and Sit helps pet businesses optimize and measure GMB performance.

Tool from LocalSEOGuide tracks changes to local listings on Google.

07/28/2017

Incentivizing customers to write positive reviews for your business violates most sites' guidelines and can cross legal boundaries. Just as importantly, it can cheapen your brand and irk your customers.

I’ve written in the past about review incentives and the risks they involve. While a big part of this can be the legal risks you open your business up to, there are other outcomes that just might be even worse. Review Incentive Examples (What Not To Do) My wife visited her dentist the other day …