The Executive Report will tell you how your business is doing online… where most of your best prospects will discover, and do their research on, your business.
Following is a summary about how to interpret your report. You might want to keep this page bookmarked as a handy quick-reference guide when you first start reviewing your report.
First I want to give you a reference point via the diagram below. This shows you how my services help your business get found and chosen over your competition.
As you can see, your website (content, structure, back links, etc.) counts for about 50% when it comes to local search engine ranking. Your webmaster takes care of that for you.
What I do for your business provides the other 50% in helping you get found on the internet (local SEO).
The reviews have a much higher value in helping your business get chosen over the competition as we generate and display them online. Reviews are like testimonials that build trust and draw people to your business.
As far as your report is concerned, look for the bottom line regarding the following.
Listings: This in an ongoing struggle, so I push out your accurate data every week in order to overcome forces that constantly try to degrade your data. Different websites pull from several different sources over the course of a year. Some of these sources have inaccurate information, so there is competition to keep your data clean.
We want to keep your business above 90% for the listing score so that your business is easy to find through a wide range of online sources.
Citations: Citations are mentions of your business name along with another piece of business data (phone number, address, website, or any combination of those), and they are key in search ranking results.
As you can see in the diagram above, citations (location information) are worth 25% of the factors for getting found online. Our goal is to get you as close as we can to 200 citations over the course of a year and then keep it there. Websites that list your business as a citation come and go all the time, so this is an ongoing effort like with listings.
Reviews: You should have a steady stream of reviews coming in each and every month. That’s what search engines like to see… consistency.
As a general guide, over the course of a month I would ask you to continue to request reviews from your happy clients and set a goal of perhaps one per business day, or about 20 per month. But even 10, or so, per month is going start adding up quickly.
Furthermore, it would be great if we could get about 20% of those to go to Yelp (reviewers must be members or willing to sign up) and 20% to Google Plus (they need to have a Gmail email address). The remainder will be displayed on your review site that I built for your business.
Reviews count for 25% of your local SEO as well as being the predominant factor for getting chosen over your local competition. So, it is critical that we continue to ask for, and post, positive reviews.
Bonus information
You’re also getting some bonus information for you to use as you will. You’re not being charged for this, but I thought you may find it interesting.
Trending (in the Reviews section): This simply tells you what people who give you reviews talk about the most.
What I would look for here is to see what services or customer service topics are being talked about. This may tell you what services you should push more in your marketing efforts or maybe some issues regarding your business that need to be addressed.
Average rating: This will give you a good overall view at a glance of how your reviewers feel about your business.
Mentions: I use this for my purposes on your behalf to dig deeper into the Internet and see what people may be saying about your business in the news, on blogs and in social networks. It’s just another way I watch your back regarding your business.
I will alert you if I find something that needs to be addressed. The only thing you’ll probably want to look at here is if there is a negative mention.
Social: This is simply for you to glance at if you are active with your social accounts like Facebook and Twitter. It will show you your volume of likes and followers.
Competition: I think this is really good information for you to have. I did a search using certain keywords regarding your business. Then I made a note of what businesses came up as your competition.
The pie chart graphic (in the report) will tell you how your business stacks up to the competition for certain local keyword searches. This is just for your information, but it will give you some excellent insights into how your business is doing compared to your competition.
So, you now have a comprehensive report that you’ll be getting monthly. It will show you how my services are doing for you in key areas that account for 50% of the local SEO factors (getting your business found).
It will also give you the bottom line for how you’re doing in generating the reviews that are vital for helping your business get chosen over your competition.
Call me with any questions you may have about the report, and I will be happy to review it with you.