{"id":1251,"date":"2017-12-21T14:41:58","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T19:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/?p=1251"},"modified":"2021-11-30T10:58:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T15:58:43","slug":"here-are-3-actionable-items-to-improve-your-seo-results-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/here-are-3-actionable-items-to-improve-your-seo-results-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Here Are 3 Actionable Items to Improve Your SEO Results in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re planning your marketing strategy for the New Year and haven\u2019t thought about your digital presence, now is the time!<\/p>\n<p>2017 saw a number of important changes as search engines such as Google and Bing have continued to evolve in an attempt to deliver the best results for web users. By keeping up with and adapting to these changes, you can help ensure that your website is making the biggest impact and delivering the best returns from search engines for your business.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few different ways to improve your SEO results in 2018:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong> Fully Optimize Your <em>Local<\/em> Listings \u2013 <\/strong>For any business who sells their products or services at their location, at a minimum you should have a verified Google Maps and Bing Places business listing set up and maintained by you or on your behalf. This will let your local customers know where you are and when you\u2019re open.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">And there are proven ways to get even more out of these listings, especially as \u201cnear me\u201d searches are as prevalent as ever. An interesting shift, however, is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thinkwithgoogle.com\/marketing-strategies\/search\/marketing-trends-year-in-search-2017\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>exclusion<\/em> of \u201cnear me\u201d in the search query<\/a>, but the expectation that local results are still delivered. <!--more--><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1256\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1256\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1256 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360-300x131.png\" alt=\"sharp office 360\" width=\"300\" height=\"131\" data-size=\"1832x801\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360-300x131.png 300w, https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360-768x336.png 768w, https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360-1024x448.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360-880x385.png 880w, https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/sharp-office-360.png 1832w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/> <\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1256\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">360 Google Tours are one way to stand out against the competition<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Luckily, <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/business\/answer\/7091?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google has offered some suggestions to improve your business\u2019s chance of appearing in the local results pack<\/a>, and these include:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<li>Entering complete data<\/li>\n<li>Verifying the location<\/li>\n<li>Listing accurate hours<\/li>\n<li>Reading and responding to reviews<\/li>\n<li>Adding photos for all categories (interior, exterior, product, team, identity, and, if you really want to stand out, consider having a <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/UiBaxQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">360 Google Tour<\/a> done).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Other recommendations that have been shown to yield good results include asking your customers to leave reviews to help build your review count far beyond what competitors may have, having a high \u201cstar\u201d rating from happy customer reviews, and utilizing <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/business\/answer\/7342169?hl=en&amp;_ga=2.245072326.214355544.1513268906-872814488.1485892750&amp;visit_id=1-636489503788767496-1590062439&amp;rd=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google\u2019s new \u201cPosts\u201d feature<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong> Consider Expanding Your Current Meta Descriptions \u2013 <\/strong>This one may require some data analysis or testing, but the good news is that both are easy! <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/google-officially-increases-length-snippets-search-results-287596\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google recently started displaying longer meta descriptions in their search results to provide more descriptive snippits<\/a>, and has recommended updating your meta descriptions if you want to help control the messaging that\u2019s provided in the search. This change is quite significant, moving from about 155 characters to about 320 characters, so depending on your site\u2019s size, this may take some time to work through.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Before you jump in and change all those descriptions, you\u2019ll want to consider your other search traffic referral sources as well. Sites such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo may be sending you significant traffic as well, and haven\u2019t made this change. Updating your meta descriptions, therefore, might lead to drops in these other search engines.<\/p>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/5-reasons-to-think-mobile-first\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Think Mobile-First<\/strong><\/a><strong> \u2013 <\/strong>Making a back-to-back appearance on our list of actionable items for the New Year is \u201cPlacing an emphasis on mobile-first.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2016\/11\/mobile-first-indexing.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google\u2019s Mobile-First index has already begun to roll out<\/a>, so your website should already have been putting the primary focus on ensuring that mobile visitors have an experience with your website that\u2019s as good as or even better than the experience that their desktop counterparts have.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Any future changes to your website should be succeeded by the question of \u201cHow will this change affect our mobile users?\u201d Just like any website change, if it doesn\u2019t improve or enhance their experience, you will want to reexamine your approach. Keep in mind that page speed is crucial to a great mobile experience. Some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seroundtable.com\/google-mobile-first-index-22953.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">common questions and a few official Google recommendations about the mobile-first index are listed here on Search Engine Roundtable<\/a> if you\u2019d like to learn more.<\/p>\n<p>We understand that all of this information may be confusing if you\u2019re not an SEO professional. So if you\u2019re unsure how to go about taking action on any of these items, give us a call today at 717-290-6760. Our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sharpinnovations.com\/services\/internet-marketing\/search-engine-optimization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">search engine optimization<\/a> team will be glad to put these updates in place and discuss other ways to improve your search results and digital marketing efforts in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re planning your marketing strategy for the New Year and haven\u2019t thought about your digital presence, now is the time! 2017 saw a number of important changes as search engines such as Google and Bing have continued to evolve in an attempt to deliver the best results for web users. By keeping up with&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,99],"tags":[194,63,263,243,264,111],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo","category-websites","tag-bing","tag-google","tag-meta-descriptions","tag-mobile-first-index","tag-near-me","tag-seo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Here Are 3 Actionable Items to Improve Your SEO Results in 2018 - Sharp Innovations Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you\u2019re planning your marketing strategy for the New Year and haven\u2019t thought about your digital presence, now is the time! 2017 saw a number of important changes as search engines such as Google and Bing have continued to evolve in an attempt to deliver the best results for web users. 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