Connect Your Google+ Business Page To Your Google Maps Listing

Following steps to merge your pages:- 

1. Log in to Google+, open the drop-down navigation ribbon on the left-hand side, and select Pages. Find your Local page, which will have a “Verified Local Business” shield, and click Manage this page.

2. Click Dashboard in the upper Right-hand corner to open the drop-down menu, and then click Settings.

3. Scroll down to the “Profile” section, near the bottom. There is a line that says: “This page is connected to Google Maps.” There is a button beneath that line that says Connect to a different page. Click it. (Note: if you are the Manager but not the Owner of your Local age, you will not see this button.)

4. A dialogue box pops up that says [your location] is currently linked to [your local page]. There is a drop-down menu to select which page you want it to be linked to. Select your business page. (Note: if you are the Manager but not the Owner of your Business page, it will not show up in the drop-down list.)

5. Click Next. You will see the list of changes (included above) that will occur on your pages.

That’s it! You will still have the two pages in your dashboard, but the “Backup of [business name]“ page can now be deleted.

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5 Ways To Use What Consumers Want To Boost Local SEO Strategy

Local businesses have unique competitive advantages over larger brands, and columnist Wesley Young analyzes a study by Yodle to find ways to leverage them into an effective search strategy.

The business of local is enjoying a surge of growth, supported both by consumer demand and business interest. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have long been touted as the backbone of the economy. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data (2012), businesses with fewer than 20 employees make up 90% of all employer businesses and produce $4 trillion in sales receipts.

But it is their future growth that has marketers taking notice. Local online marketing company Yodle released a report titled, “Yodle Insights: What Consumers Want from Local Businesses,” that surveyed more than 6,000 consumers.

Source: Yodle Insights: What Consumers Want From Local Businesses

Yodle found that 82% of US consumers use local businesses, and that they use them more than national chains. More importantly, 47% of consumers stated that they used local businesses more this year than last year, and 48% planned to use local businesses even more over the next 12 months. Virtually no one expressed that they would use local businesses less (1–2%).

This growth in consumer dollars spent locally is a huge opportunity for marketers to help small business. Yodle’s data on what consumers want from local businesses is key to understanding how to take advantage of this opportunity and market in a way that distinguishes local businesses in their areas of strength.

Yodle’s study reports that 42% of consumers use online reviews or social media to research a business online — and there is significant overlap and synergy among various media as consumers seek, discover and consider products and services. (For example, a search on Google for Chinese restaurants in Frisco, Texas, yields results from Yelp, Zomato, TripAdvisor, YellowPages.com and FourSquare.)

With that in mind, each of the following strategies should be part of your overall search marketing toolbox.

1. Highlight What Consumers Value About Local Businesses

Consumers value local businesses for quality. They overwhelmingly chose local businesses over national chains for providing personalized service, delivering quality work, treating customers fairly and being reliable in delivering a product or service as promised.

Source: Yodle Insights: What Consumers Want From Local Businesses

Each of these business traits represents a competitive advantage local businesses have over those with larger, more recognizable brand names. One way to highlight these traits is to include language in search results that communicates them.

For example, for “kitchen remodeling” search results, include in the business description terms such as “customized designs,” “hand-cut stonework,” “quality remodeling,” or other terms that remind the consumer that delivering quality is an important factor when evaluating a business.

Another way to take advantage of this consumer perception is to emphasize the fact that your business is local. Since consumers already strongly believe local businesses have the above traits, attaching the local business tag to your store immediately identifies you as a business with high quality and personal service.

So include information in your meta descriptions, landing pages and business listings on other websites (e.g., Yelp) that emphasizes your local presence, such as address, neighborhood, maps and local area code.

Even national franchises can make sure that customers know the store is locally owned. Prominently include pictures of local owners and staff and use the term “locally owned” to help draw in some of the benefits of being identified as a local business.

2. Ask Customers To Provide Positive Reviews

Yodle found that more than 75% of customers say that online reviews are important to their evaluation of a local business, with 40% expecting to see reviews and 36% believing it sets a local business apart from its competitors. What is most surprising is that almost 90% of consumers would leave a review if asked, yet only 7% have been asked.

  Source: Yodle Insights: What Consumers Want From Local Businesses

While some businesses shy away from online reviews because of the fear that complainers are more vocal and likely to leave reviews, Yodle’s study found that 80% of customers posted reviews as the result of a positive experience with a business.

So local businesses are missing a huge opportunity for positive PR, content and reviews, all of which affect SEO and ranking. Do searches on your own business to find which sites with reviews pull up.

Taking the previous example of Chinese restaurants in Frisco, Texas, a local restaurant should monitor and seek reviews on Yelp, Zomato, TripAdvisor, YellowPages.com and FourSquare. Also, reviews are prominently used in map search results such as Google Maps.

3. Update Websites In Both Form & Content

Local Search Association (LSA) research shows that 50% of consumers state they are extremely likely to look at business websites when searching for a local business, the second highest source behind search engines — and 67% of consumers want improvements or mobile-optimized sites from those businesses, according to Yodle.

The importance of websites as a source of information is clear: Search results, online reviews or display ads contain limited information and often link back to the website, where more detailed information is available such as menus, prices, detailed service descriptions, staff qualifications and other information that consumers want to inform their buying decision.

Of course, this assumes that you have a website. LSA’s Local Pulse Survey conducted by Thrive Analytics earlier this year revealed that only 51% of sole proprietors have websites. More than 30% of businesses with fewer than 25 employees still do not have a website.

For those that do have a website, failing to maintain it — or treating it as a static asset — may be just as bad as not having one. Outdated or inaccurate information frustrates consumers and risks losing valuable customers.

Perhaps the highest profile example of problems outdated websites can cause was the case of Harvard professor Ben Edelman’s dispute about a $4 overcharge by a local restaurant. Edelman reported the restaurant to local authorities and threatened legal action. While Edelman’s boorish behavior backfired on him after the dispute went viral, the “overcharge” was the result of outdated menu prices on the website — he was correctly charged the newer prices on in-store menus.

According to LSA’s Local Pulse Survey, 56% of SMBs wait six months or more before updating their websites, and 60% are not optimized for mobile. Fresh content and mobile optimization not only help SEO, it’s what consumers want.

4. Use Offers & Deals To Compete On Price

The one big advantage national brands have is scale, which helps them offer lower prices. Yet it would seem that if prices were comparable, customers would choose what they believe to be higher quality local businesses.

On the other hand, significant price increases were rated as the number two reason that surveyed customers would stop using a local business, so setting temporary low prices to gain business just to raise them later is not a winning strategy.

The solution may be to use offers and discounts. A whopping 88% of consumers in the Yodle survey want special offers for returning customers, with 57% saying it sets the business apart and 31% saying it is expected.

                  Source: Yodle Insights: What Consumers Want From Local Businesses

Discounts allow prices to remain at a sustainable level while providing temporary or one-time offers. These offers draw in customers to experience a local business’ quality and service.

Offers and discounts are particularly effective for mobile advertising. Consumers using mobile devices to find local businesses are often on-the-go and ready to buy, and limited-time discounts offered during their search will help motivate purchases.

Thrive Analytics’ 2015 Local Search Report for LSA found that 50% of consumers who clicked on a mobile ad and made a purchase did so because the ad offered an attractive deal or discount.

Use of offers or discounts in search engine listings, display ads, landing pages and other search results was the biggest factor consumers in the Yodle study said differentiates local businesses from the competition.

5. Email Customers To Keep The Business Top Of Mind

Another area of opportunity that local businesses aren’t taking full advantage of is communicating with existing customers. Good communication with existing customers can stand in for brand reputation and management.

There are many reasons that justify reaching out to consumers: appointment reminders, the aforementioned deals and discounts, timely advice such as seasonal gardening tips, promotion of events, new services, and generally helpful news. Luckily, customers are open to receiving these communications, as the following chart from Yodle illustrates.

                     Source: Yodle Insights: What Consumers Want From Local Businesses

Businesses often cite lack of time and resources as reasons why they fail to engage in such communications. However, almost 70% of the consumers surveyed preferred to receive email communications, as opposed to phone or mail, from businesses. Email and digital services such as online booking and payments can be kept simple and automated to reduce both the cost and time needed to manage them.

Regular emails will keep a local business top of mind so that when customers conduct searches, they are likely to use narrower or targeted keywords that ensure the business turns up in results.

Conclusion
Local businesses have many competitive advantages over big name brands that can help attract customers. Consumers also often prefer doing business with local merchants. Knowing what consumers want and appealing to those desires will help win them over.

The key is when consumers search for local products and services, the results and the following actions as they discover and consider local businesses all reinforce factors valued in local business. Communicate the advantages of doing business with a local business, and customers will keep coming back — and they’ll tell their neighbors, too!

Source: http://searchengineland.com/5-ways-use-consumers-want-boost-local-seo-strategy-225114

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How To Remove Bad Reviews on Google Places (Google Maps)?

1) “Flag as inappropriate”
Below every review on Google+ Local pages, you can click the flag icon:

 

You can then “Report a policy violation” – i.e. whether it’s hateful, spam, off-topic, etc…

We did this first, but as there wasn’t an option for anything to do with slander in the list, I wasn’t convinced it would do the trick…

2) Respond to the review
In addition to the flag icon, if you’re the owner of the page, you should also have the option to “Respond” to each review:

Not a ‘removal’ technique per se, but we decided to do this just in case the review wasn’t removed straight away but seen by others in the meantime. We left a short message explaining that we considered the message to be slanderous and that we were taking steps to remove it.
 
3) Report the Google+ user profile
Given that “Charlotte” had a Google+ profile but it contained no info whatsoever (except for that review), my father decided to “Report / block” the user as well. This can be done by navigating to the person’s G+ profile and clicking on the “Report / block [name]” link found below their avatar:

Click to enlarge

 

4) Report legal action
This was the winner though. After doing all of the above, I investigated a bit more and discovered this post, which brought to my attention something I should’ve spotted in #1 above – this:

Click to enlarge

When you go the “flag as inappropriate” route, there’s a box that says:

If you have located one or more reviews that you believe warrant removal from Google’s services based on applicable laws, please follow the instructions detailed on this page to submit a legal request.

That link lets you “Report other legal removal issue” depending on your country and its laws. You have to give a bit of info (the content and its URL, plus why you think it breaks the law), leave a “digital signature” and tick a box that means you “swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that [you are] authorised to report this alleged violation.” Pretty serious stuff.

Thinking it might take a week or two, I thought to myself: “we’ve done all that we can…”
 
Success!
 
In less than 24 hours, Google had emailed my father saying that they had removed the offending review!

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Search Engine Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2014: When Pandas, Penguins & Pigeons Attack

We begin two weeks of year-in-review articles with a look at the most popular news stories we covered in 2014.

The clock is ticking on 2014. In a matter of days, we’ll all turn our calendars to 2015 and close the books on another year. Before we do that, the editorial team that brings you daily news and features on Search Engine Land and Marketing Land is going to look back at the most popular content we published during these past 12 months.

If you’re a new or recent reader, you’ll likely find some important news and commentary that you missed the first time around. If you’ve been reading our sites all year, you’ll hopefully enjoy a reminder of the year’s important marketing news. (And thanks for being a long-time reader!)

Over the next week two weeks, we’ll reveal our most popular columns (overall, and broken down by topic) and our most shared stories on the main social networks. But let’s start today with a look back at the most popular news stories we published in 2014.

Search Engine Land’s Most Popular News Stories Of 2014

This list is based on pageviews, and includes news stories published through December 18th.

1.) Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now

Barry Schwartz, May 20: “Is this the softer and gentler Panda algorithm? From talking to Google, it sounds like this update will be gentler for some sites, and lay the groundwork for future changes in that direction.

“Google told us that Panda 4.0 affects different languages to different degrees. In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.”

2.) Google’s Logo Moves Some Pixels Around

Barry Schwartz, May 26: “Google made a slight change to their logo recently, as a Reddit user posted. The “g” in the latter part of the word was moved left one pixel and the “l” in the Google logo was moved down a pixel.”

3.) It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results

Eric Enge, August 28: “The primary reason behind this shuffle of products is Google’s unswerving commitment to testing. Every product, and every change or innovation within each product, is constantly tested and evaluated. Anything that the data show as not meeting Google’s goals, not having sufficient user adoption, or not providing significant user value, will get the axe.”

4.) Panda 4.1 — Google’s 27th Panda Update — Is Rolling Out

Danny Sullivan, September 25: “The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge, if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, made alterations to your site, you’ll know by the end of next week if those were good enough, if you see an increase in traffic.

“The rollout also means that new sites not previously hit by Panda might get impacted. If you’ve seen a sudden traffic drop from Google this week, or note one in the coming days, then this latest Panda Update is likely to blame.”

5.) Google Releases Penguin 3.0 — First Penguin Update In Over A Year

Barry Schwartz, October 19: “Publishers hit by the last version of Penguin — back in October 2013 — have been waiting until now to see if actions they’re tried such as removing spammy links have worked. If so, they’re likely seeing some improvement in traffic this weekend. If not, they have to try making more changes and then waiting until however long it takes for Google to release Penguin again.

“By the way, for those who tried disavowing bad links, if you did that within the last three weeks, that was too late for this Penguin update.”

6.) Google “Pigeon” Updates Local Search Algorithm With Stronger Ties To Web Search Signal

Barry Schwartz, July 24: “Google told us that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.

“In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.”

7.) Google’s “Olympic Charter” Logo Stands Up To Russia’s Anti-Gay Legislation

Danny Sullivan, February 6: “If you had any doubts over how Google feels about Russia’s legislation against gay “propaganda,” just go the Google home page. The company has started what will be a string of special logos for the Olympics with one that includes a quote stressing that the official Olympic Charter is against discrimination and using the colors of the rainbow gay pride flag.”

8.) Apple Drops Google For Bing As “Spotlight” Search Provider In iOS 8 & Mac OS X “Yosemite”

Danny Sullivan, June 2: “This is a big new integration for Bing, which last year knocked Google out of Siri. Currently, Spotlight offers a “Web Searches” option which launches Safari (if you haven’t changed your default browser), which in turn runs a Google search, as Google is the default on Safari.”

9.) How A Single Guest Post May Have Gotten An Entire Site Penalized By Google

Danny Sullivan, March 26: “More broadly, while it’s easy to dismiss all this as some type of SEO squawking, it should be pretty disturbing to any publisher that Google might fairly broadly decide just how narrow your site has to be, in order to escape a penalty, if you have guest authors it deems writing off-topic.”

10.) Is eBay A Big Loser In Google’s Panda 4.0 Update? — Winners & Losers Data

Barry Schwartz, May 21: “Yesterday, Google began rolling out their Panda 4.0 update designed to punch low-quality content. That’s generated both “winners” who have moved up in rankings as “losers” have dropped down — and eBay might be one of the big losers.”

With just a couple exceptions, the top 10 articles are specifically about Google rankings, algorithms and search results — which is no surprise. Last year’s list was 100 percent Google-related, and also filled with articles about Google’s various animal-related algorithm updates/filters. If you need a refresher on those beyond the articles linked above, see our article library to get caught up:

• Google: Panda Update
• Google: Penguin Update
• Google: Pigeon Update

We’ve also compiled a similar list on our sister site, Marketing Land: Marketing Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2014: Facebook Layout Changes, Oscar Selfies, CIA Tweets & More.

On behalf of the Search Engine Land editorial team, thanks for reading us during 2014. Happy holidays to you and best wishes for 2015!

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/sel-top-10-news-stories-of-2014-211443

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2014 Year In Review: A Look Back On What Happened With SEO

Columnist Erin Everhart provides a round-up of the biggest SEO developments of 2014.

Every year, we say how much has changed in the industry – and every year, we’re right.

It never ceases to  amaze me how much SEO constantly refines itself to more sophisticated Google guidelines and smarter, savvier searchers. Think about it: Since 2011, Moz has counted more than 83 major algorithm updates to the search engine giant.

That’s 83 times we’ve had to change our tactics in three years! Can you think of any other industry that has gone through that much fluctuation? Unlikely.

So, as part of the end-of-year trends, let’s take a look back on everything that went down this in 2014.

January

Expedia was the first big brand of the year to get reportedly hit by a penalty for unnatural link building. Rankings plummeted, and Searchmetrics suggested the company lost 25% of its visibility in Google because of the penalty.

Matt Cutts put the hammer down on guest blogging, urging any SEO using this tactic as a way to build links to cease fire of suffer the consequences.

Rap Genius is finally back on Google after getting doled a manual penalty in late 2013 for link schemes.

Google announced a new Googlebot user-agent for crawling mobile content. “Googlebot-Mobile” was retired in place of the standard Googlebot, causing webmasters to update their robots.txt and technical structure of their site for mobile optimization.

February

In late 2013, Google moved to 100% secure search, thus taking all of our keyword data with it. By February, Not Provided had topped more than 80%.

March

Webmasters started chatting about an update after seeing fluctuations in Google’s search results. Google never confirmed an update, but 

SERPs.com (among many others) noted a heavy increase in Google’s index volatility.

Google redesigned its SERPs for desktop users, removing underlined hyperlinks, increasing the font size slightly for title tags, and changing how ads are displayed.

April

The Heartbleed bug was revealed. Google, Rackspace, AWS and a host of security software used by millions of websites were affected, causing serious privacy concerns among anyone who uses the Internet.

Vic Gundotra, head of Google+ and Google’s social efforts, announced his departure from Google. Many questioned what this would mean for Google+ and its integration into organic search results. TechCrunch got word from multiple sources that Google+ will no longer be a product, but a platform, thus ending competition with Facebook and Twitter.

May

Panda 4.0 rolled out, the next wave in targeting sites with low quality content. Ask.com and RetailMeNot were among the big brands affected by the change.

eBay is the latest big brand to get hit by a (speculated) manual search engine penalty in addition to the Panda 4.0 update. eBay later suggested that this cost the business $200 million in revenue.

June

Authorship photos in SERPs listings were removed. Many questioned if this was the end to the entire program itself.

Google hosted its main event of the year, I/O 2014, where it announced news about the company and its future vision, including a new, consistent design across Chrome, Android and the web, an updated visual element to search, and wearables. You can read more about all the announcements at Verge.

July

Google added another animal to the algorithm apocalypse, releasing a local search algorithm update dubbed “Pigeon.” This update drastically changed which factors Google looks at when determining local rankings, including stronger ties to traditional web ranking signals.

Matt Cutts announced he was going on leave from Google, planning to return in October, and leaving his web spam duties behind. People panicked but were, on the whole, supportive.

Groupon ran a study showing that 60% of its direct traffic was actually organic search traffic, proving something many SEOs had long thought about their own “direct” traffic. Following that experiment, Conductor updated their 2013 study of web traffic, claiming that now 64% of all web traffic was from organic search.

August

Google announced that it would begin using HTTPS as a ranking signal, encouraging everyone to move from HTTP to HTTPS. This was seen as a sign that Google is trying to take this whole Internet privacy thing seriously.

We all saw this coming: Two months after the removed authorship photos, Google abandoned its Authorship program, which aimed to provide a stronger tie between content writers and content publishers.

The blogosphere was all abuzz over an influx of negative SEO extortion emails in which someone claimed they’d ruin your site’s rankings unless you wired them $XX amount of money.

September

Dentsu Aegis Network, a multinational media and digital communications company, acquired Covario, one of the largest search agencies in the United States. Rio SEO, Covario’s software business, was not a part of the deal.

Searchmetrics released their 2014 SEO Ranking Factors. High quality content, strong page architecture, and user signals saw the biggest increases in affecting ranking, while keyword links and social signals both decreased in value.

October

Authority Labs released one of the most comprehensive organic CTR studies. It segmented out desktop and mobile clicks, branded and non-branded keywords, and search intent (e.g. informational vs. transactional).

Google finally refreshed Penguin, the algorithm filter that targets web spam, over optimization and unnatural links. This was particularly noteworthy because it meant that everyone who was hit by the last Penguin and submitted a reconsideration request could finally get the opportunity to be reinstated into Google’s good graces.

Microsoft laid off Duane Forrester, Bing’s longest-serving face to the SEO community, not to mention the darling of the industry, having just won Search Personality of the Year.

Just a day later, Cutts decided Google web spam hadn’t crumbled in his absence and extended his time off until 2015. Speculations of a pending retirement ensued.

November

Google ditched its Local Carousel for hotels, restaurants, nightlight and entertainment. The SEO industry rejoiced.

Mobile became even more important to SEO as Google rolled out the mobile-friendly search label for mobile search results and a mobile friendly test tool in Google Webmaster Tools. This was the beginning of Google experimenting with a new ranking algorithm for mobile friendly sites.

December

Bing released its version of Panda, and frankly, did a better job at outlining what it actually considers good content.

Stone Temple Consulting released an extensive Twitter engagement study of more than 4 million tweets. One of the big findings was that time of day had little to no impact on “retweetability.”

What a year, right? I know I didn’t get it all, so what did I miss? What else monumental happened in 2015?

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/2014-year-review-look-back-happened-seo-210959

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5 SEO Tactics To Kick-Start The New Year

How can you give your business a leg up in 2015? Columnist Casie Gillette suggests some simple tactics you can apply as the year is winding down.

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably already checked out for the year. Clients are out of the office, you’re on vacation, and 2015 contracts have already been signed. There’s nothing left to do but close that computer, put on your slippers, throw a log on the fire, and hibernate until January 2nd.

Or…keep that laptop open, give your site a good scrub, and get a jump-start on your competition going into next year!

After all, they key to a solid SEO strategy is continuous improvement. As Stoney deGeyter pointed out in a recent article, “you don’t always get your SEO perfect the first time out.” We have to use our learnings and data to adjust our strategies and make the site better.

So, as we head into the New Year and everyone else is busy resting, give your business a leg up by revisiting, revising, and readying your site for 2015.

1. Give The Site A Technical Once Over

When you started your SEO program, you probably got a killer technical audit. You knew the details of every page. You knew where all the errors and redirects were coming from, where all the broken images were, where your site was lagging, and much, much more. And you fixed it.

But what has been done to the site since?

Pages have likely been added or removed, tags modified, images removed. Perhaps URLs changed, the site was redesigned, new sections were added, etc. 

Do you know where the site stands at this exact moment?

Make sure the site is technically sound going into the New Year by taking these steps:

Use Screaming Frog

Run a Screaming Frog report to identify any existing errors, redirects, duplicate URLs, and/or canonical errors.

You can also make sure you have the correct Google Analytics code on every page. How? Check out this great post from SEER Interactive.

Once you have all your information gathered, you can begin fixing any and all issues.

Check Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools is another good place to identify any errors occurring on the site. Aside from the standard 404 errors you might see, you can also check for robots issues, server issues, and sitemap errors.

If you’ve implemented Schema markup or Hreflang tags, Webmaster Tools will also provide information on both of those, showcasing any errors that may be occurring within those tags.

Update Google Analytics Goals

While it (thankfully) doesn’t happen too often, I’ve certainly seen cases in which goal URLs are changed or new forms are added and the proper tracking is not put into place.

One of the nice things Google Analytics (GA) now does is provide information on goal tracking. It will alert you if there are any drastic changes to your goal numbers or if it sees any irregularities within your account.

Make sure to take a look at your GA goals to ensure the URLs are correct, are tracking properly, and you aren’t missing any important information.

As I noted above, use Screaming Frog to ensure GA tracking code is on all pages.

2. Identify A Few Quick Wins

As the year progresses and we focus on our campaigns, it’s easy to get caught up in the big picture and overlook some of the small stuff.

Revisit The Basics

The basics — like title tags, meta descriptions, and ALT text — may not be high up on your list of strategies, but you shouldn’t forget them.

Using your Screaming Frog report, Export the HTML list and take a fresh look at your tagging. Make sure there are no missing titles or descriptions and no duplicate tags, and ensure that your brand is contained in all titles.

You can also export the list of missing ALT tags to identify opportunities for image tagging.

While these things may seem insignificant in themselves, they can go a long way in helping with that big picture we discussed above.

Repurpose Content

One of my favorite things to do at the end of each year is to sit down and evaluate the content from the past 12 months. How did it perform? Which content did the best? How can we use this information going forward?

Another avenue to this is, “What can we repurpose?”

Companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars creating content, only for it be posted and never thought of again. It’s really quite sad.

Erin Everhart wrote a post earlier this year, “How To Repurpose Content Without Looking Like A Total Jerk,” that showed how to repurpose both blog content and social updates. I also wrote a post on how to turn old content into new links, which breaks down both the content audit portion and the link building portion.

If you’re interested in repurposing some of that wonderful content you created this year, give them both a read. It’ll give you some easy and valuable content ideas heading into next year.

3. Scope Out Editorial Opportunities

As publications get ready to kick off the year, their editorial calendars are updated and they are already starting to generate their stories. Get a jump on the year by identifying any opportunities for your business or clients.

As I outlined in a past article, editorial calendars are pretty common and can be found through simple site searches, Google searches, or by using a tool like EdCals.

If you’ve found an editorial calendar that isn’t updated or is only partially updated, start tracking it with TrackedContent or ChangeDetection.

Both of these tools will alert you when the content on a selected page is changed, giving you the jump on fresh press opportunities.

 4. Clean Up Your Business Listings 

Did your office move this year? Did you lose or gain any team members? Were there any significant changes that happened within the business? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” it’s important that your online presence reflects those changes.

The first place to start is your contact info. I can’t tell you how many people call the KoMarketing office thinking we are at our address from 9 years ago. Where are they getting that information?!?

As it turns out, tools like Moz Local will actually give me that answer:

See where incomplete, inconsistent, and duplicate listings reside. It even includes your social networks like G+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Bonus: If you need to update your site, Moz Local will adjust the listings for you, ensuring a consistent presence across the web.

Don’t forget about places like Wikipedia or Crunchbase, where consistently changing information like revenue, employees, and stock prices resides.

We can’t control everything on the web that’s said about us, but we can at least try to control our business information.

5. Perform A Quick Competitive Analysis 

Last but not least, we can’t get a leg up on our competitors without actually looking at them!

While you probably don’t need to go “full-fledged stalker” in your competitive analysis, giving your existing analysis a quick refresh could certainly be beneficial.

Revisit Links 

Using Majestic, Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or your other favorite link-checking tool, scan competitor sites to see what new links they’ve acquired recently.

Look at what press mentions they’ve received over the past few months, and identify any potential blogs that also fit your business. Also, take a look to see what their top linked content is.

If you’ve performed a competitive analysis in the past, you likely already have a pretty good idea of what their link building strategy (if any) is, but you may find a few new media targets or influencers to add to your list.

Validate Content Ideas

I’m not a huge fan of looking at a competitor’s site and just stealing their content ideas. I am, however, a huge fan of looking at a competitor’s site, evaluating how their content is performing, and using that data to inform my own content strategy.

With budgets being one of the biggest hurdles to content marketing, understanding where to put those dollars is invaluable.

Use the link data mentioned above to find the top linked pages, or plug your competitor’s site into BuzzSumo to see what their most shared content is. Both of these can provide you with insights into what your audience likes and wants, helping you figure out where you may want to spend your dollars next year.

Identify Strategic Changes 

One of the biggest benefits to a competitive analysis refresh is you get a look inside their strategy going into the next year and a better understanding of where they see the future of the business.

Do they have any “coming soon” or new product pages? Did they rename a product or any part of their company?

These types of things can indicate a fundamental shift in how a competitor views the industry, the market, and their product/service. While this is not something you are necessarily going to use in your own strategy, it can help show you some new places to look.

For example, if a competitor is suddenly calling out HR professionals, that may be an audience you want to look at if you haven’t already. If they are using new terminology to describe the industry or their products, you may want to take a look to see if this impacts you. Check Google Trends and search volume data for any additional information.

Knowing what your competitors are doing can help you better understand the landscape, the target market, and inform your own online marketing strategy.

So before you leave the office or throw on those PJs, think about doing these five small things to help give your business a leg up in 2015. Happy holidays!

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/5-seo-tactics-kick-start-new-year-211198

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