Strategy

Why Local SEO is Critical for Your Home Service Business

Imagine this: a homeowner in your area is frantically searching for a plumber after a pipe bursts. They whip out their phone, search “plumber near me,” and boom—your competitor shows up first. You, however, don’t even make it to the list. Sounds frustrating, right? That’s exactly why Local SEO is necessary for your home service business. Let’s dive into how it works—and how it can get you seen by the right people, at the right time.

What Exactly Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is your way of saying, “Hey Google, show my business to people around here who need what I offer!” It’s all about ensuring your business appears in those super-specific local searches—whether it’s someone looking for “electricians in New York City” or “landscaping near me.”

For home service businesses like yours, Local SEO helps get your name in front of customers ready to book, not just browse. It’s the difference between being invisible and being the first call someone makes when they need a hand.

How Local SEO Works (And Why You Should Care)

So, how does Local SEO actually help your business stand out? Here’s the play-by-play:

• Google My Business (GMB) Profile: Your Google My Business profile is like your business’s digital storefront. When someone searches for your services, GMB makes sure they find you. If it’s optimized (and we’ll make sure it is), you can show up in the “map pack” results, which means more clicks, calls, and visits.
• NAP Consistency: Not the kind of nap you take after lunch—NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. You want this info to be the same across all platforms. If your phone number is different on your Facebook page than it is on Google, that’s bad news for your rankings.
• Online Reviews: People trust reviews. It’s just how it is. The more 5-star reviews you get, the higher you’ll rank, and the more trust you’ll build with future clients. Don’t be shy—ask happy customers to leave a review!

Why Local SEO Is a Game Changer for Home Service Businesses

Let’s get real—if you’re a home service provider, your customers are coming from your local area. They’re not looking for a handyman in the next state over; they want someone nearby. Here’s why Local SEO is essential for home services:

1. Capture Local Customers: Homeowners searching for HVAC repairs or plumbing services want fast, local results. Local SEO helps you show up when they’re looking, and that means more business for you.
2. Outshine Competitors: If you’re not investing in Local SEO, you’re leaving money on the table. The businesses that are focusing on local rankings are grabbing your potential customers. Time to change that!
3. Drive Traffic, Calls, and Bookings: When people see you in local search results, they’re more likely to visit your website, give you a call, or book an appointment. Local SEO puts you front and center for those ready-to-buy customers.
4. Build Trust with Reviews: You know that feeling when you’re checking out restaurants and you see one with a ton of glowing reviews? That’s exactly how your customers will feel when they see your highly-rated business at the top of the list. Reviews = trust, and trust = business.

Simple Tips to Boost Your Local SEO

Ready to start showing up where it counts? Here are a few quick ways to get your Local SEO in shape:

• Claim and Optimize Your Google My Business Profile: This one’s easy. Claim your GMB profile, fill it out completely, and keep it updated with photos, services, and correct contact info. Don’t forget to post updates—it helps your rankings!
• Sprinkle in Local Keywords: Make sure your website and blog content includes keywords that reference your service area. Instead of just saying, “We’re experts in tree removal,” try “We offer tree removal services in New York City.”
• Get Those Reviews Rolling: Ask your satisfied customers to leave reviews. More reviews = better local rankings = more customers.
• Make Sure Your NAP Is Consistent: Everywhere your business info is listed online, it should match exactly. No different phone numbers or addresses on different platforms!

Ready to Be Found Locally? Let’s Chat!

You don’t have to be a marketing pro to win at Local SEO—that’s what we’re here for! At Linx, we specialize in boosting home service businesses with a tailored Local SEO strategy that’ll get you on the map (literally). Whether you need help with Google My Business, local keyword strategies, or getting more reviews, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s connect today, and we’ll make sure your customers find you first!

Maximize Your Local Business’s Reach with Chat GPT SEO Strategies

Imagine losing potential customers to your competitors simply because AI chatbots recommend their business instead of yours. In a world where 60% of consumers rely on AI-powered chatbots for recommendations, your business can’t afford to be overlooked. With millions of local searches happening daily, it’s crucial to ensure that your company is the one being suggested when potential customers ask, “Where can I find the best service near me?” Harnessing ChatGPT SEO strategies can put your business at the forefront, capturing attention and driving local traffic your way. But how exactly can you optimize your online presence to align with AI recommendations? We’ll walk you through some essential steps that will ensure your business stands out among the crowd.

First Things First: How ChatGPT Pulls a Company’s Information 

Before we get into SEO optimization strategies, it’s important to understand how ChatGPT finds and presents information about your business. ChatGPT uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze and understand user queries. It relies on a vast, pre-trained knowledge base compiled from diverse sources. Essentially, when someone asks about a business, ChatGPT identifies keywords and context to match their query with relevant information. It then retrieves details like company information, products, services, and reviews from its knowledge base, generating a response based on the most relevant data it finds.

Essential SEO Strategies to Get Your Business Noticed by ChatGPT

To get noticed by ChatGPT, there are several strategies your company can implement. It might seem overwhelming, but we’ll break it down into actionable steps.

• First, optimize your online presence. This includes using smart SEO tactics on your website, like relevant keywords and local SEO, and staying active on social media. Engage in online communities to increase your visibility. Collect and showcase positive customer reviews, and use structured data to help search engines understand your content better.
• Create high-quality content regularly, such as blog posts, FAQs, and guides. This establishes your authority and improves SEO rankings.
• Showcase reviews by encouraging satisfied customers to leave positive feedback on platforms like Google and Yelp. Display these testimonials on your website and marketing materials to build trust and credibility.
• Use structured data on your website, like schema markup, to enhance search engine understanding and improve your chances of appearing in search results.
• Engage in online communities by participating in forums and Q&A sites, and joining industry-specific groups. This helps in providing helpful answers and subtly promoting your business.
• Develop a strong brand identity by ensuring consistent branding across all platforms.
• Invest in online advertising to increase brand awareness.
• Offer excellent customer service by providing quick and helpful responses to customer inquiries and actively seeking and acting on customer feedback to improve your services.
• Use chatbots and AI tools on your website to engage visitors and analyze customer data for improved personalization in marketing campaigns.
• Collaborate with influencers and partners in your industry to promote your products or services and form partnerships with complementary businesses for cross-promotion.

By focusing on these steps, you’ll set a strong foundation for your ChatGPT strategy, increasing your visibility and credibility.

Partner with Linx for Expert AI-Driven SEO Strategies

By following these strategies, you can significantly enhance your business’s online presence and increase the likelihood of being recommended by AI models like ChatGPT. Remember, optimizing for AI-driven marketing is an ongoing process that requires consistent effort and adaptation to new trends and technologies. 

At Linx, we specialize in optimizing your online presence to align with AI recommendations, ensuring your business is easily found by those who need your services. From local SEO and high-quality content creation to active social media engagement and structured data implementation, we have the expertise to build a comprehensive SEO strategy tailored to your ever-evolving needs.

Ready to take your business to the next level with AI-driven marketing? Contact Linx today, and let’s start building your winning SEO strategy.

It's Time to Use AI in Marketing

If you and your competition aren’t using artificial intelligence in your marketing strategy, this might be the year that changes. It’s expected this year will be when a lot of businesses wake up to the power of AI, and leverage its abilities to analyze consumer behavior and search patterns, and use data from social media platforms and blog posts in order to better understand how customers find their products and services.  

Artificial intelligence is the biggest commercial opportunity for companies, industries, and nations over the next few decades. It’s anticipated to increase global GDP by up to 14% between now and 2030. For this reason, latecomers to AI will find themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage. 

Reasons for Adopting Artificial Intelligence in Your Business: 

• To obtain or sustain a competitive advantage 
• To move into new markets 
• Because new organizations using AI will enter your market 
• The pressure to reduce costs 
• Customer desire 
• And more! 

For AI integration into your marketing platform, you can look to the big players like Salesforce, which integrates Einstein AI into their platform, or a slew of third-party applications that offer single use AI tools, such as nurturing automation, personalization, and even offers. The new tools are based upon historic behavioral actions as well as aggregated data from target personas. 

Linx has found that by using these toolsets, we can improve our Conversion Rate Optimization programs by 2-3x. 

Chatbots at Your Service 

Chatbots are one of the many ways you can introduce artificial intelligence into your marketing strategy. Chatbots are an AI-based technology which uses instant messaging to chat with customers, leads, and site visitors in real-time. Their natural language processing allows AI chatbots to decipher what information a user is looking for, and the bot will respond as if it were a real person instantly 24/7 (with outstanding customer service, never losing their patience!), which is why they’re widely used across the web and on social media. 

• Of the 71% of people willing to use messaging apps to get customer assistance, many do it because they want their problem solved fast  
• 63% of people prefer messaging an online chatbot to communicate with a business or brand 
• 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020 
• By 2022, chatbots will help businesses save over $8 billion per annum 

At Linx, we frequently deploy chatbots on client websites, such as the live chat we implemented on Suburban Exterminating’s website, which allows website visitors to get in touch with a customer service agent within seconds, amplifying the company’s web leads 24/7. 

Ready to embrace AI in your marketing strategy? Get in touch with Linx today! 

 

Video Marketing Isn't Going Away

It’s no secret that video marketing is, and will remain to be a huge marketing trend. Not only does video content marketing have the potential to drive sales through compelling content and storytelling, if your website includes video, but it’s also actually 50x more likely to drive organic search results compared to text. This is because users find video more captivating, and Google pushes pages that include videos higher in its rankings. 

Here are a few more reasons why you should be using online video marketing in your business: 

• 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video 
• 93% of brands got a new customer because of a video on social media 
• 43% of video marketers say video has reduced the number of support calls they’ve received 
• 88% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI 
• 99% of people who use video marketing say they’ll continue doing so

Through the use of strategies such as sequential storytelling and day-in-the-life videos, for example, you can truly bring your brand to life on social media through video marketing. 

Video SEO marketing is also important—YouTube and other online videos are displayed in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), so it’s going to be important to optimize your videos, as well—text overlays, closed captions, descriptions, titles, and file names are all important to your video SEO. 

Linx has a robust history of video marketing for businesses across a variety of industries. Here are a few highlights from some of our recent video production projects: 

ELMO Board Product Video 

• Created a product marketing video for ELMO, a global leader in educational technology, introducing their new ELMO Board 
• Released in 5 different languages to drive product sales around the world 

Suburban Exterminating 5 Second Video Ads 

• Developed a catalog of 5-second video ads for Long Island-based pest control company, Suburban Exterminating, promoting their “Pests Today, Gone Tomorrow” guarantee 
• Used in YouTube retargeting ads to remind Suburban’s past website visitors of the company’s services

Ready to implement video into your marketing strategy? Click here to get started. 

User-Generated Content is on the Rise

Content for your audience, created by your audience is a huge marketing trend and is a powerful, often unexplored resource for marketers trying to reach younger markets like Millennials and Gen Z. Creating a user-generated content marketing plan involves coming up with innovative ways to encourage your audience to share their own unique content, often by offering them something in return, such as a discount or partnering for a cause.  

Recently, Linx created a monthly social giveaway program for Farmingdale Meat Market, a Long-Island-based butcher shop with a new national e-commerce website. Farmingdale’s social followers were encouraged to share photos of their cooked Farmingdale meats with their own followers in exchange for the chance to win a Farmingdale gift card, resulting in greater social engagement, brand recognition, and customer loyalty (during a pandemic, no less). 

As a whole, user-generated content significantly increases brand engagement, helps SEO, builds loyalty with your customers, drives conversion rates, and according to a recent study by PR Newswire, has the potential to influence the decision to purchase in as many as 90% of shoppers.  

So how can you create user-generated content? 

• Encourage your audience to share photos of your products in exchange for an entry in a giveaway  
• Create branded hashtags for your audience to use in social media posts 
• Develop campaigns your audience buys into, with a shared effort toward a specific cause 
• Leverage both product and service reviews 

If you’re looking for help developing a marketing strategy that includes user-generated content, reach out to Linx today at thinkahead@redesign.dev.linx.com. 

 

 

Welcome to a Cookieless World

After an unprecedented year that impacted marketing around the world, a new year brings exciting new ways to attract, engage, and delight your audience to drive business growth.  

Today we’re sharing the first part of our new blog series, The Top Marketing Trends You Need to Know. 

Goodbye, Web Cookies

Web cookies are small pieces of data stored on users’ computers by their web browsers, allowing websites to remember information, such as the user’s browsing activity or the items they added to their shopping carts. For many years, cookies have played a vital role in the digital marketing machine by providing key data used in targeting and retargeting audiences at the right time, harvesting data, and improving ad performance. 

Now for the mic drop. From now on, you can expect a cookieless world. Popular browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies, meaning you’ll have to get more creative in your efforts to make up for the loss of valuable data cookies provided. 

So, here’s what you can do: 

• Embrace AdTech in new ways, such as media mix modeling (MMM) 
• Build your own Customer Data Platform (CDP), a process providing long-term control over targeting 
• Be at the forefront of alternative technologies; demand-side platforms are a good start 
• Rely on the data provided by FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet); in many cases, this data is sufficient when combined with robust analytics 
• Educate, test, and train, from the C-Suite down on this issue and new ways to manage targeting 

If you’re looking for help setting a marketing strategy in a cookieless world, reach out to Linx today at thinkahead@redesign.dev.linx.com. 

In Simple Terms, What Is Predictive Marketing?

This question is best answered by example and by thinking about how things have started to change in the marketing world. Nowadays, businesses can measure and record many aspects of their interactions with individual customers. This information can be used to help businesses better understand which customers are most interested in their product, what their customers’ needs truly are, and which marketing efforts are working best for each customer segment. Once businesses better understand their customer-business interactions, they can make data-driven decisions to improve these interactions. In some cases, this data can even be used to make predictions about new customers.

Making predictions involves creating a mathematical or statistical model which learns from historical data to forecast future events. Being able to predict which customers will interact with your product allows businesses to prioritize their marketing efforts and marketing spend.

As an example, one of our clients is a lending company which keeps track of every customer which was both approved and not-approved after they’ve applied for funding (this company counts conversions as customers who were approved). In addition, the company also keeps track of each applicant’s credit score, industry, state, and annual sales information. Armed with this data, we leveraged statistical modeling techniques to create models that could predict the chances that new customers will be approved. In other words, using the model the company can now classify new customers as “fundable” or “not-fundable”. Why is this useful?

To see how the model could be used, suppose that the company will spend $100,000 over the next few months marketing to new customers, and that 40% of those new customers will not be approved for funding and 60% will be approved. These percentages are not known in advance because the company (obviously) cannot see into the future. This means that $100,000 x 40%=$40,000 will be wasted on non-fundable customers and $100,000 x 60%=$60,000 will be spent on customers who are funded. Alternatively, if the company had used the predictive model from the outset, they would have identified those non-fundable customers and specifically not spent money marketing to them. If the model was perfect, this means the company would have only spent $60,000 instead of $100,000 to acquire the same number of total conversions, thereby reducing their cost per conversion by 40%. In this example, the data collected and the predictive model saved the company $40,000 which can be used towards other marketing efforts or investments.

This is just one of many different applications of predictive marketing. In general, predictive modeling should be used to answer specific business questions such as: which markets should I decide to attack next? How should I adjust my budget over various channels to increase revenue? What products should I recommend to my existing customers? One important requirement for predictive modeling is to have high quality data. There are several ways to approach this:

1. First define your business goals and then decide what data is best to record.
2. First collect a bunch of data and then mine the data for insights.
3. Augment you existing data with 3rd party data sources.

Most people would probably say that option (1) is best, but it all depends on your own specific goals and limitations. As newer data-recording and data-storage solutions are created, the demand and utility of predictive marketing will continue to climb. From this perspective, marketing is destined to become an increasingly scientific field. So, we will have physicists, biologists, chemists, mathematicians, and marketicians. Marketicians? Maybe marketologists is a better name. Or not, time will tell.

To check a sample predictive report, click here.

43rd Annual Golf & Tennis Charity Classic

Cohen Children’s Medical Center has greatly benefited from the hard work of the members of the Children’s Medical Fund. On June 18, CMF hosted its 43rd Annual Golf & Tennis Charity Classic at Glen Oaks Club in Old Westbury. The event featured a friendly golf and Tennis tournament followed by a cocktail reception and dinner where there were live auction items and raffle prizes available for purchase to help support the children. During the dinner, a silent auction was held where several superheroes emerged to promote CMF’s new program: Heroes with Heart. Guests were able to bid on the Super Heroes, to send them to the Children’s Hospital. A total of $19,000+ was raised that night.

Linx partnered with CMF in creating this program to help facilitate some happiness for hospitalized children. This program is designed to bring popular superheroes to the bedsides of children to remind them that they’re not alone in their fight. The superheroes come into the hospital rooms with toys and activities to give them a sense of hope and joy during these difficult times.

All the proceeds generated from the golf outing helped fund The Children’s Medical Fund Center for Diagnostic Studies, located on the fourth floor of the new pavilion at Cohen’s. This pediatric diagnostic suite is a state of the art MRI and X-ray area designed specifically for children in the hospital. The NASA-themed suite features two MRI machines, a mock scanner that child life specialists use to ease children’s apprehension, and special goggles that allow children to watch movies during their examination.

For several years, Linx has partnered with CMF to aid in ongoing marketing efforts, including writing email blasts for their events and integrating other client companies’ marketing into CMF events. We also designed the front cover of the journals given out at the golf outing.

Please contact us if you’re looking for ways to boost the marketing of your company or business.

If you’d like to donate or volunteer with The Heroes with Heart program or are interested in learning about the charity, additional information can be found at Cmfny.org. 

Facebook’s New Advertising Policy Forces Companies to Improve Customer Service

Facebook’s New Advertising Policy Forces Companies to Improve Customer Service
Facebook has put a new policy in motion to fight against yet another form of advertising abuse in an effort to prevent “bad shopping experiences,” and to avoid consumer frustrations with the Facebook platform. Users will now be surveyed on their experience if, after clicking on a Facebook Ad, they purchase something. If a business continues to receive poor reviews, Facebook could potentially limit or even ban that company from advertising on their platform in the future.

What Does This Mean For Advertisers?
Well, some businesses may see this new policy as a negative, but in reality, this can be an opportunity for companies to improve their customer service and operations. Many organizations may think they are currently serving their customers well, from their perspective, but fail to really analyze their internal processes from their customers’ point of view. That’s why it’s so important that marketing extends from the first customer touchpoint through the entire customer journey and relationship with your brand.

Think Ahead: Marketing Beyond the Ad
At Linx, our Strategic Advisory services approach marketing in a holistic way that includes a deep-dive into every client’s operations and processes – the root of the customer experience. By analyzing and restructuring organizations for optimal marketing success, we are building the foundation for memorable and enjoyable brand experiences that lead to customer retention and brand loyalty. And, your operations and processes must change and evolve as your business grows, and as new and changing marketing trends, and customer needs, develop.

So, Will The New Policy Affect Your Brand Negatively Or Positively?
The answer is… it’s up to you! Companies who have adopted an agile culture in today’s ever-changing world are primed to continuously improve their customer experience and grow their business. These are the brands who are listening to and communicating with their customers, personalizing their experiences and engaging them in more than just their products or services. Companies that are not doing this are risking the retention of customers to those who are!

Amazon Moves Further Onto Netflix's Turf With Low-Priced Streaming

Amazon, which has a long history of pricing lower than competitors in many markets, is going toe to toe with Netflix. Their plan to have a worldwide standalone video service, priced at a cheaper rate, could be a problem for Netflix.
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