Month: November 2021

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What to Do When You Have an Earache and Sore Throat

Different things can cause sore throats and earaches, but having both can get you to the doctor. If you have earaches, it’s essential to see a doctor because they could be signs of a sore throat or ear infection.

See a doctor if you’re not sure whether you have a sore throat. Preventing complications is another benefit of seeing them. Ear and throat pain can be debilitating if not treated promptly.

What’s causing your sore throat and ear pain?

Earaches during swallowing are excruciatingly painful, as anyone who has experienced them can attest. They can even make it difficult to do things like eat, drink, or talk if severe. Ear, nose, and throat infections can cause ear pain when swallowing, so knowing the symptoms is critical. An ear infection can be detected by looking for the following signs.

An ear infection can strike without warning and have no apparent cause. It is incredibly uncomfortable. An ear infection frequently accompanies a cold, flu, allergy flare-up, or sinus infection. Symptoms of an ear infection include pain, fluid, swelling, and a pressure sensation in the ear.

Aside from the above symptoms, adults who have an ear infection are likely to experience ear pain, hearing issues, fluid discharge from the ear, and a mild fever. It is more common in children than adults to get an ear infection caused by a disease that affects the middle ear due to infection with bacteria or viruses.

Find out if you have a sinus or throat infection with these simple tests. Other causes of ear pain when swallowing include sinus and throat infections. Adenoids (small immune tissue pads near the Eustachian tubes) grow when germs are ingested through the nose or mouth. Eventually, the adenoids block the ear tubes and cause ear pain due to their growth.

If you’re sick with a stuffy nose or sore throat, consider consulting your doctor. you may have a sore throat, swollen glands, dry, scratchy throat, cough, and bad breath in addition to these symptoms.

What are some quick-fix remedies for an earache?

Earaches are excruciatingly painful. That’s why knowing how to relieve the pain is critical quickly. Ear pain can be relieved by a cold or warm compress, such as a heating pad or a moist washcloth. To relieve ear pain, alternate using an ice pack and a warm compress on the affected ear.

Each time you sit down, give yourself ten minutes. Try to keep both in your ears. When sleeping, elevate the ear that is congested rather than resting it against the pillow.

Why Does Your Throat Hurt on One Side?

One side of your painful throat is coming from another condition, which could indicate something else is going on. Lymph nodes can enlarge and become uncomfortable while your body battles pathogens (viruses and bacteria), Consequently, you will experience discomfort on one side of your throat. Sore throats can also be caused by postnasal drip. There may be some discomfort if mucus and fluid flow into the back of the throat on one side of the body.

Another typical reason for a sore throat on one side is tonsillitis, an inflammation of one or more tonsils. This illness is often accompanied by symptoms such as fever, swallowing problems, and abnormal breathing noises. gastroesophageal reflux is a result of (GERD), in addition to a sore throat, you may have stomach contents backing up into the oesophagus.

Are antibiotic ear drops available without a prescription?

It is possible to get disinfecting ear drops without a prescription, but this has not been proven effective. Ear infections can be relieved with over-the-counter drugs more often than destroy the bacteria that cause them. Ask your ear professional for advice if you are experiencing ear pain or an infection and need medicines.

Earaches aren’t always caused by an infection or even by the ears themselves.

As a rule, these are the culprits:

A waxy substance called earwax is constantly being produced and expelled from your ear. When this process fails, mucus builds up in the ear canal and hardens. Earwax, on the other hand, is what your doctor will call it. It can be painful at times. Earwax should not be removed using cotton swabs or any other instruments. Waxes will only get lodged in your ears if you continue to blow them out. If your ear starts to pain, itchy, leak mucus, or becomes infected, you should seek medical attention right once. For a time, you could even go deaf. Over-the-counter ear drops that soften the wax and allow it to drain freely can be used to relieve clogged ears.

If your earwax has solidified, you should consult a physician. In his hands, the earwax is no match for the eardrum.

In most cases, your ear does an excellent job of maintaining the pressure on the eardrum’s inner and outer surfaces equal. When you swallow, you may see a small pop. This is normal. On the other hand, rapid fluctuations can knock you off your feet, as in an elevator or an airliner. Hearing loss is possible if your ear is inflamed. This is usually due to a longstanding problem with the Eustachian tube in the patient.

Here’s how to fly without a hitch: You can eat gum or suckers during takeoff and landing or yawn and swallow them. While the plane is descending, keep your eyes open and your mind active. Inhale deeply, clamp your nose shut, and then softly blow air out of your nose to see if you can make any noise. It’s best to stay away from diving and to fly while you’re sick. Get to know more about your ears and air pressure by reading this article. Ear of the Swimming If pulling on your earlobe or pressing on the small flap that seals it hurts your ear, you most likely have an infection of the outer ear. Bacteria in your ear canal is to blame due to water accumulation. You may have swelling, itching, and pus coming out of your ear. It’s not spread by contact. It can be avoided by keeping your ears dry while swimming and afterwards. Your doctor will most likely prescribe antibiotic eardrops to alleviate the pain and irritation caused by the inflammation.

Viral infections of the inner ear are the most prevalent. A bacterial infection of the inner ear is a rarer complication. Ear infections in which the swimmer’s ear (also known as otitis externa or infection of the outer ear) is involved are usually minor and go away in one to two weeks. Inner ear diseases tend to linger a long time. The middle ear is the most common location for an ear infection (otitis media). Middle ear infection symptoms differ slightly from inner ear infection symptoms and include ear pain, fever, and drainage from the ear canal. A painful throat, runny nose, and a stuffy nose are all common symptoms of otitis media, sometimes accompanied by an upper respiratory infection (a “cold”).

Problems When it comes to inner ear infections, they are more common than middle ear infections. Several symptoms are more commonly associated with middle ear infections, such as nausea, vomiting, and dizziness, which inner ear infections can cause. To treat an inner ear infection, talk to your doctor about taking antibiotics. nausea and vomiting medicine as well as anti-inflammatory drugs as well as medications to treat vertigo and dizziness (feeling like the room is spinning).

Viruses and bacteria that cause an inner ear infection can spread from person to person. Most people will be free of symptoms within one to two weeks if the infection is promptly treated. Their ears will not be permanently damaged in this timeframe. Some infections of the inner ear might cause permanent hearing loss or vestibular system damage.

Auricle, earlobe, and ear canal make up the outer ear. The pinna (also known as the auricle) can be seen outside the body. One may hear with their middle ears because the eardrum is located here. The incus, malleus, and stape are all located here. Semicircular canals filled with fluid, the cochlea, the vestibular nerve, and the auditory nerve comprise the inner ear’s inner structure.

When should you go to the doctor if you have earaches or a sore throat?

Because earaches and sore throats can have various underlying reasons, it’s critical to get medical attention as soon as possible, especially if you’ve recently been in contact with someone who has the illness. Call your doctor right once if you experience a high temperature, dizziness, a stiff neck, bleeding from your ear, or recurrent heartburn after starting therapy. If you have a sore throat and an earache, go to the nearest clinic.

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It’s common for people to visit websites without converting — maybe they’re conducting product research, educating themselves on your brand, or weighing out the advantages of your product versus one of a competitor.

All of these actions are normal but they’re not always ideal for your business — you want those visitors to stay on your site and convert (e.g. provide their contact details, sign up for your newsletter, or make a purchase).

One way to help accomplish this — and avoid customers coming and going without converting — is with the help of exit intent pop ups.

In other words, exit intent pop ups know when one of your visitors is about to leave your website — they serve a visitor a valuable offer/ message that’s designed to keep them on the page (and, hopefully, influence them enough to convert). 

How do exit intent pop ups work?

Imagine a visitor is on your ecommerce site — they’re browsing your product line. They then decide they want to exit the web page they’re on and they move their cursor out of the frame/ boundaries of your website. But a pop up appears with an offer (e.g. coupon code, free ebook, free trial, etc.) that they stay on the page to read. They click your CTA and convert in the way you intended them to.

So, exit intent pop ups make it possible to retain visitors on your site for longer periods of time, increase conversions, decrease cart abandonment rates, grow your email subscriber list, and more. 

What about exit intent pop ups on mobile sites?

Your target audience is bound to browse your site via mobile device. But if exit intent pop ups work by tracking cursor movements, then how does this strategy work on mobile devices? 

Exit intent pop ups will often appear on mobile devices after one of two actions are completed by visitors. 

1) A visitor scrolls down your web page at a normal pace, but then rapidly scrolls back up to the page. 

2) A visitor presses the “Back” button on the screen. 

How to Implement Exit Intent Pop Ups

The easiest way to implement exit intent overlays on your web pages is with the help of a tool specifically designed to do just that.

Let’s take a look at the features and benefits you can get out of one of these tools by looking at an example.

Exit Intent Pop Up Software: HubSpot Exit Intent Forms

Price: Free forever, $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200 (Enterprise)

HubSpot’s Exit Intent Forms track visitor mouse movements and clicks on your website and then display your form when visitors appear to be leaving. In addition to showing your customized exit intent form, HubSpot can send automated emails (e.g. cart abandonment) and re-engagement campaigns or content.

Implementing exit intent forms with HubSpot is simple and quick — you simply embed your exit intent messaging on your website. HubSpot also allows you to customize your message, theme, and pop up timing.

With HubSpot, you can also:

• Customize your exit intent form’s location, branding, and messaging.
• Trigger email campaigns once visitors leave your website to reengage them.
• Integrate with your other systems for marketing, forms, and meeting scheduling without the need for additional development (e.g. Zapier, Shopify, WordPress, etc.).

Other tools on the market to help with exit intent pop ups are Optinmonster, Sleeknote, and Informizely.

Why would you use an exit intent pop up?

When they’re used and shared on the right web pages at the right time, exit intent pop ups are an effective strategy for increasing revenue. This is because they help you lower cart abandonment and increase retainment, form submissions, and subscriptions on your website.

To better understand how exit intent pop ups work, put yourself in the shoes of your website visitors for a moment. Imagine you’re browsing a website with a specific product that you like and/or believe can help you resolve a challenge you’re facing.

But you then say to yourself, “Ehh, I’ll think about it and come back to this later.”

You move your cursor to the top of the screen to exit the page. But suddenly, a pop up appears on the screen — it’s a coupon for 20% off your first purchase.

You’re likely going to consider applying that coupon code and purchasing the product now, right?

Exit intent pop ups work by providing customers and website visitors with the value that they wouldn’t otherwise have had on the landing, web, or ecommerce page.

An important piece of information to note is that exit intent pop ups should be used when people haven’t already taken action — this feels redundant and impersonal to your visitors.

For instance, if someone already clicked your CTA to subscribe to your newsletter — which shares discount codes and information about product deals — then you shouldn’t show them an exit intent pop up with that offer.

Exit Intent Popup Examples

In this section, we’ll review some of the best exit intent pop up examples.

Best Exit Intent Pop Up Examples

Here are some of the best exit intent pop up examples for lead generation to inspire and guide your exit intent pop up creation.

1. Cart Abandonment Exit Intent Pop Up Example

Source

Why it’s effective: This cart abandonment exit intent pop up is effective because it appears on the page the moment someone who has an item in their cart moves their mouse towards the “exit” button on the screen.

Not only does it remind visitors that they are leaving items in their shopping cart, but it also asks for feedback about why the visitor is deciding to move forward without making a purchase.

This is unique and powerful because it shows visitors that the company cares about them on a personal level — they want to know their opinions, challenges, feedback.

These are the types of customer experiences that leave a good impression on visitors and leads even if they don’t complete a purchase. You’re offering them a personal experience that may lead them to come back in the future or promote your business among their networks by word-of-mouth.

2. Email/ Newsletter Subscription Exit Intent Pop Up Example

Source

Why it’s effective: The moment you scroll back to the top of the page and move your mouse out of Omsom web page’s framework, a bright exit intent pop up appears with a form so visitors can sign up for the Omsom newsletter.

The pop up is well-timed, on-brand and eye-catching (even for someone who has the intention of leaving the page), and clearly states the value a lead will get out of submitting the form (getting the latest brand information, recipes, tips, and “hot takes”).

3. Discount on Purchase Exit Intent Pop Up Example

Source

Why it’s effective: If you go to leave the Elaluz landing page an offer appears on the screen with a 15% off discount. Whether a visitor was thinking about moving forward with a purchase at that moment in time, the coupon is enticing for anyone on the site.

In addition to influencing purchase behavior with the coupon code, it also requires an email address — meaning those visitors who want the code must convert whether they use the code that day or not.

4. Exclusive Offer Exit Intent Pop Up Example

Source

Why it’s effective: When you go to leave Curls’ landing page, you’re shown an exit intent pop up that asks you if you’re leaving. It then succinctly tells the visitor what they’ll be getting out of submitting the form.

In addition to this exit intent pop up’s timing being effective, it’s also located in an ideal spot — it’s at the top of the page, where a visitor who’s leaving the page naturally has to move their cursor. Lastly, it’s unique because it makes the offer a surprise — visitors know they’re getting an “exclusive offer” but they don’t know exactly what that offer is which is exciting and enticing.

5. Resource Offer Exit Intent Pop Up Example

Source

Why it’s effective: When you’re on ActiveCampaign’s blog and you go to leave the page, an exit intent pop up appears with educational resources. It’s a free guide with six emails for your “welcome series”.

Not only is ActiveCampaign positioning itself as valuable because they have helpful information to share with their target audience, but the company is also positioning itself as a thought-leader in the industry.

Additionally, although the offer is free, visitors who want it have to submit their email address ¸— meaning, a new lead and contact for the business.

Other Ideas for Exit Intent Pop Ups

These aren’t the only five types of exit intent pop ups you can create and implement. You can offer your target audience anything you believe they’ll find valuable, whether it drives leads or not — here are some more ideas:

• Free shipping
• Contest entry
• Blog subscription
• Customer experience survey
• Course or lesson
• Customized offer of some kind based on past buying experiences
• Product demo

Increase Conversions With Exit Intent Pop Ups

Exit intent pop ups are a simple yet powerful marketing and lead generation strategy. Once you implement them, you’ll be able to retain more audience members on your website and increase conversions and revenue.

Rank Higher on Local Search Results

Local SEO for electricians is a major driver of website traffic and qualified leads for electrical businesses. Every year, local search becomes more and more relevant to small businesses. As a matter of fact, Google saw 350 times more searches for the keywords “local” and “near me” in 2019 than in 2009. People are using the internet to find the services they need, and you don’t want to be left behind.

To help you out, we’re going to cover four local SEO tips for electricians to make sure you show up when users search for electricians in their area.

1. Take Advantage of Google My Business

Forty percent of mobile searches have local intent, which typically results in the local pack appearing on the results page. The local pack is the list of three businesses that appear above the normal organic listings when users search for local services or products. For local queries, 42% of searchers click on results inside of the local pack. That makes the local pack valuable real estate in the search results page of Google.

So, how do you get your electrical business to show up in the local pack? You optimize your Google My Business profile.

Choose Your Business Category

Make sure your primary business category aligns with the services you offer. There are more electrical-based business categories than you’d imagine, and Google is always adding more. Is your business focused on electrical installation, or do you primarily offer electrical engineering services? Maybe your business is best described as an electrical repair shop.

These are all business category options for Google My Business listings. If you’re not sure which category suits your business best, we suggest opting for the category of “Electrician,” which captures most electrical services.

Set Your Service Areas

You need to include the priority cities you serve in the service area section of your GMB. Try not to cast too wide of a net in this list. The closer to home you make your service area map, the more effective your efforts will tend to be.

Show Off Your Images

Include recent and quality images of your team and your work. Users trust businesses with up-to-date pictures more than they trust listings with no pictures at all. Some images that work best include ones of your team, your business, and your work.

Your Team

Try having images of your team at work. Some examples might be members of your team working a job, your team standing in front of a service truck, or even staff profile images. These help customers feel at ease knowing who will be coming to their door, which service truck is legit, and whether your team will make a mess while working.

Your Business

If you ever experience a Google My Business hiccup, you’ll know that Google will typically ask for images of your storefront with the address clearly labeled on the door. That’s why it’s important to make sure you have a clear storefront image of your business. A few other images of your business you definitely need to include are your logo, a cover image, and the inside of your business office.

Your Work

At the end of the day, you’re trying to sell your work, so show it off! Include pictures of jobs you’ve done, products you work on, services you offer, etc. Some examples might be generators you install, newly installed recessed lighting, or an open circuit breaker.

For more tips on how to get your Google My Business listing to rank, check out our blog on getting your business to the top of Google’s local listings.

2. Build a Mobile-Friendly Electrical Website

With an internet-connected device in nearly everyone’s hand or pocket at all times, people have much easier access to search engines than ever before. Consumers no longer have to ponder their questions or add “find an electrician to hire” to their to-do list — they can just find answers and businesses immediately.

This explains why there were 221 million mobile phone search users in the United States in 2020, according to Statista. The move to using mobile devices as a means of searching creates a demand for mobile-friendly websites. In fact, Google ranks sites with better mobile design higher than those without.

Mobile-friendliness is characterized by fast speeds, easy-to-navigate design, and accessibility for mobile phones.

How can you optimize your website for mobile? Keep your site speed fast, make sure your site has a responsive design, and make your buttons large enough to work on mobile. Try testing your website’s mobile-friendliness with Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool.

3. Lean In to Local Content

One of the easiest and most understandable SEO metrics to track is keyword rankings. When people search for electrical services, is your site showing up in the results?

If you want to rank for local electrical queries, you need to have local electrical content. The top three ways to include local electrical content on your site are through service area location pages, blogs on electrical searches relevant to your local area, and geotargeting site-wide.

Let Your Location Be Known With Service Area Location Pages

These pages help inform Google and users of the areas where you operate. Service area location pages are a must-have in order to convey to users whether you will drive out to their location for electrical services. Having service area location pages opens up a new opportunity for your site to rank when users search for electrical services near them.

Educate Your Consumers With Blogs

Relevant local blogs can be a great way to target local searchers. Companies that blog have 55% more visitors on average. When users search for common electrical problems or questions, you want to make sure that your site is in the results with an answer or a solution.

To drive local traffic to your site, you should focus on electrical topics that are relevant to your area. For example, if you operate in a thunderstorm-prone city, try publishing a blog on lightning arresters.

Or, if your area regularly experiences hurricanes, a blog on generators will surely gain traffic. One last example would be if your town has a lot of historic, old homes, you might write blogs on the signs your home needs rewiring.

Let Google Know Your Service ARea With Geotargeting

Including geotargeting site-wide is crucial to signal your local service areas to search engines. By including the city your office is in as well as any priority cities you serve in the title tags, headers, and calls to action throughout your site, search engines will know to include your website in the results when users search for electrical services in those areas.

4. List Your Business on Local Directories

Listings of businesses on online directories are called citations. According to Moz, citation signals are one of the top local ranking factors for the local pack and for normal organic search results. Citations usually show your business name, address, and phone number. The importance of citations is making sure they are consistent across the web.

We suggest claiming and optimizing all directory links of your business across the web so they all have the exact same information. By doing so, Google will rank your website higher on search results. If your business doesn’t have any or many listings in directories across the web, we suggest getting started by adding your information on:

• BBB
• Bing
• Apple Maps
• Facebook
• Yelp
• Yellow Pages
• Nextdoor

And any niche local directories, like the Chamber of Commerce.

Build Your Electrical Business With Blue Corona

We know that some of these tips can be daunting. Service business owners shouldn’t have to keep up with their own business and search engine optimization as well.

That’s where Blue Corona comes into the picture. Our team of SEO analysts will take care of the local search ranking and more.

We’ve been proven to drive 73% more qualified leads from electrician SEO services.

Get in touch today to learn more about what Blue Corona can do for your business.

Electrician SEO Campaigns Built To Grow Website Traffic, Qualified Leads & Booked Jobs

So, you own and/or operate an electrical business and you’re wondering how to create a better SEO campaign to increase your chances of being discovered by potential customers while they search online, but you’re not sure where to start? Well, you’re definitely in the right place!

An effective electrician SEO campaign will improve the rankings of pages on your website, which will increase traffic to your website and increase the number of qualified leads you receive, ultimately increasing your company’s revenue!

So, what do you need to focus on in order to achieve this successful SEO campaign that drives more qualified leads and booked jobs through your website? You’ll want to make sure these four pillars of SEO are included:

1. Technical SEO
2. On-Site Content
3. Local SEO
4. Off-Site Authority

In this blog, we’ll break down what each of these pillars of electrician SEO is, why they are important, and how you can improve each pillar to rank higher than your competition on Google search listings.

First of All, What Is SEO?

SEO, short for search engine optimization, is simply a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results, according to Moz.com.

Simply put, SEO is how you get your electrician website to rank on the first page of Google search results.

There are many methods and tactics that can be used to create an effective SEO campaign for your business, but there are four main pillars that you will want to focus on to have a successful electrician SEO campaign. Again, those four pillars are:

1. Technical SEO
2. On-Site Content
3. Local SEO
4. Off-Site Authority

Just like you have a list of your must-have tools that you need to be a great electrician, including pliers, screwdrivers, and cable ties, these four pillars are some must-haves for your SEO campaign. Each of these pillars works with the others to optimize your website’s SEO value for Google’s ever-changing algorithm ranking factors.

Pillar #1: Technical SEO

Technical SEO may be a term that sounds a little overwhelming, but simply put, this just refers to the ability of search engines, namely Google, to view your content and explore your website. A few things you want to be sure are optimized within the technical SEO realm are:

• Your website’s URL structure
• Mobile usability
• Site speed
• Overall user experience

URL Structure

Your URL structure should be well organized and clearly present a hierarchy of pages throughout your site. Ensuring this will make it easy for Google to crawl your website and know how to index each page properly.

A not-so-great structure would include URLs that are well over the recommended 60 characters, contains words that are not relevant to the content on the page, and do not include an appropriate “folder” in the permalink.

For example, if you have two different pages on your electrician website about your outdoor lighting installation and outdoor lighting repair services, these two URLs wouldn’t suffice:

• Bad outdoor lighting installation URL – www.yourwebsite.com/electrician-wiring-services-in-your-area
• Bad outdoor lighting repair URL – www.yourwebsite.com/ceiling-fans-and-lights-outside-electrician

A better example of what you would want the URLs of those pages to look like would be:

• Great outdoor lighting installation URL – www.yourwebsite.com/outdoor-lighting/installation
• Great outdoor lighting repair URL – www.yourwebsite.com/outdoor-lighting/repair

These URLs are less than 60 characters, they are relevant to what the content on the pages are about and they sit within the proper outdoor lighting “folder.” Google would be able to easily distinguish what kinds of pages these are and how to index them properly, which also increases your chances of being ranked higher in the search result listings and being discovered by potential qualified customers.

Mobile Usability of Your Website

Optimizing the mobile usability of your site is crucial to having a solid SEO campaign for your electrician business. Since well over half of all web users utilize their phones to browse, you want to ensure that your site is easy to use on mobile phones and tablets.

You can do this by building your website with a mobile-first mindset on a responsive framework. A responsive framework means your electrician website automatically resizes, depending on the device your user is browsing with, whether it’s an iPhone, tablet, laptop, or desktop!

Site Speed

Now, site speed! You must be sure that the pages on your site load quickly. How many times do you get frustrated with a website when the pages seem to be dragging or taking a long time to load fully?

Generally, if a site takes too long to load, it encourages the user to leave and visit another site. Don’t let that be your website’s story.

To optimize your site’s speed, refrain from including large photos, video embeds, or anything of the sort, as they will definitely slow the speed of your site down.

User Experience

The last part of technical SEO is the overall user experience. For the best electrician SEO campaign, you, of course, want to make sure you give the user a great experience while browsing your site. A few questions to ask yourself when building your site to ensure you’re thinking about the user experience are:

1. Is the design of the site clean and easy to view?
2. Is the content on each page easy to read without having to strain, squint, or pinch to zoom?
3. Does the organization of the pages make sense? Are pages easy to find?
4. Is the information presented clearly, easy to understand, and relevant to the page it’s on?

One keyword in each of those questions is the word “easy.” You want to make the user’s browsing time as easy as possible for successful electrician SEO.

Another reason you’ll want to be sure the user experience of your website is at its best is that Google has recently released its Core Web Vitals, which is a set of specific metrics that helps developers understand the user experience of a webpage. Read all about this update here and understand how slow site speed will decrease your ability to rank high in Google’s search results.

Pillar #2: On-Site Content

The phrase “content is king” rings true in the SEO world. Your overall website might be well organized, beautifully designed, and technically sound, but is the content on every page of your website optimized to rank high in Google’s search results, thus improving your online visibility for potential customers who could become qualified leads?

Google ranks individual pages on your website, not the entire website, so you’ll need to make sure each page is optimized to have the potential to rank higher than your electrician competitors in Google’s search result listings.

This means you should consider having a page for every service line you offer so that a specific page ranks well.

So, instead of housing all of your lighting services on one page, break them out into separate pages for increased ranking opportunities across service lines. For example, your electrical services can be broken up into:

• Lighting installation
• Ceiling fan installation
• Panel replacement
• Wiring and rewiring
• Outlet installation

And the list goes on!

Now, having each of these pages is great, but you’ll also want to make sure the content on each page is relevant to what that page is actually about and that the content is high quality!

Along with these different types of service pages, it’s a great idea to add electrician blog posts, positive testimonials, and high-quality images/videos to your site, as well. Adding these types of content will increase the number of pages Google has to crawl, index, and rank from your website!

Pillar #3: Local SEO

Reaching the top of Google’s search result listings is great, but reaching the top of Google’s search results listings in your service area is better. That is where local SEO comes in. Well-optimized local SEO for electricians helps your company rank better for searches in your local service area. This is also what improves your visibility in Google’s local map listings.

So, what are some ways that you can optimize your local SEO? Here are a few:

Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

This first means you want to be absolutely sure that you have claimed and verified your Google My Business listing and be sure all of your business information is filled in accurately.

Though all information is important to fill in correctly, be sure your company name, primary business category, address, phone number, hours, service area, and description are filled in properly. It’s also best practice to include clear and updated photos of your business and/or employees to build a rapport with users who are browsing for your services.

Build and Verify Local Directory Listings

You’ve probably heard of common local directories that customers use to find electrician businesses like yours. Some (not all) of those include:

• Nextdoor
• Angi (formerly Angie’s List)
• Yelp
• Facebook
• Bing

Claiming and verifying your business listings within these directories is a great way to boost your local SEO.

Get More Reviews

Reviews matter. That’s the bottom line. One study, mentioned by Bigcommerce.com, stated that consumers want to see at least 40 reviews to justify trusting an average star rating.

Reviews are also important for your electrician SEO performance because search engines, including Google, take them into consideration when calculating search rankings. So, not only do you want to encourage your customers to leave good reviews, you want to encourage them to leave a lot of them!

How can you encourage your customers to leave more reviews? Three steps:

1. Provide top-tier service
2. Ask your customers for reviews when you’ve completed a service
3. Ask them again and/or provide an incentive for leaving a review

Pillar #4: Off-Site Authority

Ensuring that your on-site SEO is optimized is important, but don’t forget about improving your off-site authority. Building your off-site authority is what solidifies your website’s authority and influences how trustworthy and credible Google sees your website to be.

Improving your website’s authority can be done by increasing the quality and quantity of your backlinks.

A backlink is any link on a third-party website that points back to yours. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your authority. The higher your authority, the more your business and website are seen as a trusted source in the digital world.

There are three different ways to get high-quality backlinks:

1. Natural backlinks – These links are simply given without any work or outreach on your part and are normally given editorially.
2. Manual backlinks – These are given after you’ve reached out to another relevant website and requested to have a link to a page from your site placed on their site
3. Self-created backlinks – These are links from your website that you also place on a website that you also control and/or can add information to.

Social Media Presence

Another way to increase your off-site authority is to be intentional with your social media profiles. Social media, including the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, influences your SEO performance.

If you are using your social media platforms in intentional and meaningful ways, you will increase your brand recognition and visibility, which will, in turn, influence consumers to see you as the authority in the electrical industry. A few ways you can use your social media would be:

1. To educate – Try showing your homeowners why it’s safer to have an electrician install lighting around their home or maybe provide them with a few simple tips and tools they can use in their everyday life.
2. To entertain – Show your followers what a day in the life of an electrician is like or show them how you repair or install a new generator.
3. To engage – Maybe you’re wondering which electrical issue customers in your area are dealing with the most. Use social media to ask them and have them respond and actually communicate with them. This not only helps you to connect with your customers, but it also provides you with information about what kinds of service calls you can be expecting to get in a given time frame.

Improving your off-site authority will definitely encourage Google to place you higher in the rankings.

Recap

So, now you know all about the four pillars of a successful electrician SEO campaign. Remember to optimize your technical SEO, your on-site content, your local SEO, and your off-site authority. Focusing on each of these will have you ranking well in Google’s search result listings and driving even more qualified leads to your business’ website.

At Blue Corona, we believe in growing businesses. We work with hundreds of electricians across the United States, working with them to measurably improve their marketing performance.

Grow Your Business With Electrician SEO Services

Looking to increase leads, reduce your marketing costs, and differentiate your brand online?

Contact us today to learn more about how our electrician SEO services can help you achieve your goals.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a new blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of Black business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Over the last year and a half, entrepreneurs have had to revamp their marketing strategies to navigate doing business during a pandemic. This shift hasn’t been easy, especially for Black business owners. According to an H&R Block study, more than half of Black-owned small businesses experienced at least a 50% decrease in revenue during the pandemic.

As a Black woman who launched two businesses in the last year and a half, I’ve had to revisit my marketing strategy to avoid this dip in revenue. My goal was to pay close attention to who my audience is, keep track of performance metrics, and create engaging content without wasting time or money. The key was to use marketing tools that make our company more strategy-focused and data-driven.

If you have a small team, you don’t always have to hire more people to maximize results — you can invest in tools and systems to streamline your marketing strategies. Read on to discover seven high-quality tools that are user-friendly, cost-effective, and able to help you succeed.

7 Marketing Tools for Black-Owned Businesses

1. HubSpot

Best for: Customer Relationship Management

Price: Starts at $45/mo

If your marketing strategy is on point, you’ll have leads flowing in with ease. Keeping track of those leads can tell you what converted them to a buyer — this is key for knowing what’s working in your marketing strategy.

Our team uses HubSpot’s CRM tool to keep track of conversions, and when revisiting our marketing strategy, we look at two essential items:

• How did the lead hear about us
• What services/products are they interested in

Your marketing strategy should include a clear overview of your buyer’s journey, from awareness to decision making. HubSpot’s Deal Stages dashboard houses this important data. That way, you can keep track of each stage, and better nurture leads with relevant content.  

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2. Mailerlite

Best for: Email marketing

Price: Free, then $10 if you have less than 1,000 subscribers

My company Perfeqta started using Mailerlite this year and the benefits are endless. With the tool my team has been able to:

• Easily design landing pages and newsletter campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor.
• Create pop-ups and embed forms to add to our company website.
• Monitor subscriber lists and divide them into interest groups.
• Quickly access campaign reports to understand results.

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For those who are less email marketing savvy, Mailerlite’s academy program will walk you through its core functions so you can start building email campaigns within a few days’ time. Because of the free plan, this is one of the most cost-friendly options for all of its features.

3. Buffer

Best for: Social media marketing

Price: Free for three social channels – $10/mo per social channel for unlimited channels

Buffer is an all-in-one social media tool that my team uses to manage 12 different accounts. The dashboard is incredibly user-friendly, and it is easy to schedule (as shown in the image below), review, and publish content without having to change pages or switch accounts.

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Here are the key benefits that have allowed my team to maximize their time:

• Approval tool that lets you review posts before they’re published.
• Option to create campaigns and view analytics in one spot.
• Audience demographics so you know who you’re targeting.
• Download reports as charts and images to share with the team.
• A community management tool that lets you reply to comments and engage with followers from your desktop.

And here’s another bonus: If you’re a Black- or POC-owned or -led organization that engages in anti-racism work, Buffer offers a 50% discount.

4. Google Analytics

Best for: Website tracking

Price: Free

No matter the size of your business, tracking website analytics is essential for company success. There’s a reason why many companies use Google Analytics to track customer data — it’s easy to understand, even if you aren’t very familiar with metrics.

Here’s how my team uses Google Analytics to drive our marketing strategy:

• We can see which pages lead to conversions and turn people away, which allows us to make effective changes.
• We can see audience demographics, which gives us a better understanding of who our clients and customers are, where they live, and how they engage with content.
• We can better plan for future marketing campaigns and set attainable goals because we have clear data to reference.

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As you scale your business, you’ll want to track growth as closely as possible, so you know how to stay connected to your audience and serve them content they will engage with.

5. Canva

Best for: Content creation

Price: Free – $12.99/mo for Pro account

Once a simple software for quick, text-based graphics, Canva has become a full-fledged design suite. My team uses Canva to create content for social posts, presentation decks, flyers, proposals, and more — for only $13 a month.

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If you don’t have a designer on board, you can use Canva templates for inspiration and customize them based on your brand guidelines.  With a pro account, you can also:

• Import your brand fonts and create brand color palettes.
• Use Canva stock photos, which have become more diverse in ethnic representation.
• Collaborate with your team and comment feedback directly on posts.
• Plan your content and share it directly to your social channels.
• Organize files into folders to keep track of content.
• Export various file formats, including png, jpeg, pdf, gif, and more.

The platform also has a video editor, which helps eliminate the many hours spent creating quick, 60-second social media posts.

6. Asana

Best for: Building out a marketing strategy

Price: Free – $24.00/mo

Effective communication and project management are crucial for running two companies with multiple team members. Asana has made it incredibly easy for me to outline marketing campaigns, assign tasks to responsible individuals, monitor due dates, and link files to specific projects.

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My team creates visual workflows for our marketing strategies by making lists, cards, and a project calendar for each phase. Here’s how we break down some of our boards:

• Research and Discovery: This section includes links and files to outside research and our brainstorming notes.
• Content: We share links to relevant folders under specific tasks, so it’s easy to pull social media assets and navigate directly to Google Docs, where we write our copy.
• Technical Support: We send our technical specialist reminders to ensure she keeps up with regular website updates and tests our campaigns before they go live.
• Reporting: This is where we create visual charts to help us keep track of progress on an individual and team level.

Asana is also mobile-friendly, so everyone gets project updates sent directly to their phone and email.

7. Moz Pro

Best for: SEO & keyword research

Price: Starting at $99/mo

Spending endless hours creating content isn’t worth it if your target audiences won’t see it — Moz Pro helps ensure that this won’t happen. Use the tool to serve content to your audiences and rank higher in search results, drive traffic to your website, and monitor SEO campaigns, all of which are essential to growing your business and increasing visibility.

Here are the key benefits of Moz Pro:

• Keyword ranking and search visibility score to see what your audience is searching for.
• Link research to increase the number of high-quality links pointing to your website.
• Technical site audits to make sure technical SEO issues don’t go unnoticed.
• SEO insights and reporting so you can use data-driven insights when strategizing for multimedia content.

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Moz also has tons of resource guides to help you understand link metrics and analytics altogether.  

As Black business owners, it’s essential to have tools and systems that streamline your marketing processes while also supporting your business growth and team growth.

Remember, you don’t need to be an expert in every area of your business. Take advantage of the resources that have already been created by the experts so you can focus on what you do best – building amazing products and services that people love.

It’s almost the end of the year and we’re thrilled to share the exciting new features we’ll be rolling out this quarter and into the new year. As we look ahead to 2022, here is a recap of the key roadmap themes and the strategic initiatives we’re focused on to help you be successful on social:

• One Hootsuite: We’re working to provide a cohesive and streamlined user experience with the tools our customers need to be successful.
• Personalized Guidance: We aim to personalize your Hootsuite experience by including additional context on how to best use the platform’s functions.
• Social Network Depth: As the networks continue to evolve, we’re working hard to provide the most up-to-date channel capabilities.
• Time-Saving Workflows: This is a longer-term priority for our product teams to help customers increase efficiency, productivity, and collaboration.
• Extensibility: We’re deepening our focus on two-way integrations with the systems that matter most to you.
• Clear ROI: We’re committed to helping you measure the success of your social media initiatives.
• Integrated Paid and Organic: We continue to work towards creating a seamless experience for managing paid campaigns and organic content together in Hootsuite.

In the short-term, we’re concentrating on setting our customers up for success and creating a frictionless experience. Next, we aim to increase brand love and provide additional context to our users on how to best utilize our platform’s features. In the future, we strive to drive unparalleled performance to maximize return on investment (ROI) and attract, retain, and develop top talent.

As you level up your social strategy, we want to provide solutions for every team that uses social media—from social marketing to social selling and customer care. These new features are categorized into four key groups: Customer connections, digital intelligence, workforce activation, and risk mitigation.

Customer connections

We’re committed to helping you build meaningful connections and engage with
your customers and prospects through social media marketing, social selling, and social customer care. These upcoming product updates are all designed to make your efforts easier, faster, and more effective.

Boost efficiency through custom posts per network

Schedule amazing content, faster. Now, Hootsuite’s Dashboard enables you to customize text, mentions, emojis, and switch up the hashtags for each social network—without having to schedule each one as a separate post. Plus, you can preview the differences in Composer before you publish or schedule your posts.

The update improves efficiency for users who want to post similar content on different networks. Gone are the days of clicking into drafts to adjust hashtags/links/mentions for each network one by one. You can also get a preview of how posts will look on each social network before publishing, remove potential errors, and, ultimately, take full control of your social presence.

Get a holistic overview of your content

You asked, and we listened. Planner will soon include a monthly view option! You’ll be able to enable a monthly view that summarizes the status of your posts for easier review and post cadence optimization within Planner.

Make direct edits through Streams view

We know that social media content is always changing. So, we wanted to make it easier to take action when you need to. You’ll be able to change and edit posts by adding a direct link to the planner for those moments when you find something you want to improve. Quickly edit, refine, and review posts you’ve scheduled on the fly by accessing the planner view for any post through streams view.

Stay updated through push notifications on Hootsuite Mobile

Never worry about missing an unread notification again. We’ve added indicators on the app icon and on the bell icon in Streams to remind you about unread notifications.

You can now visualize unread notifications and see what’s been opened and what requires action.

Better understand the impact of your LinkedIn campaigns

As part of Hootsuite Impact’s migration, we’ve moved Linkedin Advertising into the main Hootsuite Dashboard along with the previously released Facebook and Instagram ads. You’ll be able to track performance of LinkedIn ads at an individual ad level, ad-group level, and campaign level within Hootsuite Analytics’ Advertising Performance Module and Reports.

By getting a detailed analysis of your campaigns and ad metrics, you can easily benchmark changes over time and share these reports with your stakeholders.

Dive deeper into your post analytics

Highly anticipated detailed reporting and post-level metrics features will be available within Hootsuite Analytics for our Impact customers.

You’ll be able to add organic content tiles to Hootsuite Analytics reports with the ability to filter by tag across organic platforms for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. This will match ad capabilities for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Get insights about your 2021 content performance

In need of soundbites for your year-end presentation to the higher-ups? Need to analyze how things went to develop a sound 2022 strategy?

See how your social performance has changed in the past year with our Year in Review report sent to all our paying customers. You’ll receive an email in January letting you know it’s available in your Analytics for a quick recap of how your social accounts performed in 2021.

Digital intelligence

We want to help you understand how your brand is perceived, adapt to changing customer behaviors, and stay ahead of industry trends. These upcoming product changes will help.

Find the info that’s most relevant to you

Ever wonder which hashtags you should be using? Soon, you’ll be able to increase visibility and impact of your posts by surfacing the top-performing posts using your favorite hashtags.

You’ll be able to find most popular content by hashtag in Streams—learn from the best, understand what hashtags followers respond to, and incorporate their style and success into your own posts.

Add context to your reports and PDFs in Insights powered by Brandwatch

Reports can be complex—having personalized notes and context can make all the difference in interpreting metrics. Soon, you’ll have the ability to add annotations or notes to your scheduled reports and PDFs that’ll help provide more clarity and context for your stakeholders.

This feature will be available to Business and Enterprise plans that have access to Insights powered by Brandwatch.

Keep track of the conversations that matter most

You’ll be able to customize and personalize your email alerts directly from the pop-up to best fit your needs with the added capability to:

• Specify alert time and frequency
• Customize the number of ‘Mentions’ per email
• Edit filtering settings directly from the pop-up

This feature will be available to our Business and Enterprise users that have access to Insights powered by Brandwatch.

Workforce activation

Employee advocacy and social selling have become a large focus for many organizations. We want to provide you with the tools you need to enable your workforce to reach customers and prospects, and help foster more connections.

Edit and manage your content live—within Amplify

Amplify admins will soon be able to edit, delete, and send content back to drafts directly from the ‘All Content’ feed in Amplify. There will be no need to edit content from the Streams view—you can do it all in one place.

This feature will be available to our Commercial and Enterprise ‘Admins’ and can be accessed through the Amplify Desktop view.

The best part? This update will make Amplify easier for admins to navigate edits and manage posts without adding any additional work.

Incentivize your employees to leverage social selling

Who’s up for a little friendly competition?

Within Amplify, Weekly Goals in the ‘Desktop View’ will allow admins to engage and incentivize their social sellers to share more on a weekly basis based on key goals. Having goals will motivate your advocates to stay on top of sharing content that presents them as thought leaders on their social channels.

The element of gamification allows program administrators to keep their advocates and social sellers engaged with higher participation on a weekly basis.

Risk mitigation

We’re committed to providing the tools you need to protect your customers, secure your brand assets, and stay compliant with relevant regulations.

Investing in a modernized security-hardened infrastructure

Lastly, we’re committed to taking a uniform risk-based approach to security and compliance practices to meet the requirements for globally recognized security designations and audits, such as FedRAMP, SOC2 Type II, and U.K. Cyber Essentials Program.

Along with our compliance partners ZeroFox and Proofpoint integrations, it’s faster, easier, and safer to integrate social media across your organization.

Interested in learning more about any one of these features and what you can achieve with social? Ask to see Hootsuite in action with a custom live demo.

Request a Demo

The post Coming Soon to Hootsuite: Custom Posts Per Network, Month View, and More appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Show me the waters of your homeworld Muad’dib

This post is gonna contain spoilers beyond the recent Dune movie, be warned.

So forecasting in SEO is such an interesting subject. I really hate the cop-out answer of “it depends” and judge the SEO space for falling back on this lazy crutch as a way to answer real business questions. Just to be fully transparent, I have worked in-house and would pass over/fire a vendor who was unwilling to help me hit my hard numbers post-haste.

“But Dan, Forecasting is an inaccurate science”

Thanks, random internet stranger, I think this is the crux of most objections to forecasting. And it’s the most obvious, self-evident truth. Seriously, treat yourself with a little kindness and empathy and realize that when you are doing things like predicting the future it’s directional at best. And this is where we get into Dune.

Forecasting in SEO is like Paul’s visions before he drinks the waters of life (SPOILERS AHHHHHH). They are confusing and he is unsure about what they mean. He doesn’t understand the order they are occurring in, whether they are true or possible futures, it just really forces him into an existential crisis. This is how SEOs act around forecasting. YOU ARE THE FREAKING KWISATZ HADERACH. You have all the power. The people asking you for forecasts are like Gaius Helen Mohiam, they think they have all the power with their budget and institutional power, etc but you are the one that can be many places at once, you are the one that can predict the future. They need you and you have the power to get what you want from them. Spice.

Forecasting is only a way to advocate your clients (or yourself if you work in-house) politically. It helps you navigate the corridors of power in a way that allows you to be taken seriously and unlock budget and resources etc to better accomplish your job. It’s totally reasonable for someone you are asking for money to ask you what they are going to get out of it.

The true power of forecasting is only unlocked after you get your initial buy-in and start your journey, once you have successfully unlocked your budget with your forecasting. Then you are like Paul after he drinks the waters of life. With every investment in SEO the future becomes more clear, you understand what is and is not successful and can prune away at all your excessive plans and forecasts for the ones that hit or exceeded their mark. The waters of life allowed Paul to see all the potential futures, to see where investment would work and not work based on actual evidence. He was able to prune away at the various futures until only one remained. Forecasting can help lock you on The Golden Path. It may be hard, it may be uncertain but in it lies salvation.

The post Forecasting in SEO is Like Dune appeared first on Local SEO Guide.