Hi!
My name is Rev Ciancio and I'm here to help you. I'm the Director of Small Business Success here at Yext. Not only am I a former small business marketing agency owner, but I also used to own alocal bar in New York City.
You can ask me anything — in fact, that's the whole point here. In this blog series, I'll be answering your questions about how you can be successful in marketing your business with Yext.
Before we get to the first question, here are two things to keep in mind:
The Yext Help Center — You can enter any query you have here about Yext products and solutions.
Support — If you have immediate needs or questions, please send an email to support@yext.com. This is a great resource if you are having difficulty with your Knowledge Manager or have a question about your account.
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Asked by : Jim B
Rev, I am a one man operation wanting to make my life simpler. I am semi-retired and don't want to "HAVE TO" spend a lot of time promoting my business with SEO, SEM, Facebook, Yelp, etc. So my question to you is: How can I stay busy doing my business without having to spend much time with the social stuff?
I'm just trying to have fun working without the drudgery of marketing.
Thanks for your time.
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Rev:
Jim
Thanks for writing in. I think you want what we all want!
Even though you can update Facebook using the Yext Knowledge Manager, Yext is not a social media marketing tool. It can, however, help you manage all the facts about your business on all of those sites with a click of a button.
By making sure all of the fields in Knowledge Manager are up-to-date, you'll be saving time from having to update it manually on each publisher. It also means you only need to update your info when something changes about your business — like hours of operation, or if you have new photos you want to share about your products and services.
My suggestion would be to set aside two days a month where you can sit in front of a computer for 30 minutes and update any new information or promotions to the business. After that, you can go back to doing all the things that you need to do to provide great service to your customers.
If you need help running your social media accounts but don't have the time, I'd suggest finding a digital marketing agency in your area that understands your business and can help you.
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Asked by: Allen H.
My main search keywords are architect, ADA consultant, waterproofing consultant, third-party review in my area.
When I conduct a Google search under "architect in [my city]" my name does not appear, but when write "architect consultant in [my city]" my names appears! (But most people search for "architect" not for "architect consultant".) When I search for "architect in area" my name does not appear.
Also, when I search for "ADA consultant in [my city]" my name appears, but when I search for "ADA consultant in [my state]" my name does not appear. Please advise.
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Rev:
Allen
I think we would all be very excited to find out there was a magic bullet or even a step-by-step roadmap to winning at search. Unfortunately at this time there is no "X" to mark the spot for that SERP treasure.
What we do know, at least from Google, is that local search is determined by three factors: relevance, distance, and prominence. In other words, the type of business, where it is, and recent high ratings and reviews, generally speaking.
To send those quality signals to Google and other publishers, you need to be managing your digital info consistently, everywhere it appears on the web. Because you're using Yext, you've already got this part on lock-down. Just be sure that you have filled out as many of the fields in your Yext Knowledge Manager that are relevant to your business, especially keywords and Google My Business Attributes.
*Note, Google My Business must be live in your account. If it is not, we have instructions on how to do it in theYext Help Center.
The next step is to monitor, manage, and respond to reviews about your business. Here's a good article that might help you to beat your competition with reviews.
From there, you have a number of options — content marketing on your site, creating content for third-party websites relevant to your business, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, etc.
Remember, the SEO game is a long-term play and no one gets into a knowledge card overnight. Constant, consistent, relevant content that's helpful to your potential and current customers is the best way to send strong signals about your business to the publishers. Here's an article that might help you: Improving Your Business' Local Ranking on Google.
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Asked by: Silvia T.
Hi Rev! Love your hat! 🙂
Can you please tell me where is the best place to get images for your marketing?
Thank you.
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Rev:
Silvia
Thanks so much for the compliment! I have about 10 of them and wear one every day.
If you are looking for free images, I have 2 suggestions:
Librestock – It allows you to search 47 free stock photo sites all at one.
Google Image Search – Here's a blog post that can show you how to do that.
More responses coming soon!
Onward!
-Rev
