Kat & Mouse Co.

From the mouth of Google: CTR (clickthru rate) helps your website rank in search.

Since we work with local businesses primarily, here are a few ways you can improve the clicks on your Google Business Page (GBP) and help with your map rank.

1. Increase driving directions clicks:
1.a. If your clients make on-site appointments, send them a reminder in text about their appointment an hour before and include a link to driving directions that you get off your GBP.

1.b. If yours is any other kind of brick and mortar business, when you advertise promotions, include the driving directions link.

1.c. Add a driving directions button or link on your website.

2. Increase review clicks on your GBP

2.a. Send review requests with links directly to your GBP. Google provides you with a review request link. Use that. Send the request later that evening when they are home to send that location info to google so it will make a connection there for you. It will help you rank further away.

2.b. Add links to your reviews in all your written correspondence including your email footer.

2.c. Where you add reviews on your website, include a link to the actual review and add a link to "See more reviews" under the others.

3. Get clicks to your GBP

3.a. Add "Find us in Google" link wherever appropriate. You can use a QR code for this if you want.

For service area businesses that meet clients at their homes like plumbers, for example, do all the above, but also run social media ads in outlying areas where you're not ranking that link to your GBP, not your website.

There are tools that will fake CTR for you, but these are ways you can get those naturally without running the risk of getting penalized by Google for trying to manipulate their system.

It's a great day. Just launched a new website for a painter client. This text from her came in the first half of day 1!

Even before we do the SEO, we got results. That's because conversion optimization is even more important to us than search engine optimization. As we like to say, "You have to get the house (website) ready before the party (traffic) arrives." In this case, we're running ads to get the traffic there before SEO does because the latter takes time. Ads are instant.

If your website is not working for you, please reach out to us. We'd love to turn things around for you!

Our conversion tracker caught this spam call that most of you probably get every single day, i.e., someone saying you need to verify your Google business page. It's a lie. Ignore them. (scroll down to see transcription)

I found this one a bit funny as this scammer revealed his political preference in his caller ID. Not sure being connected with a scammer is what he hopes to do for Cruz, but he just did. ;)

This is just one year of SEO and conversion optimization on an ecommerce site. We started 3 years ago at about $400K and a conversion rate of just .19%. My goal is to double the conversion rate in a year. Average for this industry is 1.5%. That will be difficult because it'a hard to compete on price with Amazon, Home Depot, and others, but we'll see. Would you like to see returns like this?

How many of you get offers to submit fake reviews for you? Almost every day, right? Well, the FTC is going to come down on fake reviews now, so don't do it! Neither should you be faking your popularity in social media.

Just go be awesome instead!

Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials The Federal Trade Commission today announced a final rule

URGENT!!
This is for all businesses in California and those who serve California customers via their website. If you have a website, your business is at risk of a very expensive lawsuit. It concerns ADA requirements for your website that will make you a target of litigious plaintiff attorneys and their sometimes fake plaintiff clients. It is imperative that we push back. I need to form a small task team here in San Jose because one of our reps' names in on the bill. We need to meet with him personally.

Here's what I got from our committee head:
"Hello fellow W3C members, Board, and team,

I bring to your attention California Bill AB1757 - Website Accessibility, that has been re-introduced in the California legislature on 6/12/24. This bill creates massive impact and potential for stiff liabilities for most members of the W3C and other stakeholders in the business and tech community.

While the bill aims to help/force the web to be more accessible and provide businesses some recourse against web resource providers, it also opens the floodgate even wider for litigation by plaintiff attorneys notorious for filing thousands of web accessibility lawsuits each year in the US primarily against small businesses. Note: This bill does NOT only impact California-based businesses but any person or entity that provides service to a website that is viewable to a resident of California.

Here is a clean version of AB1757 as the California legislature page of the bill has so many strikethroughs that it may be difficult to read. You can assess how it may impact you, your employer / business.

ASSEMBLY BILL AB1757 Rev 6-12-24 An act to amend the heading of Part 2.53 (commencing with Section 55.55) of Division 1 of, and to add Sections 55.565 and 55.566 to, the Civil Code, relating to accessibility.

Someone in the commercial drone Facebook group suggested everyone get a directory listing on The Droning Company website to get more business. I did a not-so-deep dive into their analytics with an SEO tool I use to see if I could discover if their $10/mo fee was worth it.

I would love to get my hands on that site and SEO it. Lots of potential. The first thing I would do is identify where their best source of revenue will be. If it's selling directory listings, then start there. Build and optimize the website that makes you the leader in where to find drone services. If you watch the video, you'll see they completely failed in that regard.

The droning company audit

Google's latest integration of ai into the search results is drastically changing the web. Writers are leaving their profession in droves. Websites that rely on their blog traffic are getting hit hard. Businesses are being hurt. What's the future of SEO that helps so many businesses if Google's ai controls the narrative? It's a question all SEOs are pondering now. Fortunately, if you're a local business, SEO is still a very powerful force for lead generation. It's also still great for other bottom-of-the-funnel queries. For mid to top funnel informational queries, though, right now it's questionable how effective your blogs will be for lead generation. Stay tuned.

Building contractors, painters, any service business with a portfolio, be very careful about using stock photos in your portfolio. Here's why.

ADDENDUM: I want to add, until you build up your portfolio, let your reviews speak for the quality of your work and service. Emphasize those on your website instead. You don't need a lot of those, BTW.

Re: Re: Home | Loom - 24 May 2024

Found these notes I created to use in an SEO presentation I gave in 2019.

That's 5 years ago, and nothing has changed. Google still wants the same thing. It's only gotten better at delivering, making this advice even more relevant today.

Shocking to me that it took the rest of the SEO world 5 years to catch up and finally realize this is what they should have been doing all along. And it's quite shocking to me when I see their videos and blog posts on the subject RIGHT NOW (May 2024) go viral as if they are NEW revelations.

Me, I just "go, ho, hum. So what else is new?" :)

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"The days of search engine ranking are gone when you could simply tweak a few keywords in a listing or in a title simply do not work. For the past number of years, and moving forward, what matters the most is branding your company as the authority on a certain topic and subject.

How do you do that? Just write about what you know about and what you want to be known for. And cover the topic well enough that people find value in it. That serves to get you business but also sends the right signal to Google that you belong at the top.

If you're a local business, that popular topic may not bring 1000's of local views, but if the post is seen by thousands worldwide it will benefit you in a number of other different ways:

a. It says to Google(and other search engines) that you are an authority on that particular topic. This will be taken into account for local and organic search. If your site and that particular blog/article/post has proper internal links it will push authority of that page to those areas. This should help increase in organic and local rank.

b. Time on site. If people are finding and reading your content worldwide on a subject you are not being seen as an authority on, it will increase an important ranking factor, Time on Site. As people spend more time reading and interacting with your page it increases the perceived authority which is a signal that Google and other search engines utilize to determine ranking.

c. Take pride in the fact that you are helping people find real content about whatever subject matter you are writing. I have no doubt that locals will find the content as well, but in the grand scheme of things that content is benefitting your business as an authority in that particular subject.

Written in 2019 by Kathy Long, Kat & Mouse for an SEO presentation

I spoke here 8 years ago. The title of my talk was "SEO" is not a 4 letter word. I still believe it, but as of 2023 and 2024, thanks to Google updates, many SEOs who just got hammered would not agree. They're cussing up a storm. So are their clients! SEO should always be future-proofed to prevent these kinds of hits. Just give Google what it wants which is what your customers want and you should sail right through these updates and come out ahead!

Recommended sales training!!
Your website can have all the traffic in the world, but if you can't convert them, all that traffic and the effort you put into it is a waste. I see that with clients of mine who fail on that end and nothing saddens me more because they had the fish on the line but didn't know how to reel it in. So when I saw this class advertised, I rejoiced!! Please check it out. The trainer will be addressing everything and more that I cry over when I see my clients miss the mark. It's mainly geared for home service providers. And no. I get nothing for promoting this, nor am I affiliated in any way. I just think it's that good. https://learn.jondon.com/stream-sfswincaller-20230411...

Very important lesson from someone I consider to be one of the greatest marketing and business minds on the planet. This is so apropos for those of you out there trying to build a business.

In search of incompetence Learning is about becoming incompetent on our way to getting better. If you’re not open to the tension that is caused by knowing you could do better, it’s unlikely you’re willing …

You know you're doing something right when your client is #1 & #2 for one of their most coveted keyword targets, even beating out huge businesses with websites that have hundreds of thousands of backlinks (the holy grail of SEO).

You also know you're doing something right when at least one of them are not happy and they target you with negative SEO, in this case almost a billion toxic backlinks. The joke's on them because Google didn't care as evidenced by our rank.

We have only 1 spot for another ecommerce brand, but we're very selective. If you're interested, DM us here and we'll let you know if you're a good fit.

We're building a better mousetrap (aka lead gen tool)! It will blow your socks off!

And that, my friends, is the truth.

It's this pest control expert's lucky day! This is how you do SEO the right way!

How to get those coveted SEO backlinks!

ADDENDUM: Many are reporting that their ai content survived. So, some tanked, others didn't. Why is the big question. Obviously we can't just pin it on ai then. But what we do know if you're just pushing out a lot of content just to rank and not to serve your client's need, you run the risk of getting the hammer.

I'm modifying the bullet points below based on this new information.

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Ok guys. Your friendly little (yes, I'm short) SEO coming at you with another important SEO tip. Deep breath.

Google just came out with another helpful content update. This time they are targeting ai-generated copy. And why I'm sitting here speechless now is a respected colleague of mine just witnessed his entire website get taken out of Google's index. And why this is so surprising is this guy is an A+ copywriter. He actually won't post anything unless it's quality content. Still, he got hammered.

Here's what you need to know now:

1. Don't use ai for your web copy as the finished product just to be a little safer. Edit it, make it sound human, put your personal touch on it, but even that can get hit. So whatever you do, make it good, helpful content.

2. If any SEO or content marketer comes to you and tries to sell you on a content plan with a price that seems too good to be true, they are probably using ai, and possibly not even taking the time to edit it. Avoid them. You get what you pay for.

3. Straight-out Ai content is fine for email marketing, text messaging, and probably social media.

4. If you get hit, your pages, maybe your whole site will get de-indexed. Replace the copy with human-generated (or ai-content that has the human touch) quality content,, the kind google loves, then ask Google to index it and you should be good to go. It needs to be good though.

5. Finally and most importantly, give Google what it wants which is what your target audience wants. Speak to them in your own words. Show them why you are exactly what they've been looking for.

None of our clients at Kat & Mouse tanked. Stay tuned and I'll teach you how to do what we do. Or reach out and ask us to do it for you.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

---Kat