Are you using on the job photos and videos as part of your Local Online Marketing? If not you need to start now!

Pictures are worth 1000 words. Sure, it may sound cliché and overused, but in today’s online environment nothing captures the imagination—and the customers—like a great picture.

Today, pictures are worth a thousand views, and it’s crucial that you remember this as you develop your local marketing strategy.

In an recent update to its seller rating system, Google, has upped the minimum amount of reviews required in order to qualify for seller ratings to 150 from 30 reviews. While this comes as a surprise to many, the importance of reviews has grown in the past few months and this should come as no surprise.

New Google Seller Ratings Requirements

The new thresholds are as follows:

• 150 unique reviews in the last 12 months
• Have an average rating of 3.5 stars or greater

Remember this threshold is important if you are running paid search campaigns so that the reviews extension can display.

You may have heard awhile back Google announced that they will be rolling out individual bid adjustments for each device type: mobile, desktop, and tablet. It looks like those changes have finally started rolling out and we couldn’t be more excited. Previously, you were only able to adjust your bids for mobile devices which left us wanting more.

So what does this mean for your campaigns?

First off, it means that you can now better adjust your bids based on the conversions you are looking for.

Running a Paid Search Campaign with High CPC Keywords Is Possible!

In Adwords you and your competitors are the primary cause for high CPC keywords. The more a job is worth directly relates to how much those clicks costs.

But this means, that paid search campaigns can become very expensive to run – especially if your competitors are driving up the cost per click.

If you are wondering if your campaign will ever be profitable because CPC’s are so high,

No Longer Wait For Verification

Anyone who has gone through the process of verifying a Google My Business listing knows the pain and frustration it can cause. While it sometimes is seamless many times to requires a patience and telling all of your employees not to throw away junk mail for a few weeks.

However, for those who haven’t yet verified their business, have had issues in the past, or have new locations to add to GMB can rest easy.

Pokemon Go, at this point you have played it, know someone who is playing it, or heard about it on the news.

I was out to dinner with friends last night and I saw endless amounts of 18 to late 20-year-olds walking around with phones out, stopping at seemly random businesses and landmarks trying to catch Pokemon.

At first I thought this was silly, and even mocked some of these players but I then reluctantly downloaded it and started playing –

Whether you like to admit it or not most people – including your customers – are on Facebook and using it daily basis (even if they do not admit it).

The problem is that many home contractors do not see the value in using it for their business, and simply leave their Facebook business page a ghost town of logos and old photos.

Is Your Facebook Business Page A Ghost Town?

If you are like most people the hardest part of getting going on Facebook is not the setup of the page or posting relevant posts –

What is the point of doing all of the correct things in Google My Business if you are not measuring your success? Today, learn how to dig into the insights page within your account to learn the health of your listing.

Insights For Google My Business

In our opinion, measuring data is the most important step in Local SEO success. If you do not measure and account for trends in data then you will never be able to fully optimize your account.

Want to know more about Google My Business? You are in luck! Mike is back again with part 3 of the Ultimate Guide to Google My Business.

In the last video, Mike spoke about getting your listing setup correctly within GMB. Which if you missed it, is the most important part of getting ranked in the local stack. If you haven’t watch it yet be sure to do so.

Let’s Talk Reviews

This week is all about reviews.

Were you working on your business or with a customer yesterday at between 12 and 1 yesterday afternoon? Well you are not alone.

Despite being small business friendly, Google’s Adwords feature presentation probably wasn’t a huge priority for many service professionals yesterday. And nor should it, much of the time was dedicated to features that service based business will never need.

Luckily we were able to catch most of the presentation and are excited about a few new things that Google is working on.