Current eMessage > Creative Solutions > October 2020

Creative Solutions

An Iowa telecom finds search engine success

by Ryan Thompson, Creative Services Manager

Just Google it! Ensuring your company’s website is search engine friendly is likely the best advertising investment you can make. 46 percent of all Google searches are looking for local information and 88% percent of searches for local businesses on a mobile device result in a call or visit within 24 hours*.

This consumer behavior can be taken advantage of by your company. Making a website search engine friendly is accomplished through search engine optimization (SEO) and its importance can’t be overstated. A great example of SEO at work is found at Titonka-Burt Communications. The Iowa-based company had MACC’s Creative Services Team create a new website earlier in 2020. Search engine optimization best practices were applied to the site and positive results soon followed.

Titonka-Burt Communications’ General Manager Aaron McCartan said, “With the search engine optimization our new website enjoys, we find our listings toward, if not at, the top, of search results. Previously our website would be much lower in the search results with national providers or competitors appearing first. In some cases, the other listings didn’t even have a service footprint in our markets!”

In the past, he said the company leveraged social media, radio, and print advertisements to market its services. They were pleasantly surprised at the difference a new site made.

“This has been tremendous for our visibility to current and potential customers,” Aaron said. “We have seen an increase in new subscribers since launching the site.”

A full discussion of search engine optimization is beyond the scope of a newsletter article, but at its heart, good SEO is focused on having website content for which customers are searching. Google also likes sites which are fully mobile friendly as in some markets, more searching occurs on phones than computers. It’s also important to manage your Google My Business page. Check out this article from the archives for a refresher on the topic.

If you’d like more tips or tricks on search engine optimization, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

* https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats

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