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How EMSC Gathers Your Digital Assets Under Your Ownership

Your digital assets are valuable business assets. Your website, content, advertising accounts, analytics, and historical data represent years of investment, and you...

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Local Services Ads Moving Into Google Ads

If you run a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, pest control, or similar home service business and you’ve been advertising through Local Services...

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How to Apply Your New Brand Guide Across Digital Channels

A comprehensive brand guide with a new logo, color palette, typography, imagery, and voice is a powerful asset. The real question is...

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Advertising is Coming to ChatGPT: What Businesses Need to Know

OpenAI has announced plans to introduce advertising on ChatGPT. They are planning to serve ads to users with free and Go tiers,...

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Apple-Gemini Alliance: You Need an SEO & AEO Strategy

The "AI Wars" of 2024 and 2025 have culminated in a massive shift for 2026. Apple Intelligence has arrived, and it has...

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The Shift from SEO to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

On October 23, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser that changes how users discover and interact with online content. Atlas places...

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How EMSC Optimizes for ChatGPT

Why It Drives More Leads for Local Businesses At EMSC, we don’t just optimize websites — we engineer your entire digital presence...

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Adapting SEO Strategies for Google’s AI Mode

With the rise of AI Overviews and AI Mode in search engines, SEO strategies must evolve to stay competitive. How we adapt...

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Using Google’s AI Tools for Smarter Ads

Google now offers powerful AI capabilities to support ad copywriting and image creation, and EMSC is actively incorporating these tools into our...

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Optimizing for AI Overviews

Google is continually innovating its search results to provide users with faster, more direct answers. The latest significant development is the introduction...

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Using AI in Reporting & Insights

EMSC wants to help you turn data into dollars. Hidden in those analytics dashboards and spreadsheets are the insights that could double...

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Leveraging AI Imagery

We’re excited to share a new creative solution we’re now offering as part of our web design services: custom AI-generated imagery. Why...

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Google Ads Are Becoming Pricier–But Also More Effective

Plot twist: Your advertising dollars are working harder than ever! Some eye-opening data just dropped about Google Ads, and we’ve got the...

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How to Calculate and Increase Your PPC Conversion Rate

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising remains one of the most powerful tools for driving targeted traffic to your website. However, driving traffic is only...

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KPI Glossary and Implementation Guide

The right key performance indicators (KPIs) can help measure success in digital marketing. At EMSC, we’ve developed a systematic approach to setting...

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TikTok Advertising in 2025: A Complete Guide for Businesses

What a year, huh? Few platforms have experienced as tumultuous a journey as TikTok. It’s hard to ignore the rollercoaster we all...

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Reddit Ads: A Game-Changer

EMSC specializes in digital marketing for home service businesses, law firms, senior care communities, healthcare facilities, and others. We’re always seeking innovative...

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Digital Marketing Trends for 2025

As we prepare to flip the calendar to 2025, the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. At the...

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Last-Minute Holiday Email Marketing Strategy

These five proven strategies will boost your December marketing, even if you start your holiday campaign today. The holiday rush is here,...

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2024 State of Blogging – Why Only 20% Succeed

The state of business blogging in 2024 presents a stark reality: only 20% of blogs achieve strong results. However, newly-minted research* from...

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Click-Through Rate: The Ad Metric That Really Matters

Are your ads actually working? It's a simple question, but many businesses struggle to answer it. That's where Click-Through Rate (CTR) comes...

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Major Changes Coming to Google Local Services Ads Reviews: What Business Owners Need to Know

In a significant shift to streamline its review management system, Google has announced substantial changes to how reviews will be handled for...

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AI Updates to Google PMax: What You Need to Know

Google's latest Performance Max updates are revolutionizing digital advertising with the powerful Imagen 3 AI model. These changes offer businesses a rare...

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Marketing Lessons Rooted In Classic Halloween Tales

Maybe it's the regular sight of seeing jack-o’-lanterns light up porches, but this blog draws inspiration from the timeless appeal of classic...

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Spooktacular Ways to Create Captivating Content

Halloween's not just for kids and candy companies - it's a great chance for any business to get creative and have fun...

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Is the Future of HVAC Subscription-Based?

Subscription services have become the norm for everything from entertainment to meal planning. But what if the next industry ripe for a...

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Google SGE: Tips to Boost Your Ranking

Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) is revolutionizing how search results are generated, offering users AI-powered, detailed responses. EMSC wants to provide essential...

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From Consumers to Creators: Harnessing the Power of User Content

Capturing and retaining audience attention is difficult but critical in today's fast-paced digital world. One of the most effective ways to achieve...

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Why Updating Old Blogs Is Crucial for Your Content Strategy

While fresh content is essential, revisiting and updating old blogs can offer substantial benefits. Here’s why refreshing existing content should be a...

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Seasonal Marketing Tips for Home Service Businesses

As the leaves start changing colors and a crisp takes over the air, homeowners begin thinking about preparing their homes for the...

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What are UTMs?

UTMs (Urchin Tracking Modules) are snippets of text, or code, added to the end of a URL that identify tracking parameters allowing...

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How to Design a Website That Converts

Imagine having a website that turns visitors into loyal customers. It's not just a dream—it's achievable with the right design. A high-converting...

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The Strategic Advantage of Hiring A Digital Marketing Agency

The online medium continues to evolve. Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) face unique challenges in establishing and maintaining a robust online presence. In this...

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How Blogs Humanize Your Brand

Showcase the Heartbeat of Your Brand Making a genuine connection with your audience is more important than ever. One of the best...

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Mastering Social Media Advertising Across Key Platforms

Effective social media advertising is important for businesses aiming to boost engagement and connect with their target audiences. Each platform offers unique...

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Google Ad Extensions: 12 Ad Assets to Boost Your Campaign Performance

Imagine your ads capturing the attention of potential customers like never before. Ad extensions can transform your Google Ads, making them more...

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How Google’s AI Overview Feature Will Influence Your Website Traffic

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how users interact with online content. Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE), now called “AI Overviews” in search...

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The Rise of Microsoft Ads

Staying ahead of trends is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge in digital marketing. While Google has long been the dominant force...

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Google’s Search Document Leak: 11 Ranking Factors to Pay Attention to

In March 2024, the SEO community discovered an unprecedented leak of documents that originate from Google’s internal Content API Warehouse. This cache...

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The Future of Search is Here: Google Tests AI-Powered Results with Ads (and What it Means for Your Business)

Exciting news! Google is exploring a new way to connect users with information and businesses like yours. They're testing the integration of...

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Which Performance Max Audience Delivers The Highest Quality Lead?

Opportunity: Performance Max represents Google's cutting-edge campaign type designed to empower advertisers in reaching users across multiple Google Channels, including Google Search,...

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2024 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch For in the Trades

With the digital marketing arena continually evolving, 2024 holds promise for groundbreaking shifts in strategy and approach, especially for businesses involving home...

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5 Quick-Win Link Building Strategies for Business

Boost Your Domain Authority There are so many aspects of your website that affect your SEO (search engine optimization) that it can...

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Micro-Moments: How to Win the “I Want It Now” Moments

What are micro-moments in marketing? Micro-moments are intent-rich moments where consumers turn to their smartphones and Google Search in order to satisfy an instant want. These moments can be broken down into four main groups: I want to know The consumer is researching a product or service but is not necessarily ready to buy. I want to go The consumer is searching for locations near them. This often comes in the form of “near me” or city-specific searches. I want to do The consumer needs new information in...

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Determining a Smart Marketing Budget

Business owners are often asking themselves how much to budget for marketing expenses. While the answer varies from business to business, there...

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Bid Like a Pro with Automated Bidding

Let’s discuss an innovation that your business needs to more effectively compete in the Google advertising race: automated bidding. What is Automated...

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Creating Ad Campaigns in a Variety of Languages

Engaging with your customers in their primary language helps to establish long term meaningful relationships. Writing content is an opportunity to show...

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Email Marketing Made Simple

Email marketing is a cost-effective way to promote your business and connect with your customers. It allows you to get up-to-date messages...

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The Value of Call-Only Ads

As the mobile landscape continues to expand, it is essential to cater your digital advertising efforts to a mobile format. When it...

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The Many Benefits of Facebook Advertising

With 2.60 billion monthly active users, Facebook’s audience is hard for marketers to ignore. In March 2020 alone, Facebook reported 5.7 million...

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Is it Time to Ramp Up Your Marketing?

Although many businesses may be experiencing some uncertainties in the short-term, one thing all business owners can and should do now is...

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$100 Million in Small Business Grants from Facebook!

To help boost small businesses negatively impacted by the current situation, Facebook announced earlier this week they will be giving away $100...

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Online Behaviors Are Changing – Here’s What You Can Do.

The stay at home order has brought about many challenges for small businesses and EMSC remains committed to ensuring the health of...

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Social Media Advertising with EMSC

The most compelling way to expand the reach of your business’ social media profiles and grow the number of people following them...

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Why Your Business Needs Google Search Ads

For many businesses, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google’s Search Network is the fastest and most cost-effective way to get in front of...

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Updating Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2020

One thing that we can always count on regarding digital marketing is that it is ever-changing. Think about it: It wasn’t so long ago that posting to Google+ was an important aspect of a digital marketing strategy. As trends change in the world of digital marketing, make sure that your company is following suit. At EM Search Consulting, we are always researching new trends and ensuring that our clients’ strategy reflects what is important in their industry, as well as what is important to the digital world at...

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The Importance of Landing Pages for Your Paid Advertising Campaigns

Landing pages are an indispensable part of paid advertising campaigns and more specifically, lead generation efforts. A landing page is a stand-alone...

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5 Digital Marketing Trends for 2020

Now that we’ve officially started a new decade, it’s time to turn our attention to the emerging marketing trends. Voice Search Over...

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Industry Conversion Rates: Are You Beating the Competition?

Do your digital marketing results stack up against the competition? Unbounce, a leading marketing company, used artificial intelligence (AI) technology to analyze...

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How to Effectively Utilize Remarketing Ads

We are all familiar with the feeling that advertisers are following us around the internet. This happens because advertisers are utilizing remarketing,...

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How to Effectively Use Your YouTube Page

YouTube Is Powerful YouTube is the second largest search engine. Users are viewing more than 180 million hours of video every day,...

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More About Responsive Search Ads

You may remember a newsletter from us a few months back that introduced responsive search ads, or you may already be aware...

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Introducing: Our New & Improved Reporting Platform

EMSC is excited to roll out an enhanced reporting platform as soon as this week, which will include a 100% transparent dashboard...

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2019 Marketing Trends That May Affect Your Business Directly

With the rise of technological advancements, marketing trends are changing almost daily. It’s important to keep up with these changes as it...

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Store Visits Conversion in Google Ads

Are Store Visits Important to Your Business? If visits to a physical store like a car dealership, office, hotel, or store are...

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Google Ads is Removing the Average Position Metric: What This Means for Your Business

Digital marketing is constantly changing, and it’s important to keep up with the changes that impact the industry. Google, an obvious industry...

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How to Effectively Use Google Business Posts

A properly claimed, verified, and optimized GMB profile is one of the best and easiest ways to make your business stand out...

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What Are Bumper Ads?

In today’s digital world, we are constantly bombarded with distractions such as emails, Instagram notifications, texts, alarms, or whatever alert is popping...

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How to Build an Effective Google Business Page

In today’s world, we are accustomed to having a huge amount of information at our fingertips. That being said, why would anyone...

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Your Google Ads Quality Score & Why It Is Important

To run a successful PPC campaign, it’s important to understand quality score and the influence it has on both the effectiveness and...

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Best Tactics to Promote a Product or Service Launch

If done correctly, digital marketing can play a crucial role in spreading the word about your new product or service. Use these...

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What Customers Want From Your Social Media

Whether your business is big or small, using social media to market your brand is no longer optional. Social media delivers measurable...

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Frequently Asked Digital Marketing Questions

In the world of digital marketing, it is nearly impossible to know everything about this ever-changing discipline as a business owner. This...

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Amplify Your Online Reviews

Where’s the first place you check before trying a new place of business? You guessed it: online. Ninety-seven percent of participants said...

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The Importance of Personalizing your Website

In any industry, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses competing for the same customers in a given geography.  Not only...

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Where Do You Direct Your Paid Traffic?

Directing paid traffic to your website can be an effective strategy, but did you know you can also direct your paid traffic to a conversion page...

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Impression Share: What is it?

Your impression share is the number of impressions that you have received divided by the estimated number of impressions that you were...

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Are You New To Google Analytics? Here’s What To Look At:

When it comes to using Google Analytics, you may find yourself wondering what areas deserve your attention and what areas aren’t as...

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What It Means to be a Google Premier Partner

When you sign up to work with our team at EM Search Consulting, you trust that we have the expertise to guide...

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Just In: Customer Testimonial GBP Posts

By now, we are all aware of the importance of customer reviews. Positive customer reviews are a testament to your business, helping...

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Digital Marketing FAQs

Digital marketing is best described as marketing that reaches people who use Internet-connected electronic devices. It can reach computers, tablets, and smartphones....

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Straight Outta Beta: Responsive Search Ads

That’s the great thing about Google Ads: it’s never satisfied with current functionality. Google Ads now offers responsive search ads (still in...

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Keep the Momentum Going: Q2 is Around the Corner

Quarter one is rapidly coming to a close. Can you believe that 2019 is already one-fourth over? If that sends you into...

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Google Ad Extensions & How They Help Your Business

When it comes to your business ranking on Google, every competitive edge helps. One way to get an extra leg up on...

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Seasonality & Your Business

The official start of spring is around the corner, and our team at EMSC couldn’t be more excited to swap our snow...

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Why You Need Call Tracking

Compared to website leads, phone calls convert to revenue 10 – 15 times more often. Shouldn’t we know where these conversions are...

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Are You Using Remarketing? You Should Be.

At one point or another, we’ve all found ourselves browsing a company’s site and contemplating purchasing a good or service, only to...

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The Importance of Review Management Software

When’s the last time that you willingly purchased a good or service from a company that has negative reviews? If you answered...

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Dialing-in Lead Attribution with Your CRM

CRM, or customer-relationship management, is the way in which your company manages interactions with both current and future customers. The goal of...

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Chatbots & Customer Experience

Your business has a lot to accomplish every day. Responding to client requests manually can take hours and many of your clients prefer...

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A Beginner’s Guide to Google Knowledge Graphs

Tips on Obtaining a Google Knowledge Panel When you search for a particular business or individual on Google, you’ll see a large box on the right hand side of the page results. This contains information such as address, hours, phone number, appointments, Q&A, reviews, posts, popular times, and more. Essentially, everything that a consumer would want to know about a business is located in the Knowledge Panel. There are two types of Knowledge Panels, and they differ based on the process of verification: Local panels are verified via...

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Video Marketing: What’s the Big Deal?

Put video marketing at the top of your to-do list for 2019. It’s no surprise that consumers want information and they want it now. What better way to do so than via video? Videos are versatile, easy to digest, and have the potential to deliver a huge ROI. In fact, 72 percent of businesses say that video has improved their conversion rate and 70 percent of consumers report sharing a brand’s video. Why Videos? Build brand trustEducate consumers about your product or serviceReplicate face-to-face interactionsCasual, engaging updates What Platforms...

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Your 2019 Budget & Strategy

The time to say goodbye to 2018 is right around the corner, meaning it’s time to focus our attention on what 2019 has to offer! After the champagne bottles are empty and the confetti is thrown, start to think about how your business could improve in the upcoming year. Below are some of the top digital marketing trends for 2019: Online Review Solutions Review quantity and quality is a primary ranking factor for Google Local Listings. We offer software that helps you get more authentic customer reviews. Facebook...

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Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

With the exponential growth of digital marketing, it can be difficult to determine the dos and don’ts necessary to create the best...

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Online Reviews: Get on Board

With the rise of native advertising, suspicious social media content, and more phone and email scams than we can count, consumers are...

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Directory Listing Scams

Proper SEO management will include directory listings, which is essentially listing your company on different sites throughout the Internet and making sure...

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Social Media Marketing: What’s the Big Deal?

There are one million new active users on social media every day. In 2017 alone, there were 2.80 billion social media users...

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The Importance of Call Tracking For Your Business

The Importance of Call Tracking For Your Business Online activity tracking is a staple for marketers and business owners in our current...

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Importance of Proper Reporting

When you hire a company for a service, you may get a regular report on your progress. This is common for many...

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Where Should I Allocate My Budget?

There are so many marketing platforms online that it can feel overwhelming trying to decide where to spend your budget. You only...

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User Experience Can Make All The Difference

Whether you run a small local startup or a giant well-known company, your end goal is often the same – giving your...

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Professional Photography Means More Business

All-too-often, we run into businesses that fail to see the value in professional photography for their websites. We find sites with outdated...

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EMSC Goes to Google

On October 11-12, the EMSC team was able to go to the Google office in the West Loop of Chicago for an AdWords Bootcamp. Our team spent two days learning about new techniques in AdWords, best practices for our clients, mobile solutions, and much more. At EMSC, we are always looking to continue our education about digital marketing as a whole, and especially with tools that our clients continually use. Although our company is a Google Premier Partner, meaning that we are in the top 3% of all...

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How Can Pokémon Go Benefit Your Business?

July 6, 2016 marks the launch of the biggest mobile game in history: Pokémon Go. The mobile app now has more active users than Twitter spending more time playing than time spent on Facebook. It is hard to walk around the city of Chicago without seeing at least 5 active Pokémon players. It is fair to say that the Pokémon Go phenomenon is sweeping across the country. But game players may not be the only ones getting on the action - business owners are finding ways to benefit...

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Using RLSAs Intelligently

Remarketing Remarketing is a powerful tool that has come a long way. It allows us as businesses to capture some of the most valuable eyes browsing the web—those who have already viewed our sites and products. Early remarketing was known to have its flaws, but luckily the technology at Google AdWords has improved over the years. Google introduced RLSAs, or Remarketing Lists for Search Ads so that businesses could more intelligently target their remarketing efforts. RLSAs allow us to segment our audiences and customize our remarketing solutions for...

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Live Chat Company

Have you considered using live chat for your website? If not, its time you do. Live chat has been proven to increase conversion rates on your site, improve user experience and help your website work harder for you even when your business is closed for the night. In fact, 90% of your website visitors see live chat as useful and 63% are more likely to return to your site because it offers live chat. In Chicago we see a lot of websites using live chat for years. If...

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Google Certified Partners In Chicago

EM Search Consulting is proud to be a Google certified partner. For the past several years we have been certified in adwords, analytics, display advertising and much more. This means we have taken all the test and passed all the proper protocol to run intelligent internet marketing programs for our clients. We are also proud to announce that we rank in the top 5% of all Google partners across the United States. This means that when you hire us to manage your pay-per-click advertising you know you are...

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How Your Small PPC Budget Can Compete

Forbes recently wrote a great article detailing how smaller companies can compete with Pay Per Click advertising against bigger competitors with bigger budgets. A lot of this is routine knowledge for PPC professionals but it is great information to digest if you own a small budget of have ever wondered how your business could possibly compete with the bigger spenders in your area. Basically, think about your biggest profit centers and target more of the precise ways people would search for those products and services. We work with a lot...

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How to Solicit Reviews With Google

If your business is like most businesses then you have probably tried (and possibly failed) to solicit more positive reviews online. Everyone knows that Yelp is a tough review site to crack so you may have tried Google. Google is great because all it requires is a gmail and your customers don't need to have written countless reviews for their glowing sentiment about you to be shown. However, you may have been going about it incorrectly. If you send any type of email marketing or social marketing with...

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Are You Ready For Mobilegeddon in Chicago?

Google has officially launched "mobilegeddon" and your site could be in severe danger of losing its current rank or falling further into the archives of search if you do not pass the mobile test. Organic results on mobile devices will now have a bias towards sites that are considered mobile friendly. To find out if your site is mobile friendly you can take the mobile friendly test . This announcement is not new as it was originally announced earlier this year but today is the day that the update began...

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Local Business Listing Power

Verifying your local business listing is one of the most important steps you can take when trying to increase your online exposure. Not only is it important from a business branding standpoint but it is also very important when it comes to search engine optimization. Many clients have been asking me what to do and how to make sure these pages are optimized properly. Below are some of the most important steps to take when it comes to optimizing your local business listing. If you haven't yet claimed your...

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Your Yelp Reviews Never Sounded Better

Stumbling upon a negative Yelp review about your business can be unsettling, aggravating and downright the worst. Gotta Kid to Feed Productions has published a YouTube channel with videos of seasoned actors and award-winning narrators reading real Yelp reviews of actual businesses. If you had to discover a negative review one way or another, wouldn't it be nice to this way? Start watching >

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