It’s that time of month where we explore tools you can use and add to your toolbox. This month we are looking at podcasting tools, a Schema Markup Generator, citation management and a review management platform.
Buckle up!
Podcast: How to start your podcast on a budget. Robert Cairns – slide deck.
Stunning Digital Marketing’s Rob Cairns attended the PodCamp in Toronto this past weekend. He presented “How to start your podcast on a budget.”Â
How to start your podcast on a budget.
How to start your podcast on a budget resource list PDF.
This link is to his slide deck on SlideShare. He provided it for us (see above).
In his slide deck he mentioned several tools he uses for free or low price such as Audacity, Zecanstr, headphones, recording equipment including microphones, and much more. These tools can help you get up and running for a reasonable amount of money and without breaking the bank.
Additionally, he provides a link to a PDF file which has links to places where you can buy these tools for podcasting.
You may not be planning on doing your own podcast, but you may be interviewed on a podcast and so some of those tools will come in handy.
Schema Markup generator
Working on a project recently, I learned about Local Schema Markup.
Here is the thing friends, I knew about Schema Markup, that is true, but I had never heard about markup for local businesses.
I will admit JSON is not a language I know a lot about, so I was thrilled to find out you can generate the code.
One of those tools is provided by Merkle.Â
Merkle has a nice schema markup generator and there you can fill out your local business schema.
That’s not all. Merkle has a plethora of other SEO tools.
The tools include a Mobile-First Index Tool, .htaccess Tester, a Sitemap Generator, Mobile-Friendly Test, and more.Â
It is a nice suite of tools all the way around!
Citation management
I was thinking about how twenty years ago, everyone felt they needed to be in the Yellow Pages. Remember those?Â
My how things have changed over the years. Few people, especially under 40 years old, know what a Yellow Pages are.
We realized over a decade ago that search engines were more important. Hence, Alta Vista (wait, that doesn’t exist anymore), Yahoo (come again?), and Google (now we’re getting somewhere).
Do you remember when you used to submit your website to multiple search engines manually? Do you remember when you did that for directories across the internet?Â
Physical location businesses critically need to keep business citations up to date.
There are several tools that help with this, including BrightLocal. BrightLocal is one I have used to monitor a business listing to help with local SEO.
But, there are others!Â
This article in Search Engine Journal outlines a few of the other citation management tools.
SEMRush has a citation management tool that has a free element for a citation scan.
What do you use for local business citation management?Â
Professional Review Management – Trustindex
I found Trustindex to be helpful in managing review sites for a client.Â
For me, the major plus was being able to import these reviews to her website using their widget system.
To be sure, we use Trustindex for Google and Facebook. I can add those reviews easily and it updates the reviews as they come through.Â
If you have a local and/or service business client, this can serve as a hub for the various platforms that host reviews and directories.
The price is rather reasonable and something you that can easily be a value add. After all, if you choose to use a plugin, a good premium plugin will cost as well.
Trustindex has 128 review platforms you can integrate into your account.Â
They help with other areas of review management, including emailing clients to leave reviews and more.Â
Wrapping it up
Using the tools mentioned above, you can start your podcast on a budget, manage reviews and citations, and generate schema markup.
Let us know if you use any of these tools in the MainWP Users Facebook Group.
