Search engine optimization for local businesses and SMBs is becoming more difficult and competitive. Local SEO best practices are continuously changing to keep up with new features that search engines add to how they display search results for local search queries. For local businesses and SMBs, there are generally three main types of local SEO strategy categories to concentrate on:
Among these three main categories, there are specific strategies that will help optimize your local presence, ultimately bringing more traffic and visibility. Let’s look at each of these local SEO strategies in more detail. Then, I’ll list even more local SEO strategies and quick tips that you might not have thought of yet. Optimizing Local Listings & CitationsLet’s start with your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) data. In order to get listed and ranked in Google Maps, you need to be a legitimate business, and in some areas, you’ll need a business license (depending on the type of business you’re in). That NAP needs to be consistent and listed the same everywhere or you’ll have problems later on. Before you get started with local listings and citations, you’ll also need the following:
The main strategy for local listings and local citations is to get as many as feasible in the right category, with consistent information such as your NAP data. Local citations are mentions of a local business, which includes NAP data. Local citations may or may not include a link to your website. There are generally two strategies for getting local citations:
Taking the time to get local citations yourself can be a really big project, especially if you’re in a competitive industry in your area. Competitors could have up to hundreds of thousands of local citations, which is nearly impossible to do manually. If you’re a local business (SMB) in a fairly non-competitive market, then getting a handful of local citations manually is a good strategy. If that’s the case, a non-competitive local SEO strategy for local citations is to get these listings:
The last two on the list are specific to certain industries, and you’ll want to search certain directories that are specific to your local business’ industry. Typically, these are easy to find — they’ll rank in the top 10 search results (on the first page). Submitting to directories (and getting listed) will allow your local business to take advantage of what’s often referred to as “barnacle SEO.” Your business gets listed on pages on other websites that rank well for a certain keyword you’re targeting. So for “Dallas carpenters”, Google lists sites like homeadvisor.com, thumbtack.com, houzz.com, and angieslist.com. Getting listed on those sites will bring the business leads, as they’re ranking well in Google. Once you have secured (and verified) those local listings, the next local SEO strategy is to get listed with the main data aggregators. There are four:
The data aggregators will take the information of the local business and aggregate it (make it available for literally thousands of websites to use). Be sure you’re using the correct NAP data and website URLs, as once the data aggregators get hold of your data, it’s tough to get it corrected and updated and can take quite some time. Using a Third Party for Local Citations & ListingsAnother local SEO strategy is to outsource local citations and listings. Several third-party businesses allow you to submit your local business listing to them (the NAP data, short and long descriptions, URLs, etc.), and they will then use their connections to get that data on other websites. Many have agreements with certain data providers, and can efficiently get hundreds, thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of local citations. These third-party services include:
Some of these services are better than others, mainly because of the agreements they have with other websites and their technology. Some submit to only 30 websites, and others like Advice Local will end up getting a local business thousands upon thousands of local citations, many of which include a link to the website. Be wary of any third-party websites that set up a local listing on behalf of the local business but won’t give the local business the login and password for those listings. Reviews Are KeyGetting reviews of your local business, especially on Google, is going to help rankings and it will encourage others to visit your business. People do read reviews online, especially for service-type businesses (hotels, resorts, carpet cleaners, home inspectors, carpenters, and even car dealerships). So if your local business is a service-type business or another business where reviews are important, then creating a good strategy for dealing with reviews is key. Local businesses need to request and encourage their customers to leave a review. There are a lot of ways to encourage customers to leave a review. Some businesses post a plaque at the business asking for reviews. Other SMBs encourage reviews by offering a “prize” each month to a random reviewer (one local business I frequent gives away an Apple iPad once a month to a random reviewer). The local business should respond to reviews just as quickly as they are left, regardless if it’s a positive or negative review. If it’s a positive review or comment, thank the customer for leaving a review. If it’s negative, deal with it quickly and offer to take the issue offline to minimize any future problems and the negative review getting out of hand. Too many local businesses will take the time to verify their local listings but won’t properly deal with reviews and respond to them in a timely manner. Local businesses should take the time to develop a strategy for encouraging reviews, tell employees what that strategy is, and designate one or two people to respond to reviews. Here are a few other ways to manage reviews:
Reviews sent directly to the business can be posted on the company’s website (with the permission of the customer). Reviews left on a third-party website (like on Google, Yelp, etc.) cannot be copied and posted on the company’s website. Reviews on third-party websites have in fact been given extra weight lately by Google. So sites like these, where customers can leave reviews and feedback, could potentially help with local rankings on Google:
Another way to get more local reviews is to create a postcard or handout that’s given to customers. Tell them you’d like their feedback, and use that feedback to make your business even better. They can leave you a review on your website, or on any of these third-party websites (list the websites where you’d like them to leave a review). Optimizing Your Local Website’s ContentWithout going into too much detail about optimizing a local website, there are several on-site local SEO strategies that are important to consider:
Optimize for “Near Me” Search QueriesLately, there has been an upswing in the number of search queries that include the phrase “near me,” such as “restaurants near me” or “pharmacies near me.” Those two search queries assume the search engine knows where the searcher is located. Local SEO Guide recently published a list of “near me” local SEO ranking factors. These include:
Local SEO Guide found that for “near me” searches, you only really have to be located in the city in order to show up in the results for keyword queries that include “near me.” They found that “being closer doesn’t necessarily mean you rank higher.” There are, however, things you can do to influence the rankings:
Work on getting more backlinks specifically to your individual location pages that include “city name + keyword” in the anchor text of the links. Be a Local Content MachineOne interesting tactic or “local SEO strategy” I’ve seen lately that works well is becoming a local content machine. Essentially, by adding a blog to your local business website and writing about local news and events, you’re producing content that others in the city will want to read and share, especially on social networks. While you’re not necessarily writing about your local business, you’re branding the business locally. When someone wants or needs a company’s services, they’ll think of your business first since they’ve seen it so much online. A local auto accident and personal injury attorney hired a writer to write articles every single day about accidents in their city. While they weren’t targeting the actual victims they wrote about, the social media shares went up dramatically and the attorney got his name out there in front of people in the city. Those social media shares did end up creating links to the website, which in turn helped local rankings. Buy a Local Website or BlogIf you’re looking to add a lot of content fairly quickly to your local business website, consider purchasing a local website that already has the content you need. It could be a local hobby website with local news or articles, or it could be a local blog that has the content. Perhaps the owner doesn’t have the heart to keep up with the content like they used to or they could just use the money. Approach a local website or blog about buying their site and incorporating and moving their content over to your local business website. Setting up redirects from the old domain name to your local business website will help pass any link equity and history over to your local business. Optimizing and Working on LinksGoogle’s Possum algorithm update that happened in September 2016 put more of an emphasis on links. More specifically, local links or links from other local businesses and organizations are important. Greg Gifford, from DealerOn.com, recommends that you can “find easy link opportunities by looking at the relationships you already have.” Local sponsorships, local volunteer opportunities, and local offline groups can all lead to local links. Need more ideas for local links? Use Majestic.com to analyze the link profiles of similar businesses in another city. Another local SEO strategy for local links is to get links from competitors. Use a web crawler such as the Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl their website and review all of your competitors’ outgoing links. Then, see if there are any links you can get from websites your competitors are linking to. Essentially those competitors are passing link credit or PageRank to the other website that then passes it to your website. Additional Local SEO TipsThose are a few local SEO strategies that will help local search engine rankings. But if that wasn’t enough, here are a bunch more local SEO tips and pointers that you may not have thought of yet. Local Listings
On-Site Local SEO
Local SEO Audits
Off-Site Local SEO
Final ThoughtsAfter doing local SEO for a lot of businesses over the years, I can’t point to any of these local SEO strategies or tips that will be the one “trick” to getting better local search engine rankings. It’s generally a combination of several (or a lot) of these local SEO strategies that boost a local company’s search engine rankings in both the maps listings and the organic SERPs. Image Credits Featured Image: Unsplash https://www.searchenginejournal.com/local-seo-strategies-smbs/194305/ On – 25 Apr, 2017 By Bill Hartzer from https://andlocal.org/52-local-seo-strategies-for-smbs/
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