This Local SEO Marketing Business Strategy Brings Results That Massively Grow Your Business
CLICK THIS IMAGE to see where my customer shows up on a search for their top keyword. Note the number of positive Google reviews that I also managed. At the time of this update they actually have 592 reviews.
If you pay attention to your website content you can get a ton of quality traffic to your website from search engines; therefore your job as a site owner is to prove to the search engines that your site is valuable and capable of ranking at the top of the first page of the search engines. If you are successful in achieving this then you can increase the traffic to your website and maintain a stable online business. The process of getting top search engine ranking is called search engine optimization (SEO).
This customer also has rankings overpowering their competitors for their most important keyword search. The Google reviews alone indicate the power of their presence, but they have a lot more than Google reviews.
Local SEO has more moving parts than regular, nationwide SEO. In short, it ties the physical location of your local business to other Internet properties and takes into account the online activity in the form of reviews. Experts believe that local SEO rankings are more important than national organic rankings.
A major trend in SEO is an optimized local presence which means that search results are displayed for your local area; the top search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo all practice local search listings. Internet marketing is a technique which helps you to attract a huge crowd towards your website and also enhances the branding of your company. Here are the activities and internet marketing tips that you must complete in order to get top local SEO rankings that will help your business attract local customers.
Google Business Profile is Required
Most Local SEO Ranking Factors lists consider your Google Business Profile as the top ranking factor (by far) to achieve local SEO rankings for your company's products and services. Creating a full profile, and updating it regularly (weekly is ideal) with posts and photos will make a huge difference in your local rankings. You can create offers and setup bookings in your profile, and the more you use all of the capabilities of your profile to the fullest, the more Google loves you for it.
You also need to setup a Google Search Console account and Google Analytics (GA4) so you can track the health of your website.
Pro Tip: Make sure that all of the photos you place on your profile (and your website, for that matter) have been taken within the geographical area you service. The meta-data in the .jpg images contain latitude and longitude, and when they are from your service area, the photos count a lot more towards your local SEO rankings.
Setup a Bing Places for Business Profile
Yes, SEO is primarily about Google, but Bing is out there, and you don't want to ignore it. Just like your Google Business Profile, setup a Bing Places for Business account so you will be sure to catch all of the web searchers out there.
You Need a Mobile-Friendly Website
If you don't have a mobile-friendly website as defined by Google then you can assume that you will not get any top local rankings. As of April 21, 2015 Google is penalizing websites for not being mobile-friendly. You can test your sites mobile friendliness on this Google Mobile-Friendly test page.
Keyword Analysis: Focus on Location-Specific Keywords
Top Keywords Found on This Page
Selecting a proper keyword an important place to start; select keywords relevant to your business and location. This is important because if you choose irrelevant keywords for your site then you will definitely lose your customers as they will never reach your website. Selecting a proper keyword not only gets you good traffic but also boosts your performance with the search engine. This local keyword tool is great to use once your main keywords are known. You type in a zip code and service radius and it generates keywords for each of the cities within that radius.
Finalize and JSON-LD or Schema Code Your Company Information
You need to put your important company information into the correct format, then install it onto your website. it essentially allows Google to take this structured information and put it into their database. You can go to the JSON-LD or micro data code generators to create the proper code to install onto your site. There are also several examples at Google and a detailed discussion here. It is worth getting this right, because the results of this effort are going to be compared to your network listings discussed next. Once you have the right code you must install it onto your website. It must be installed in the <head>code here</head> section of your website. WordPress has plugins that will do this for you.
Place Your Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) On Every Page
A very important local ranking factor is to finalize the name, address and phone number (NAP) of your business, then put your NAP on each page of your website; this is important as you can gain more local customers only when you re-enforce your geographical location and that is possible only when you put your completed address on your website pages. This will help you in getting many unique visitors to your website and help you in turning these visitors into customers.
List Your NAP in the ALL of the Local Citation Sites Important to Your Business
Google doesn't just make local ranking decisions based on the content of your own website. They get information from many other sources, many of them. See this diagram from MOZ that shows where Google US gets their information:
You need to go to the most important citation sites, claim your account then complete it with proper categories for your business, all of your company's information, images, and videos. Google checks these sites for your NAP, and the more places they find a consistent and complete listing alongside your NAP, the more credit they give you and the higher your local rankings will be.
Manage Honest Reviews
Once you have claimed your citation site accounts you want to get reviews in all of the citation sites most important to your business and locality. Google is the most important. You must be absolutely squeaky clean and not stuff any of them with fake reviews. If you cross the line by posting fake reviews, then you'll most certainly be discovered and kicked out of Google altogether. If that happens at Google or Yelp then it can seriously hurt your business. A Harvard Business School study showed that "a restaurant that boosts its Yelp score by one full star can see revenues increase 5 to 9 percent", so you want to protect your citation accounts.
Done For You Local Small Business Marketing
If you more sales from top local rankings then complete the form at the top-right and we'll do it all for you at extremely reasonable prices. We not only manage it all, but we improve dramatically on the service and results that you can achieve on your own, just ask how. Hey, we're in the business! Complete the form at the top-right of this page and we'll be in touch within 24 hours.