How is Local SEO different from National SEO?
Can you outline a brief action plan you’d recommend for new company looking to compete for local search results?
First, claim your local listing on Google Places, and make sure to complete your listing until it’s at 100%. This will require adding images, videos, and more. When creating this listing, DO NOT use any keywords or location names in your business title or business description that aren’t a part of your official business name or absolutely critical to accurately describing your business.
While all of the elements that apply to national SEO also impact local SEO (on-page factors, links, social, indexing, etc.), local comes with a few unique elements.
The first and probably most important is that for local SEO you need to create and claim a local profile on Google (and other platforms as desired.) Your local listing is what will show (usually) for localized search results.
The second most important thing is called a "citation". A citation is any place online that uses your company (name, address, phone number) all on the same page, in the same format as your local listing. It is extremely important that you include these details always in the same way regardless of where you will provide a citation. This is just to help Google index your business address more effectively and will help you not lose a potential citation because you have listed it in a different format and Google has mistaken it for another business address. So for example if your business address is 113 Gauden Road Clapham SW4 7BQ, it is imperative that you stick to this format everywhere.
Third, reviews are extremely important. The more reviews that can be left on your Google Places page the better and the more authentic the reviews that you have with both good and bad reviews wil add genuinity to your business and make people more believe that your business is human after all. This is an important ranking factor. In a previous post I highlighted a number of ways for you as a practice to get reviews.
How does on-site optimization differ for Local SEO vs. National SEO?
All of the same elements apply, but there are four things you should strongly consider mixing in. One, make sure your name, address and phone number are used on every page of your site, in the same format as your Google local listing (in the footer is an ideal location.) Two, use your City and County names in your Title tags, Meta descriptions, and the content on your site (as it fits, don’t just force it in there.) Three, make use of Schema Local Mark Up to better help search engines identify and show your location.
All of the same elements apply, but there are four things you should strongly consider mixing in. One, make sure your name, address and phone number are used on every page of your site, in the same format as your Google local listing (in the footer is an ideal location.) Two, use your City and County names in your Title tags, Meta descriptions, and the content on your site (as it fits, don’t just force it in there.) Three, make use of Schema Local Mark Up to better help search engines identify and show your location.
What are the most important signals that boost local SEO rankings?
The three biggest factors in local listings appear to be the number of citations, the number of reviews (primarily on your Google Places listing, though other places do count), and how positive the reviews are overall. Positive reviews do beat citations for obvious reasons, so persuading your customers and clients to leave great reviews on your Google local page is the single most important thing you can do. Of course, there are some things that have a big impact and that may not be directly in your control, such as how close your business is to the city center. I will include a later post on how to set up Google Places account.
What does the location of a business close to a town center have to do with anything?
Google uses something commonly called “centroid bias”, which means that if someone searches for, say, Clapham Physiotherapist, there will be a bias towards the physiotherapist locations that are closest to the center of the city. While it is possible for a business in a neighboring city to rank for a metro keyword (i.e. a business in Cambridge trying to rank for a Boston keyword), if you’re on the outskirts of a city, or in a city neighbouring a major metropolitan area, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.
Can you outline a brief action plan you’d recommend for new company looking to compete for local search results?
First, claim your local listing on Google Places, and make sure to complete your listing until it’s at 100%. This will require adding images, videos, and more. When creating this listing, DO NOT use any keywords or location names in your business title or business description that aren’t a part of your official business name or absolutely critical to accurately describing your business.
Second, use a service like Yext to make sure that the information from your Google Places page is spread across all of the other major local platforms, in the same format. Each of these will become a citation, which is hugely valuable.
Next, make sure you have your on-site SEO in order, and that at least some of the links you build contain your target City/County combo (you can also use some postal codes in your anchors as well, to spice things up.)
Last but not least, do everything you can to get your happy customers to leave positive reviews for you on Google Places. You aren’t supposed to directly solicit positive reviews, but there are plenty of ways to encourage great reviews.
What are some of the best ways a local practice can use to get citations
You can use a tool like the White Spart Local Citation Finder to locate the best citation sources for your city. There are many other tools available to find citations but industrywide this one is recommended and easy to use. Guest blog posts are also a fantastic way to get citations, as you can often work them into your author bio. The only thing is it will take time to build relationships with bloggers, this is the time that it takes them to feel confident in you and do some research into you to see what type of content you write and if you would be a good fit in with their practice. Obviously you will need to measure this vs the time you have and necessities of the practice to make money.
You can use a tool like the White Spart Local Citation Finder to locate the best citation sources for your city. There are many other tools available to find citations but industrywide this one is recommended and easy to use. Guest blog posts are also a fantastic way to get citations, as you can often work them into your author bio. The only thing is it will take time to build relationships with bloggers, this is the time that it takes them to feel confident in you and do some research into you to see what type of content you write and if you would be a good fit in with their practice. Obviously you will need to measure this vs the time you have and necessities of the practice to make money.
How can a local practice get reviews?
Let your customers or clients know that they can rate their experience with you on your Google Places profile. Have logos up in your windows or in your office showing the places where people can leave reviews. Include your profile links in your email communications (particularly in follow-up emails after a purchase or visit), direct mail, and anywhere else you can think of to get it in front of customers. Bear in mind to get positive reviews you need to provide excellent service and engage your customer to make them fell that they are special and that your business is special as well that they want to go back and tell their friends, they want to talk about you on Twitter and Facebook. You get positive reviews by providing an "excellent service". Nuff said.
Let your customers or clients know that they can rate their experience with you on your Google Places profile. Have logos up in your windows or in your office showing the places where people can leave reviews. Include your profile links in your email communications (particularly in follow-up emails after a purchase or visit), direct mail, and anywhere else you can think of to get it in front of customers. Bear in mind to get positive reviews you need to provide excellent service and engage your customer to make them fell that they are special and that your business is special as well that they want to go back and tell their friends, they want to talk about you on Twitter and Facebook. You get positive reviews by providing an "excellent service". Nuff said.
One of the things you are encouraged to avoid is going out and buying links. A few years back this was common practice but now it is not something that is advised and most of the major search engines will look down very badly on you if you are caught out which means you could lose your site rankings and positions which will affect your business bottom line. Once you have lost these rankings it may be extremely difficult to get them back
Will getting your practice in directories help?
Getting your practice placed in local directories will help immensely and the easy way to do this is simply finding what local directories exist in your local area and get yourself a listing. Say for example I have my practice in Clapham all I have to do to find the relevant local directories is to do a google search with the search query;
directories "clapham"
Is it recommended for a practice to do its own SEO or an SEO expert?
What are the pros and cons of each? This depends entirely on your budget. There are plenty of guides out there that will walk you through local SEO, and you could quite easily put an intern in charge of reading those posts and following instructions (getting citations isn’t terribly complex.) Of course, if they mess things up, neither you nor they may realize it until it’s far too late. An agency will almost certainly be able to do the same things much, much faster, and while an agency may cost more upfront it might end up being worth it for the speed and accuracy.
Getting your practice placed in local directories will help immensely and the easy way to do this is simply finding what local directories exist in your local area and get yourself a listing. Say for example I have my practice in Clapham all I have to do to find the relevant local directories is to do a google search with the search query;
directories "clapham"
Is it recommended for a practice to do its own SEO or an SEO expert?
What are the pros and cons of each? This depends entirely on your budget. There are plenty of guides out there that will walk you through local SEO, and you could quite easily put an intern in charge of reading those posts and following instructions (getting citations isn’t terribly complex.) Of course, if they mess things up, neither you nor they may realize it until it’s far too late. An agency will almost certainly be able to do the same things much, much faster, and while an agency may cost more upfront it might end up being worth it for the speed and accuracy.
Are there any specific services, websites, or tools that help companies with local SEO?
The WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder should be your first investment. It’s pretty cheap, about $16/mo, and is the best tool available for finding citation sources. You’ll also want to set-up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, so that you can effectively track what keywords are driving search impressions and traffic to your site.
The WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder should be your first investment. It’s pretty cheap, about $16/mo, and is the best tool available for finding citation sources. You’ll also want to set-up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, so that you can effectively track what keywords are driving search impressions and traffic to your site.
Is Local SEO an ongoing effort, or is it something I need to do one off and that is it?
There is alway a cost for an SEO service but the most important thing is that is SEO is an ongoing effort to be able to reap the rewards in the future and for a small business the need to bring in customers and show the effect on bottomline immediately may for some outweigh any benefits that may arise from anyone coming in and helping you out with your SEO effort in the long term if you are only going to use him for one month and then stop. Rome was not built in a day and just as things change in life your rankings in the search engines will change as well so to reap the benefits local SEO is a longe term project. The most important thing is that as a customer you need to be able to measure what your ROI is from these efforts. So if you establish that you need a local SEO service for six months costing £200 per month then you know that in six months the amount you have invested needs to be at least doubled in revenue from your SEO effort for it to be worhwhile.
Do I have to get a mobile version of my website?For the past few years everyone has been saying that it is the year of the mobile. In 2013 mobile and tablet use is expected to overtake desktop access to the internet. So this will have an effect on my local SEO efforts. To make sure that my local SEO efforts are optimised, you should
There is alway a cost for an SEO service but the most important thing is that is SEO is an ongoing effort to be able to reap the rewards in the future and for a small business the need to bring in customers and show the effect on bottomline immediately may for some outweigh any benefits that may arise from anyone coming in and helping you out with your SEO effort in the long term if you are only going to use him for one month and then stop. Rome was not built in a day and just as things change in life your rankings in the search engines will change as well so to reap the benefits local SEO is a longe term project. The most important thing is that as a customer you need to be able to measure what your ROI is from these efforts. So if you establish that you need a local SEO service for six months costing £200 per month then you know that in six months the amount you have invested needs to be at least doubled in revenue from your SEO effort for it to be worhwhile.
Do I have to get a mobile version of my website?For the past few years everyone has been saying that it is the year of the mobile. In 2013 mobile and tablet use is expected to overtake desktop access to the internet. So this will have an effect on my local SEO efforts. To make sure that my local SEO efforts are optimised, you should
- make sure your website is optimised to work on mobiles and tablets
- your business is listed on Apple Maps
- your Google+ listings is displayed in Google Maps
- your business is listed in all prominent local apps (for example; I did a search for Clapham for this and I got back 2-3 apps which were relevant to my area)
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