If you work in the SEO industry, you need to understand how to do Local SEO. Seriously.. I'm not kidding here... If you're sitting there thinking "Um, no... not really" - then you're exactly the person I'm writing this post for.
If you haven't already, I can pretty much guarantee you that at some point in your SEO career, you're going to do some SEO for a business that has a physical storefront. BOOM - that means Local SEO. Sure, you've still got to do all the traditional SEO things that you do every day for all your clients, but when you're talking about a physical location, Local SEO is absolutely necessary.
If you're thinking "But Greg - If I do all the SEO stuff I'm supposed to do, I'll still get the site to rank organically..." - you still aren't getting it. If you add some Local SEO to the mix, you can show up in organic results AND the map pack (clients love that, so you should too). Plus, showing up in the map pack or the Local Carousel is incredibly important when a business is trying to pull in customers from the immediate area. Also, the map pack results show up ABOVE the organic results on mobile, and we all know that mobile is blowing up.
So if you've never paid any attention to Local SEO, it's time to start lifting, bro. I'm going to give you a simple workout plan to help you beef up your Local SEO muscles, and with a little practice, you'll be playing with the big boys in no time.
You should already know how to optimize a website, and if you don't, there are a ton of awesome posts here on Moz. When you're working on your optimizations, there are some important elements that you need to concentrate on for Local SEO. These elements are extremely important on your landing pages for your Google Plus Local listings (more commonly known now as "Google My Business Places Plus Local For Business"). If your business has multiple locations, you should have a unique location landing page for each Google Plus Local listing. you're dealing with a single location, then we're talking about your home page - but these elements should also be locally optimized on product and services pages.
- City and state in the title tag. Arguably one of the most important places to include city/state information. We've seen many small businesses jump up in local rankings from this alone.
- City and state in H1 heading. Hold on, don't interrupt. I know it doesn't HAVE to be an H1 heading... So whatever heading you've got on the page, it's important to also have your city/state info included.
- City and state in URL. Obviously, this can't happen on your home page, but on other pages, including the city/state info in the URL can be a powerful signal of local relevance.
- City and state in content. Clearly, it's important to include your city/state info in your content.
- City and state in alt tags. We see far too many local business sites that don't even use alt text on their images. Make sure you've got alt text on all your images, and make sure that you're including city/state info in your alt text.
- City and state in meta description. Yes, we all know that the meta description doesn't play into the ranking algorithm... but including city/state info can really boost clickthrough rate for local search results.
- Include an embedded Google Map. Including an embedded Google Map is important too, but PLEASE make sure you do it correctly. You don't want to just embed a map that points to your address... You want to embed a map that points to your actual Google Plus Local listing.
Most of the Local SEOs who really live and breathe local agree that citations aren't the amazing powerful weapon that they used to be... but that doesn't mean they're not still incredibly important. If you don't know what a citation is, it's commonly referred to as NAP information in Local SEO circles - Name, Address, and Phone number. Google expects local businesses to have their NAP information on certain other websites (Yelp, social media sites, etc.), so if you don't have citations on the important sites, or your citation information is incorrect, it can really hurt how your business is ranking.
While they're not the silver bullet for rankings that they used to be, they're still an important signal for local relevancy. Here's may favorite example... We were hired to do the SEO for a car dealership just outside of New Orleans last fall. The dealer spent tons of money on radio and TV ads and was very well known in the local area, but he didn't understand why he wasn't showing up in local searches.
Within about 30 seconds of looking at his site, we knew exactly what the problem was. The correct spelling of his dealership name is "Deal'N Doug's Autoplex" - but he had his own business name misspelled five different ways on his home page alone:
- Dean'N Dougs Autoplex
- Deal' N Doug's Autoplex
- Deal'N Doug's Auto Plex
- Dealn Dougs Autoplex
- Deal n Dougs Autoplex
We did a quick citation evaluation, and sure enough, he had all of those misspelled names floating around in different citations. He also had several citations for "Dealin' Doug's Autoplex" - which is grammatically how you'd expect it to be spelled.
We figured that we had the perfect opportunity for a citation experiment. All we did during the first month of work was NAP cleanup. We corrected the business name everywhere on his site, and we made sure to manually update all of the citations that were misspelled.
In just a few weeks, he went from not ranking at all to ranking in the top spot in the map pack. When the local algorithm went through the big shakeup last October, he retained the #1 map ranking and also gained a #2 organic spot. Yes, we did a lot more optimization for him after that first month, but cleaning up the name information was enough to get him to rank #1 in his city.
Working on citations can be tedious, but it's well worth the effort. There are tons of submission services out there, but we prefer to do everything manually, so we know 100% for sure that things are done correctly. Here's our citation campaign workflow:
- Run an initial check with Moz Local. No, I wasn't paid to say that (but if Moz wants to hook me up with some extra bacon at MozCon to thank me, I wouldn't turn it down... cough, cough). We start with a quick check on Moz Local to see the current status of a client's citations. It's a great way to see a brief overview of how their NAP information is distributed online.
- Fix any issues found in Moz Local. It's got all those handy links, why not use them? If there are missing citations, go get them. If you've got incomplete listings, follow the tips to update them.
- Run a citation search with Whitespark. Whitespark's Local Citation Finder is awesome (it's our favorite citation tool). You need to run two reports: one to check your current citations, and another to find citation opportunities. Whitespark is simply the best around for finding citation opportunities.
- Set up a campaign in BrightLocal. Yes, it's a bit redundant to use BrightLocal and Whitespark at the same time... but we really love their interface. You get 3 tabs of info: active citations, pending citations, and potential citations. On each citation, you can enter specific notes, which really helps you keep track of your efforts over time. When you add in new citations from your Whitespark list, you can add them in to your "pending citations" tab. When you re-run the report later, any pending citations that have become active will move over into the active list.
- Keep pumping reps. Over time, you'll add more citations, but you should always use Whitespark to check for new opportunities AND any incorrect NAP info that might appear. Keep your notes in BrightLocal so you can keep everything straight.
Reviews are an integral part of Local SEO, but they're also vital for local clickthroughs. Now that Google displays reviews in an isolated popup (instead of taking you to the locations Google Plus Local page), users will read your reviews before they see any other information about your business.
Our process is simple, but it works well. Here's how to get more positive reviews for any business:
- Set up a review page on your site. We always set up a page at domain.com/reviews for every client. It's easy for any employees to remember, and it's a simple URL to tell customers about. You don't want to ask for reviews and then expect that your customers will be able to search for you on Google, navigate to your Google Plus Local page, and find the right link to click to leave a review.
Include simple instructions for leaving a review on the page, along with a direct link to the location's Google Plus Local page. It's also helpful to let customers know that they'll need a Google account to leave a review (and instructions for setting up a Google account if they don't have one). You should always focus on Google reviews until a business gets at least 10 reviews. Once you've got 10 reviews on Google, you can offer other options and let customers choose the review site that they're most comfortable with.
PRO TIP: For Google reviews, include this string at the end of your Google Plus Local link: ?hl=en&review=1
Now, when customers click the link, the review window will automatically pop up when they land on your Google Plus Local page (so they don't have to find the link!). - Create a review handout. There are several review handout generators out there online, but in our experience, most of them are a bit too complicated. Instead of showing a flowchart on the handout or giving customers several options for review sites, our review handouts simply point customers to the domain.com/reviews page that we set up.
This allows us to create a really nice branded postcard to hand out, and regardless of our review strategy, the card never changes. - Hand the card to every customer and ASK. You can't just hand the card over, you have to ask your customers to leave reviews. We encourage our clients to hand over the card at the last possible moment of customer interaction, so the request and the card are fresh on a customer's mind when they leave. Don't offer an incentives to leave reviews, just be honest and let your customers know that you'd truly like to hear their honest opinion about their experience
Even if your client has a ton of customers, make sure they understand that they won't get a lot of reviews. We tell our clients that 1 review a month is a perfectly acceptable pace. A steady stream of reviews over time is much more important than a quick influx.
There you have it! If you follow these simply Local SEO workout tips, you'll build your Local SEO muscle in no time. You'll be able to provide better results to your clients, which means they'll be happier... and happier clients means more long-term business. Everyone wins!
The ?hl=en&review=1 protip is great... I didn't think about it!
Thanks!!!!!
no problem! It's a gem, really makes it idiot-proof!
I want to ask one question,do domain authority comes under local seo and is domain authority of blogs hosted on blogger or wordpress gradually more.My blogs https://technopcarea.blogspot.com/ domain authority is 93 and domain authority of blogger is 96 so is my blog's dmain authority this much because it is hosted on blogger.
yes, domain authority matters... but it's always better to have your blog associated with your domain name... so either domain.com/blog or blog.domain.com. When you've got it over on blogspot like that, it doesn't "count" the same, and if you get links from your content, they won't benefit your actual URL...
I suppose we're even now... You've taught me something new today.
:)
Awesome post Greg. Always love the way you write and use images in your posts.
Greg talked about how the algo is just mathematical. One of the things I teach is that the local algo is like a kindergartener playing a match game. She amazes you at how smart she is, then amazes you again at how easily she can get confused!
So you need to make it easy for her to make a match! In local there are over 300 ranking factors and whoever has the most puzzle pieces in the right places wins and gets to be on top. (In extremely over-simplified terms.)
If your client has broken puzzle pieces, like violations on the G+ Local side of the house or mismatched NAP then you won't rank in blended. There are even violations of unwritten rules, that can cause a blended ranking penalty and lock you out of the pack. If that happens, even if you rank at the top in organic - you won't get in the pack.
It's critical to understand the local rules and equally important that she can match up the NAP on the G+ L page and the NAP on the site. Then the organic and local listings will blend and your client will rank in the 7 pack - where those precious customer converting reviews show up
So anyway, great job Greg! Off to share.
Thanks Linda! LOVE the kindergartener reference...
Well said.
That's EXACTLY how I try to describe SEO to people. It's a HUGE puzzle, some pieces are larger than others, some pieces are smaller than others, but it takes all of the pieces to successfully build the puzzle.
Google algorithm changes come through and change the size and shape of the pieces, but you still need all the pieces to complete the image.
While it's not always possible to use 100% of the pieces, all in the correct locations, who ever uses the most pieces correctly wins.
Good information Greg for local SEO but you didn't mention incorporating Structured data mark-up on Physical address of business. It also has some value.
Also I think keeping physical address on every instance of website will be more helpful.
Agreed with Shaym. Structured markup data is an excellent approach to highlight the special data of the website to search engines. It really works.
Agree with Shyam, structure data always fetch good CTR's.
oh yeah - i had to cut back, or it would have been somewhere around the length of War and Peace! I definitely agree...
Some really important and minor factors for Local SEO, specially the name spelling that I guess many of the people ignores. Really helping article.
Thank you! Glad you got something out of my post...
As someone who works primarily with local SEO, this was a great post Greg.
On the point of reviews, they are great but we want to point out that it's best to diversify your reviews as much as possible. Google Local and Yelp are great places to start but from there find out where your audience is. If you're a restaurant try Urban Spoon if you're a contractor use angie's list.
oh yeah - that's why our strategy works so well... we can concentrate on Google for the first 10, since that's the most "bang for your buck", and then we can diversify and get other sites, and niche-specific sites - all by just changing the links on the /reviews page on the site...
Thank you for the post Greg. I have always been reluctant to use a on-site review page or those widgets that take visitors from your site to a review site because it would have a referring domain on the visit and that could be considered influencing the customer. That is why I always thought a page or poster with mobile QR codes to site would be ideal because visitors would go directly to the review sites.
I would be grateful if you convinced me the review page is not risky.
Interesting point: RE: Referring Domain, has there been any high-profile cases of this catching companies out?
Nice piece Greg, and amazing visuals, lol.
Here's my question: are there really a group of SEOs out there that think local SEO isn't important or that they'll never need to use it? Have you encountered these people often?
That's shocking to me; as you said, local SEO tactics find their way into my campaigns all the time, even if the business isn't solely a storefront (e-commerce site on top of it, etc).
Oh yeah - there are tons of them... It's pretty sad, actually. That's my big push this year - to get more SEOs and small businesses to really understand what they need to do to rank well in local searches.
Greg if this is your push for 2014, you should be v popular! :-)
Great tips indeed.
Try working in the legal space. Particularly Elder Law attorneys. This is Jabez...not sure why I'm logged in as Mark :)
Oh, hey Larry - how's it going?
Hello Greg,
Thanks for the post !
You recommend to list the City in the title and H1 tags.
Some directories do not accept city in the name.
Do you think it could be considered as a NAP discrepancy please ?
Hey Greg! I really liked your idea to add review section on the website. I think it is the best effective way to get more-n-more reviews. It is totally worth to add.
Thanks! We've found that having the page to send them to makes things so much easier - AND, it lets you control where you're sending people for reviews without having to re-print review handouts or signage at the store...
Yeah, this is just an amazing technique Greg. I never thought before we can also try this to get reviews.
Funny pictures!
Thank you for the guide! I am struggling with getting the local stuff just right, and this will surely help me out a lot!
Tried local Moz but the program will not accept PO Box for address. I also experienced trouble trying upload data file. The support Person was very nice
You'll find that Google also does not accept a PO Box as a local address. Sorry you had troubles with uploading the data file, but glad to hear you had a good experience with our customer support.
Local SEO is an important part of SEO, but if we don't know the major difference between SEO and Local, we can't get the proper results. Local SEO is one of my favorite topic. I just loved the post as it contains very useful stuff which really matters a lot in Local SEO.
Excellent article ! This is the article i am looking for ! This helps me to improve my local SEO knowledge !
Thanks greg you are the super star !
I found it really helpful and simplified, I am going to apply these tips in my client's website.
as for a local biz i would avoid hiring an seo if you don't have to .. i would advice them to read the 101s of local seo and do it them self. if not then your in the hands of some seo who could careless and just wants your money. and then can hurt you if your unhappy ... just something to think about
That's not really true - MOST of us in the industry are trustworthy and do excellent work. Local SEO is vital to small businesses, and reading a few blog posts isn't going to give someone the knowledge they'd need to excel in doing their own SEO. Plus, many small businesses just don't have the time to handle it themselves. Hiring an expert to do the work is usually the best option.
But yes - they definitely need to check into who they're hiring first, to make sure that they're legit.
Nice Post, Thanks Greg Gifford. Google increasingly personalized customer. Local influence how large the results Mobile Seo?
Nice post Greg You done a amazing work.Its really very helpful for everyone who want to spread his business locally.
Thanks Larry! Glad you enjoyed the post
Great read thanks Greg. Quick question - I cannot keep up with Google's rules re: multiple Google+ pages. We have a client with franchises in different states and cities and have refrained from creating a page for each (e.g 'Company Name City') as we do not want to get anyone's listing removed (had that experience in my pre-SEO life with Google Places). Appreciate your thoughts on this - or direction to any credible reading on the subject. Thanks again for your post - look forward to ready more of your summations.
ok - there's definitely a rule against having multiple G+ listings for a single location - so you don't want to do that.
BUT - if you have locations all over, then you definitely want to have a G+ listing for each location, and the landing page for each location should be a unique page on your site. I'm not sure what your experience was with getting a listing removed, but it was probably for some other violation... Google WANTS you to link to a unique landing page for each listing...
Thanks so much Greg - really appreciate your reply.
What if the city they are located in is so small that numerous larger cities automatically populate into maps? For example: Westmont NJ - if you Google just the city all of the results come up for Camden County, but then there are other cities that populate in other sites. Facebook says Haddonfield, Google + says Collingswood. How do you optimize in a situation like that?
so what are we searching for in Westmont? If I could see the query and results, I could give you a more on-point answer...
Greg Gifford Sir one of the best info for local seo thank you so much.
Thank you very much for featuring the way you facilitate getting more positive reviews. Your Pro Tip on using the ?hl=en&review=1 string at end of the G+ Local URL is without doubt a gem. Fantastic post!
What if the city a client is located in is very small and online maps populate larger cities automatically? In one case Facebook, Google +, and numerous directories all changed the city to something different - and Wikipedia automatically brought me to the county for information. How do you optimize in that kind of a situation?
Are you talking about what to do for the Google Map embed? You can customize the map embed view, so make sure it's showing your address, then just zoom in close, then embed that version of the map.
I have a lot local views, but not many hits
You mean lots of views of your listing in the map pack, but not many website visits? Sometimes, depending on what your business vertical is, the map pack is all you need. If people can see your listing and just call you (or get your address to visit you), there's not necessarily a need to click over to your website.
Greg,
Great post, what are your thoughts on the NAP citation tools that syndicate your listings to local citations?
Have you used Whitesparks paid service for your clients? If so has the process been efficient?
I agree that Local SEO makes perfect sense for any business with a physical location -- it's a no brainer -- but I run into trouble with search volume. What if the town where the business resides has virtually no search volume, as opposed to a city nearby that gets a lot. Another example, if you were optimizing a ski resort in the Adirondacks, would you focus on optimizing for the town/state or go for "upstate new york," which is more closely aligned with their overall goals. Any thoughts on this?
After Pigeon, it's a heck of a lot harder to show up high in cities where you're not located - but it *IS* possible. It depends how close you are to the other city, how rural your area is, how good your content is, etc... but it can be done, and many times it's the right play. We target the major metro for most of our car dealers for just that reason.
As far as the ski resort goes, you just need to do some keyword research and figure out which phrases would bring the most potential traffic. You could also check other resorts in the area and see what they're going after (since you want to be sure you're competitive). Target the phrases with the most volume, and the phrases your competitors are going after, and you should have a pretty good set of terms.
Greg, I love the pro tip, using the string at the end of the link (?hl=en&review=1) but it's a little bit of a mystery. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Or it will work on my screen, but I'll email it through to someone to test it and it won't work on their screen. Any tips/tricks regarding this?
Does anyone have any ideas? Would love to know...
I'm in Australia. I only point that out because we seem to be having some techy issues with the changeover to Google My Business pages...
Greg (and everyone else here),
Narrowing the topic to URL structure... we are working on a directory of local races (5K, marathons, etc) and we are trying to determine best practices for URL structure for SEO purposes. My question is regarding city, state references in the URL string. Which is best:
localraces.com/kansas-city-mo/event-name
or
localraces.com/mo/kansas-city/event-name
or
localraces.com/missouri/kansas-city/event-name
We are focusing on the top 250ish metro areas in the US for now, btw.
That first example is amazing. I have a client who has a business name that can easily be spelled a couple of different ways. Very helpful.
Ignore local SEO is madness nowadays. I do not think there is a single referrer who neglects this point.
This is a great article! Thank you.
Great post Greg. Thanks!
The URL extension and the printout forms are great tips!
Yes I am agree with your idea. With this we can also do the submission our website in Google Places
I completely agree to what this article says. Local SEO is not only important but is also a crucial part of the business right now. Everybody wants things to be around him. Whether it's a barber, a mother dairy or a general store or anything else,but the priority is always given to the nearby sources. And this is the opportunity that a business might not want to miss especially the starters. Now a website is not worth it if it's not be able to get crawled in the search engines. Lack of ethical SEO techniques makes this happen and all the purpose of making a website goes in vain. Even websites do not appear on Alexa for months. And that's what explains - Why do we need SEO?
[link removed]
What's a mother dairy?
Bonus points for the "brolic" language and images. That's good writing.
Hello Greg,
You recommend to include the city in the title and in H1 tags.
Some directories don't accept that we list the city in the name.
Do you think it could be considered as NAP discrepancy and have a negative impact ?
Thanks
TanguyLT -
The H1 heading is on your website, not on directories... it's the heading at the top of the page - the page title, if you will. You definitely want to put ONLY your business name in any directories or citations to keep your NAP info consistent...
I see that embedding a Google Map on each page is important.
You say do it correctly by pointing to the G+ page.
How exactly is that accomplished?
Thanks for the excellent info.
When you do it "wrong", you just go to Google, enter the address, and then embed that map. To do it right, you need to get to the map from your G+ listing and embed that version.
If you did it wrong, the info popup will just show your address. If you do it right, it shows your biz name and info too.
Local SEO takes a hit thanks to Google Pigeon update..
Is it consider to be keyword stuffing if you add your local city to the title tag on every page?
Hi Greg,
Really incredible post on local SEO. We’re doing local SEO for yrs. now and using all these techniques + few more such as: we can add zip/area code in title tag to get better results for Local SEO.
Thanks!
Thanks for reading the post! Glad you liked it...
Great post Greg! Love the little "hl=en&review=1" hack :-)
Quick question, and I'm not sure if you can help me answer this or not. I've been recently doing some Local SEO work for a client of mine and I've had their Google+ Local Page specked out to the max! It was even ranking right at the top for several weeks within the Maps Section.
Then suddenly, gone! It just disappeared one day from the Maps search results. Nothing really changed on the Google+ Page or the actual website itself.
What do you think caused this to happen? It was really bizarre :S
Thanks! Glad you liked the post... and yeah, we were pretty stoked when we figured out the review popup hack. Definitely use it, it really helps!
Can you send me a private message with a link to the G+ page? I'll check it out and see if there's anything that jumps out... it's possible you tripped one of the unwritten rules...
Sounds like keyword stuffing the description to me. City name should never appear in the description and you do not need to stuff keywords. In fact, you can think of your description on the Google+ Local Listing like you do a meta description. It is not used in the local ranking algorithm. Write it for conversions, not search engines. It *is* used in the local spam checks though, so while a keyword stuff description won't do anything to help your rankings, it can definitely hurt them.
Hello Greg,
Thanks for sharing the Local SEO info.
It's really help us to do correct local SEO for our clients.
You're very welcome! I'm glad it will help you...
Very true. Citations and NAP play a crucial when it comes to Local SEO.
Hello all!
The Author is telling truth 100%. we should do local seo first then we can wish to rank globally. I did local seo on my blog first ,after that it self search globally . So friends you must add you city or state name with keyword and title too,
Thanks to write detail information about this.
You're very welcome! Thanks for reading the post...
This is an excellent article, well done!
Thanks, Tom! Glad you got something out of it!
Brilliant post Greg! I'm a junior Local SEO consultant and pretty much do everything you have listed. What I did find interesting with your post is the experiment of only fixing the incorrect citations had such a big impact on the rank. I have always had a feeling that the little things like inconsistent NAP can make serious damage but I have never had the opportunity to carry out an experiment as such.
Doing well in local search can be pretty simple if you follow the basics, but it always gets a little confusing if problems like inconsistent NAP already exist before you have even started. I currently have a client who has 5 alternative business names, 1 physical address & 2 registered addresses... oh the joys!
yikes! It's definitely not fun to find out that a new client has really jacked up NAP info...
I can relate. My appliance guy had 7+ Google map listings when I started trying to clean up the old Agency's mess last February.
Took over 12 months to actually get him back on Google maps after cleaning up all the spam and his listing is still trying to fight the way up to the top of the map packs.
Nice Article, great insight!
Thanks - glad you enjoyed it!
Great info! Was talking about the topic just couple of hours ago! It made some things clear for me!
@Greg. Great piece of information. I personally use moz local for one of my friend's local business. However, bright local and whitespark as also good. Consistency of NAP information is very important. At the same time you need to focus on Google+ local optimization and keep a track of competitor citations using one of these tools in order to find hidden opportunities.
yep. We typically only use Moz Local on brand new locations. For everything that already exists, we use a combo of Whitespark and Bright Local.
Great post, Greg. Some useful tips here.
Would you say it was essential to setup two separate location pages for businesses with two locations? Or with two lots of citations pointing to the home page would that work equally as well?
oh yeah - if you have a single website and 2 locations, you definitely need location pages. Each Google My Business (Google Plus, Google Plus Local, Google Places, whatever you want to call it) listing should point to a unique URL. If you have a "primary" location, you could point that one to the home page, but if they're equal, you should probably point each to a unique location page (that's got great content and is fully optimized)
Cheers Greg.
The organic factors can play a big role in the local rankings, so when I have multiple locations I always pick one of them and target it to the homepage. The homepage has all the link equity and it's a shame to lose that. For two locations I'd link the most important one's Google+ Local listing to the homepage, and the other to a location landing page. I'd still make a location landing page for that other location, but I'd point the listing at the homepage for it.
Good stuff.
Will you say a tool for finding and remove undervalued back links.
Use your GWMT data in conjunction with Open Site Explorer and maybe even BrightLocal and compile the data into 1 spreadsheet, remove dupes & take the undervalued links to the woodshed via the Disavow tool.
yep, what he said...
Greg,
A. Loved it.
B. Look forward to seeing you at MozCon
C. The sad part about reading this blog is I kept hearing your voice with EVERY word :)
Great job, my friend.
RS
A. Thank you!
B. Ditto! It's gonna be an awesome conference...
C. Why is that sad? That should make reading the post even more full of awesome!
See ya next week!
I am also a Fan of Local SEO myself, I spend a lot of time building citations for local clients and doing their SEO.
Since the Google start focusing on providing local results for local queries, the importance of Local SEO has increased, If you are running a local business and you are not doing SEO to get rank in your local area then you are missing a huge amount of customers that are searching for you.
Greg, you went on vacation and forgot to bring back the beard!
I'll throw in my 2 cents: Use Review markup on your review's page. It will take that fancy star rating and kick it up a notch -- by showing it right in the SERP under your URL.
https://schema.org/Review
yeah - that's a good tactic for pages that have reviews on them - but what we're talking about here isn't a page with reviews on the page - it's a page to send customers to that links out to the review sites where you want them to leave reviews...
I use a "dummy" reviews page for my Appliance Repair client with screen shots of reviews from one of the review sites appropriate for his vertical (images to avoid dupe content) that links to his reviews on that site.
It does a good job of being a double edged sword. It's a great closer for potential customers on the verge of making a decision & encourages happy customers to leave their own 2 cents.
Ok...
Ran into a bit of a CMS issue last night, so I figured I'd share the info I gleaned from the experience.
If you run Wordpress, it will let you put schema markup in on a page in the article via the text based view. HOWEVER, if you ever go back into that article to edit it, the Schema markup will be gone. It wipes the tags. Widget field does not do this, nor will your template file (as long as you don't update your template).
For Joomla, put anything you need to markup in a Jumi module and load the module on the appropriate page. Joomla's WYSIWIG can do the same thing to you if you add the schema in page in the article (depends on which editor you're using, check the global config)... wipe it out if you open the article to edit it again down the road.
oh, and it was just that I forgot to update my profile photo here - still rocking the beard...
I understand that Greg was specifically speaking about a page to help encourage reviews but I agree with you Scott that actual review markup can help with local SEO and bring landing pages to the next level. Definitely a worthy mention!
Love the branded review postcard! What a terrific idea, blending the best of offline local with online local, very smart!
Thanks! We've had incredible success with it... so I thought I'd share
Thanks Greg, it's been a while since I shared something useful on G+ - This'll do it!
On the topic of SEOs not up-to-date on Local SEO, I'd like to point out call tracking can be extremely hurtful in regards to NAP consistency (obviously). It's ok as a script on a page because only the original number gets crawled but when that tracking number gets distributed to citations... (insert profanity here).
I'm helping a business right now who unfortunately got sucked into the SuperMedia vortex - and that's part of their "services".
oh yeah - call tracking can be an absolute nightmare... and all the PPC and call tracking folks really push it, and claim that since the script changes the number but the bots still see the original, it's safe... but it's inevitable that the tracking numbers end up getting used in some citations, and then it's profanity time...
Don't forget Google Maps Business View!
Excellent point! I had to leave a ton of stuff out so that it wasn't the longest local SEO blog post ever...
Great post on Local SEO .Thanks For sharing
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for the ideas.My website is new and I'm trying to do everything is good:)
Hopefully my post will help you!
didn't thought cleaning up NAP could help so much, specially when its only one word misspelled a few times..
NAP consistency is VERY important when it comes to the local algorithm. Google "expects" certain things to be true... it assumes that businesses will be listed at the major citation spots, and it assumes that the NAP will be the same at every listing. If a business has its name spelled a bunch of different ways, then that's a red flag... Remember, the algorithm is just a mathematic formula, so if it's checking for consistent info and the name is misspelled several different ways, that's going to have a huge effect on the outcome.
@Greg. You are spot on the target. Correct NAP information is damn important.
Thanks! It's a shame that more SEOs don't know that... (about NAP info, not about me being correct... ha ha)
Thanks for putting this together. Very helpful to have a checklist and I'm definitely doing the review page.
Awesome! Glad my post will help you!
I also strongly believe that local SEO can play big role to get business as well as ranking.
Excellent post! Definitely an educational and fun read, but I demand royalties on use of my likeness in the picture above (kidding).
What is your thought on the use of state abbreviations in this context. I feel like the water is muddy when discussing Local SEO here in New York State. I've always exercised spelling it out (New York) , but have recently been doing some AB testing, and found almost better success in the Map Pack with NY.
I'd be curious to read your (and other members) opinions about this.
typically, we almost always use the state abbreviation... Sometime in an H1 it looks odd, so we might spell it out - but the vast majority of the time, we just use the abbreviations...
Hi Greg, it was a great discussion about using city, state and NAP in local SEO. But could you please give us some detailed insights about using Schema.org for the same?
That's something I could write another entire post about... You definitely want to use schema anywhere you can... and make sure you're using the right Local Business Classifications, so you're really shoving your business info down Google's throat.
Thanks for the article... I would like to add a few items. I got into local search a few years ago and have had hundreds of local search clients. What we found worked the best is actually off site tactics.
We focused our efforts on local business listings, and making sure we claimed all the top profiles with CONSISTENT information. I achieved a top map listing in 88% of our customer by just utilitizing these profile listings and not doing ANY on-page optimization
I would recommend reading:
https://moz.com/blog/2013-local-search-ecosystems
https://blumenthals.com/blog/
Also, there is no mention of adding schema to the website, while I didn't find this was required to acheive rankings, it sure didn't hurt. (I would add into the footer so it displayed on all pages)
Yep - citations are definitely important, but recently, they've lost a bit of their power. While I agree they're definitely awesome and can do a lot, on-page local optimization is always going to be important too...
And yes, I agree on schema as well - but if I had put *everything* into this post, it would have been WAY too long...
Thanks for reading and commenting though!
sehr guter Artikel, danke
Bitte! (sorry, that's about the extent of my German...)
Great post on LSEO, it really is amazing how much a simple citation clean up can cure.
Thanks Shane!
Hi Gerg,
Great article with awesome visuals about local SEO, Including city and state name in title, keywords, descriptions and h1 or in content body is great idea to come up with local search for those who are targeting local market for there business. But sometimes companies are are targeting only international markets and multiple countries, in that case how they target the local?
Sorry, not sure I understand your question... wanna clarify? Or if you wanna DM, that works too
Hey Nice post Greg...
Thank you!
Great post on Local SEO, I like the simple way you list the required actions.
Thanks - glad you enjoyed the read...
City And State Is Very Important For local seoThanks.
can i repost this sir?...
I appreciate your local seo experience. But what to do? the client site is showing "Error 503 Service Unavailable". Try to fix them.
Error 503 isn't a SEO problem. Get a server with higher capacity.
___
The 503 Service Unavailable error is a server-side error, meaning the problem is usually with the web site's server. It's possible that your computer is having some kind of problem that's causing the 503 error but it's not likely.
I knew it isn't seo problem. I just told him to fix. What is the use seo if the website isn't live even it has good traffic?