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Is your brand visible to potential customers? If you're a local business and you haven't nailed down your local SEO, you're missing the opportunity to be seen when that customer searches on desktop or on mobile.
But local SEO isn't some mysterious entity. It's a series of concerted steps. And we can help you tailor those local SEO efforts to your business model. Simply find your business type on the following illustration and follow the steps that are specific to your needs.
But wait! You aren't done yet. There are some local SEO steps that work for businesses of all kinds. Use the checklist below to make sure you're ticking all the boxes to get seen in the SERPs. To jump ahead to a section, use these links:
Everything that applies to traditional SEO also applies to local SEO.
Regardless of business model, every local business website needs to be indexable, error-free, multi-device-compliant, well-structured, and properly optimized. See the complete technical checklist.
In addition to the above, local website optimization requires that you:
Getting local content right
Content is an important part of any SEO effort, so make sure you're not tripping yourself up with thin or duplicate content. Here's a list of common content mistakes followed by a checklist of ways to increase the local SEO impact of your content.
Content mistakes to avoid
Don't scrape content from other websites, even from the websites of manufacturers or authorities, unless you are publishing an attributed quote within your own, unique content.
If you offer the same services or products in multiple cities, think carefully about attempting to create a unique page for every possible city/keyword combination. Only embark on this plan if you know you have sufficient resources of time, money, and talent to create truly high-quality pages for each combination. Avoid publishing thin or useless pages. If you know you don't have the resources, it's better to go with just a strong page for each city and a strong page for each service, rather than creating lots of thin or duplicate city/keyword combo pages. See this complete resource on developing city landing pages.
Think long and hard before deciding to take a multi-website approach, even if your company offers multiple services or has multiple offices. Numerous experts agree that it is almost always better to build a single, powerhouse website that promotes your brand and all of its services and branches rather than dividing up time, funding and talent between multiple websites. For more on this, see this community discussion.
Ways to create unique, user-, and search-friendly content
Citations
Citations are complete or partial references to your name, address, phone number or website (NAP+W) anywhere on the web. Learn more.
Citation basics
Automated or manual citation building: your choice
Building manual citations
You can choose to build all citations manually, keeping track of their existence, status, and progress in a spreadsheet. The main benefit of this path is more direct control over your listings; the main drawback is the considerable amount of time manual creation and management involves, including time involved to update all citations if a business re-brands or moves. If you'd like to try manual management, these resources will acquaint you with top citations you will want to build:
You can choose to pay for either manual or automated citation building instead of doing the work yourself. The main benefit of this path is a savings in time and ease of making updates across multiple citations at once if a business moves or re-brands; the main drawback is that not all services are of equal quality and some may cause problems rather than resolving them.
With most citation services you will have somewhat less direct control over your local business listings, but if the product is good, this is not normally a major problem. The main thing is to be sure that any service you consider is building important citations rather than selling fluff and that there are not known problems being alleged regarding the way the service is sold or managed.
If you are considering purchasing a citation building service, read this comparison guide.
Even if you do pay to have citations built for you, in some cases, you may want to augment this by building some citations manually on specific niche sites that aren't offered in agency packages.
Duplicate listing clean-up
Duplicates sap your listing strength so detecting and resolving them is key. Use these tools and tips to get those duplicates cleaned up:
Earning reviews
Given their power as a ranking and conversion factor, reviews are must-haves for every local business. Follow these steps to earn reviews:
Social media for local businesses
Avoid wasting effort and money by identifying the right social platforms for your business's clientele. Maximize the return on your investment:
Out there in the real world
All online local efforts are but a reflection of offline realities and goals. Be sure you're getting it right where it counts most by remembering:
Summing up
There are many theories about "effective frequency" — the number of times a person needs to be exposed to advertising before making a response to it. Some say the golden number is seven, but not everyone agrees.
What you can feel confident about is that all of the above steps represent efforts you are making to put your brand out there for the consideration of your potential customers, and the golden opportunity for local businesses is that their competition is limited by specific geography.
You don't have to compete against the whole world, but rather be a consistent, reliable resource for your own neighbors. Be in the right places at the right times, pair that with great service, and your local business has every chance of succeeding.
Have all your local SEO tactics under control but still think you could do more? Maybe it's time to focus on your strategy. David Mihm has written a white paper, "Foundations of a Successful Local Marketing Strategy," that walks you through all the necessary steps to map your local strategy to the on-the-go customer.
This is an epic post, I will be sharing this around with the team.
With the new redesign of G+ it became a lot harder to generte a direct shareable link to leave a Google review. So we build this tool that can help everyone generate a direct link : https://supple.com.au/tools/google-review-link-gen...
Wow! Thank you so much for sharing your free tool here.That's a real time-saver, for sure, and I'm awfully glad you've added this as an extra resource to the discussion here. Way to go in developing that!
Awesome tool! I manually deleted the .au. Not sure what google would think of reviews for a US company coming through an Aussie url? Anyway, I have it implemented already and it works great. Thanks!
There are some more points where we need to work for local listing results
We will have to create more pages for particular service page with targeted local modifiers
We need to add phone no. at the page title or descriptions that would be optimized by Schema.
We will have to add contact information to business hours at first look on the site for home page as well as inner service pages
We'll have to add KML file in every service page
We need to install discuss, or another attribute by this user can directly add his review about particular service in the specific service pages or home page
We'll have to find out vertical sites that have good domain authority and all
We'll have to find the way how gov sites like chamber of commerce can approve for our niches locally
We need to do more work on sites like Yelp for that need to some genuine reviews
We will have to find out more local authorized directories
So these are some basic steps on which if we work then we can get the expected results for particular niches in Google maps.
Something that worked out very good for me about Local SEO is registering all the info about the company in Local and National directories on Google. The 10-15 most important ones and this helped me to boost the website about SEO.
"Don't scrape content from other websites, even from the websites of manufacturers or authorities, unless you are publishing an attributed quote within your own, unique content."
Does this apply to product descriptions on e-commerce websites?
I think you shouldn't scrape content from other pages, no matter what type of website. But sometimes you get in trouble, when some manufacturer tell you, that you have to use that one description and images wich everybody uses. So you need to get usefull and unique content with a lot value arround that duplicate stuff. Heres a lot of stuff arround that topic, like this WBF
One of the most extensive checklists for Local SEO. Great post Miriam and thank you for sharing. When adding video content I would suggest adding NAP at the end of video as well, it helps as a local citation.
I have a question re. Google maps rankings. I am following each step you mentioned for local citations but I am not getting success to rank the client's website in top position in Google Maps every time. Sometimes I have noticed that website was ranking in top position and there was a sudden drop in ranking of well optimised Google listing.
Also, I have noticed that the websites who do not have well-optimised citations were ranking in the top. I am still confused with the factors that Google actually consider while showing website in top rankings. Can you please help me with this???
I'm so glad you like this post. Here are some general things you should investigate. For troubleshooting ranking failures like this one, I recommend you read:
Awesome post Miriam. still working my way around to fully understand how google ranks Local SEO Factors, Read through the Moz Q&A links you have recommended, they are a good read as well. Thanks for the post.
So glad if this helps you along the path of Local, and that's great to know our Q&A forum has been a useful resource for you. Thanks for letting me know!
Thanks Miriam for this great analysis and checklist.
SEO is all about the efforts and practices one is going to make for potential customers and local audience plays an important role. Yes of course being at right time at right place will create much chance of success. In that case when someone already have multiple websites for its services and after that get aware with the fact that it’s better to build a single platform; then what should he do?
In many cases, businesses in that situation will decide to consolidate everything into a single website and then 301 redirect the old sites to the new one. This, however, is a complex undertaking and must be done with great care to avoid ranking loss.
Local SEO has become one of the most important and effective strategies for every online local marketer. The points you have covered in the post are great and very useful for all type of business owners.
This is truly a fantastic breakdown everything from how to start depending on how big the business is to cleaning up the duplicate citations. Keep up the great contributions to the community I enjoy reading them for sure and sharing them with colegues.
Yay! Tim, nothing could make me happier than knowing you find this worthy of sharing with your colleagues. That's wonderful to know, and I'll definitely keep working on contributing. Thanks!
This is awesome for Local SEO and I will likely use it for my automotive dealer digital marketing plans in Chicago. Btw, can you or anyone here give me feedback on our new site for car dealer seo in Chicago www.autoclimber.com , please?
Hey There - so glad this may be of help to you. Are you currently a Moz Pro member? If so, I'd suggest that you start a thread in our Q&A Forum to request feedback about your new website. You're bound to get some helpful suggestions there.
Miriam Thanks for the checklist, printed and stuck on the wall in front of me! Already checked a few points on the list. My website would be locally optimized by next week. Thank a lot.
By far the best local SEO checklist I've ever seen. I've got this link backed up in 3 spots and checking through this is going to form the foundation of my new training program for juniors. Thanks for the post Miriam - You are doing an awesome job!
Hi Miriam Ellis, Thanks for posting wonderful checklist for Local SEO! If we have two or more websites with same business info (NAP) and have same priority to all of our websites! So what we do on Google My Business Page and all local business listing? Also what impact on Social Media Optimization using same NAP?
Thanks so much for reading this post! You should not have more than one website featuring the same NAP as this can lead to NAP consistency problems. Best practice advice here would be to consolidate your websites into a single site, and use that URL on all of your citations and social efforts. Hope this helps!
Why don't you spend time on publishing your content on other pages to find backlink and improve your site? I think that focusing on your only website is not enough. SEO requires more than 1 step!
Great checklist and great article, local SEO is so important now and its great to have a list like these to align all efforts out there and make the best out of it. Recently articles here facing local SEO step up the game on what to do.
That was great! I will defiantly follow this local SEO checklist,, and can you share brief ideas about GEO targeting..? it's useful for local areas..? it's useful for online store..?
It could be that some people are still using them, but it's not something I think of as a basic core Local tactic these days. If you know more about this, please do share in the comments here.
This is a brilliant resource. Sometimes there's so much stuff to remember, it's so easy to overlook something obvious. Bookmarking this as it's a great way to check that you're covering all your bases.
Hello Ellis! I would like to have some suggestions from you on local seo for Lithuania with keywords in Lithuanian language , a online credit business website without any physical location.Would you help me please ? I need a straight local seo for lithuania checklist.Wiating for your response.
Decent post... Not so sure you need to add 9 business locations to your footer element as it won't leave room for other things like your popular pages, or services
The most comprehensive checklist on Local Seo I've ever seen. It will be very helpful for us, as our company works primarily with local businesses. Thanks for sharing Miriam
Miriam , another excellent post . Congratulations. I very much agree on all the points you mentioned about the importance of positive and negative reviews . Moreover, the image of the company is an important factor in marketing. Having qualified personnel in all areas is paramount. A satisfied customer, is a customer who recommend our service or product . However, on this same point , I realized that there are many local companies that their first goal is to be known quickly on the internet with a flashy website. With many lights. Featuring "gold and moro" but do not have (like your appointments ) staff, equipment and skills to carry out . This being an important factor in the short or medium term ( if not improved ) to business failure. The development of ada stage has to slow. Unhurried, without skipping cycles.
For sure, even the best website will not cover up problems a business is having in the real world, in its day-to-day work. I agree with you that getting the basics of your business right (most particularly excellent customer service) is essential to real success. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!
I have a question about local city landing poages that I am struggling to find a answer to and was wondering if you would be as kind as to give me some insight and guidance into my dillema please?
I am aware that you need to make Local City Landing pages part of the Top Navigation as so that they are not seen as doorway pages to Google. However, here lies the problem for me... In my top Navigation I have a Menu Item "Areas We Serve" but, due to the nature of my custom website design constraints, I cannot have a drop down menu that will show the individual cities or towns that I service as a SAB because it will look like complete crap and blow the aesthetics of my website right out of the water.
My question to you is if I just have a "Areas We Serve" in the top navigation and when you click on that link can i have a page with links to the individual City/Town Pages on the master "Areas We Serve" page and will this be considered acceptable or will this be interpreted by google as bad where I will get penalized?
Here is my website and as you can see, my website is very unique and having the "Areas We Serve" as a drop down menu with the custom cartoon fonts that I use will not be a viable option from a design and aesthetic point of view.
Here is the link and the Area We Serve is in the Top Nav Menu ---> https://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/
Thanks for your question. No, I would not worry about getting penalized for having to link from the menu to an areas we serve page. In fact, large brands often have to link to a location finder page because they couldn't possibly have a dropdown of 100 different stores (look at REI example noted toward the end of this post: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages). Ideally, if you just have a few locations, you'd be able to upgrade your website design to feature them in a high level menu, but if you can't do so right now, I wouldn't be concerned with taking the approach you are constrained to take. It isn't, perhaps, as user-friendly as possible, but I wouldn't be concerned about a penalty. Hope this helps!
Thumbs Up post by Miriam Ellis. Read best ever post for local SEO To Do list. All the information of local SEO from beginning to end are covered in this blog post. Thanks for sharing valuable content like this.
I believe you are asking whether a business should add city names to its business name for SEO purposes. The answer to this is: only if the city name is part of their real-world brand. So, for example, a restaurant named Yummy Food with three branches should not build citations or content calling the business Yummy Food NYC, Yummy Food Boston, Yummy Food Chicago ... unless these names are the legal business names that customers will see on the signs outside the door, on the menus, and hear on the phone when they call the business. Only use city names in the business title if they are really part of the business name.
Hope this helps, and thanks so much for letting me know you enjoyed this post!
Hi Miriam
This is an epic post, I will be sharing this around with the team.
With the new redesign of G+ it became a lot harder to generte a direct shareable link to leave a Google review. So we build this tool that can help everyone generate a direct link : https://supple.com.au/tools/google-review-link-gen...
Eg: For the Sydney Opera House you would get this link to leave a review on Google.
Would love to know what you folks think about this tool.
Wow! Thank you so much for sharing your free tool here.That's a real time-saver, for sure, and I'm awfully glad you've added this as an extra resource to the discussion here. Way to go in developing that!
thanks Miriam :D. It does feel awesome when we get responses like that :)
BTW I tried to look for you on Twitter but had no luck in finding you. Are you on twitter?
So sorry, but I'm not. Appreciate you asking.
:)
Awesome tool! I manually deleted the .au. Not sure what google would think of reviews for a US company coming through an Aussie url? Anyway, I have it implemented already and it works great. Thanks!
Awesome Sajio, that definitely saves a lot of time! Thanks!
thanks Vinod :)
Brilliant Saijo - this is a great tool well done!!!!!
thanks
There are some more points where we need to work for local listing results
So these are some basic steps on which if we work then we can get the expected results for particular niches in Google maps.
So glad you're brainstorming, Faisal!
This is a great info!! Many Thanks!
Something that worked out very good for me about Local SEO is registering all the info about the company in Local and National directories on Google. The 10-15 most important ones and this helped me to boost the website about SEO.
Hey There! For sure - citation building is a key step. Thanks so much for taking the time to share what has worked well for you.
Miriam—this checklist is amazing! Thank you for putting so much detail into this post. I can't wait to go through each of these and check them off.
"Don't scrape content from other websites, even from the websites of manufacturers or authorities, unless you are publishing an attributed quote within your own, unique content."
Does this apply to product descriptions on e-commerce websites?
I think you shouldn't scrape content from other pages, no matter what type of website.
But sometimes you get in trouble, when some manufacturer tell you, that you have to use that one description and images wich everybody uses. So you need to get usefull and unique content with a lot value arround that duplicate stuff.
Heres a lot of stuff arround that topic, like this WBF
And there's a lot more
Thanks!
Good resource, Andreas!
Thank Miriam Ellis, Nice Check List, Great Work.
Very helpful having this all in one place. Definitely bookmarking.
Very good tip, Danny! Thanks for taking a minute to share this. Video SEO can be a competitive difference maker in a competitive field.
Nice Tip, Thanks Danny Star
Amazing post Miriam!
I have a question re. Google maps rankings. I am following each step you mentioned for local citations but I am not getting success to rank the client's website in top position in Google Maps every time. Sometimes I have noticed that website was ranking in top position and there was a sudden drop in ranking of well optimised Google listing.
Also, I have noticed that the websites who do not have well-optimised citations were ranking in the top. I am still confused with the factors that Google actually consider while showing website in top rankings. Can you please help me with this???
Thanks in advance
Hi Dharti!
I'm so glad you like this post. Here are some general things you should investigate. For troubleshooting ranking failures like this one, I recommend you read:
https://moz.com/community/q/top-local-organic-rankings-but-nowhere-to-be-found-on-google-snack-pack
https://moz.com/community/q/do-you-know-what-s-tri...
These two threads from our Q&A forum should help get you started troubleshooting this. Hope this helps!
Awesome post Miriam. still working my way around to fully understand how google ranks Local SEO Factors, Read through the Moz Q&A links you have recommended, they are a good read as well. Thanks for the post.
So glad if this helps you along the path of Local, and that's great to know our Q&A forum has been a useful resource for you. Thanks for letting me know!
This is really helpful to a newbie like me. I appreciate your insight, it demystifies some of the local SEO navigation.
Glad to know this was easy-to-understand for a newcomer to the field! Thanks, Dina.
Thanks Miriam for this great analysis and checklist.
SEO is all about the efforts and practices one is going to make for potential customers and local audience plays an important role. Yes of course being at right time at right place will create much chance of success. In that case when someone already have multiple websites for its services and after that get aware with the fact that it’s better to build a single platform; then what should he do?
Hi Shalu,
In many cases, businesses in that situation will decide to consolidate everything into a single website and then 301 redirect the old sites to the new one. This, however, is a complex undertaking and must be done with great care to avoid ranking loss.
Great work. Excellent read through.............
Very useful checklist, Miriam!
Local SEO has become one of the most important and effective strategies for every online local marketer. The points you have covered in the post are great and very useful for all type of business owners.
Great checklist. Thanks for the downloadable checklist. We will refer to it often.
Nice to know this will become a useful reference for you!
This is truly a fantastic breakdown everything from how to start depending on how big the business is to cleaning up the duplicate citations. Keep up the great contributions to the community I enjoy reading them for sure and sharing them with colegues.
Yay! Tim, nothing could make me happier than knowing you find this worthy of sharing with your colleagues. That's wonderful to know, and I'll definitely keep working on contributing. Thanks!
This is awesome for Local SEO and I will likely use it for my automotive dealer digital marketing plans in Chicago. Btw, can you or anyone here give me feedback on our new site for car dealer seo in Chicago www.autoclimber.com , please?
Hey There - so glad this may be of help to you. Are you currently a Moz Pro member? If so, I'd suggest that you start a thread in our Q&A Forum to request feedback about your new website. You're bound to get some helpful suggestions there.
A great post, I guess many hours of work and research for a post well, congratulations!
Information you shared with this post is really useful for those who want to promote their business in local area.
Few more suggestions:
*Alway start your Business name (keywrod+NAP)
*Citations submisson plays very keyrole to rank your business .
*Reviews with targeting keywords also work well.
* Make your profile 100% with each citation list (images and product list etc)
Hi Sanjay,
Happy you found this useful!
Miriam Thanks for the checklist, printed and stuck on the wall in front of me! Already checked a few points on the list. My website would be locally optimized by next week. Thank a lot.
Good post. I follow some of the tips to help rank my site, because it's costing me a lot of work.
Cheers.
Good checklist for Local SEO.
Thanks for sharing.
Hello Miriam Ellis, thanks for share this helpful ideas!
Awesome job, loved it!
Hi Miriam
For any local company, local SEO can be even more important than the overall SEO.
Thank you very much for the suggestions
By far the best local SEO checklist I've ever seen. I've got this link backed up in 3 spots and checking through this is going to form the foundation of my new training program for juniors. Thanks for the post Miriam - You are doing an awesome job!
Hi Matt - That's just excellent! So proud to know this will become part of your staff training. Wow!
Hi Miriam Ellis, Thanks for posting wonderful checklist for Local SEO! If we have two or more websites with same business info (NAP) and have same priority to all of our websites! So what we do on Google My Business Page and all local business listing? Also what impact on Social Media Optimization using same NAP?
Any duplication arise in this case?
Hi Usman,
Thanks so much for reading this post! You should not have more than one website featuring the same NAP as this can lead to NAP consistency problems. Best practice advice here would be to consolidate your websites into a single site, and use that URL on all of your citations and social efforts. Hope this helps!
Why don't you spend time on publishing your content on other pages to find backlink and improve your site? I think that focusing on your only website is not enough. SEO requires more than 1 step!
Awesome guideline thanks alot!
Thank *you* Roman, for taking the time to read an comment!
Great checklist and great article, local SEO is so important now and its great to have a list like these to align all efforts out there and make the best out of it. Recently articles here facing local SEO step up the game on what to do.
Thanks for letting us know you're finding our Local SEO category useful these days. That's welcome feedback!
Hey Miriam,,
That was great! I will defiantly follow this local SEO checklist,, and can you share brief ideas about GEO targeting..? it's useful for local areas..? it's useful for online store..?
Thanks Miriam Ellis ! Its such a worth to read and implement. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Miriam Ellis,
Well written, I just want to know Local Moz is available in India? if yes then great. if no then any alternat tool for India.
Hello Kamaldeep Singh!
I'm so sorry, but at this point, Moz Local is only available in the US and UK. So sorry about that.
Hi Miriam!
I don't see mention of a GEO sitemap. Do you think one is warranted or is that no longer necessary?
Hi Donna!
Good question. Geo sitemaps kind of fell off my radar after Google dropped support: https://www.seroundtable.com/geo-sitemaps-gone-149...
It could be that some people are still using them, but it's not something I think of as a basic core Local tactic these days. If you know more about this, please do share in the comments here.
So pretty much we need to make a "unique high quality page" no matter what type of business we have, right?
Haha - yes, Greg. Going for quality in everything you publish is a good rule of thumb :)
What happened to the nicely formatted checklists? :(
Good catch, Vincent -- thanks for noticing! We'll get this reformatted ASAP :)
This is a brilliant resource. Sometimes there's so much stuff to remember, it's so easy to overlook something obvious. Bookmarking this as it's a great way to check that you're covering all your bases.
Very happy to think this deserves a spot in your bookmarks, Ria. An honor!
WOW! Great info about local SEO - Many thanks!
Thank you, Jack, for saying so. I'm very pleased to know you found this to be valuable information.
Hi Miriam -
Do you think this checklist is still relevant, even in 2017?
Thanks!
John
Hi John,
Yes, this post should still be 99% relevant in 2017. Some new things have emerged, but the advice here should still be solid. Thanks for asking!
Hello Ellis! I would like to have some suggestions from you on local seo for Lithuania with keywords in Lithuanian language , a online credit business website without any physical location.Would you help me please ? I need a straight local seo for lithuania checklist.Wiating for your response.
Decent post... Not so sure you need to add 9 business locations to your footer element as it won't leave room for other things like your popular pages, or services
The most comprehensive checklist on Local Seo I've ever seen. It will be very helpful for us, as our company works primarily with local businesses. Thanks for sharing Miriam
Deeply pleased that you consider this a best-ever resource. Thanks for letting me know.
Miriam , another excellent post . Congratulations. I very much agree on all the points you mentioned about the importance of positive and negative reviews . Moreover, the image of the company is an important factor in marketing. Having qualified personnel in all areas is paramount. A satisfied customer, is a customer who recommend our service or product . However, on this same point , I realized that there are many local companies that their first goal is to be known quickly on the internet with a flashy website. With many lights. Featuring "gold and moro" but do not have (like your appointments ) staff, equipment and skills to carry out . This being an important factor in the short or medium term ( if not improved ) to business failure. The development of ada stage has to slow. Unhurried, without skipping cycles.
I hope has been a contribution.Thank you.
Ivar Lagos.
Santiago, Chile
Hi Ivar,
For sure, even the best website will not cover up problems a business is having in the real world, in its day-to-day work. I agree with you that getting the basics of your business right (most particularly excellent customer service) is essential to real success. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!
This if one of the most awesome Local SEO checklist ever!
cheers miriam!
@Miriam Ellis,
I have a question about local city landing poages that I am struggling to find a answer to and was wondering if you would be as kind as to give me some insight and guidance into my dillema please?
I am aware that you need to make Local City Landing pages part of the Top Navigation as so that they are not seen as doorway pages to Google. However, here lies the problem for me... In my top Navigation I have a Menu Item "Areas We Serve" but, due to the nature of my custom website design constraints, I cannot have a drop down menu that will show the individual cities or towns that I service as a SAB because it will look like complete crap and blow the aesthetics of my website right out of the water.
My question to you is if I just have a "Areas We Serve" in the top navigation and when you click on that link can i have a page with links to the individual City/Town Pages on the master "Areas We Serve" page and will this be considered acceptable or will this be interpreted by google as bad where I will get penalized?
Here is my website and as you can see, my website is very unique and having the "Areas We Serve" as a drop down menu with the custom cartoon fonts that I use will not be a viable option from a design and aesthetic point of view.
Here is the link and the Area We Serve is in the Top Nav Menu ---> https://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/
Please advise...Thank you Miriam.
Sincerily,
Campbell McArthur
Hi Campbell,
Thanks for your question. No, I would not worry about getting penalized for having to link from the menu to an areas we serve page. In fact, large brands often have to link to a location finder page because they couldn't possibly have a dropdown of 100 different stores (look at REI example noted toward the end of this post: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages). Ideally, if you just have a few locations, you'd be able to upgrade your website design to feature them in a high level menu, but if you can't do so right now, I wouldn't be concerned with taking the approach you are constrained to take. It isn't, perhaps, as user-friendly as possible, but I wouldn't be concerned about a penalty. Hope this helps!
Fantastic resource! Thanks so much!
Thumbs Up post by Miriam Ellis. Read best ever post for local SEO To Do list. All the information of local SEO from beginning to end are covered in this blog post. Thanks for sharing valuable content like this.
Yay! So glad you think this one's a keeper, Vishal.
Really good job Miriam
We are a locale business and this checklist will be very useful to improve our local SEO, for sure !! Thanks for so incredible post.
Nice to know this will help your local business out. I'm grateful that you took the time to tell me so.
All Local SEO tips at one point. Great! Thanks Miriam Ellis for sharing it.
try not to make it too super complicated :p
Great article !
Thank you so much for sharing. Your post have many..many userful and helpful infomation!
nice post.
Hi Miriam.
Loved the infographic.
Great post.
Regards
Credit goes to our great design team, who took my rough graphic and turned it into something handsome. Thanks so much for the kind praise!
Nice Checklist Miriam Ellis, Great Work !
Thanks so much, Vishal!
This is great! I will bookmark this and will make use of the checklist on doing Local SEO for clients.
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I was searching for such an article which discusses all the aspects of Local SEO. Yes, this serves the need. Thank you...
Is it advisable to use location with company name always for local seo?
Hi Neeraj,
I believe you are asking whether a business should add city names to its business name for SEO purposes. The answer to this is: only if the city name is part of their real-world brand. So, for example, a restaurant named Yummy Food with three branches should not build citations or content calling the business Yummy Food NYC, Yummy Food Boston, Yummy Food Chicago ... unless these names are the legal business names that customers will see on the signs outside the door, on the menus, and hear on the phone when they call the business. Only use city names in the business title if they are really part of the business name.
Hope this helps, and thanks so much for letting me know you enjoyed this post!
Am gonna make my own checklist now!!..
Good for you! Hope it's a good one.
This is perfect
Great to know you found it useful, Tripp!
Nice topic really you have shared a great topic with us.
Thanks for taking the time to read, Muhammad!