LOCAL SEO CheatSheet

Do you want to rank you or your client’s local business in Google, Bing, Apple Maps, and other local search engines? You’re in the right place.

For those of you that are unaware, claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing is the cornerstone of local SEO. If 56% of businesses haven’t even claimed their GMB listing, well, I doubt they’ve done much else...

But while claiming your Google My Business listing is a good starting point, there’s MUCH more to local SEO than that.

Best Practice Local SEO Tactics

To thrive in local search, you need to do three things: optimize your Google My Business account, improve your on-page SEO by updating your website, and excel on the Wild Wild Web. While it might sound overwhelming, it’s entirely feasible to succeed in all three with some patience and perseverance.

Let’s explore each one in-depth.

Optimize for Google My Business

Google My Business has become the creme de la creme of local search -- since Google understandably feels most comfortable sharing content it can support and verify, Google My Business is their tool to help your business meet Google’s needs.

If Google can verify your business as authentic, it will potentially reward your business with a coveted sidebar space in Google local search.

To ensure you’re optimized for Google My Business, you’ll want to create and verify a Google My Business page, use Google Posts within your account, encourage your customers to share reviews online, and respond authentically to reviews, specifying location.

For example, “We appreciate your feedback on [product/service] in [city, state]. We value your input and look forward to working with you again. Thank you from the [full company name] team.”.

Website Updates

Now that we’ve discussed optimizing your business for Google My Business, let’s take a look at five simple website updates to improve your local SEO.

1. Improve Internal Linking Structure

Although external links pointing to your site are ideal, adjusting your internal linking structure will also boost your SEO rankings.

Why does internal linking matter? It does the following:

• ●  Supports website navigation

• ●  Assists with information architecture and website hierarchy

• ●  Distributes page authority and ranking power among pages

If you want to improve your internal linking structure but aren’t sure where to start, check out Kissmetrics’ The Seven Commandments of Internal Linking for Top-Notch SEO.

2. Optimize URL, Title Tags, Headers, Meta Description, and Content

When it comes to content, every new blog post is a new indexed page for your site, a new page on which to target a geographic search phrase, and a new opportunity to get found in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Every time you write a piece of content, you need to optimize the content for search engines by using high-volume keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description, and body.

If you're having trouble coming up with geo-targeted content, consider highlighting customer success stories and case studies.

3. Add Location Pages to your Website

If you have more than one brick and mortar location, create location pages. Location pages provide readers with your NAP, store hours, unique store descriptions, parking/transit information, promotions, testimonials from happy customers, and more.

It's also important you avoid duplicating content across multiple location pages. For single location businesses, create a locally descriptive About Us page. You’ll get big time bonus points if you add a Google Map to your website on your respective location page(s).

4. Create Local Content

Google continues to get smarter, which means content creators are now able to truly write for users, not search engines. But while writing about general topics will attract a wide crowd, sometimes it’s more important to hone your focus and write about local or industry news to attract a local audience.

Be the local authority for your industry by promoting local industry gatherings, news, employees, and other educational content on your blog. Think of top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your business sells.

For example, if you're a local security company and you’re trying to attract businesses that are new to the area, create a helpful resource to get these businesses well-acquainted with your city.

A map of local service providers or a calendar of city-wide events could both provide value for your persona and contain highly relevant on-page local signals.

5. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

Local search and mobile search go hand in hand (nine out of ten smartphone users conduct local searches on their devices!). Some of the most common ways people will use your site in a mobile environment is to look up reviews, find directions to your location, and search for contact information.

Make it easy for your prospects and customers by making your site mobile-friendly.

Engage with Directories and the Wild Wild Web

You’ve learned how to optimize your business for Google My Business and how to update your website for an internal SEO boost -- now, let’s take a look at how you can use NAP consistency, directories, and inbound links to take your business one step closer to that number one spot on local search.

Name, Address, Phone Consistency

You've got to make it easy for people and search engines to find you and your clients. To do this, set up your NAP, which stands for name, address, and phone number (with area code).

This should be included as crawlable HTML text on your site. Avoid the common mistake of only including the NAP within an image -- images can’t be crawled

from search engines like HTML text. The most common location for the NAP is in the footer or header of the site.

Optimize Online Directories and Citations

For United States companies, these four map data aggregators provide a large amount of the map data for Apple, Yelp, Bing, Google+ local, Trip Advisor, and more.

• ●  Express Update

• ●  Neustar Localeze

• ●  My Business Listing Manager ● Factual

  Consistency is key

  verify that your citations are consistent and complete across these four data aggregators. Discrepancies like misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite number or wrong phone number can be problematic.

  If Google can’t determine which information about your business is correct, it may not show your business at all in search results. Additionally, be sure to remove any duplicate listings you find. Bonus points for emphasizing a Chambers

of Commerce membership in your community, which will garner you an external inbound link.

Get Inbound Links with Relevance and Authority

Inbound links are incredibly powerful opportunities to boost your local SEO -- every inbound link tells Google you’re a legitimate company, and inbound links can also raise your domain authority.

Here are a few ways to get inbound links:

• ●  Sponsorships or Partnerships

• ●  Guest Blog Posting ● Scholarships

  Start with your own personal network, which may include the Chamber of Commerce, business improvement districts, licensing bureaus, trade associations, resellers, vendors, and/or manufacturers and other affiliates.

  Consider sponsoring a webinar or meet-up, hosting a community event, promoting something local you love, and building relationships with prominent people and influencers.

  Additionally, learn to feel comfortable reaching out to partners to see if they can feature you on their partner directory.

Be a guest blogger, talk to and about (positively, of course!) other people in your industry, and act as a resource provider for the community. If you're an active participant in community conversations, the buzz around you grows in the form of inbound links, social media growth, and media coverage.

Given that .edu links are the bee’s knees for domain authority, why not earn some links by featuring a scholarship in your geographic region?

It should be relevant to your industry, send the right signals to your domain (given the backlinks from schools) ... and make you feel good, too! Moz built up a solid guide on the steps to success for effective scholarship outreach.

Engage with Social Media and Add Posts to Google My Business

Google considers content shared on social media more important now than ever before. Now that you’ve carved out a beautiful Google My Business page, share the page on social media, further aligning social and search.

it’s clear that local searches make up a huge chunk of the SEO world. And if you can get your local business in front of these searches, there’s a good chance they’ll be walking through your door a few minutes later.