Demystifying Local SEO. How Small Business Can Get Found Online

Transcription

1 Demystifying Local SEO How Small Business Can Get Found Online

2 About the Author My entrepreneurial background and my love of teaching are the perfect fit for helping small businesses become more successful online. I m all about empowering my clients with knowledge to do the job themselves or provide them with the information to make an informed hire. Let s grow your business! Kim Merritt-Butler is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in e-commerce and online marketing, plus 36 years of experience in retail, management, and operations. She started her first company, Kim s Khocolate, at the age of 11, and was discovered by Guy Kawasaki at the age of 18, which led to Apple using Kim s Khocolate MacIntosh computers to market the Mac. She s worked with AT&T, MCI, Bausch & Lomb, Range Rover, The Rolling Stones, and Becton-Dickinson. Kim s monthly webinars and The Small Business Academy are used by Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) across the country to help educate and empower small businesses to be more successful online. Follow Connect with Kim Merritt-Butler Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 1

3 Who Should Read This ebook The internet and mobile search has changed the way we look for products and services and how we interact with our audience. Over 4 billion search queries performed on computers each month in the US have local intent. That means your prospec?ve customer is out there, searching for products and services like the ones your company has to offer. And, they re looking for these products in their own city, town, and neighborhood. This ebook is for the small or mid-size business, concerned about gegng found online in the area in which they are located. You re not worried about someone clear across the country finding you. Your primary focus is the guy right down the street or on the other side of town knowing you re there. This ebook is based on our webinar, Why Can t The Locals Find My Website? It includes a variety of prac?cal and easy to implement ideas that you can use to get your website found online. Good luck! Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 2

4 Contents Defining Local SEO Local Directory Listings.. 07 Google My Business.12 Reviews and Ratings. 13 Your Website & Local SEO. 16 Social Media s Part in Local SEO , Social & Local...18 Blogging with a Local Flair...19 Top 10 Local Search Ranking Factors...22 Online Marketing Options..25 Winning the Local SEO Game Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 3

5 Growth of Local Search Last year, for the first time ever, more Google searches took place on mobile devices than on computers in the US, and 50% of those mobile search queries had local intent. People don t open up the Yellow Pages anymore, they get online, whether it s on their computer, their tablet or their smart phone. But not all local searches are done on Google or Bing. There are digital maps, GPS systems, and mobile apps that can all point searchers to a business in their general vicinity. There s also review sites like Angie s List, Yelp, and even Facebook that help a searcher find what they are looking for close to home. According to the 2015 Local Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal, consumers have become considerably more comfortable using the internet to find local businesses in the past few years. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 4

6 What is Local SEO? All this talk about local SEO and local search. What exactly does it all mean and how does it differ from regular search? Local search is when you search within a specific geographic area for something. Based on where you are physically located when you do the search, Google and other search engines will return results that are located close to you. Local SEO are the techniques used on your website and in your online marketing to help your business get found for those local searches. Let s look at the different components of a Google search results page and see exactly what we re talking about when we discuss local search results. 1 The four listings at the top of the page with the little yellow Ad icons are paid listings on Google Adwords. These advertisers are paying every time a searcher clicks on one of these links and goes to their website. 1 2 Directly 3 Then underneath the ads are the Google local search results, otherwise known as the Local Stack or 3 Pack. These local results are blended and include both website and local information to decide who shows up here. A searcher s physical location will impact the search results in the 3 Pack, even if they don t use geographic keywords in the search query. we see the organic results or the natural SEO listings. Showing up here takes some of the same factors into consideration, but that s a totally different ebook. 2 3 Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 5

7 If a searcher clicks on the More Places link under the 3 Pack, they ll be taken to a page with a larger map and more local results. Each result listed has a corresponding pin point on the map. In perusing the list of local companies in the results, when a searcher clicks on one, a knowledge panel appears with the name of the company, their address and phone number, hours of operation, a link to their website, a link to directions, pictures, a review summary, and their individual reviews. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 6

8 Copy here. And here. And here. Local Directory Listings A local business listing or citation is an online profile that contains your business name, address, phone number and other information about your business and your location. There are thousands of websites, directories and review sites online that allow local business owners to create free business listings, like Google My Business, Yelp, City Search, Bing Places, and the Yellow Pages, just to name a few. All these online listings make your business more visible. Every time your business gets a new directory listing, it increases the chances that more searchers will find you. So the more listings you have, the more these directories trust the accuracy of your business information, which increases your chances of ranking in local search. In addition, many of the online directories share information with each other. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 7

9 Data Aggregators There are four main data aggregators of local business data in the United States, Neustar Localeze, Infogroup, Acxiom and Factual. These companies have compiled unique data of over 20 million business locations. They each update and confirm business data in their own ways, including calling businesses and personally making sure their details are correct. These aggregators then syndicate that data to most local search engines, including Google and Bing. How the Search Engine Find Your Website Google and other search engines find out about your business in two main ways: visiting links that point to your website and tracking these citations of your business. Search engines look at the websites that are pointing links to your site or have you listed in their online directory and take into account if those websites are high quality or low quality and are in your area. Your goal is to get the most links and listings from high quality sites. From Google s point of view, local search is all about having a physical location that can be pin pointed on a map. Bing and Yahoo tend to follow Google s model on this. Online only businesses can t get a Google, Bing or Yahoo local listing and companies that market nationally or internationally would only be able to get a local listing in the city where they have an actual physical location. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 8

10 Local Listing Requirements In order to qualify for a local business listing in any of the websites or directories, your business must meet all four of the following criteria: 1. You need to have a business name. 2. You need to have a local phone number that matches the city you re located in. This can not be a shared phone number, a toll free number or a call tracking number. 3. You need to have a physical street address that your business is located at. This can not be a shared address, a PO Box, or a virtual office. 4. You need to make face-to-face contact with your customers. You can not be a virtual business for a local listing. Each online directory has a different process for claiming your business listing and verifying that you are actually the owner. It could be a phone call, text message, an , or a postcard mailed to you. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 9

11 Verifying Local Listings & Getting Started Most properties will first ask you to check and make sure your business doesn t already have a listing in their directory. Don t be surprised if you find one, even if you weren t the person who placed it. If you find a listing, you need to verify that the information is correct. If it s not, you ll need to update it. Remember all your listings have to be consistent, same name, address and phone number. After you verify your listing, there is no standard time established for how long these listings take to appear online. Confused about where to start placing your listings? Whitespark has done a great job of creating a list for you. Their Top 50 Citation Sources in the US, is a great place to start. They also have lists for the best citations for different cities around the US and for different categories. As you start to go through the process, you ll want to be on the lookout for existing listings with incorrect information and duplicate listings. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 10

12 Important Attributes of Your Local Business Listings When you write and submit your local business listings, you want to make sure the various attributes of your listing follow these best practices. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 11

13 Google My Business The first listing you want to claim is with Google My Business. Your ability to rank on Google in the local listings and show up on Google maps is dependant upon an optimized Google My Business listing. Use your real business name and your current address and phone number. Make sure that this information matches what s on your website. Fill out your profile completely and include your web address. Spend some time writing the descriptions and use relevant keywords. Include pictures, video, your hours of operation, and payment methods. Be sure to pick the categories that best describe your business. Don t pick a category just because you think you ll get a lot of traffic. When you re done submitting your listing you still have to verify it. Don t forget this important last step. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 12

14 Reviews & Ratings When was the last time you tried a new restaurant or made a new hotel reservation without first checking the online reviews? Online reviews can have a huge impact on whether or not a prospective customer is willing to try your product or service. It s imperative to get your best customers to leave reviews of your business online. It s also important to monitor reviews and take action if a negative one appears. What can you do to make things right with an unhappy customer? Be aware that different platforms have different rules about whether or not you can solicit customers for reviews. Yelp doesn t allow solicitation. Google allows you to ask for reviews but you can t tell customers what to say. Space your request for reviews out. You want them to look natural. Get in the habit of asking for reviews on a regular basis so you have a steady stream of them showing up online. What your customers have to say about you is really important. According to BrightLocal s 2015 Local Consumer Review Survey, 33% of consumers said they regularly read online reviews and 59% said they occasionally do. The survey also found that consumers are fast to form an opinion. 40% of consumers only read 1-3 reviews before they decided whether or not they could trust a local business. In addition, 69% said the reviews must be no more than 90 days old. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 13

15 Copy here. And here. And here. Now that you understand the importance of online reviews, you ll want to ask for them on a regular basis. Pay attention to what sites your competitors are being reviewed on. You may want to target those sites with your review requests. To actively acquire a steady stream of reviews, you ll want to: 1 Send satisfied customers an asking them to review you. Send them links to a couple of choices so they can pick their favorite site. 2 Have the review sites you focus on printed on company brochures, thank you notes, receipts, postcards, and/or on the backs of business cards. 3 Train your staff to ask customers on the phone or when they see them to please review your company. 4 Don t forget to link to your review sites of choice from your website. Never ever place fake reviews or pay someone to place fake reviews. But do remember to share a great review on your social media. There s nothing wrong with sharing a link to that review on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 14

16 Negative Reviews But what happens if you get a Negative Review??!! Gasp!! First of all, breathe. It s not the end of the world. But it is very important that you respond and handle the situation with your best customer service skills. In the world of reviews, we all understand that 2 or 3 star reviews do happen and you re most likely not going to lose new customers to one bad review in a sea of great reviews. But you ll want to respond positively and try to make the situation right. Handling negative criticism with grace and trying to actively turn a bad situation into a good one, speaks volumes to future customers who read these reviews. You ll show you care, that your customers opinions matter, and that you re listening. And don t forget to thank people in the response fields when they leave you a good review. This is all about building long lasting relationships with your audience. Reputation management needs to be part of your business routine. You need to watch and listen to what your audience and customer base is saying about your company online (and your competitors). Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 15

17 How Your Website Impacts Your Local SEO Your website is really the core online marketing piece your company has. All your marketing activities and social media, stem from your website. A local business with a professional looking website with clear information presented, has a distinct advantage against local businesses where their website is an afterthought or non-existent. Let s look at a couple of website best practices that impact your local search activities and the visitor experience on your site. 1 2 Mobile Friendly Website Your website should be a responsive design that automatically adapts to the screen size of the device your searcher is using. You also should be designing all your content, images, and calls-toaction with a mobile screen in mind. Fast Loading Pages Your site needs to have pages that load fast. If a searcher has to wait for pages to load, they re going to leave your site and move on to your competition. Several years ago Amazon determined that a one second longer page load time could cost them $1.6 billion in sales. 3 Your NAP On Every Page Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be on every page of your website. I highly recommend placing it in the footer with a few keywords to describe what your company does. 4 Multiple Locations If your business has multiple retail outlets or offices, you should have a dedicated page on your website for each location. Those pages need to have unique information on them. You can t copy the same thing on every page. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 16

18 Social Media s Part in Local SEO Suggestions for each social network: Make sure your business profile is completely filled out. Your About section should have the most current information about your company. Don t forget to add your full address, phone number, and link to your website. The rise of social media and the increase in mobile usage is tightly connected to local search. More people are using mobile phones to find products and services close to home and then asking their friends on social media for their opinions and recommendations. Create keyword-friendly boards and profiles that include geographic descriptions of your location. Make a board about your town or a specific street or neighborhood where you re located Use hashtags and invite your audience to take pictures and share comments of your product or service. Share what s going on right now to help drive traffic to your website or location. Find local influencers with shared interests that you can interact with and follow. Make sure your profile is geographically correct. Put geographic locations and keywords in your posts & use geographically targeted hashtags. If there are local groups on LinkedIn, join them. If you participate in community events, support local groups and charities, create a board that shows this local activity. Use Rich Pins to create a place pin that includes a map, an address, and phone # in the images you pin. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 17

19 , Social & Local should play a big role in your local efforts and it s the perfect partner to social media. It s important as you re tweeting and pinning and liking and following that you re also collecting people s addresses. When you own the addresses of your audience, you re in control. You re not at the mercy of a social media network s algorithm or rules as to when and where you can reach out. As you collect addresses through your social activities and through your website, segment where they came from and what kinds of prospects or customers they are. That way you can target your message to the right groups. Send regular s to your audience. Be sure and include social share functionality so your recipients can easily share that with their friends. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 18

20 Blogging with a Local Flair Blogging on a regular basis is a another great way to get more eyes on your website and your business. Fresh content that is relevant to your industry, product, or service can help you establish better natural search engine rankings and can help improve your local search rankings. Since Google s Pigeon Update, website content has become more important than ever for local businesses trying to gain visibility in search. So what do you blog about and how do you make it local?? Local content has more to do with being a resource than it does about selling your product. Be helpful and useful now and your visitors will remember you and come back when they actually need your product or service. In the meantime, all that great useful, local content is helping your local search engine rankings move higher in the search results. The key for blogging is consistency. Make a schedule and stick to it. All your blog posts don t have to be about the local community, but you can write specific posts once or twice a month or a week and categorize them as local so those in your audience that are interested can easily find them. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 19

21 10 Local Blog Post Ideas Community News Share local news or share your opinion on local news Review Local Businesses Write reviews about the local businesses you support. They might return the favor. Local Events From parades to outdoor concerts write about what s going on in your community Interview Local Figures Talk to the mayor, police chief, football coach about what s going on, hot topics, opinions Sponsorships or Charities If you sponsor local events, share it. If you support a charity, let your readers know. Lists: Top 5, Top 7, Top 10 People love lists. Talk about your favorite places & things. It helps broaden your reach. Event Guides Share upcoming information about local events. List restaurants, hotels, destinations Frequently Asked Questions Asked something about your town over & over? Write the answers up in a blog post. Local Resource Guide Make a list of other local businesses you recommend. Aggregated Content Share local content from others, including their blog posts. Originally published by Greg Gifford for Search Engine Land 20

22 Local Ranking Factors Since 2012, Google has returned blended results for local search queries. There are many different factors that the Google algorithm uses to decide who comes up in first position vs. who gets stuck in position 549. We all know that if you re not on the first search results page, your chances of getting found are slim. So what exactly is impacting those search results in local searches and what can you do to get a better search rank? Bottom line is none of us, except Google, knows for certain what is in that magic algorithm, but our friends over at Moz survey experts in local search every year to come with everyone s best guess of the top Local Search Ranking Factors. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 21

23 Top Local Search Ranking Factors 22 From the Moz 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey

24 Physical address in city of search Consistency of citations NAP: name, address, phone number GMB categories Have your Google My Business category right Proximity of address to point of search Quality of citations What websites are they coming from? 23

25 Domain authority of your website Keyword in GMB title Google My Business product & service keywords City & state in GMB title Tell Google My Business where you are NAP in website HTML Your website must match GMB & citations Click through rate from search results 24

26 Online Marketing Options What is my best choice of marketing techniques? You understand the basics of local SEO and the different factors that impact whether or not your business shows up in the 3 Pack in Google. But how does a local business know where to concentrate their efforts? How do you prioritize? Both organic search ranking factors (the things related to your website) and social media factors (such as reviews left for your business on Google, Yelp and other sites around the web) impact your local search ranking. In order to truly succeed in local search marketing your business needs to make efforts in both of these areas. But every business is different, so a set of techniques that works for one business isn t necessarily what a business down the street should use. Let s take a look at factors to consider in deciding where to spend the majority of your online marketing efforts. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 25

27 Location The first is where you are located. If you re in a major city, like Washington, DC, you re probably going to find it s harder to rank in the natural local listings because of all the competition. But, if your business location is right downtown, you do have an advantage over a business that is located 5 or 10 miles out of town. In mid-sized markets like Syracuse or Chapel Hill, you can find a large audience with less competition, so that can work in your favor. Downtown in a mid-sized market is even better since you ll have Google s local algorithm giving you an advantage. You ve got a leg up to be found in local search results. And finally, in small towns or rural markets, you ll definitely have less competition and it could be easy to come up at the top of the local listings, but it s also very likely that few will be searching for your product or service. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 26

28 NAP Next is your NAP. Your name, address and phone number. Have you moved in the past 3 years? Changed your phone number (and that s your local phone number, not a toll-free number)? If you have, it s more likely that there is incorrect and outdated information floating around in online directories about your business. We ve discussed throughout this ebook the importance of your NAP being consistent. Your website, Google My Business listing and directory listings must all match. Getting listed in directories and updating current listings is a low cost activity that offers great benefits to your business. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 27 This is definitely one area to spend time and attention.

29 Age How about your website? Is it less than 2 years old. It takes a while for a website to gain visibility in organic and local search. With a newer website, you might have to supplement natural search listings with forms of paid advertising like pay-per-click campaigns on Adwords or in Facebook or LinkedIn, until your website starts to gain that visibility. Another area younger sites can spend their time and attention on is social media. Social media will also help with visibility. Although it is more time consuming than some online marketing techniques, it is relatively low cost. If your website is 3-7 years old, you have a better chance of getting listed higher in the natural search results. Social media will help with more established sites as well, giving them an even larger boost of visibility. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 28

30 Take the Quiz Which Digital Marketing Options Best Fit My Business? DO-IT YOURSELF NEED GUIDANCE NEED SOFTWARE NEED TECHNICAL HELP Facebook Pages Twitter Google Plus Pinterest LinkedIn Forums Q&A Sites Marketing Reviews / Social Reputation Daily Deals Lead Generation Services Location-Based Services Social Media Ads Search / Display Ads Local SEO Linkbuilding Blogging Text Message Ads Digital Loyalty Programs Online Video Website SEO Mobile Apps David Mihm / SEOmoz, Inc. Approved for non-commercial re-use with full attribution. Not to be re-used for commercial purposes without explicit permission of copyright holder. moz.com/learn/local/priori0zing- local- marke0ng There s a great short questionnaire at Moz.com that can help you prioritize your online marketing efforts based on your current situation. It s free and takes about 2 minutes to fill out. Just answer some of the questions we ve talked about here, like where your business is located and how old your website is, to get instant suggestions custom tailored to your business on what to focus on and how to prioritize your efforts. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 29

31 Summary Winning the Local SEO Game Local SEO can heavily impact whether or not your audience in your own town or city is finding your business. But with some time and attention to Google My Business, placing directory listings, getting reviews from customers, participating in social media and adding local themed content to your website you can beat the competition in the race to place in the local search results. Written by Kim Butler The URL Dr LLC 30

32 Let s Get Your Business Found Locally! The URL Dr offers options for the do-it-yourselfer or the company looking for full service options. Our plans help you to achieve your online goals, while being economical. We re a small business too! We understand. Contact us today contact@theurldr.com