Superdream is a leading creative, digital, and advertising agency based in the Midlands.

Transcription

1

2 Contents About Superdream... 3 Contact Us... 3 Introduction... 4 About Local SEO... 4 Keywords... 6 On-Site SEO... 7 Title Tags... 7 Meta Description... 7 Address... 8 Schema... 9 Content... 9 Local Pages Off-site SEO Social Media... 13

3 About Superdream Superdream is a leading creative, digital, and advertising agency based in the Midlands. With over 30 years experience in the industry, we re committed to building lasting relationships and helping businesses boost their brand. With three dedicated and integrated teams, we can offer you the complete solution. From initial concept through to implementation, we work with you every step of the way to bring ideas to life. We offer a wide range of services including search engine optimisation (SEO), branding and brand management, website design and development, and all avenues of advertising. Superdream is committed to delivering world class marketing solutions. Bring us your brand story, and we ll get people talking about you. Dream bigger with Superdream. Contact Us For more information, you can contact using any of the options below: Or you can send us an hello@superdream.co.uk or give us a call

4 Introduction Local SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is becoming increasingly important for small to medium sized businesses that are looking to acquire new leads. Whereas once consumers would pick up the Yellow Pages to find goods and services in their area, now they are hitting the internet. How many people are doing this? Here is a snapshot of how many people are searching for services with a local qualifier: Keyword Broad number of searches per month Plumbers in Birmingham 3,600 Restaurants in Coventry 8,100 Garage in Worcester 2,900 In addition to these figures, search engines such as Google will now return different results depending on where in the world you are. So if you search for plumbers from a computer or phone in London, you will see different results from somebody making this search in Manchester. Most companies will now have a website, but how effective is this website in attracting new business? This is where local SEO comes in, and it can help you to tap into the potentially lucrative demand that exists for your goods or services online. This whitepaper will show you how to optimise your website to attract relevant traffic and turn this traffic into customers. We will cover all of the main ranking factors and explain how you can incorporate them into your website, enabling you to drive qualified traffic to your business. About Local SEO By implementing local SEO practices on your website, you are attempting to become as visible as possible for searches involving a keyword and your location. When a user performs a search for products and services, they can expect to see a listing that looks like this:

5

6 Search engines will show a mixture of standard organic pages, which are those that it decides are the most relevant for your search, and Google+ for Business pages (or Bing Local pages in Bing), which display the most relevant companies in your area. By optimising your website effectively, you can make sure that your website will be displayed when somebody in your area is looking for your products or services. Keywords Your first step should be deciding on your keywords, the words that your customers are using to look for what it is that you provide. There are a number of ways of doing this: Look at your competitors websites, what words are they using? What would you type into a search engine if you were looking for your service? Use Google s Keyword Tool to see what other words people are using in their search Your keywords will usually be your service followed by a regional qualifier, such as Plumbers in Cardiff and should be as closely related to what your company does as possible to ensure the traffic you attract will make an enquiry.

7 On-Site SEO These are factors on your website that search engines will use to determine where you should rank for a given keyword. Title Tags This is a piece of information that tells the search engines what a particular webpage is all about, and appears in the Head section of your website. These should be unique for every page, and should also include your location. If you use a Content Management System such as Wordpress to manage your website, there will be options on each page to enter this information. A good example for your homepage would be: Garages in Worcester Blue Widget Ltd This includes the keyword and location that we are looking to rank for and tells the search engines what the website is all about. Meta Description This also appears in the Head section of your website and can sometimes be used as a description of your website in the search engine results page, e.g. Here, the website Title appears in blue, with the description beneath it in black. This should also include the location information for your business and be unique for each page on your website. An option for this will also be found on most CMS platforms.

8 There are plugins available for CMS systems that enable you to easily enter your title tags and meta data, such as this one for Word Press. H1 Tags These header tags are another way in which websites are able to tell the search engines what they are all about. These should be written for the user, with keywords inserted where suitable. Most CMS platforms will enable you to select headers when you input your content. Address You should have your company s physical address included on every page, ideally in the footer of your website. This should be your full address, including town, county, postcode and phone number, and should be marked up with the relevant schema.org code, which we will discuss later. As well as including your phone number in the footer, you should also ensure that it is included in every page in a visible position, usually at the top right of the screen. This should be in a larger font than the rest of the site and often in a contrasting colour to your other content. It is often said that a call is better than a click, so your phone number should be as visible as possible to encourage conversions. It is also important to use a number with a local area code rather than an 0845 or mobile number.

9 Schema It is becoming increasingly important to ensure that your website is marked-up with relevant schema code. This helps to tell the search engines what content is on your page including your type of business and location. More information on how to do this can be found at Content You need to make sure you have plenty of high quality, useful content on your website, both to increase its size and also to attract links. The larger your website, the larger your online footprint will be and the more chance you will have of being found for relevant terms. You should produce content that is targeted at your users rather than the search engines and it should be produced to fill a need that your audience might have. Do you run an electrical business? Producing how-to guides for simple jobs that people can do around the house would be a good way of showing off your expertise and fulfilling the need of a relevant audience. Content doesn t have to be restricted to just articles; slideshows, videos and podcasts can all be used to help to market your website.

10 Instructional videos are a good way of providing useful content that attracts links and adds value to your website If you don t have one already, consider starting a blog on your website. This acts as a great place to put regular content, building you an ever increasing footprint on the web. You can use this section to host your marketing content such as how-to articles.

11 Local Pages Building a local page for your business is a quick and easy way of building a presence for regional search terms. Both Bing and Google give you the chance to build a page for your business that could be displayed in the local section on relevant search terms, such as the garage in Worcester example at the top of this white paper. To open a Google+ for Business account, simply visit this page and for Bing visit this page Be sure to complete your page thoroughly with your business address, photos and reviews. Reviews are an important ranking factor, so the more you can acquire then the more visible your page will be.

12 Off-site SEO Off-site SEO is a crucial factor that determines where your website will rank. Search engines detect links pointing to your site from external pages and use the quantity, quality and relevance of these links to determine where to rank your website. While off-site ranking factors can be complicated, it can be relatively simple to get started with building links and citations for your website: Look for directories of local companies in your area and submit your website for inclusion. It is advantageous if you can include your company address and telephone number in these directories, but make sure these details match the ones on your website. Your local newspapers could be a good place to start. Approach local companies and see if they will link to you from their website. You could approach local suppliers, businesses of friends or acquaintances, your local Chambers of Commerce etc. Look to provide content to other websites where there might be an interest in your expertise. Many websites and blogs now accept guest posts from people who can add value with their content, this can be a good way of getting a link back to your website. You can place an author bio at the end of any content you submit to other websites with links back to your own site, as demonstrated in the image below. Be sure to link to different pages on your site and vary the text you use in your links.

13 Social Media If you have a presence on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, you can also optimise these to associate your business with your region. Facebook allows you to set up a specific page for your business, which you can customise with your location to give your company a presence on the world s largest social network. You will need a personal account to do this, then simply head here to set up your page.

14 Twitter will allow you to set up a profile for your business and it is proving to be an extremely popular way for companies to connect with their customers. You can also enter your location into your Twitter account, and make sure you link to your website from here as it can be an effective way to generate traffic. With ever increasing numbers of people looking for products and services online, it is becoming vital for local businesses to make the most of their website. Local SEO can be the first step in bringing quality traffic to your website and generating enquiries for your company.

15 Thank you for reading our Whitepaper on Local SEO, we hope it has given you plenty of ideas for how to get your website to reach its potential. At Superdream, we specialise in helping our clients rank for both local and national terms and have a proven history of increasing both traffic and enquiries. For more information, you can contact using any of the options below: Or you can send us an hello@superdream.co.uk or give us a call