Local SEO For Your Small Business

Is your brand visible to potential customers? If you’re a local company and you haven’t nailed down local SEO, you’re missing the chance to be seen when that potential customer searches online.
But local SEO shouldn’t be a secret. It’s a just series of collective steps. And we can help guide you.
Find out if your business can be found on Google.

Technical website criteria

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.
Local website optimization requires that you:
Have a contact page featuring the complete business name, address, and phone number of each staffed location.
If you have 10 locations or less, the complete name, address, and phone number of each should be in the sitewide footer element.
Use Schema markup of your location data. Make sure your number is visible on your website and clickable on mobile. Your name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be consistent everywhere on the website.
Beware of business naming or mixing up NAP elements between multiple locations or additional team members, partners, etc.
If you prefer to keep your business address hidden, don’t publish it on your website, but do be sure to provide a phone number that is staffed during business hours.

Getting local content right

Your unique content is a critical part of SEO, so make sure you’re not offering up 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.

Avoid these Content Mistakes

Do not plagiarize other websites! This includes manufacturers or authorities unless you attribute/cite the content within YOUR OWN content. If you have sufficient resources of time, money, and talent to create truly high-quality pages, consider creating unique pages for different city/keyword combinations.
Do not publish thin or useless pages. You only want to consider this if there is relevant information to offer in each city. If you know you don’t have the resources, it’s better to go with just a strong page for each city and a sales page for each service or product. Rather than creating lots of thin or duplicate city/keyword combo pages.
Give plenty of consideration before deciding to make multiple websites, even if your company offers a lot of different services or you have more than one office. Any expert will tell you it is better to build a single, powerhouse website that anchors one brand, services, and locations rather than dividing up time, funding and talent between more than one website.

Ways to create unique, user-, and search-friendly content

• Utilize testimonials from customers in your service cities to make your city landing pages unique
• Use different testimonials from clients that relate to the product and service pages
• Build an on-site blog and continue to develop a library of content once your basic web pages are complete
• Keeping your website updated can boost your rank for some terms related to your services and products
• Videos and images are page content, too. Use tags and label them in real text
• Offer city-, service-, or product-specific specials, schedules, or calendars to differentiate what you do in one location vs. another
• Make sure to participate in local events in each city for unique content
• Interview experts around the city- or product-specific content
• Offer tips that apply to specific groups or demographics
• Include biographies and descriptions of your staff at each location

Most important, make sure to sponsor local charities, town events, high school teams, or organizations in each city and write about it on your website with links to the organizations.

Citations

Citations are complete or partial references to your name, address, phone number or website (NAP+W) anywhere on the web.

Citation Building 101

Build a set of citations that make sense for your physical location. Your citations should always have the same name, address, phone number and website URL. Be careful and minimize variance in abbreviations from platform to platform (street vs. St. or # vs. suite). Lastly, do not try to get citations for P.O. boxes and virtual offices they are simply frowned upon and will not be accepted. It is important to understand that local business data moves through a data ecosystem. Remember, a problem on one platform can lead to replications of the problem elsewhere.
For multiple locations or multi-practitioner businesses, point the website link on all citations to the correct corresponding landing page on the website.
For example, obtain Newark citations for your Newark landing page on the website and obtain Joel Margavage’s citations to Joel Margavage’s page on your marketing website.
All businesses should be listed on the primary local business data directories to start. Other citations on niche sites that relate to your industry or location, such as the Chamber, a contractor’s association, or the local newspaper.
If you do not want the business address to be public you can still build citations, but only on platforms that support hidden addresses.

Automated or manual citation building: your choice

Building your own citations

You can choose to make citations on your own just by keeping track in a spreadsheet. The main draw here is more control over your listings; the main disadvantage is the amount of time and management, as well as the time to update citations if you re-brand or move. If you’d like to try, these resources will acquaint you with top citations you will want to build:

Automated citations

You can choose to either manually obtain citations or automate it. The main advantage of automation is saving time and easy updates if a business changes numbers or an address; the biggest concern is that not all services are of the same and some can create more problems rather than solving them!
With most citation services you will have less control over your local business listings, but if the product is good, this is not a problem. The main thing is to be sure that any service you consider is building relevant citations rather than selling a tool that doesn’t add valuable listings.
Even if you do buy citations, you will probably want to amplify this by creating some citations on niche sites that aren’t found in agency packages.

Duplicate listing clean-up

Duplicates drag your listing down so detecting and resolving them is vital. Advanced screening of Google duplicates requires a lot of effort. A combination of tools and an understanding on how to write query strings should help you resolve as many Google duplicates as possible. You have several options for fixing duplicates, but Map Maker will be your best option. Read on.

Earn your reviews

Given their power as a ranking and conversion factor, reviews are must-haves for every local business. Follow these steps to get reviews:
Be sure you are listed on the leading platforms – Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook. Next, you will want to make sure you obtain listings on industry or geography-specific review sites. On average, most business locations will have anywhere from 50 – 200 citations of relevance in a given service area.
I’m sure most can agree, Google reviews will have the most impact on local listings visibility. Generating a shareable Google review link is easy (thank you, Whitespark)! Remember to review any platform guidelines before you pursue reviews. Every platform has their own set of rules. Pay close attention to Google and Yelp, which are very strict!

Here are a few tips when getting reviews

• Don’t set up a review station/kiosk to ask for reviews
• Make sure customers leave reviews under their own accounts
• Make sure customers use their own devices
• Don’t confuse reviews with testimonials
• A review is content on a third-party website
• A testimonial is content published on yours
• Do not mark up on-site testimonials with Schema
• Add a review widget to your website for customers to leave reviews
• Don’t ask for too many reviews at once, at any time
• Monitor all review sites for red flags that quality has fallen off
• Reply to all negative reviews with accountability and professionalism
• Respond to positive reviews too! Thank your loyal customers publicly

Social Media and Local SEO

Research your customer base and identify which social platforms are popular. Look for opportunities to help, whether it’s answering a question, offering resources, or sharing an inspirational message. Social media can be a challenging experience for any business. It is likely that you will try several platforms and strategies before finding what works. Dedicate a person or two who regularly monitor and participate on the social media platforms you choose. Don’t let your profile fall stale. Your job in social media is to facilitate and help others, not selling.

Your online presence is a reflection of the real you

All your online efforts are just a reflection of your real life business intentions. Make sure you’re getting it right where it counts most.
No measure of marketing can substitute good business practices. Don’t hire employees without committing to training them in basic interaction, customer service, your products and/or services. Never allow an employee to represent your business that has not been trained. The cost of a bad review is not worth the lack of training. Keep a level of quality control and standard practices to keep on top of customer issues. The owner needs to be familiar with all products and services, customer complaints, and how your staff is serving the public.
Holding regularly-scheduled meetings to address details brought up in reviews to strengthen procedures. Adapt to each conflict while keeping your confidence, and instill this in your staff too! Whether you are dealing with an unrealistic client or someone who is justifiably dissatisfied with your business, know that you can apologize and offer to make it right. Keeping peace with your customer-base will certainly make you a fantastically, reasonable person!
Local Search is often considered as a replacement for all traditional advertising, but this is not true! Yellow Pages, billboards, local radio, and local TV advertising are still profitable forms of advertising for some businesses.
Remember that everything, online or offline, is anchored in making your brand the one that comes to mind when anyone needs your product or services. Limiting yourself to a simple website, with citations, some reviews, and a few social media platforms won’t cut it.
You have to build brand awareness through physical participation in community events and organizations. Get out there and meet your community by attending meetings and conferences, contributing to celebrations, sponsoring teams, and make local newspaper headlines with outreach to your community.