The Ultimate List: 50 Local Business Directories. What is a business directory? A business directory is an online list of businesses within a particular niche, location, or category. One way local businesses can get found by online searchers is through inclusion in business directories. Today, Google is inserting itself between consumer and local business websites much more often. You need look no further than Google My Business conversion points, AMP, and featured snippets for proof. So it makes sense to get your local business information into the places people are already going to find businesses like yours, rather than simply hoping they'll find you in search results. Click here to get everything you need to get your website ranking in search. Getting your local business' NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information listed on directories, online business listing sites, and citation sites helps to improve visibility, but backlinks from these sites can also have a benefit to SEO.
Consistent NAP. Free Business Listings. Best & Worst Ways To Influence Local SEO Rankings. The vast majority of local businesses out there – even those heavily invested in digital and mobile marketing – are constantly looking for insights on how they can improve their placements in Google’s search engine results. While there’s plenty of advice available on specific tactics ranging from leveraging keywords and linking to boosting reviews and Facebook likes, most business owners struggle with how to prioritize their local marketing budgets to improve their rankings, while avoiding unintentional negative hits to their search visibility. David Mihm at Moz, a marketing analytics firm, pulls together the valuable “Local Search Ranking Factors” survey each year to help to demystify local SEO rankings by honing in on the insights of 35 local marketing experts. Participants evaluate the influence of key ranking factors and prioritize specific ones that they believe contribute to local SEO rankings.
Where To Prioritize Local Marketing Efforts Image courtesy of Moz.com used with permission. Logo Optimization: A Local SEO Stealth Tactic. When local businesses look to beef up their SEO game, they’re often looking for some clever technical trick. But, one of the simplest and most elegant local SEO tactics is to optimize the site’s logo. Since many businesses are unaware of it, employing it will amount to a “stealth” tactic, giving an advantage over competitors.
I’ve written a number of times about SEO for images, and many sites and blogs do image SEO to one degree or another. The logo is one of the most important images associated with a website and with a company, so it should be the most consistently optimized image on websites — yet when I review local business websites, I commonly find the code around logos to be completely lacking basic attention. If your local business website’s logo is not optimized, it could represent a considerable lost opportunity and potential. The main way this helps is through conveying anchor text for logos linked on every page of a site, all linked to the site’s homepage. File Name. 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors by Moz. David Mihm and the folks at Moz released their 2013 local search ranking factors last night. They polled dozens of local SEO experts on 104 different ranking factors and asked hundreds of questions to come up with this report.
You can read the details at moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors but here is just an overview chart: Chuck Finley at Cre8asite Forums said, "For those of you that are interested in tapping into Local, this is the Bible. It's all in there! " Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums. How To Do Onpage Optimization for Local SEO – The “Perfectly Optimized Local Page” Example. The “Perfectly Optimized Local Page” Example We put together a quick example wireframe/infographic (below) on what an ideal local optimized page would look like. Feel free to share this with those SMB’s who need it.
The video above explains all the different elements of this example wireframe below. What Contributes to rankings: Title TagMeta DescriptionHeadline (H1 & H2 Tags)Permalink (slug)Body/Content Optimization (have keywords in content, local mentions, etc)Local Markup (schema or at least have Name, Address, & Phone on the page) What Contributes to higher CTRs: Review MarkupAuthor/Publisher Markup See the example wireframe below. Download this infographic. Tags: Local SEO, onpage seo, optimization. How to Claim & Set Up Local Profiles: From Google+ to Yelp. Claiming and setting up local profiles is an important branding activity that has tremendous SEO value.
Most websites that offer local business listings follow the same listing process, with a few points of differences here and there. Last year I took on the position of Director of Marketing at Ogle School, a .EDU that has over 8 locations in the Texas area. As you can imagine, local SEO is incredibly important (as is local social) so claiming, setting up, managing and updating all of the local listings for our school is quite a task. This article will take you through the process of claiming and setting up local profiles across diverse online platforms, and help them get a better idea about what they need to do to connect with local customers.
I’ve put together tactics and tips for Google+, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Yahoo Local, ChamberofCommerce.com and Yelp. Let’s begin: Google + Local Let’s start with the Big Daddy of them all – Google+ Local. Step 2: Verify Listing Facebook Yahoo! Evolution of the Local Algorithm - Whiteboard Friday. Remember the days when doing SEO for a local business was no different than doing SEO for any other business? We've come a long way since the early 2000's, and local SEO has evolved tremendously since the beginning of online search. There are still many questions to be answered when it comes to the ever-changing landscape of local SEO: what are the factors Google is using to rank local businesses? Where should owners focus their energy? What's the new hot thing for local rankings? Our local expert, David Mihm, is here to shed some light on all of your burning local SEO questions. In today's Whiteboard Friday, David discusses what factors affect ranking of local businesses, and how local algorithms within Google have evolved throughout the years.
"Hey everybody. Google+ Local Bible for SMBs. If you're a small local business, having a Google+ Local profile is imperative to putting your brand – quite literally – on the map. Google Places was recently replaced with Google+ Local – a merging of Places and Plus that serves up your Google+ Local listing in Search and Maps results on mobile devices and traditional browsers. Whereas Places was a static listing, Local is dynamic and social. A well-optimized Google+ Local page can benefit your digital marketing strategy in the following ways: Outrank your competitors in local search.Build the authority of your brand through +1's and user reviews.Drive traffic to your website.Convert more visitors into leads and clientele. Quick stats about local mobile use: 50 percent of mobile search is local.61 percent of local searches result in purchases.50 percent of smartphone shoppers use a GPS/mapping app to find a retail location.Only 33 percent of advertisers have a mobile optimized website (Read more mobile statistics for local business). 1.
Local Business Competitive Edge: How To Scope Out The Competition. 96 Flares Filament.io 96 Flares × Do you use cloak-and-dagger tactics when scoping out the local competition? Every business owner needs to have a little James Bond in them when it comes to understanding and knowing the competition. Businesses use the phrase “competitive edge” to describe how they gather information about the competition. Let’s do a little high-tech “spying” that will help your business spring ahead of the competition and boost your competitive edge. Know the competition better than you know yourself. Alerts, Mentions, and Crawl Tools Google search may be at the top of the list when researching local competition, but other than NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) details are limited.
Alerts and Mentions Google Alerts: Provides email alerts based on keyword queries you set up, like your business name, your name, or your competitor’s name. Google Trends: Allows users to visually see the frequency (interest over time) of keywords and a prediction for the future. Content Crawls. Why Citations Are Important for Local SEO | GetListed.org. Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms in Google and Bing. Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.
Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (i.e., Superpages.com) help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business's contact information and categorization. To paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals' coach Dennis Green, citations help search engines confirm that businesses "are who we thought they were!
" Citations are particularly important in less-competitive niches, like plumbing or electrical, where many service providers don't have websites themselves. Without much other information, the search engines rely heavily on whatever information they can find. Citations also validate that a business is part of a community. Citations and links from these kinds of websites can dramatically improve your local search engine rankings. Local Citation Finder for Local SEO. How To Expedite Uploading Photos To Your Google Maps Listing. Jade Wang from Google gave a tip in a Google Business Help thread on how to expedite the uploading and listing of photos on your Google Business Maps listing page. Typically, a business owner would upload photos through managing their page within Google+ or via Google Places. But that process can take a month for the photos to be approved and visible within Google's search results and Google Maps.
Instead, Jade said you can take a "shortcut" by uploading the photos by going to the Photos tab of the Google+ Local listing. She said the photos should be visible "almost immediately. " So if you want to get photos to show up right away, that is the way to go. Forum discussion at Google Business Help. Anatomy of an Optimal Local Landing Page Infographic | Every website has landing pages. Every local landing page has certain traits. But there is nowhere that explains what pieces of information are important and where that information should go to reach a higher ranking.
That was until now. What we’ve done is gone through and checked over a hundred different landing pages from many different types of businesses, including the food industry, the automotive industry, insurance companies, and other SEO firms, to find what most people were doing. We then complied a list and put it in infographic form so it’s easy to digest. You’re welcome internet. We did it out of love. We’re also proud to be a part of the launch of a very talented new brand, Avalaunch Media, who took all of our hard data and turned it into the sexy little number you see below.
Click on the image to be taken to a larger version Click on the image to be taken to a larger version So there you have it. Feel free to learn more about me by checking out my Google+ Profile: +Mike Ramsey.