Ranking Tactics for Local Search #smx
David Mihm, Designer & Local Search Marketer, davidmihm.com
What local search looks like
- the 10-pack
- driven by google.com, yahoo.com, etc.
Organic search ecosystem
- Yahoo/Bing
Local search ecosystem
A little more complicated…
Local search ranking factors
- Verified local business listing
- Off-page/off-listing criteria
- Customer reviews
- Traditional on-page criteria
- 7/ top 10 are specific to local
Developing your local mindset
- SEO is about optimizing sites, local is about optimizing location
- Consistency: name, address, phone number are critical (don’t use tracking phone numbers, don’t stuff keywords into business name)
- Building out business profile, you’re not creating an ad
Local Search
- location (verification, claiming, off-site references, categoreies, reviews)
- website
Traditional
- Website (on-page, title tags, link building)
Mike Blumenthal, Owner & Local Marketing Expert, Blumenthals
How Google Ranks your listing
- Web page totals in Maps (citations)
- Geo references and reviews
- Business name
- Business category
- content
The “new” PageRank
- Score of website
- # links referring to business
- Highest score of those links
How Google scores your website
- In-bound links from documents that mention the business with full or partial name and/or address
- in-bound links with business name in anchor text
- business name in title tag
- all or part of business name in domain
Takeaways
- Choose your business name and domain carefully for use in local
- Think about gaining inbound links with your business name as anchor text
- Be sure your title tags reflect your name
- Strike a balance between optimizing your site for local and Google Maps
Mary Bowling, SEO, Director of Search Marketing, seOverflow
- Sometimes the local 10-pack is a 3-pack
- 10-pack isn’t exactly the Maps results
- You cannot be in the 10-pack if you don’t have a Google Local Business Listing
Optimize your Maps listings
- Use your main keyword phrase and complementary terms in your profile descriptions
- Grab the long tail by including:
- your products and services
- the brands you carry
- the locations you serve - Choose – or create – the right categories (choose two/three existing categories, then create the remaining two/three that apply to your local listing)
- Create attributes (other information not already included – but DO NOT KEYWORD STUFF)
Create citations
- AKA web references
- They don’t have to include a link
- Mine competitors’ web pages (would that site also be willing to give you a citation?)
Get reviews!
- Reviews are exactly what people (and Google) are looking for
- Google pulls reviews from across the web (so it doesn’t matter where your customers leave them)
- Come up with a system to encourage reviews by happy customers
- Yahoo has mentioned after a certain number of reviews, they’ll start figuring out whether your reviews are positive or negative
Your website and the 10 pack
- Use your website to build trust and reinforce you LBL info by:
- linking to your Maps lisitng
- get links from local websites (Center of Commerce,e tc.)
On-page optimization
- Add location!!
- Place full street address and phone number on every page of your website
- Optimizae your Contact/About page for business name/location
Standaradize
- Use same name, address, phone number everywhere
- Got to sources of business data and standardize
- Get listed on local directories
Check for Location Trust
- Check data providers
- Search for your business name
- Search for your phone number
- Search for your address
How to track the pack - how to track the 10-pack with Google Analytics
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Barnacle SEO: attaching oneself to a large fixed object, then waiting for customers to float by in the current.
Local search: how?
- “Web references” = links, Links = trust
- Yellow Pages
- Local directories - Links aren’t critical – the correlating factors are name, address, and phone
Places to submit:
- Wire Fan
- Mixx
- Yahoo! Local
- City Search
- Super Pages
- Insider Pages
- Yelp
- Yellow Pages
- BrownBook.com
How can you do the same
- Maximize local listings with SEO
- Keywords in titles and copy
- Links to local profiles (even low-quality links will do, leverage social bookmarking/directories)
Andrew Shotland, Proprietor, Local SEO Guide
Top SEO’d IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages)
- SuperPages
- CitySearch
- Yelp
- Yahoo Local
- InsiderPages
- Yellow Pages
- Biz Journals
- AreaConnect
- MagicYellow
- Switchboard
- Here are more
Rankings by site type
- Local Business – 32%
- IYP – 27%
- Vertical – 17%
- Article – 6%
- Local Vertical – 5%
- LYP – 5%
- Natl Chain – 4%
- Unrelated – 2%
- Gov – 1%
- Edu – 1%
- Social – <1%
- Video – <1%
Which Yellow Pages sites should you use for which categories?
Questions
- Google’s Local Listing bulk upload instructions
- Choose a certain number of “barnacle” or IYP sites, because you’ll want to continuously update them.
- Like traditional SEO, keep profiles “fresh”. For example, in Google Maps, update coupons, photos, videos, etc. especially if your customers are used to it.
- What social media sites are good for local businesses? Twitter for a company like a pizza place, for a company like a plastic surgeon: Facebook. For a more professional company, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the easiest SM site to talk people into, and to ease them into others.
- Vertical is important for review sites (Urbanspoon and Yelp is mandatory for restaurants, TripAdvisor for hotels)
- Barnacle sites outrank you: you can get ahead of yourself.
- Other important sites that will get picked up by a ton of others: Openlist, Zvents, Local.com, Mojopages, Immercifind
- How to prevent local listings sabotage? Make your listing consistent across every IYP and every submission.