Local SEO
Instead of trying to sell you on our local SEO services,
Why don’t we just teach you to rank better so you can choose us to take you to the next level when you are ready. Your local business listing visibility is important to getting customers through the door or to your store site. Local SEO is key to any business strategy whether you are a small business storefront or a multinational company.
With most searchers turning to maps for where to eat or what to do, shouldn’t you take up more of the local top search results impressions?
If you are like us finding a great place to eat is as simple as:
- Pulling up your phone
- Searching for the best local …
- Arguing over what category to insert after local
- Rock paper scissors
- Winner chooses
- End up going with Thai food anyway
- Pick best-rated result
The interesting thing to point out is: Who really picks out the best results to show on our maps? We are sure there are better Thai places out there but in local search, the only results that matter, are the ones who show up in local search. We hear from a variety of clients who all ask a similar question.
LOOKING FOR A COMPREHENSIVE COMPETITOR WEBSITE ANALYSIS AGAINST YOURS?
Use our Free competitor analysis and SEO Tool and see how you stack up.
There are still many local SEO signals that help you rank better.
With local search, it still helps to have great on-page SEO as well as technical SEO. (It helps the search engines know what your local listing should rank for). However, local search engine optimization does not fully focus on the same thing as a national search campaign may. How you appear in searches both in the search engines but also map services is the key focus.
Brand online reputation management
Managing customer reviews across multiple listings
What can happen if an owner does not claim their local Google listing or monitor their brand reputation?
In this case, this is only one of many online issues (if you searched for them they have been locally hijacked and this isn’t the only reviews that point to a tv show.)
How did it come to be a live listing?
- This listing was suggested by someone other than the owner.
- A large number of fake reviews were placed there.
- A website was suggested as an edit (in this case it is for the Bates Hotel tv show).
- In this case, the local listings across a large number of websites across the internet have been changed. Solidifying the listing take over.
What is unfortunate is the owner might not know this happened or they feel helpless to fix it. How does this happen? In this case, someone suggested the business be added then continued to suggest edits to change the listing. Which leads to our next example.
Competitor Local Listing Sabotage
Another common issue that happens with Google My Business listings (Not limited to GMB but across all platforms) is a competitor, angry customer, or spammer sabotage. A competitor will suggest an edit and the owner will never know the change took place. Worse yet they suggest the business is closed and your listing gets a permanently closed notice. There is a great article here to read about it from Moz. Here is a great example from Eden Prairie, MN.
They are running ads but their listing is reported closed (They might want to switch their SEO/PPC company and consider our SEO/PPC services). This franchise is trying to manage a store but someone decided to hurt their local SEO by reporting it closed. The more locations you have or the higher in search you rank the more this becomes a problem. We have found franchises tend to have more attempts to change a business location information due to the high brand visibility and diffused anger directed at the corporate face of the company. As well as competitors trying to move traffic away to their listing. However, it is important to remember local listing highjacking is not only limited to large businesses
How would you fix this?
It requires you, the owner (or SEO company) to:
- Claim the Google My Business (GMB) listing.
- Flag or respond to the fake or real reviews (unfortunately the process to get a review flagged and removed is not always the easiest or a sure thing that they will remove it. Some times you have to call support to plead your case and even then they may not remove it).
- Then research any false information that was placed on your listing to see if it has been placed anywhere else online. There are other listing sites that sometimes pick up your GMB or overzealous defacers may have changed other listings.
- Contact us and we will be happy to show you other ways that may help or walk you through the process.
Either way, it is important to clean up the incorrect information if only for your customers who search for you.
Why should you hire a Local SEO company and what do they do?
- Besides ensuring you are listed on quality sites they make sure you are found when someone pulls up driving directions to your business in GPS devices, and other similar services.
- They make sure your information is correct across all digital areas. Nothing confuses a searcher more than conflicting information.
- They actively respond to reviews and build a review strategy with you so you can filter reviews before they are placed live. On some platforms, we can actually catch a low review and assist with remediation before it ever makes it to the live review site. Which give us the opportunity to allow the customer to feel heard and potentially turn it into a high rating. (Did you know that many businesses suffer from customers who were never customers or complete miscommunication which can stop those one-star reviews. Similarly named businesses deal with this commonly.)
- Improve on page SEO and optimize listings to show up higher in
search . You want to dominate more of the results. It is important to remember that not only can your business website show up in search, but quality citations/reviews can as well. - Manage brand reputation and make sure that you do not fall victim to competitors modifying your online business listings.
- Verifying that your service pages have the proper geolocation markups.
- Save your time and money.
- As well as increasing your potential sales. (You have to close the sale, we can’t do that for you.)