When the World Wide Web was in its infancy, all businesses – large and small — operated on a relatively level playing field. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. Today, small businesses face many unique challenges online. Large businesses simply have more money and resources. They can easily make a big splash online while pushing small businesses to the side.
That’s why almost every type of business needs some type of local search engine optimization.
- Local Businesses
This is what most people think of when they think of a “local business.” This is a business with one physical location. Most of the business transactions take place in this store. The company’s web presence mainly exists to augment the physical business, providing customers with the hours, address, prices and other info designed to draw the local customers into the physical store.
- Businesses with More than One Location
These are chains, franchises, etc. The goal of the website is usually the same as the local business described above – to drive local customers into the store. In this case, however, the content of each site must be designed with the individual location in mind. Plus, as mentioned above, each site must have unique content, even if some of the information is the same across all sites.
- Virtual Businesses
One of the main advantages of a virtual business is their ability to sell to anyone around the world. There is still a place for local SEO, however. You want to target specific areas which relate to the business.
For example, suppose someone sells toys and supplies for at-home pools. Customers around the world purchase these items, but there are certain markets you can pay extra attention to. For pool supplies, you might want to create local pages for California, Florida and other areas where people typically own pools.
If you own a small business (or manage the marketing of one), don’t worry. There are still many ways you can keep up with the big guys and we cover some basic steps in this article.
Table of Contents
- 1 Local SEO – an algorithm in the wild
- 1.1 How to create your GMB
- 1.1.1 Sign up for Google My Business
- 1.1.2 Enter your business/company name
- 1.1.3 Add your business category
- 1.1.4 Add your services
- 1.1.5 Add your location (address)
- 1.1.6 Add your contact details (phone number and website)
- 1.1.7 Verify your listing (can take 3-7 days)
- 1.1.8 Checklist GMB for local SEO
- 1.2 How to optimize your GMB
- 1.2.1 Add additional categories
- 1.2.2 Add Business Hours & Special Hours
- 1.2.3 Claim your short profile name
- 1.2.4 Add an appointment URL & products (if applicable)
- 1.2.5 Add suggested attributes
- 1.2.6 Add a professional business description
- 1.2.7 Add GMB Photos & Videos (important)
- 1.2.8 Add GMB Posts (important)
- 1.2.9 Add and monitor your Q&As (important)
- 1.2.10 Checklist GMB Optimization
- 1.3 GMB reviews
- 1.4 Local Citations
- 1.1 How to create your GMB
- 2 Local on-page SEO
- 3 Local Link Building
- 4 Final words & Checklist
- 5 Additional Resources & our SEO Services
Local SEO – an algorithm in the wild
Search results for local searches are a bit different to the traditional search results.
Let’s take “Roofing New York” as an example.
As you can see from the screenshot below, Google lowill first show some relevant Ads, followed directly by the so called “local map pack” or “snack pack” that highlights the top 3 Google My Business (GMB) listings for that particular local search phrase. Below the local pack you have the local organic search results.
This hyper-local search result is Google way to connect the searcher with relevant businesses that are in close proximity to him/her. In days were most people all well versed with the in-and-out’s of Google local, most clicks will go towards the local pack, i.e. the top 3 GMB listings.
What is a GMB, you ask?
GMB is short for “Google My Business” and it’s a way to create listing of your business on Google Local. Typically a Google My Business listing includes valuable information that your potential customers might want to know, like:
- Business name
- Business address
- Services offered
- Hours (opened/closed)
- Your phone number
- A link to your website
- Brand images and / or videos
- Reviews from actual customers
- Questions & Answers regarding your services or products
- GMB posts
- etc.
Furthermore, it is absolutely vital for local SEO that you fill out all of these infos.
According to a MOZ study a well-optimized GMB listing is still the #1 ranking factor for the local map pack along with link signals, review signals, on-page signals and citation signals.
(Source: MOZ study)
So in order to succeed with SEO for local businesses and get your business listed in the local pack you need an optimized GMB. Don’t worry we’ll get to that now.
How to create your GMB
Sign up for Google My Business
To get started with the signup process, go to Google My Business and click on the “Manage now” button. Please keep in mind, that you need an active gmail account to sign up for Google my business (you can create on here https://accounts.google.com/SignUp),
Enter your business/company name
Enter your company name. Quite straight forward. Google will sometimes provide an auto-complete suggestion in case there is already a listing in existance for your company name.
Add your business category
This step is very important. These categories are a big ranking factor for your GMB and local SEO. You should research your main three competitors and find out what categories they are using for their GMBs. Use the same primary category as your #1 competitor. You will be able to add additional categories once your Google my Business listing is verified – don’t forget about this.
Let’s take the “roofing new york” example again. In the screenshot below you’ll see that the top local three listing for “roofing new york” all use the same primary category, in this case “roofing contractor”.
You should use this category as your main category too as it is a valuable factor for your local SEO efforts. Enter the primary category into the field (Google will probably autosuggest it for you) and click on “next”.
Add your services
Here you can add your services that you offer your customers. Google will probably give you some suggestions, but you can add your own custom services too.
Add your location (address)
To enter your full business location (address), click on “Yes” and then “next”. Make sure the address is correct and uses the same format as on your website. This is the main part of your NAP, so you better make sure it’s absolutely correct.
Next you can pinpoint your location on a map. Don’t worry if its not 100% exact, Google is smart enough to take care of it.
Add your contact details (phone number and website)
In the last step, you have the option to enter your phone nr (make sure it’s correct and uses the same format as on your website). Make sure that it’s a local number. We don’t suggest to use generic numbers. You will also have a field for your website’s URL. We usually recommend to use your homepage, unless you have specific location pages on your website that you want to use.
Verify your listing (can take 3-7 days)
That’s basically it. Once you followed all the creating a GMB listing for local SEO, you will need to verify your listing. The most common form of verifcation is via post-card. Google will send you a letter containing a verification code to the address that you entered during the registration process (your company’s address). Once you received the letter, you simply enter the code and your business listing will be verified.
For some businesses Google offers Instant, Phone or E-Mail verification. But these methods are only available to selected businesses. You can read more about that HERE.
Checklist GMB for local SEO
- Use your correct business name
- Add all the necessary categories (make sure you research the categories beforehand)
- Add your services (that you actually supply to your customers)
- Make sure that you entered the correct address, including street name, ZIP and state.
- Make sure that you entered the phone number correctly and that you used the correct website address.
- Verify your listing (via postcard, phone or email)
- Make sure that all the information matches your website.
How to optimize your GMB
Once you have verified your GMB listing, it is time to optimize it for maximum local SEO results. The process is a bit tedious, but well worth it. The jist of it is to fill out everything to the fullest extend. And by everything we mean it. Don’t leave out any forms or fields. You need to fill out the Google My Business listing completely.
Don’t worry, we’ll guide you through it. It’s not rocket science and everyone should be able to do it. So let’s get started.
Add additional categories
Remember, we talked about additional categories before? Now is the time to add them to improve relevance for local SEO.
Here’s a little guide to find all additional categories of your competitors that you can add to your GMB later on.
- Use Google Maps, enter the name of your main competitor and find their google maps listing.
- Right click on their listing where you see the address, phone etc. and click on “view source code”
- Ctrl-F for and search for their primary category. Alongside their primary categor, you will see all of their secondary categories as well. Add as many as relevant to your business to your GMB listing.
Add Business Hours & Special Hours
Let your customers know when they can reach you at your business. Make sure to also fill out the special hours (in case of holidays, seasonal changes, events etc.)
Claim your short profile name
Google gives you the option to enter a short name for your business listing. The short profile can be accessed via https://g.page/shortname. People can also use that short name to find your business and listing on Google maps. So if this feature is available for your main GMB category, please utilize it.
Add an appointment URL & products (if applicable)
The appointment URL is specifically for business that manage appointments online (doctors, restaurants etc.). If you have an option for it, please enter it here. Otherwise, you can leave it blank.
The products usually depend on your primary category. If you are a service based business, you probably won’t be able to add any products. If you have some products that you can add, go wild!
Add suggested attributes
Google will show you attributes that you can select to highlight your business. Add as many attributes to your business that are available to you.
Add a professional business description
Here you have the option to provide potential customers with a descriptive little text snippet for your business. We recommend to include your main keywords at least once. But don’t be too aggressive and start keywords stuffing your description. A keyword density of 2-3% would be ideal, if it doesn’t destroy the natural flow of the description. Always keep the customer in mind and make sure you use a natural flow and the right tonality for your clients.
Add GMB Photos & Videos (important)
Photos & videos are a great way to lure a customer into clicking on your GMB listing. According to Google, GMB listings with professional photos get 35% more clicks than listing with no photos attached.
Who wouldn’t want to get some visual impressions of a store before going there? Hm? Yep, me too.
We recommend to add at least 20 photos and at least one video to your GMB. Add as many images under each section that you can. Also make sure that you geo-tag your images.
Guidelines for the images
- Format: JPG or PNG.
- Size: Between 10 KB and 5 MB.
- Recommended resolution: 720 px tall, 720 px wide.
- Minimum resolution: 250 px tall, 250 px wide.
Guidelines for the videos
- Duration: Up to 30 seconds long
- File size: Up to 100 MB
- Resolution: 720p or higher
Ideas
- Cover Photo – this is the main image that will be shown on your GMB listing and should be a representation of your business. We recommend to use a high-quality branded image for this to gain the trust of your customers.
- Logo – it will usually appear close to your brand name on your GMB listing.
- Brand images
- Cover images
- Product images
- Images of the storefront or pictures from inside your store
- Staff Images
- Videos (AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPG, M4V, MKV, M2TS and MTS) Don’t use stock videos. Make a personal video of your storefront/store or a small explainer video about the history of your company and what makes you stand out amongst the competition.
There is also an option to add a virtual tour of your business. You can click on “add virtual tour” and will be presented with an option to hire a photographer (verified by Google) to take some professional pictures for you. While this is optional for local SEO success, it can be a great addition to your GMB. It’s still uncertain if it’s a direct ranking factor. But if you have a bit of budget to spare, we definitely recommend to use it.
Add GMB Posts (important)
You have heard of blogging, right? Well, you can do it directly on your GMB.
Google offers you four different post types that you can add to your GMB that are quite helpful for local SEO.
- Add Offer – e.g. for promos, marketing campaigns or special sales.
- Add Update (What’s new) – these can be general blog posts showcasing your expertise in your niche. But you can also write about general updates within your company, news and product innovations.
- Add Event – if you are hosting a special (local) event you can write about them here and add important information about the event, a title, the time, location, etc.
- Add Product – in case you have new product updates.
We recommend to add at least 10 blog posts in form of updates (what’s new) and if possible at least one offer, one event and one product update. GMB posts are most likely a big ranking factor so adding new content to your GMB on a regular basis is generally speaking a very good idea.
You have up to 1500 characters for your posts, but ideally you stick to 150-300 characters as only those are shown as an excerpt on your GMB listing. So keep it short and concise. If possible add photos (min. 400 px wide by 300 px tall, in JPG or PNG format) or videos (AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPG, M4V, MKV, M2TS and MTS. The maximum size for videos is 100 MB) to your GMB posts and a small CTA button (for instance “Book Now”). You can also interlink your GMB posts for a natural flow of content.
Add and monitor your Q&As (important)
A few years ago Google added a small feature that allows anyone to publicly ask questions in regards to your business. It’s a community based features that allows basically anyone to provide an answer to these questions. Subsequently, this means that you have no real control over the answers.
But what you can do, and what we highly recommend, is to leverage this feature to the fullest extent to build a positive reputation around your brand. You should monitor this section frequently and respond quickly and professionally to all inquiries, questions and concerns surrounding your brand and your company. Answers to these questions can be upvoted by the community and the most upvoted questions will appear on your GMB listing. So make sure that you work with this feature to showcase questions that could lead to a higher CTR.
Over time, you will probably encounter spammy, offensive or simply false statements in this section. Feel free to report those to Google to keep your GMB listing clean as a whistle. Pro Tip: Add the most common questions yourself and provide thorough answers to each and every one of them.
Checklist GMB Optimization
- Add Business Hours & Special Hours
- Claim your short profile name
- Add an appointment URL & products (if applicable)
- Add suggested attributes
- Add a professional business description (750 characters max. – don’t keyword stuff)
- Add 20 GMB Photos & Videos (Very important)
- Add 10 Add GMB Posts (very important)
- Add and monitor your Q&As (very important)
GMB reviews
Positive local reviews are an important part and ranking factor of local SEO. Good reviews don’t just create positive word-of-mouth. They also increase your search engine ranking. On the other hand, bad reviews can have the exact opposite effect. If a negative review of your business shows up online, respond quickly and always take the high road. It’s okay to defend yourself; it’s not okay to attack a customer, no matter what they say to you. Apologize if there truly was an issue. Politely clarify the situation if the customer was in the wrong.
According to a study by Womply, businesses that reply to their reviews at least 25% of the time average 35% more revenue and people spend up to 49% more money at businesses that reply to reviews.
(Source: Wombly Study)
As the SEO pro, part of your job is to monitor the reviews and help promote as many good reviews as possible.
A Brief Local Review Overview
Reviews can be pretty frustrating. The internet certainly doesn’t always create rational, civil discourse. You might be defending your business from reviews which are, well, pretty “out there” and possibly even entirely fictional.
Review sites themselves can be frustrating to deal with, too. For instance, Yelp guidelines make it very clear that “you shouldn’t ask your customers to post reviews on Yelp.” Google guidelines warn you to never “offer money or product to others to write reviews for your business.”
Bribing your customers to write good reviews is a short-sighted (and ethically dubious) strategy. But there are still plenty of effective ways to encourage your customers to leave good reviews.
How to Get Great Reviews
Like link building, the best reviews are ones which are created naturally. The name of the game here is influence. You don’t want to ask for or incentivize reviews. But you can create an environment where your customers will be more likely to leave a positive review. Here’s how:
As the local SEO pro, this is a bit out of your control. But the number one way your client can get great reviews is to provide fantastic customer service. If your client is plagued by legitimate complaints from customers, you might need to politely remind them that improved customer service will lead to improved search result rankings.
Looking for inspiration? These companies are known around the world for great customer service:
If your clients are already providing fantastic customer service, that’s great! You’re already set up for success. The next step is to engage with these satisfied customers.
You can always have more than one interaction with a customer. One of the easiest and most effective methods here is email. There are a variety of reasons you can send one to a customer such as:
- Appointment confirmations
- Thank you notes
- Customer service survey
- Promotion
The exact type and number of emails depends somewhat on the product or service you provide. But there are always a few options. The best part is these are all legitimate reasons to contact the customer, and you don’t have to directly ask for a review.
After a positive interaction, however, you can increase the chances of the customer leaving a great review. To do this, you’ll want to send the right message at the right time.
Is the client in an email exchange with a customer because the customer wants a refund or has a problem? That’s obviously not the right time to remind them about leaving a review. Instead, you’ll want to target your customers whenever they:
- fill out a customer survey (in a positive or neutral way)
- post positively on your social media channels
- use a coupon or promotion
- sign up for your newsletter
- engage with you in any positive manner
How to Ask for a Review (without really asking for a Review)
Once you have an engaged customer, you can send them a final email. You’ll want to thank them for their business, ask if they have any further needs and then ask if they’d mind leaving a positive review describing their experience.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a review in a one-on-one exchange. The major review sites won’t penalize you. This is because the reviews you get this way will appear on the sites in a natural time frame with unique language. There’s simply nothing about the review which will raise flags on the review site.
Another effective tip is to always mention social media. This can be as simple as ending every email with a link to your Facebook and Twitter Business account. Reviews will happen naturally when you’re engaged with your customers on social media.
Negative reviews are far more common than positive reviews. This is because most people are more motivated to post when they’ve had a bad experience. You can counteract this tendency very effectively by using the techniques described above.
When a business depends on local search traffic, positive reviews can boost both your brand and your search positioning in the map pack and help with local SEO.
Checklist GMB Reviews
- Monitor and responds to positive and negative reviews (always)
- Flag inappropriate reviews
- Ask (without really asking) your customers to leave positive reviews for your business
Local Citations
Think of the internet like the phone book: in previous decades, people would reference the phone book to find a listing of local businesses along with the respective address and phone number (e.g. a plumber or roofing company). Now, since people do not use phone books very often, they go to the internet. There is ample evidence that suggests consumers rely heavily on digital platforms (search engines like Google or Bing) to find local services. The vast majority of consumers look up local services online first.
You see, the Internet has quickly taken the place of newspapers, television, billboards and the radio as the best form of marketing and is in most cases much cheaper too. It offers life-changing rewards to savvy business owners, who are smart enough to identify this trend before too many of their competitors do.
To rank higher in your local search results you need so called “local citations”.
What are citations ?
Local citations are basically any online mention of your business. This can be just about any type of mention – not just links. Aside from your company name, a local citation will usually include your physical full address and the respective phone number. In SEO circles, your name, address and phone number are often called your NAP.
You want to always use your NAP in a consistent way. For local search engines, an address of “123 Fake Street” is different than “123 Fake St.”
So, the tip here is simple:
If you start building citations, always (!) use the same format. Not just 90% of the time, but every time.
- N – Name
- A – Address
- P – Phone
Your Name, Address and Phone Number should be the same throughout your entire online presence, starting from your website, over your social media profiles up to your business listings. This goes for your offline publications as well, like any letterheads and business cards. The more consistent you keep your NAP, the greater the chances of improving your local online presence.
Local citations and citation building are an integral part of local search ranking. Having a lot of consistent build citations for your business gives you a better chance of getting into the sought-after and coveted local 3-map-pack in Googles search engines results.
The local 3-map-pack is Google’s targeted search engine response to local business searches. When consumers do a search for a local business, Google responds by promoting the three most popular local businesses based on their search result pages (you’ve probably seen them already). Most people rely on these top three listings to make their choice and only small percentage moves below these rankings.
You want to find out what local citation are already flying around the web for your business. Most business may will have a few existing citations, but sometimes these have incorrect NAP information. As you recall, NAP consistency is key for local success.
So you want to find those citations and claim them to add your correct NAP.
Audit your existing local citations
We usually recommend to use our citation audit package to find out where and how your business is listed throughout the search engines. It’s a very affordable and reliable way to find all your correct and incorrect citations.
You can also use the free tool from MOZ Local: https://moz.com/checkout/local/check to quickly check how your company is listed on the web. But the service is only avaiable for the US, Canada and the UK.
Claim and clean up any incorrect citations
If you found some incorrect citations, you should try your best to fix them. Remember that NAP consistency is a huge ranking factor for local results.
The process for claiming and updating your entry varies by directory platform but should be fairly straight-forward for you.
Once you’ve claimed your listings you need to make sure that the details are consistent with your Google My Business and your website.
First, make sure the NAP (name, address, phone number) and your business hours are all listed and, of course, accurate. Also include a clear, brief description of the products or services provided. You’ll want to include a link back to the website, too.
Finally, photos will make your entry stand out from entries without photos. You can attach photos of the physical store, the staff, the products or the company’s logo. Another benefit to claiming a listing is now you’ll be notified when any activity occurs on your listing. You don’t want a negative review to sit unanswered, for instance.
Build more citations
Now that your existing listings are in great shape, we’ll move on to creating new listings or as we like to call them citations. This is pretty simple. We’re not really looking to create a listing on every directory on the internet.
But around 100 targeted citations can really move the needle and improve your local SEO rankings. We recommend to focus on the top directories.
Core local citations (must-have)
These are your must-have listings. If you didn’t find an existing listing for your company on these citation sites, you should go ahead and start building citations here.
Make sure to use consistent NAP details.
- Yelp
- Bing Places
- Apple Maps
- Foursquare
- Yahoo Local
- Manta
- Yellowpages
- Mapquest
- BizJournal
- BBB
- Angieslist
Keep in mind, that these are the must-have for the USA only. For other countries it may differ.
Big data aggregators
Data aggregators are sites that source company data and pass them along to search engines, directories and other websites. There are four big ones, that are trusted by thousands of sites and directories and are used frequently by local SEO & marketers.
- Factual (www.factual.com)
- Acxiom (www.acxiom.com) – might end their listing services in 2020.
- Infogroup (www.expressupdate.com)
- Localeze (www.neustarlocaleze.biz)
You can add your business information (including Name, Address and Phone Number) to their database and once the data is verified they can pass it along to their feed. If done correctly, building industry specific local citations via data aggreagtor is quite easy.
Geo and niche specific citations
Then you have your niche and geo (city) specific directories. If you run a local business in the law niche or a law firm you could create local citations on the following sites
This is ultra targeted citation building. Try to get as many of these industry specific local citations as possible as they are super targeted and very helpful to your rank Google My Business listing higher in the local search map pack.
For more information you can check out MOZ’s resource hub for a list of the most popular citations by category.
Competitor’s citations
But what we’re really interested in is where the competition is most visible. Run a local citation audit for your competitors and figure out where they’re listed (and what citation sites they used. Create your business listings on any of these citation sites where your client cannot already be found, this will help immensly with local search.
You may also want to search for new directories / business listings by using keywords and phrases related to the industry. Search like a customer looking for your type of business and see what directories pop up. These are directories you’ll want to be listed in.
Keyword searched related to local businesses typically produce these four results:
- Your client’s website (assuming you’ve done your job correctly, of course)
- Competitors’ sites
- Specific business listings in local business directories
- Categories on local business directories
Some of the top local industry specific directories are free or have a free level of subscription. At the very least, you should be able to claim your site and ensure correct information is posted. You might find various levels of paid services such as the ability to include links, photos or multiple listings across different categories. Those are good to have, but not mandatory.
Unstructured citations
An unstructured local citation is is basically the mention of your local business NAP on sites that are not specifically made for local business listing. This can be virtually anything, a website, a blog post, a news article, a post on social platforms, a press releas or even a youtube descriptions etc.
Getting unstructured citations from valuable and high authority sites can be a game changer when it comes to local SEO results. Keep in mind, that the most important aspect of local listings is that the local business information (NAP) is current, consistent and accurate.
Let us do the work
If you don’t want to jump through all the hoops of creating these local citations yourself (which is quite tedious, tbh), feel free to use our local SEO service, where citations building on over 90 sites is included.
How it works?
We first perform a full citation audit of your existing citations (both correct and incorrect listing for your local business).
We then fill the citation gap by creating at least 60 new citations in the most valuable business directories for your location and business category that were carefully chosen by our team based on authority and competition research. In addition, we create 30 unstructured citations on social, image and video sites. In our opinion, this is a perfect combination of structured and unstructured citations and a great starter local SEO package to climb up the ranks in the local search results (both in the map pack and organically).
In addition we will get you one guest post on a highly authoritative website (DR30+, 1k+ traffic) keeping your local business niche in mind.
On top of that you will get 10 manually crafted web 2.0s with local search markers (map embeds, GMB CID Link, (co)-citation including all relevant infos and a link to your local business site).
This is the perfect mix for local businesses trying to get into SEO: Authority links from guest posts, highly branded web 2.0 links and super important citations (both structured and unstructured)
1x authority guest post (DR30+, 1k+ traffic)?
10x web 2.0s with local markers?
60 Local Citations?
10 citations on social sites?
10 citations on image sites?
10 citations on video sites?
Citation Audit & SurferSEO audit report?
At the push of a button, with our new local SEO package, we will completely transform your local presence and put your business on the map with a bang. Our local SEO package will cover most of your bases: Authority links from guest posts, branded web 2.0s with local markers for diversity and of course citations from a huge variety of platforms (directories, social, image and video sites).
Local on-page SEO
Ranking well in the map pack is all nice and dandy, but don’t neglect the organic local search results. Remember, those results that show up below the GMB listings? Yep, ranking your website here is important.
How to rank organically? Well, the answer is usually the same: A well-optimized website with lots of relevant content and high authority backlinks. Let’s start with the website and the content first.
Use location pages with proper URL architecture
In the old days, “localizing” your content was pretty simple. You didn’t need to do much beyond inserting the city and state into the content. If the client had multiple locations across the country, you could even use the same content multiple times by replacing the city and state names for each market.
This technique no longer works. Search engines will flag the pages as duplicate content. In order to get the best ranking possible , you need unique content on each page. Don’t worry – this isn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds!
What you need is a good URL architecture that flows naturally and lets the algorithm know what your individual pages are about and what area they are targeting. This is a key component for local SEO.
Let’s take a roofing company in New York as an example.
For such a company we would recommend the following URL architecture:
- yourdomain.com/locations/new-york/roofing/
- yourdomain.com/locations/new-jersey/roofing/
- yourdomain.com/locations/philadelphia/roofing/
By using an URL structure like this you make sure that Google’s algorithm knows that each individual page targets a different location with location specific keywords.
Let’s break that structure down:
- yourdomain.com – this is your homepage. It should be optimized for relevant keywords without local intent. For instance “roofing”. Make sure that you add your NAP, your google map and relevant links to your location subpages.
- yourdomain.com/locations/ – this page should show case all of the locations that your business can cater to. On this page you should link out to all the location sub-pages that you have. For New York, you would link to yourdomain.com/locations/new-york/, for New Jersey you’d link out to yourdomain.com/locations/new-jersey/ and so on..
- yourdomain.com/locations/new-york/ – this page is your location page for New York. Here you can list all the services that your business offers to New Yorkers. For instance, roofing, roof damage repair, etc. pp. Create a link for each location service page. If your company offers roofing services to New Yorkers, link out to yourdomain.com/locations/new-york/roofing/
- yourdomain.com/locations/new-york/roofing/ – this is your location landing page for relevant roofing keywords. This page targets specific roofing keywords for the New York area. You can even go deeper and create another level for specific roofing page where you target specific keywords. For example: if you want to rank for “roofing costs new york” you could create the following page: yourdomain.com/locations/new-york/roofing/roofing-costs/ where you add a well-optimized article for the keyword in questions.
By using a URL strucuture like this you make sure that the algoithm can rank your individual location pages for the actual local keywords that you are targeting.
Use long form content for your location pages
Now that we got the URL architecture out of the way it’s time to fill our location pages with content.
The prevailing wisdom regarding content creation is to make it A.S.A.P. –- that is, to make your content “as short as possible.” After all, this is the internet. Major world events can unfold in 140 characters or less. Readers want information, not articles.
Nobody wants to read thousands and thousands of words on a smart device. Right?
Well, not really. Turns out, long form content isn’t dead just yet. Used correctly, longer articles have quite a few SEO benefits.
Long-Form Content Defined
Like a lot of marketing terms, long-form content is a bit vaguely defined.
Generally, however, long-form content is any content over 1,000 words. Five hundred words is considered the bare minimum to be noticed by the search engines, so long-form content is roughly double that.
If you can go beyond 1,000, you’ll have a bit of a competitive advantage over shorter, similar material found on other sites. This makes the ideal length for long-form content anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 words. As you get comfortable with long-form content, you can even increase that word count to several thousand.
There are three reasons to use long-form content:
- Increases reader engagement and sharing
- Improves your SERP ranking on the local organic results
- Establishes expert status in your niche
This last one is particularly interesting. The more long-form niche pieces you publish, the more your readers will tend to see you an authority in your field. This is actually an old advertising concept which local SEO marketers are making new again.
A Brief History of Long-Form Content
Pre-internet, direct mail was one of the most common forms of advertisement. It wasn’t uncommon to receive direct mail ads which were several pages long. Perhaps surprisingly, these types of ads worked – and worked well.
Advertising legend David Ogilvy put it best. “All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short,” he said. “Advertisements with long copy convey the impression you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.”
The “more is more” approach worked in Ogilvy’s day and it works today as part of your overall SEO strategy.
This doesn’t mean every bit of content you publish has to be long. Instead, if you have shorter content which isn’t generating conversions according to expectation, you might want to make that content longer. The problem might not be the information, but the length.
The Benefits of Long-Form Content
There are many benefits but, in the interest of brevity, here are the top five. Longer content:
- …allows you to describe more of the benefits your product or local service provides.
- …allows you answer more common questions about the product or local service. Addressing customer questions is often a key aspect in making a sale (as we already learned )
- …can be a great source of information to give a potential customer who has expressed interest in your product or service.
- …can be tailored to directly target specific subsets of your local target audience. For instance, one long-form piece can target returning customers while another piece can target new ones.
- …is perfect for inserting a wide variety of keywords naturally.
Remember, you’re creating advertising, not literature. Just because the article is long doesn’t mean it should be challenging or time-consuming to read.
Keep it readable and engaging
The average news article is written at anywhere from a 5th to an 8th grade level. This doesn’t mean you need to treat your readers like they’re idiots. Instead, use simple language and short sentences. Keep the material organized in a logical way. Your readers are looking for clear information.
Avoid fluff
Your long-form local articles aren’t a last-minute homework assignment where you desperately have to reach a certain word count. Don’t just pad your content with fluff. Also, unless you’re a professional writer, your likelihood of making typos and other errors increases with the length of your article.
Long-form local content does require more research than shorter pieces. Research can take a fair amount of time. But, done correctly, this ends up being time well spent.
Use subheadings
Readers can find blocks of text intimidating. Subheadings help break up the article into readable chunks. Plus, subheadings are great for readers who want to skim the text in search of specific information. Already understand the benefits of long-form content and want to know more about how to write it effectively? Simply scan the text until you see the “How to Create Killer Long-Form Content” subheading.
Add a summary
At the start of the article, below the headline, add a short summary.
The short summary should be vague enough to spark interest but descriptive enough to make the topic clear. Keep the summary short enough to fit into a Facebook ad. A brief summary and a descriptive title will help your article spread across social media.
Optimize your location pages with local elements
Now that you have your location pages ready and filled with content, it’s time to add some local elements and optimize them for the search engines.
Basic local SEO on-page factors still apply
We won’t go into big detail on the on-page factors, as we cover these in our on-page optimization guide and our keyword research guide. But the jist of it is:
- Add your focus local keywords to the SEO title (if possible at the beginning) and SEO meta description
- Use positive sentiments or power words in your title
- Use a number in your title (the year is usually a good one)
- Use the local keyword in your URL (see URL structure above)
- Use the keyword in the first paragraph AND last paragraph of your article
- Use the keyword throughout the content (a 3% kw density is usually a good guideline)
- Use the local keywords in your main header (h1) and your sub-headers (h2-h4)
- Use the local keywords in your image alt-tags
- Use Internal Linking to create topical relevance (more on that later)
- Use External Linking (to authority resources in your niche)
- Use a Table Of Contents plugin to make navigation easier.
- Add enhanced media (images, videos, gifs etc.)
- Use Schema Markups
We recommend to use a plugin like Rank Math to take care of most of your on-page needs:
Add your NAP & business hours
Another grip local SEO tip is that all of your location pages and your homepage should include your NAP (name, address, phone). Make sure its consistent with your GMB listing.
Also add your business hours to all your location pages. You wouldn’t want a customer come to your store only to find out it is closed.
Add schema markup to your location pages
Structured data is a great way to add local intent to your location pages. It just gives Google some easy to read data about your business and can help immensly with local SEO.
And it really isn’t that complicated to implement:
- Go to https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/
- Under “What schema.org markup would you like to create” select “Local Business”
- Fill out all forms. Make sure you use the correct location and geo coordinates for your location pages.
- For the image we recommend to enter your logo URL, for instance yourdomain.com/logo.jpg
- You can add social profiles, but this is optional.
To validate your snippet click on the “G” or go directly to https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool and paste it.
If you don’t see any errors, add the snippet to your location pages.
Add a local map
Adding a map has two main benefits. First, a map can help your customers easily find your physical store. Also, a map help localize your results for the search engines.
You want the map to have clickable directions. Most likely, you’ll put the map on your NAP page. This is the page which includes the company’s name, address and phone number. Note: make sure that phone number is local! A local area code on the page will also help your local SEO strategies.
If the business is entirely virtual, you can still add a map. Simply put the location of the business on the map. This can be either a home or an office. While customers won’t visit this location, having it on a map does improve search rankings.
To add a map, simply go to https://google.com/maps and search for your business / listing.
On your business listing click on the “share” button.
A small popup will open. Click on “embed a map”.
Copy the snippet code and add it to your content / page.
Highlight local aspects
While you’re describing the product or service provided, try highlighting some local aspects. This applies to both multi-market franchises or single businesses.
Let’s use the example of a landscaping business in San Diego. While you describe the services offered, explain how these services apply to the local area.
For example: “Smith Brothers Landscaping understands how the seaside weather of America’s Finest City can affect your lawn maintenance needs.” You’ve managed to include a local term for San Diego (“America’s Finest City”) as well as “lawn maintenance,” which is a searchable term similar to “landscaping.”
More than simply describing the services the business offers, service pages offers plenty of ways to boost your local search result ranking. Make use of them!
Highlight your staff
People connect with other people. This is why every business should have a page dedicated to staff biographies. These bios should contain a lot of details about each person including non-work info such as their hobbies and a bit about their family. The more you can create a connection with potential customers, the more they’ll feel comfortable trusting the brand.
If members of the team have local roots, you can use that as part of your local SEO strategy. “Business owner John Williams is a proud Denver native, having grown up in Lakewood and educated at the University of Colorado in Boulder.”
You’ve managed to humanize the business owner while also using three different location-based keywords (in this case, for the Denver-metro area).
Use internal links to create topical relevance
Building a web presence is like selling a house. The website is the house itself. The SEO and content marketing aspects are like two things: the directions to the house and the layout of the house. The house itself can be the most beautiful one in the world – but if people can’t find their way there, the house won’t sell. Also, once people are in the house, if they can’t find their way from room to room, they’re not going to want to stay.
We discussed the importance of local citations, local content and local link building already, but did you know about the importance of internal linking? It is one of the most overlooked techniques in the entire realm of local SEO to create topical relevance for your local website.
Internal links are any links on one page of a domain which lead to another page within the same domain. There are basically two types:
- Site Navigation Links
These are the links on every page, usually along the top, bottom and sides. These types of links are usually controlled by the person who built the website (likely you or another web pro).
- Related Content Links
These are links within content on the site which lead to other content also on the site. For instance, this link to our recent article on the “best SEO tools” is a related link in-content link.
Site navigation links are generally static. They generally don’t need to be linked to within the text on the page. After all, if navigation links are implemented correctly they’ll be easy for your viewer to find. Instead, we’ll want to concentrate on related content links.
Implementing Internal Links
Internal links are always a good idea from a publishing perspective. When users read an article and then click on an internal link this tells you two things: they’re interested in the topics you’re discussing and they trust your expertise enough to read additional articles.
Here’s how internal linking works: First, you identify a post which is popular and evergreen. Then you insert a link within the content of that post. The linked text should naturally fit into the rest of the content.
Quick Definition: “Evergreen” means the content is appropriate all year long. How-to guides and instruction manuals are popular types of evergreen content.
These links are an effective way for a site to communicate to both search engines and visitors that a particular page of content is important. Related content links help bridge the “authority gap” between the site’s most link worthy content and most profitable content.
Internal links also help improve the ranking of certain keywords. For instance, suppose you want a page to rank for the keywords “PBN links” (side note: we just released our huge PBN guide)
You can use relevant anchor text to point your visitors towards any page on your site containing those keywords. This tells search engines that this page is relevant in regards to those keywords.
Internal links are a great way to promote time-specific local events and paid services. You’d want to create a page on your site promoting this upcoming speaking engagement. Within that page, you’ll then link to an existing page on the site directly related to the subject of the speech. This connects the new content to existing, perennial content.
Finally, internal links help search engines crawl the site. Google is able to index the entire site more efficiently when internal links appear in articles, categories and tags.
Many SEO plugins like Rank Math have a feature that suggests relevant internal links for your blog posts.
Let’s Look at an Example
Your client owns a rental car service. They have a wide variety of cars available to rent. Among those cars are luxury vehicles and SUVs. Now, the word “luxury” can be used on both the “luxury vehicle” page and the “SUV” page. While some luxury vehicles are SUVs, not all SUVs are luxury vehicles.
Proper internal linking will clarify which SUVs are luxury vehicles and which aren’t. This way you’ll be able to reach both people who search for “luxury vehicles” and people who search for “luxury SUVs.” Internal linking is especially important when there are no external links pointing to these separate pages.
How to Maximize the Benefits of Internal Links
While some internal links are pretty obvious, other potential links are a little harder to notice. Here are a few SEO tips:
- Estimate link probability
How likely is it that a user will click on this link? If the link is going to greatly expand upon a topic only touched upon in the current text, the chances are pretty good. If the link provides proof for a statistic or claim, that’s a good link, too.
- Determine anchor text and link position
You want to highlight enough words to explain the idea of where the link goes, but nothing beyond that. Limit anchor texts to one sentence at the most. Regarding position, links in the first few sentences tend to be clicked on frequently. Same with links in the last few sentences of an article.
- Put important links on the homepage
Important links include product pages, local service pages, main categories or call-to-action pages. These pages can be linked to the text on the home page even if they’re also in the site navigation.
Done correctly, internal links will strengthen your brand, improve your local rankings, and have both you and your customers doing a happy dance.
Local Link Building
We covered the on-page side of things, now let’s dig into the backlinks.
Relevant backlinks from high-authority sites remain the most critical ranking factor in organic and SEO local. So, if your site fails to move up the ranks on SERPs despite valiant efforts of optimizing your website, then the reason is because you don’t have enough quality backlinks.
Google’s Senior Quality Analyst created a bit of confusion in August during a recent video chat. “Webmasters,” he said, “should not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links.” This was later clarified (and re-translated) by Google to mean webmasters shouldn’t buy, sell, exchange or ask for links that may violate Google’s linking guidelines (emphasis mine).
This still created quite a bit of chatter among local SEO professionals. Google’s Guidelines state, “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered … a violation [of those Guidelines].”
But that leaves a lot of room for confusion. In some ways, any type of content marketing has the intention of getting a link. In other ways, content marketing is simply promotion. If links are created, great – but that’s not the overall intention of digital marketing activities.
Online and off, large businesses have a lot of advantages over small businesses. For instance, large brands can post content on their website and they’ll get links. If McDonald’s has a new promotion, plenty of tweets and blogs will repost that content and generate natural links. If a small business does something similar, they’re not going to get the same result. Not because their promotion isn’t interesting, but because they don’t have the brand awareness of something like a McDonald’s.
Small businesses have to do more than just host good content. But they can still achieve great results with proper link building.
41% of companies also agree that link building is the toughest SEO task by far. Whether you like it or not, however, you need to build backlinks for your site if you truly want to rank on top of search engines for your keywords and make money in the process
For starters, instead of listing down the different link building tactics, I suggest you read this post that discusses the most effective link building strategies in great detail. The post also talks about anchor ratio and useful SEO tools to help you implement the technique with great efficiency.
SEO Tips for local link building
Whenever you are building links for your local website, you need to keep local intent in mind. Just pointing links with your desired anchor texts to your website can work just fine, but you can improve upon it by adding relevant local elements (if possible).
What elements, you ask? Well, let’s get into that
Add your NAP
This is quite straight forward. We’ve discussed the important of your NAP in great length before. Adding them to the content for your links would be a great way to enhance local relevance.
Try to use locally relevant content
This is another no-brainer. Using content for your links (e.g. guest posts, press releases) that is relevant to your niche AND your location would be a GREAT way to add local relevance.
Embed a map
This again? Yep… adding a map to your press releases, web 2.0s or guest posts would be awesome. We’ve discussed how to find your embed map code already, so we won’t go into it again.
Link to your GMB CID URL
Your CID is the platform ID of your GMB listing in the wide ecosystem of Google. Linking to it can have some benefits for local SEO.
A CID URL usually looks like this:
https://maps.google.com/?cid=7424445505592810920 (link to our CID)
You can grab your CID by using a CID converter.
Simply enter your business name and the tool will spit out your GMB CID URL.
So, don’t just link out to your location pages on your website, but also link to your CID.
These links really pack a punch
Aside from citations (which often allow for linking to your website) there are tons of backlinks that you can successfully utilize for local SEO.
However, when choosing which type of link building tactic to pursue for your local website, keep in mind that some work extremely well for specific niches while other might not give you the desired results.
It’s really just a matter of trying a tactic over a period and see if it works for your site.
Guest Posts
Active outreach link building doesn’t have the best reputation around. But that’s mainly because it’s so often misused. If you take the time to create quality content, and publish those pieces on reputable sites (e.g. via guest posting) it can be a great way to develop your brand.
- Try to find sites that are relevant to your niche and if possible even local.
- Ask them to add your map embed code and your NAP to the guest posts (!).
- Don’t fake or exaggerate your credentials. You must have a legitimate knowledge of your industry as well as something new and substantial to say.
- Understand the audience on the site where you want to post. Make sure they’ll be interested in your article.
- Approach the webmaster of the site politely and professionally. First impressions count.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for links. If your blog is a hit, people will notice and the webmaster will likely provide a link to your site.
The truth is nobody (well, practically nobody) guest blogs out of the goodness of their heart. They do it to build their brand and draw an audience to their site. Whether it’s intentional or not is pretty much a question of semantics.
Here at SEOlutions, we have perfected our guest posting process. All you need is a good team and a shared excel file.
Genuine manual outreach?
High metrics (DR/DA)?
Real traffic?
Premium content?
SurferSEO audit report?
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Guest Posts
Our guest posting service is a targeted approach to manual outreach. We do it all for you. It’s completely hands-off. We do the prospecting, analysis, outreach, negotiation, content creation and will negotiate with webmasters until we secured your link.
Link insertions
Link insertions are another great way to build authority contextual links to your website. Typically, a link insertion is added to an article that has already been published on a website and thus already gained a bit of authority, trust and maybe even a few backlinks.
You can acquire link insertions by reaching out to webmasters that have already written an article that is relevant to your (broad) niche and ask them to include a link to your website. Sometimes they even accept to add your NAP and a map. Don’t want to go through the tedious work of scraping possible prospects? Easy. Just order some genuine link insertions from us. We do it all for you.
Legitimate manual outreach?
Full transparency?
High metrics?
Real traffic?
Hands-off approach?
SurferSEO audit report?
No monthly fees?
Link Insertions
Links acquired through manual outreach. Placed contextually within aged and existing article(s) that were published on real websites with great traffic and complementary metrics. These are the real deal.
Broken Link Building (404 Links)
Another oldie but goldie that still works well. Plus, like the other tips, the intention isn’t necessarily to build links but to build your brand via promotion.
The cause of 404 links is usually just the result of pure laziness on the part of the webmaster. The good news is that a lazy webmaster is often easy to predict.
Everyone would prefer their site has working links. If you make it easy for the webmaster to replace a dead link with quality content, they’ll usually take you up on the offer. After all, they only have to plug in the new information you provide.
The key here is to match the tone of the existing website. Also, avoid blatant self-promotion and commercial information. You want the give the webmaster no reason to say no.
Here’s a general idea of what to say: “I was reading [current URL] and noticed that [a link on the site] is no longer active. Here’s a link [content you’ve created] which provides up-to-date information.”
As long as your provide quality content, don’t be surprised if the webmaster says yes. This is why 404 fixing has such a high success rate.
HARO (Help a reporter out)
If you’re a recognized expert in your industry, get your name out there wherever you can – and don’t worry about the links. Make yourself known to journalists who cover your industry. A branded link in a newspaper or other news publication can really boost your brand and local SEO rankings.
HARO is great way to acquire those links if you’re an expert in your niche. You can become a verfiable source for niche articles and get great backlinks to your site at the same time.
Alternatively, you can also check out QWOTED – which is basically the same concept as HARO.
Press Releases
Press releases are another great way to build a foundational baseline for your brand. Local newspaper are usually dying to publish relevant local content for their avid readers.
A decent press release can go a long way to boost your local presence. You should definitely include a citation (NAP) as well as a branded link to your website and if possible a map embed (might be tricky, though).
Web 2.0 Links
Web 2.0 blogs are great links that you can use for any local website. They can be highly customized with custom themes, local content, images and videos.
And of course you can add all the important local elements (map embeds, GMB CID links, NAP etc.)
As such, they are a great way to add contextual links with local relevance to your link profile.
We offer these web 2.0s for a really good price. If you want to order them with local customization, just let us know, we can work it out
10 manually crafted web 2.0 blogs?
Optimized for local SEO?
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Local Web 2.0 links
Beautiful web 2.0 posts with well-written unique local content on premium web 2.0 platforms. These links are perfect for branding and local presence (citations, map embeds etc.
Final words & Checklist
Phew, that was a long read and a lot of information to take in.
It’s easy to get lost, so we created this little checklist for you to follow along. You can access it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1scxycCe-G2K9T8CqbrwPCNql-6PQgkOog8T-JCuGIO0/edit?usp=sharing
Stay tuned for more content and as always, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter.
Additional Resources & our SEO Services
Have you checked out our SEO knowledge hub? We go in-depth on a lot of important topics that every SEO should know about. Here’s a list of all our current SEO guides for your reference:
Or you can browse directly through our various SEO & seo local services below.
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Our niche relevant PBN was born out of meticulous attention to detail (zero footprints), the desire for perfection and the drive for consistent results. The PBN posts will be stickied to the homepage of the domains for as long as your subscription is active. If you cancel, the posts will simply roll off the homepage but remain live. The fee is basically to keep your posts stickied on the homepages (where they are most powerful).
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Our guest posting service is an organic approach to creative outreach. We do it all for you. It’s completely hands-off. You get full approval of the sites before we publish any content.
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Links acquired through manual outreach. Placed contextually within aged and existing article that were published on real websites with great traffic and complementary metrics. These links are the real deal and perfectly suitable for any website.
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Our best-selling SEO services. We’ve been offering these links for over 7 years now and they still continue to provide amazing results for global and local niches. Our High Performance Links are static links that we rent from active webmasters. As a result, these links are only available as a monthly subscription. That means if you cancel, we will have to remove the links.
10 manually crafted web 2.0 blogs?
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Manually crafted web 2.0 sites with high customization. Each web 2.0 blog will come with a nifty piece of uniquely written content that is relevant to your niche. Perfect for buffering, branding, ORM, local SEO and anchor diversity.
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At the push of a button, with our new local SEO package, we will completely transform your local presence and put your business on the map with a bang. Our local SEO package will cover most of your bases: Authority links from guest posts, branded web 2.0s with local markers for diversity and of course citations from a huge variety of platforms (directories, social, image and video sites).