As you may know, local search engine optimization (SEO) is different than traditional SEO.
Welcome to boosting your business's local SEO part 2. The inspiration for this content comes from Greg Gifford's local SEO course on SEMRUSH Academy.
If you haven't seen it yet, check out part 1 of boosting your local SEO. Then, come back here for part 2.
We are working our way through Google's ranking factors. Our emphasis is on the local pack/finder section. One of my clients and I are prioritizing this over localized organic. Regardless, working on one ranking factor will benefit either objective.
In part 1 we discussed Google My Business aka Google Business Profile signals and link signals.
For the rest of this post, we will discuss review signals, on-page/content signals, citation signals, and the other signals that make up less than 10% of the map pack ranking factors.
Review Signals
I'll start this section with the fact that businesses often have hesitation asking for reviews, myself included. We must GET OVER IT! If you are delivering on the promises you make to customers/clients, you should not have any concerns about reviews. A few bad reviews are OK, because it actually brings more trust to your other reviews. Now, let's jump into some quick thoughts about review objectives.
Review Objectives for Your Small Business
- 4.2-4.8 is a good range to be in for review ratings.
- Acquire reviews on different sites such as Yelp, Facebook, Trip Advisor, etc.
- Make it easy for people to leave reviews! Consider setting up a page like yourdomain.com/reviews
- Do your best to respond to every review.
- Don't fake reviews! Google knows.
Here are a couple other tips regarding reviews for your small business. Positive reviews can be responded to once per week. Negative reviews need to be responded to as soon as possible. For negative reviews, your reply is more for potential customers, not necessarily the person you are responding to in the review. People want to see how you react to a negative review. Also, don't use a canned response in your reviews. Try to make each one unique.
Lastly, Google considers review velocity. In other words, Google does not like a sudden influx of reviews. Instead, it expects consistent reviews over time.
On-Page and Content Signals
Let me preface this section by saying we will barely scratch the surface here. This is a deep topic, but I will highlight some useful tips that should get you started with improving your on-page signals.
This course by Wes McDowell is a great resource to dive deeper on the topic.
The most important tip for boosting your on-page signals -- read your content out loud before publishing. It must sound conversational.
Another important foundation for the local algorithm is your NAP. This is your business's name, address, and phone number. Have your NAP on every page of your website. In addition, mark up NAP with schema to classify information on your website using a tool such as schema.org/localbusiness. Only use one phone number per site and ensure it is a local number.
Tips for Improving your Local On-Page SEO Signals
- Make a page devoted to every keyword phrase you want to rank for in Google.
- Your content needs to be local -- mention landmarks, local events, and your city name.
- Try to have your city and/or state in your title tag. Don't waste these characters on your business name.
- Your homepage H1 heading should have the keyword phrase and location from your title tag.
- Leverage image alt text to add location information and keywords.
- Pay attention to your URL slugs. Instead of '/usedsales', try something like '/used-cars-dallas-tx'.
- Be careful changing URLs. Set up 301 redirects, if needed.
- Use the meta description like an ad. No need to keyword stuff the meta description.
- Have a blog to share your expertise, share localized content, and stay engaged with your customers.
Citation Signals
We are starting to get down to lower priority items. That said, it does not mean we should ignore them when trying to optimize for local SEO. Citations used to be incredibly important and highly weighted in Google's algorithm. Now, it is more foundational. Greg suggests we think of it like an ante in poker. We need citations to play the rest of the game. In this case, the game is local SEO.
Things to Consider for Citations in Local SEO
- Citations should be 100% consistent.
- Google now understands abbreviations, so 'street' = 'st.'
- Google ignores suite numbers.
- If multiple businesses are at the same address, make sure names and phone numbers are unique.
- There are certain sites every business should be listed on, while other sites only matter for certain verticals.
White Spark and Bright Local offer do-it-yourself citation tools. In addition, they offer affordable citation audits to ensure your business has made the 'citation ante.'
Behavioral, Personalization, and Social Signals
We have arrived at the bottom 10% of ranking factors. While behavioral signals are less important for Google's algorithm, they are very important metrics for your business to track. This includes things like engagement with your GMB listing, location check-ins, and click through rates. I'll touch on these items in more detail in the reporting section below.
Personalization has started to decrease significantly in ranking factors. This refers to how a person's search history determines results displayed. Further, there's virtually nothing we can do to influence a person's search history.
Social signals are also becoming less important in the ranking algorithm. Social media is important for general engagement and customer service but has little to do with your business's ranking.
Use Reporting to Track Your Progress
This turned out to be my favorite section of the course. I am interested in action and improvement. Greg touched on some important metrics to track. He also suggested leveraging Google Data Studio to bring all your reports into one place. The most important thing is to report on your business goals and bottomline.
Have a Summary Sheet Focused on:
- Organic Traffic
- Leads
- Monthly Numbers
- Month-over-month and year-over-year comparisons
- Using notes to capture ideas
Other Ideas for Reporting:
- Time on site
- Bounce rate
- Overall traffic
- GMB insights data
- Review information such as review scores and total reviews for Google, Facebook, and Yelp
- GMB call tracking data
Greg offered a couple other tips. Add a pre-SEO average line for your metrics to show comparison before you started optimizing your SEO. On that note, don't be too concerned with your overall ranking. Yes, keep track of it, but at the end of the day, you want to ensure your business is improving on the metrics listed above.
That's it! This was a longer post than I prefer to compose. If you stuck around this long, thank you!
Leave any thoughts, questions, additions, etc. in the comments below.
Or, reach out to me directly.
