Local SEO – Getting your local

business on Google

By Steve Mortiboy

What we’ll learn

• Why local SEO is important to you

• How local SEO differs from normal SEO

• Basic procedures for optimizing your site

• External tools you can use

• Where to go for help

What is local SEO?

• Local SEO is the display of search results based

on our location

• For example:

Where’s my nearest Thai restaurant

-- or --

Find me dry cleaners near Raleigh NC

Local search results

Local search result – In detail

Why is local SEO important?

• 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a

store within five miles - WordStream, 2016

• 30% of mobile searches are related to a location

- Google, 2016

• 28% of searches for something nearby result in a

purchase - Google, 2016

Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

Local SEO ranking factors

• SEO title and meta description

• Directory listings and citation sites

• Google My Business

• Reviews

• Structured data markup

• On page SEO

• Inbound links

• Social media

SEO titles and meta descriptions

SEO titles and meta descriptions

• Use an SEO plugin to set SEO titles and meta descriptions

• Follow Google’s quality guidelines for titles and descriptionshttps://semperplugins.com/documentation/quality-guidelines-for-seo-titles-and-descriptions/

• Don’t waste space on page names that aren’t helpful

• Include the name of the city your business is in and/or the

area your business serves

• Focus on a targeted keyword and carefully place that keyword

as close to the beginning of the tag as you can

• You have one shot to get someone to click on your business in

search results, don’t waste it. Write informative titles and

descriptions

Setting an SEO title and

description

Google Quality Guidelines

• Every page of content must have a title and description

• Every title and every description must be unique

• Titles should be less than 65-70 characters

• Descriptions should be less than 200-300 characters

depending on whether the display 2 or 3 lines of text

• Brand your titles

• Titles and descriptions should be descriptive,

no keyword stuffing

• Fix problems as soon as they occur

https://semperplugins.com/documentation/quality-guidelines-for-seo-titles-and-descriptions/

Directory listings and citation

sites• Monitor directory listings for your business

• Claim your listings so you can request changes

• Not claiming these listings can hurt you

• Seek out and list your business in directories and citation

sites specific to your industry

• Examples:

Angieslist

Findlaw

Healthgrades

Yelp

Directory listing consistency

• When you find inconsistencies with directory listings fix

them

• Make sure your business name, address, phone number

and any other information matches what’s on your website

• You can use 3rd party tools such as Yext or Moz to help with

this

• Free listing scans:

http://www.yext.com/pl/localseo/index.html

https://moz.com/local/search

Google My Business

https://www.google.com/business/

Online reviews

• Reviews and star ratings affect customer behavior

• 70% of consumers will leave a review for a business

when asked

• 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal

recommendation

90% of consumers read just 10 reviews or fewer before

they feel that they can trust a business

Source: Search Engine Land

Structured data markup

Structured data markup

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/

On-page SEO

On-page SEO involves:

• Good quality, well written content

• Optimize each page for a specific term

• H1 titles – one on each page (usually your page/post title)

• Good quality relevant images

• Alt text on images

• Mobile-friendly pages

• Site speed – page load times of less than 3 seconds

• Good site structure and navigation

• Good internal linking

Inbound links

• Commonly referred to as backlinking

• Good quality backlinks happen organically

• They are never created or manufactured

• Good quality backlinks include:

Social media sharing, Likes, Tweets, etc.

Links from reviews

Links from directories or citation sites

Links from local media and business organizations

Links from related businesses

Social media

• Create a Facebook page for your business

• Use Twitter to monitor your local community and tweet

about your business

• Use location social networks such as Foursquare so your

customers can check in

• Add sharing buttons on your site

• Link from your website to your social profiles and vice versus

• Make sure information on social media is consistent with

what’s on your site and Google My Business

• Respond to customers that message you and respond to

reviews, both good and bad

What you can do next

• Review your current business listing on Google

• Does your business appear in the local search results?

• Set up your Google My Business profile and make sure

it’s complete and consistent

• Get on social media, it will add more work but it should

pay off. You need to be found!

• Search the web for listings for your business, claim them

and fix inconsistencies

• Set good SEO titles and descriptions

• Go through your website and perform on-page SEO

• Ask your customers for reviews and respond to them

Questions?

• Support

• Security

• Performance

• Development

• Design

• SEO