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How to Optimize for Local SEO (6 Quick Fixes)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:07:17 +0000

Before we jump into the search engine optimization waters, there’s something that should be clear: there are two types of search engine optimization: There’s Organic Search and Local Search.

Organic Search is all about how people find your site in the search engine rankings.

Local Search is all about getting your business to rank better in the Google Places listings.

It’s an important distinction if you’re a local business because many small businesses get caught up trying to rank for big keywords and overshoot the moon.

Let’s face it – as a startup, you can’t compete with the big dogs that are throwing gobs of cash to optimize their online presence.

So how do you compete? You target a smaller pond.

Optimize your local SEO

Here are 6 quick local SEO fixes that will put you on the fast track to local SEO success:

Local search is all about how to rank better on Google Places. Aside from organizing your site well, there are really five main things you can do to optimize your site locally:

1.) Get a Google Business Page

2.) Put your business’s name, address, and phone number in the footer of your site

*Use microdata markup for that info

3.) Submit your business to local directories like the ones I’ve listed below

* Get Reviews on those sites

4.) Add testimonials to your site and use schema.org microdata markup

5.) Add images to the profiles you make on those directories and to your site

*Geo-tag your images *Add service & location ALT text to those images

6.) Get links.

It’s really that simple. And while the first five items are relatively easy to implement, the sixth takes a bit of effort to get moving. Link building is a process that can be simplified but just takes time. It’s something I’ll write about in a future post, but for now, let’s take a look at getting your site listed in the main local directories.

1.) Get Listed Locally

When you search for a business, oftentimes you’ll see a listing of the closest places in your region. Typically, Google will give you the top three or four results, then a listing of business places.

Something like this:

To get your business listed in these Google “Places” listings, you’ve got to have a Google Business Page.

*IMPORTANT: The categories that you select in Google Business are very important for how you appear in the listing results. Choose them wisely.*

Once you’ve set up your Google Business page, you’ve got to verify your business’s location with Google (typically they’ll mail you a postcard at your business’s location). After that, how you rank is in these Google Places listings is determined by a number of factors, which we’ll take a look at now.

2.) Put Your Business’s Name, Address, and Phone on Every Page of Your Site

First and foremost, you have to be sure that your Name, Address, and Phone are placed on every page of your site that you want to be associated with your business location.

The footer of your site (at the bottom) is typically a good place to do this.

You also want to be sure that your business information is placed correctly with the Google Business page you just made. What you’re doing here is listing your location information on your site so that the search engine bots can associate your Google Business page with your site. Google’s bots are smart, but they’re essentially just counting 0s and 1s. Different numbers and listings appear different to them, and you’ll need them to be as accurate as possible to help boost your rankings.

Bonus Points

Additionally, you can use a bit of html code that will further help the search engines. The Search Engine Journal did a great write-up on its implementation here. You can use these markups to add reviews to your site as well.

This microdata markup is a bit complex for newbie web designers. Google knows this, and so made a structured data highlighter tool in Google Webmaster Tools to help you out. It’s really just highlight and select – that simple.

3.) Get Citations

Which means, essentially, try to disseminate your business’s Name, Address, and Phone number (what’s called the “citation”) to other sites that the Google bots can crawl. Having your business’s “citation” listed on other sites (like local directories) exactly as they’re listed on your site helps Google link those addresses to your site.

This is why you should avoid using inconsistent abbreviations (St. for Street; Apt. for Apartment, 800 for 1-800, etc). Additionally, you’re going to want to add pertinent markup to your Title Tags, Meta-description, and website content. Don’t stuff keywords in there, but if you’re a business based in say, Ojai, California, you can usually find a way to insert the info organically.

As for local directory submission, here’s a list of the most commonly used directories to which you can add your information:

Yellowbook.com

Citysearch.com

Google

Yahoo (Verizon) Small Business

Additionally, here is a Spreadsheet example that will assist you in keeping your login info and notes organized:

Alternatively, you can use a service like Yext, Moz Local, or to do a power-listing for you, and though this is something of a pricey option, you can assure that your Name, Address, and Phone are listed correctly across a wide variety of local directories.

You can also use a site like Upwork to hire someone overseas to fill out your various information, but ultimately, take it from someone who has done this personally and who knows – it’s best to do it yourself. It’s unfortunate and time-consuming, but really the only way to ensure accuracy is to either hire a service with access to all of your information or to do it yourself. Sites like Synup.com know this, and so offer an affordable hands-on solution that covers 175 sites.

When creating these listings, be aware that some listings like Yelp require a phone call to verify business ownership, so whoever is doing your listing should be by your business’s phone line.

Ok! I hope this helps.

Do you have any other tips for me? Share them in the comments!

–Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:54:19 +0000

Hi! I created this guide to be a resource to you do-it-yourselfers out there or for those who just want to know a bit more about the SEO world until they get their hands dirty or hire someone to do it for them. I hope you find it a quick & easy read with some links that you can come back to. I plan on updating this post frequently as new information arises, so let me know what you think and what could be improved, eh? Thanks for looking!)

Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Undoubtedly, if you’re a business owner and you’ve looked into (as you should) establishing your web presence, you’ve given some attention to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Getting your website to rank higher in search engines like Bing and Google means that you’re more competitive in the marketplace, and who wouldn’t want that?

Every business does better by incorporating a web presence into their business plan. I don’t know of one contemporary business plan out there today that doesn’t at least mention an online presence. Suffice it to say that you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t already know that SEO is important, so let’s get down to brass tacks: there’s a lot of information out there, what’s good and what’s bad?

Get it from the Source

Don’t take somebody’s opinion on it, talk to Google directly: Google’s beginner’s guide to SEO is a great place to start, but although eminently readable, the problem is that once you start you’re ankle-deep in html tag guidelines and meta and microdata. Questions abound: You’re using a WordPress or Joomla template. Don’t they optimize this sort of thing for you? (Yes, they do, but there is still much to be improved upon.)

Don’t fret. Though some of it might be over your head, there’s a lot of great info here for beginners who just want the nitty-gritty as straight as they can get it.

Just Starting Out

If you’re just starting out, the biggest tip I can offer you is to do all your reading ahead of time. Some great resources are Google’s own SEO Starter Guide. This will give you a good idea of how Google uses its bots to crawl the internet and index your site. It will also let you in on how you should go about organizing your site.

Another great Google site is Google’s SEO site itself which will tell you what SEOs do, what they don’t do, and how to spot a phony one.

Still, this leaves oceans to be desired as to how you’re to go about actually optimizing your content, so once you’ve learned the basic ropes, consider getting a little deeper.

Understanding

It’s best to understand what SEO is before you get involved in building your site because your site will undoubtedly involve a lot of linking to other pages, both your own and others. Do this sort of linking and page building incorrectly, and you’ll be going back to do it all again in the future. Some quick advice here:

Use a pen and paper to first make a list of categories(pages) that you’d like to list on your homepage
These Categories will become pages and should be named the keywords you’ll be trying to target. (Example: You sell vintage automobiles, perhaps a page name should be ‘European Vintage’) In this way, your page and homepage will contain the correct structure to enhance how search engines index your site. It will be more obvious to these bots that your website is about European Vintage Automobiles.
Try to include your keywords into your page URLs and make them as clear as possible.
Add some metacontent – tags, categories, meta-descriptions and microdata all add valuable information to your site. Each has its own role to play in how your site gets indexed, but each is eminently valuable.

Learn How to Use Webmaster Tools (Search Console)

This is basic, but it’s important. If you’re going to be attempting to optimize your site, you’ve got to know what works and what doesn’t, and, more precisely how well it works. Use metrics. Google’s Webmaster Tools (Search Console) is Google’s way of telling you how their search engine is interacting with your site. Learn the ropes here and it will pay off in spades. If you’re having trouble with what each tool means, here is a good guide from Neil Patel.

Learning how to write your meta-descriptions is another great way to spend some of your time. Though meta-descriptions won’t help Google index your site, you can look at it as potentially free marketing (free marketing!).

Use Heading Tags Correctly

This came as a bit of a surprise to me, but if you’re out there searching for templates to throw your website online, be careful. Many website templates tout themselves as being “SEO friendly” and pay no attention to Alt tags or Heading hierarchy. Ideally, have only one h1 tag per page and have it first thing on the page. From there, an h2, etc. on down the line, just make sure that their sequential and don’t skip around (h1 -> h5, etc.). Also, make sure that the heading tags are concise and accurately reflect the information contained within the page. Seems simple, no? You’d be surprised how easily this gets abused and out of hand.

Plugins

If you’re doing the site building yourself, you can take great leaps and strides by utilizing SEO plugins that will help optimize your site. One great plugin that will help you along you way is the SEO plugin by Yoast. It’s not comprehensive, but it’ll generate a sitemap for you and guide you along the way when building your site. Lots of good information there and you don’t have to be a technorati to figure it out.

Go Advanced

The more you know, the better off you’ll be. Hopefully the above will get you started, but when in doubt, remember the old adage that ‘content is king.’ Make your content clear, accessible, and easily found, and you’ll be off to a good start.

Before You Launch

Make sure you’re good before you launch. Once you’re live, people will be linking to your site and referencing it, and you don’t want to be creating bad links for people to use. Optimize your site further by ramping up its loading speed. You can check this using free online tools like Wave, which gives you a visual interpretation of what exactly is wrong with your site.

Links

Check out these links in order to help you get up and running:

Pingdom – Helps you gauge your website loading speed and gives available resources for correction. Easy to understand and… it’s free.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand