So now that you have a completed Google Local Business profile. The next thing to do is to associate that profile with your city and keyword. Just like your website, your profile needs links from relevant websites. Therefore if you are trying to show up in the business results for “san diego dentist“, I recommend getting a few back links to your new profile from sites relating to dentistry and San Diego. Look for websites with “dentist” or “san diego” in their title tags, keywords and descriptions. Add your new business profile to local sites and industry related business directories. If possible or necessary, change a few back links pointing to your website to point to your business profile.
Here’s another approach, create more business listings like the new one you created in other business directories such as yellowpages, citysearch, mojopages, local yahoo, etc. and link all of those pages to your website as well. This will show Google that other major directories agree with them. Make those profiles keyword rich and fill out every section. The more pages you have describing your business and location, linking to your profile, the better.
Or you can go a little deeper… Create (if you don’t already have one) a ‘contact us’, ‘locations’ or ‘directions/map’ page within your website. Make this page almost match your Google business listings with all the keywords you are targeting spread throughout the header and body. Now, from that new location page, link to your Google profile. This is even a good time to insert Google’s map of your location. Google likes it when you use their services. Now, instead of building local links to your homepage, link to the page that is linking back to your profile (the directions/locations/contact us page) to create a relevant local link tunnel. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating a page that will help your local business listing rank better.
- Make sure city and state (New York, NY) are in the title tag.
- Physical address with city, zip and phone number should be present (preferably site-wide &/or VERY prominent)
- List somewhere on your site (without being spammy) all the areas, cities, neighborhoods and zip codes you cover.
- Make sure your target keyword is in the title tag and description.
- Make sure the local business category you chose to put your site in is listed somewhere on the page.
- The phone number you added to your business profile should be present on the web page.
- Add a internal link with the city in the anchor text pointing to that new page.
Another practice I’ve found useful is to create a link from a top level page or home page pointing to your business profile . Something like ‘directions to our San Diego location‘.
Well, that’s part 2 of 3 of my Local SEO tips. Tomorrow I will finish off with how to provide a better user experience for potential customers and how to make the best of your company’s reviews and descriptions.
Tags: business results, Link Building SEO, local business seo, local google, Local Marketing, localseo
Other SEO Related Blog Posts:
I’ ve been writing some articles about Google Adsense , basic material for anyone interested in finding out what Google Adsense is all about and how they might get started. Soon I’ ll have a free Adsense package with ebooks and reports that will help anyone get adsense on their site. Below is an interview with Michael Cheney…. he produced a very informative set of screen capture videos that covers everything you wanted to know about Google Adsense…. read the interview and take a look at his course….. some…
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. :) Cheers! Sandra. R.