Local SEO Tips Pt. 3 of 3 – Finalizing Your Profile

Posted by James Harrison on Sep 11, 2008 in Blog, Local Search Engine Marketing | 0 comments

Ok finally, Part 3 of Local SEO for Google’s business listings. There’s not much to explain in this section because it’s really all about understanding a simple concept. Try to look at your Google profile like it is your storefront location. People pass by it, people hear about you and your services and last but not least, past customers can put in their ’2 cents’ (Word-of-Mouth). This is an extremely nice feature the Google’s local business offers. If you run a good business and manage to impress your customers, they now have the ability to tell every potential customer or client about your services.

Here is what you should consider when optimizing your business profile:

• Get as many past customers to visit your business profile and write about your services. Testimonials are known for increasing conversion rates. Tell previous/current customers to visit your site and then to follow a link. If any of them have a website, ask them for a link to that profile. You can even be sneaky and tell them all to make sure they include your target keyword phrase. Make it easy for them. Add a ‘review us‘ link with an anchor text like ‘San Diego Carpet Cleaning Review’ pointing to your business profile review page.

• If any of your customers have photos or video, tell them to upload them. You can even ask your customers if you could video tape them reviewing how awesome you did after you performed your services. Create a Youtube account with the username and profile info matching your business profile. Upload some videos titled something like ‘Review New York Business Consultants‘; add them to your business profile and find a way to get a few lengthy comments on your Youtube video. Oh yeah, try to get a good link to that Youtbe profile and/or video page too. Or stumble the video and get the video tons of views.

• If possible create some links pointing to the ‘to here’, ‘user content’ and ‘details’ pages

Remember I said your profile is like a storefront building? If someone knew about your business and was driving down the street, what are they looking for when looking for your company? Most likely they are looking for your address or a business sign. Back in Part 1 of this Local SEO Series, I mentioned the images section, its very important to make sure one of those pictures is your logo. Sometimes I even add a thumbnail of my website to it. Branding can’t hurt, right? Also in Part 2, I mentioned building more profiles like the Google one in other major business directories. Make sure you title that profile your keyword and if you can add a picture, add a logo. Or your best before and after picture. Some of those profiles allow you to comment links. If possible comment a link back to your Google profile.

Your Business Address: Your address should be the same everywhere your web site is listed.

• On your website
• In Your profile
• On other profiles
• On pages linking to your website
• On pages linking to your profile

Your address needs to always match at least the city and state that you are targeting. Its ok to vary on State variation (CA, Ca., Calif. Califonria, etc.)

You may notice that not all of the reviews are actual reviews. If you look under the ‘webpages’ section, you’ll see that some sites happen to be some pages linking to you. Visit those pages and see if there is anything you can do to optimize them. Many times they are similar profiles halfway filled out with no pictures or company description. If you don’t have any web pages mentioning your site in the ‘webpages’ section, a good way to get more web pages is to google (search) your company name and city. You’ll find every site ever mentioning your company. Try all variations of your company name with and without city and state variations. The majority of the time every site listed in the SERP’s but not in your business listing is just referencing you. Maybe you can contact them and ask if they could link to your website or profile since they are mentioning your company. There’s also a good chance you’ll be able to edit company profiles yourself. And to top all this off, you can get a better understanding of how others view you, your company and/or your website.

To sum it all up; you need good reviews, some type of media and other sites verifying your location in the cities you are targeting.

Now, go rank well!

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Local SEO Tips Pt. 2 of 3 – Off-profile SEO Linking

Posted by James Harrison on Aug 27, 2008 in Blog, Local Search Engine Marketing | 3 comments

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.

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Local SEO Tips Pt. 1 of 3 – Creating a Profile

Posted by James Harrison on Aug 25, 2008 in Blog, Local Search Engine Marketing | 4 comments

I have helped a number of websites get on top of Google’s local business results (just above the organic listings) by doing pretty much the same optimization strategies to all of them as I would to a regular web site. This blog post will show you how to create a SEO’d profile that has the best chance possible to rank on Google’s local business.

First let’s create a profile for your business. Treat this profile like your very own web page. I actually have a a friend who doesn’t have a website, but has the most robust Google business profile I’ve ever seen. He has the #2 spot in local business results and the way business is going for him, he may never need an official website. Depending on your time and effort, it may even be worth while to treat your profile with more respect than your own page, just for the simple fact that your profile page has the ability to rank higher than natural listings and it can be found through almost any of Google’s other services.

The profile should be completely filled out and accurate to the best of your knowledge. ALL sections; basic info, description, categories, hours of operation, payment options, photos, videos & additional details should be completed with SEO in mind. Since this page should be treated like the home page of your business website, optimize each and every section possible.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a new business profile.

• The company name is like a title tag. So you can use this for branding or SEO, or both!
• Make sure the company address is in the city you are targeting. If you aren’t physically located there, rent out a mail space in that city and just have all mail going to that address forwarded.
• City, State, ZIP – Make sure it’s the city you are targeting.
• The phone number should be a local number. This one is so major that it may be worth considering getting a local land line or cell phone that has the local area code if your company uses an 800 number.
• Email addresses that are domain email addresses work better than free service emails like gmail, yahoo, aol and hotmail.
• Make sure the URL is correct. Make this URL a link to a page on your site with your targeted city in the title tag. Like your contact, directions of location pages.
• Use all of the 200 characters allowed for your company description. Make sure your targeted keyword phrase is mentioned here at least once.

 

• Categories are very important. Go back to the Google SERP and visit the top “local business result for ….. in ….” link to figure out in which category your company should be in.

 

• It’s best if you specify that there’s a time you are open. This will show that you aren’t just a website, but actually a person or establishment that isn’t open 24/7. And if you are open 24/7, specify that as well.

 

• Check off all payment options accepted. The more payment options you accept, the more legit you are considered.

 

• If you have 10 photos, submit all 10 of them. Just make sure the 1st one you submit is your logo or a picture with your company name in or on it.

 

• If you have a video, upload it to Youtube. Give it a keyword related title then add the video’s url to your business listing. This is what gives many websites with top local business results the edge.

 

• For the additional details section. Add as many areas around your city or variations of your city name possible.
• Your specialty should be the keywords you are targeting and the services you mentioned in the category section.
• Select ‘add another’ and give Google and customers a reason to pick you.

Just like traditional search engine optimization, local business results compose of 3 parts; On-page Optimization, Off-page optimization and User experience. Part 2 will be about how to optimize your company website to create synergy between it and the and link building.

I hope this helps your company climb closer to SEO success.

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