Local SEO – Local Search Engine Optimization Service – Question & Answers
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that helps your business be more visible in local search results on Google. Any business that has a physical location or serves a geographic area can benefit from local SEO.
What is local SEO vs SEO?
Here’s the difference. While traditional SEO focuses on improving your site’s visibility on a national or global scale, local SEO allows you to capture local search territory to connect with searchers in your area.
How do you perform local SEO?
6 ways to boost your local SEO strategy
- Claim and optimize your GMB listing. GMB or Google My Business is essentially the most critical part of your local SEO strategy. …
- Keep mobile in mind. …
- Collect plenty of customer reviews. …
- Focus on local link building. …
- Ensure NAP/citation consistency. …
- Make the most of social listening.
Why local SEO is important?
Benefits of local SEO
Better online visibility: Local SEO activity, such as citation and link building, increases your online visibility. That makes your business more easily discoverable by new customers. More in-store foot traffic: Greater local visibility brings more foot traffic to your bricks-and-mortar location.
Is local SEO paid?
For a one-time project focused on analysis, research, clean-up, and optimization the average price for a Local SEO project would range from $300 – $1500 with an average price around $750.
Which is better local SEO or paid search?
SEO is also more effective for local searches and can grow your online presence for longer. Pay-per-click (PPC), on the other hand, is an acquisition strategy that requires you to spend ad money to get your content in front of an audience when they search for specific keywords online.
What matters for local SEO?
Simply put, local SEO is where you focus to improve your rankings and visibility in local search results such as Google’s Map Pack/Local Pack. Organic SEO is how you improve webpage rankings in organic search. How your website ranks in those organic results can positively influence your Local Pack rankings, as well.
How much should I pay local SEO?
Typical local SEO campaigns cost between $300 and $2,000 per month depending on your business’s needs, your competition, and your geographic location.
Who benefits from local SEO?
The most obvious benefit to search engine optimization in general is the ability to increase your rankings in Google search and other search engines. All businesses – local or otherwise – crave that #1 spot because they then have the best chance of attracting new website visitors.
What is local SEO for small business?
What is local SEO? Local SEO is the process of making your company visible for geographically related searches. It is an effective way to market your local business online. It helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers at the exact time they are looking for them online.
How many types of SEO are there?
There are about 12 different types of SEO that help websites to rank better on search engine result pages.
- White-Hat SEO
- Black-Hat SEO
- Gray-Hat SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
- International SEO
- Local SEO
- Ecommerce SEO
- Content SEO
- Mobile SEO
- Negative SEO
Do small businesses need SEO?
SEO is important because it helps you establish yourself as an expert in your field and drives traffic to your website, while also helping you organically promote your business for free. If you’re unsure about the importance of SEO, you’re not alone. Only 36% of small businesses actually have an SEO strategy.
What is organic SEO?
Organic search engine optimization (organic SEO) refers to the methods used to obtain a high placement (or ranking) on a search engine results page in unpaid, algorithm-driven results on a given search engine.
Does Google charge for SEO?
There’s no cost to appear in organic search results like Google’s, and making changes to improve your website’s SEO, can greatly impact your search rankings over time. Learn more about how Google organic search works and find tips for getting started here.
How do I increase my local ranking?
How to improve your local ranking on Google
- Enter complete data. Local results favor the most relevant results for each search. …
- Verify your locations. …
- Keep your hours accurate. …
- Manage & respond to reviews. …
- Add photos. …
- Add in-store products. …
- Relevance. …
- Distance.
Is SEO organic or paid?
While organic search focuses on unpaid rankings in search results, paid search focuses on paid rankings. With organic search, companies use SEO to optimize their site’s visibility or rankings in search results.
How do you get paid from SEO?
That said, let’s dive into the ways you can make money doing SEO.
- Work in an SEO agency. …
- Create an ecommerce website and sell products. …
- Dropshipping other products on your website. …
- Offer SEO consulting services. …
- Start a blog and monetize through ads and affiliates.
What is better SEO or digital marketing?
SEO optimization is the most effective way to grow and expand a small business. 57% of B2B marketers believe that lead generation by SEO is the highest as compared to any other digital marketing strategy. Most customers these days, find local businesses through the internet.
Can I do SEO on my own?
You can absolutely do SEO yourself or DIY SEO (Do It Yourself SEO). With some research and lots of practice, anyone can learn how to do SEO for their business. A quick way to get started with SEO is to enter your URL here and then focus your SEO efforts on the recommended action items.
How do I start SEO marketing?
How to Start an SEO Campaign
- Step 1: Set KPIs & Goals. …
- Step 2: Analyze Your Current Website Setup. …
- Step 3: Topic Creation & Keyword Research. …
- Step 4: Establish a Pillar Content Strategy. …
- Step 5: Perform an SEO Audit. …
- Step 6: Work on Audit Findings. …
- Step 7: Work on Local SEO. …
- Step 8: Work on Back Links.
How many Google searches are local?
Nearly half (46%) of all Google searches consist of users seeking local information. These local searches consist of people searching for businesses in their local area or within a specific service area.
How SEO helps business grow?
This is the importance of SEO for your business: SEO gives you the power to be the answer to potential customers’ questions. In addition to visibility and traffic increase, SEO contributes to your authoritative voice in your field. Authority then leads to brand trust, which ultimately leads to brand loyalty.
What are SEO tools?
What Are SEO Tools? SEO tools provide data and alerts about the overall health and success of your website. They help uncover areas of opportunity and identify weaknesses or issues that may prevent you from ranking and earning visibility in the SERPs.
What are the two techniques of SEO?
SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories: White Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design. Black Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.
What is a backlink in SEO?
Links on websites other than your own that go back to a page on your website. Backlinks are also called inbound links because they represent another website’s traffic coming to your own site. The quality and quantity of your backlinks can help you rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing.
What are 5 reasons why businesses need SEO?
5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEO
- Reason #1 | Increased Visibility. …
- Reason #2 | More (High-Quality) Web Traffic. …
- Reason #3 | Establish Trust & Credibility. …
- Reason #4 | Your Competitors Are Using It. …
- Reason #5 | Build Toward Long-Term Success. …
- Contact Triton Commerce for Successful SEO Strategies.
Does SEO really work?
The short answer is SEO is very effective — not just to generate traffic but also leads and sales. Don’t worry. The long answer includes research and data, not just empty statements. Most SEOs get too caught up in search-specific metrics like SERPs (search engine results page), rankings, and organic traffic.
What is SERP marketing?
Search Engine Results Page (SERP) The page that a search engine returns after a user submits a search query. In addition to organic search results, search engine results pages (SERPs) usually include paid search and pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
What is paid SEO?
What is paid search? Paid search is a form of digital marketing where search engines such as Google and Bing allow advertisers to show ads on their search engine results pages (SERPs). Paid search works on a pay-per-click model, meaning you do exactly that – until someone clicks on your ad, you don’t pay.
What is the type of SEO?
The three kinds of SEO are: On-page SEO – Anything on your web pages – Blogs, product copy, web copy. Off-page SEO – Anything which happens away from your website that helps with your SEO Strategy- Backlinks. Technical SEO – Anything technical undertaken to improve Search Rankings – site indexing to help bot crawling.
Is SEO business profitable?
SEO businesses are profitable. The search engines are ever evolving. So too are your customers’ businesses. Thus, delivering SEO services is an ongoing endeavor that includes a monthly retainer-based offering.
How long does SEO take to work?
between 4-12 months
The short answer is between 4-12 months. The longer answer has to do with all those factors we discussed that tie into your SEO strategy. If you target low-competition keywords, you can start to see results within 4-6 months.
Why is SEO monthly?
SEO takes time to impact your site’s performance and you won’t see changes overnight. A monthly retainer for your SEO company gives them time to develop the best campaign for your business without being restricted by time. Plus, a monthly SEO plan also allows you to build a relationship with your SEO company.
How can local SEO help businesses?
Benefits of Local SEO
- Enhanced Traffic. Do you know that local information is the subject of 46% of all Google searches. …
- Better Conversion Rates. …
- Less Advertising Costs. …
- Continuous Business Growth. …
- Long-Lasting Rankings. …
- Bypass Competition. …
- Gain More Local Reviews. …
- Get links with Neighbouring Business.
How can I improve my Google SEO for free?
Follow these suggestions to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results.
- Publish Relevant, Authoritative Content. …
- Update Your Content Regularly. …
- Metadata. …
- Have a link-worthy site. …
- Use alt tags.
How do you rank No 1 on Google?
How to Get on the first page of Google [recap]
- Create a keyword strategy to target terms your target customers are searching.
- Incorporate the keywords into your website content as well as HTML tags.
- Write for humans (not search engines).
- Target location-based searches.
- Optimize for mobile.
- Focus on user experience.
What is an example of SEO?
How they determine the “best” result is based on an algorithm that takes into account authority, relevancy to that query, loading speed, and more. (For example, Google has over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm.) In most cases, when people think “search engine optimization”, they think “Google SEO”.
Is SEO better than AdWords?
Adwords is more immediate than SEO since you can create advertising campaigns almost instantly and start getting targeted traffic while with SEO you need a lot more time (especially for new websites) to get good rankings and traffic.
How can I do SEO for my website?
- Let Google see your page the same way a user does.
- Create unique, accurate page titles.
- Control your title links and snippets in search results.
- Use the meta description tag.
- Use heading tags to emphasize important text.
- Add structured data markup.
Is SEO the same as marketing?
SEO and Digital Marketing are not synonymous. Although similar, they are not the same. SEO specialists focus on optimizing a site in order to get the highest rankings in search engine results (SERP) and thereby increase free organic traffic.
Is Shopify good for SEO?
For most parts, yes. Shopify has nailed all basic SEO features. It has lots of built-in features & apps that effectively get your page indexed and ranked in search engines. Furthermore, it’s probably the most easy-to-SEO eCommerce platform ever.
How do you grow SEO organically?
8 Ways To Improve Your Organic Search Ranking In 2022
- Create quality content. Content is a useful means to hold your audience’s attention. …
- Adhere to originality. …
- Improve your page load time. …
- Optimize images. …
- Use header tags. …
- Improve formatting. …
- Create an attractive meta description. …
- Start blogging.
What are the basics of SEO?
SEO involves five main steps.
- Keyword research. Find what people search for.
- Content creation. Craft content for searchers.
- On-page SEO. Make your content as clear as possible.
- Link building. Build trust and authority from other websites.
- Technical SEO. Help search engines find, crawl and index your content efficiently.
Is SEO easy to learn?
The answer is simple. Learning SEO is hard because there is a lot of information to read about search engines and how the optimization process works, and this can be overwhelming at first.
How do I create SEO keywords?
- Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business. …
- Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords. …
- Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly. …
- Step 4: Research related search terms. …
- Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.
Where can I learn SEO from scratch?
Websites to Learn SEO Online
- Web-Savvy-Marketing.
- SEO 101.
- Google.
- Moz.com.
- Search Engine Watch.
- Webmaster World.
- Search Engine Journal.
- Search Engine Land.
Who benefits from local SEO?
The most obvious benefit to search engine optimization in general is the ability to increase your rankings in Google search and other search engines. All businesses – local or otherwise – crave that #1 spot because they then have the best chance of attracting new website visitors.
How many people use Google for local business?
86% of customers use Google Maps to find local businesses
The most recent local SEO statistics from Google Maps reveal that 86% of users are using the platform to search for local stores and businesses.
Do small businesses need SEO?
SEO is important because it helps you establish yourself as an expert in your field and drives traffic to your website, while also helping you organically promote your business for free. If you’re unsure about the importance of SEO, you’re not alone. Only 36% of small businesses actually have an SEO strategy.
What are the disadvantages of SEO?
Disadvantages of SEO?
- It takes time.
- Your competition is the rest of the Internet .
- Results are not guaranteed .
- It requires constant maintenance.
- It does not give profit at the beginning.
- The cost of services is high (less offer of specialists).
- Generates penalties if done wrong.
What are the challenges of SEO?
In this article, we will list the biggest SEO challenges this year.
- Constantly Changing Algorithms.
- Competition.
- Core Web Vitals.
- Keyword Cannibalization.
- Internal Redirects.
- AI Generated Content.
- Titles Tags and Meta Descriptions.
- Duplicate Content.
Which platform is best for SEO?
The best website builders for SEO IN DETAIL
- Wix.
- Squarespace.
- Weebly.
- DreamHost WP Website Builder.
- WordPress.com.
How do I know my SEO ranking?
If you want to check your SEO rankings on Google and don’t want to count the results individually, only a live rank checker can help. Simply enter your keyword (this can also be a group of words or a phrase) and add your domain. By clicking on “Check ranking”, your ranking is retrieved within seconds.
What is the best SEO strategy in 2022?
8 Most Effective SEO Tips You Must Know for 2022
- Focus on UX.
- Use Internal Linking.
- Focus on Entity-Based SEO.
- Recreate Blog Posts as Videos.
- Get on Google Discover.
- Update Existing Content.
- Optimize Content for Voice Search.
- Drive Traffic with Long-tail Keywords.
How can I improve my SEO in 2022?
Here are seven ways you can improve your search engine optimization strategy and rankings for 2022:
- Optimize your website. …
- Target accurate keywords. …
- Create longer, better content. …
- Track your website traffic. …
- Start link-building. …
- Stay away from black hat SEO. …
- Set up a Google My Business profile. …
- Conclusion.
Which SEO technique should be avoided?
Don’t over-prioritize keywords
Keyword research has long been considered a cornerstone of SEO. Creating content that features the keywords and terms your target audience are searching for seems like the most logical approach. However, using these keywords to excess will seriously harm your SEO strategy.
How many backlinks do I need to rank?
The number of backlinks needed goes up at a faster rate than the difficulty ranking. For example, if a keyword has a difficulty of 10 you probably need about 10 backlinks to rank. But if it has a difficulty of 50 you may need 100 backlinks to rank.
How do I create backlinks?
- Step One: Find What People are Linking to. The first step in getting amazing backlinks is to ferret out the sites that already have fantastic backlinks and scrutinize their link profiles. …
- Step Two: Find Out Who’s Linking. …
- Step Three: Find Out Why People are Linking. …
- Step Four: Create the Bait. …
- Step Five: Pimp Your Content.
How much does SEO increase traffic?
Over 50% of traffic around the web entered websites by clicking on them in the organic search results. That means that websites that have invested in SEO are getting over 50% of the total traffic across the Internet. And if they rank on the first page, they are seeing over 90% of that traffic.
What is a backlink in SEO?
Links on websites other than your own that go back to a page on your website. Backlinks are also called inbound links because they represent another website’s traffic coming to your own site. The quality and quantity of your backlinks can help you rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing.
What is a backlink strategy?
Why is a Backlink Strategy Crucial in 2021? Backlinks are created when a third party links back to your website. Most often, websites link to outside sources to further explain something or to endorse the site they are linking to.
How quickly can you rank on Google?
According to multiple sources, the average time for websites to rank on Google through optimization (SEO) techniques is about three to six months. That’s right – jumping to the front of Google’s results usually takes between 90-180 days, depending on the competitiveness of your industry and popularity of your keywords.
Local business Optimization in Mumbai – India| Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for small Businesses
Local search is powerful for small businesses: 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information. If your business isn’t optimized for local search, you could miss out on potential customers ready to shop in your area. In short, local SEO is critical if you want your business to stay relevant.
To help you optimize your business for local SEO, we’ve created a comprehensive guide covering local SEO tips and tools.
By the end of the guide, you’ll have a firm understanding on how to optimize your business to reach potential consumers who use local search to choose which products or services they’re going to buy.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving search engine visibility for local businesses, primarily those with brick-and-mortar locations. By following local SEO best practices, businesses can improve organic traffic from searches performed by customers in nearby areas.
Search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user to gather information for local search.
With local SEO, businesses can use this to position their products and services to local prospects and customers searching for them.
Local SEO Tips
- Optimize for Google My Business.
- Engage on social media and add posts to Google My Business.
- Ensure your name, address, and phone number are consistent online.
- Optimize online directories and citations.
- Perform a local SEO audit.
- Improve your internal linking structure.
- Optimize URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content.
- Add location pages to your website.
- Create local content.
- Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
- Get inbound links with relevance and authority.
- Participate in your local community.
1. Optimize for Google My Business.
Google My Business has become the creme de la creme of local search. Since Google supports, verifies, and shares its own content generously, Google My Business is an ideal tool to help your business meet Google’s needs.
To ensure you’re optimized for Google My Business, you’ll want to:
- Create and verify a Google My Business page.
- Use Google Posts within your account.
- Encourage your customers to share reviews online.
- Respond authentically to reviews, specifying location. For example, “We appreciate your feedback on [product/service] in [city, state]. We value your input and look forward to working with you again. Thank you from the [full company name] team.”
If Google can verify your business as authentic, the search engine could potentially reward your business with a coveted sidebar space in Google’s local search.
Don’t just do this for the SEO, either. By having reviews and keeping your contact information and operating hours up-to-date, you’re improving the experience for potential customers to find you. Finding current data is essential to consumers, now more than ever, due to 2020’s disruption in consumer shopping behavior and business operation.
2. Engage on social media and add posts to Google My Business.
Google considers content shared on social media more important now than ever before.
Now that you’ve carved out a beautiful Google My Business page, share it on social media, further aligning social and search.
3. Ensure your name, address, and phone number are consistent online.
You’ve got to make it easy for people and search engines to find you, and to do this you have to set up your NAP.
What does NAP mean in local SEO?
The acronym, NAP, stands for the name, address, and phone number (with area code) of a business. Your NAP should be considered crawlable HTML text on your site for Google to display it better according to location-based search results.
Pro Tip: Avoid the common mistake of only including the NAP within an image — images can’t be crawled from search engines like HTML text.
The most common location for the NAP is in the footer or header of the site. Additionally, you should include your NAP on a “Contact Us” page, too.
4. Optimize online directories and citations.
For United States companies, these four map data aggregators provide many map data for Apple, Yelp, Bing, Google, Trip Advisor, and more:
Consistency is key: verify that your citations are consistent and complete across these four data aggregators.
Discrepancies like misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite number, or wrong phone number can be problematic.
If Google can’t determine which information about your business is correct, it may not show your business at all in search results.
Pro Tip: Remove any duplicate listings you find in online directories. And while you’re at it, get a Chamber of Commerce membership in your community to gain an external inbound link specific to your area.
5. Perform a local SEO audit.
Once you have the fundamentals down, it may be tempting to put your foot on the brake. However, SEO is an ongoing and intuitive process. Instead of stopping there or simply making changes and seeing what sticks, it helps to perform a comprehensive audit to see where your website stands and what you need to work on to achieve your goals. A local SEO audit may include the following:
- Google My Business Audit – How does your Google My Business appear in the SERPs? Is the information accurate?
- Google Search Console Audit – Is your site crawlable? Does it have any errors that would hinder indexing?
- On-Page SEO Audit – Does your site accommodate all the on-page SEO elements that help ranking?
- Citation Audit – Are all of your citations correct in the top business directories?
- Competitor Analysis – How does your site match up with your competition’s? Are there any gaps that you need to close? How do you match up in terms of inbound links, content, design, and positioning?
- Website Audit – How well is your website performing?
6. Improve your internal linking structure.
Although external links pointing to your site are ideal (which I’ll discuss soon), adjusting your internal linking structure will also boost your SEO rankings.
Why does internal linking matter? It does the following:
- Supports website navigation
- Assists with information architecture and website hierarchy
- Distributes page authority and ranking power among pages
If you want to improve your internal linking structure but aren’t sure where to start, check out Kissmetrics’ The Seven Commandments of Internal Linking for Top-Notch SEO.
7. Optimize URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content.
When it comes to content, every new blog post is a new indexed page for your site, a new page on which to target a geographic search phrase, and a new opportunity to get found in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Every time you write a piece of content, you need to optimize the content for search engines by using high-volume keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description, and body. If you’re having trouble coming up with geo-targeted content, consider highlighting customer success stories and case studies.
Pro Tip: The more specifications you add to these assets (especially for each location of your business), the better you’ll be able to optimize “near me” local searches.
8. Add location pages to your website.
If you have more than one brick-and-mortar location, create location pages. Location pages provide readers with your name, address, phone number, store hours, unique store descriptions, parking/transit information, promotions, and testimonials from happy customers.
It’s also important you avoid duplicating content across multiple location pages. For single-location businesses, create a locally descriptive About Us page. You can even get bonus points if you add a Google Map to your website on your respective location page(s).
9. Create local content.
Google continues to get smarter, which means content creators can now write more for users and less to appease search engines. And while writing about general topics will attract a vast crowd, sometimes it’s more important to hone your focus and write about local or industry news to attract a local audience.
Be the local authority for your industry by promoting local industry gatherings, news, employees, and other educational content on your blog. Think of top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your business sells.
For example, if you’re a local security company and trying to attract businesses new to the area, create a helpful resource to get these businesses well-acquainted with your city. A map of local service providers or a calendar of city-wide events could both provide value for your persona and contain highly relevant on-page local signals.
10. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
Local and mobile search go hand in hand (61% of all Google searches are performed on mobile).
Some of the most common ways people will use your site in a mobile environment are to look up reviews, find directions to your location, and search for contact information. In fact, “near me” searches on mobile have increased 250% since 2017.
Make it easy for your prospects and customers by making your site mobile-friendly.
11. Get inbound links with relevance and authority.
Inbound links are compelling opportunities to boost your local SEO — every inbound link tells Google you’re a legitimate company, and inbound links can also raise your domain authority. Here are a few ways to get inbound links:
- Sponsorships or Partnerships
- Guest Blog Posting
- Scholarships
Start with your network, including the Chamber of Commerce, business improvement districts, licensing bureaus, trade associations, resellers, vendors, manufacturers, and other affiliates.
Consider sponsoring a webinar or meet-up, hosting a community event, promoting something local you love, and building relationships with prominent people and influencers. Additionally, learn to feel comfortable reaching out to partners to see if they can feature you on their partner directory.
Also, being a guest blogger can help attract links. Positively talk to or about other people in your industry, and act as a resource provider for the community. If you’re an active participant in community conversations, the buzz around you grows in the form of inbound links, social media growth, and media coverage.
12. Participate in your local community.
The more you participate in the local community, the more digital PR you’ll receive. Partnering with a nonprofit on a campaign, having a volunteer day in your organization, sponsoring an event (even an online one!), or appearing in the local media as an authority in your industry are all ways to earn press, brand awareness, and inbound links.
For example, given that .edu links are the bee’s knees for domain authority, why not earn some links by featuring a scholarship in your geographic region? It should be relevant to your industry, send the right signals to your domain (given the backlinks from schools) and make you feel good, too! Moz built a solid guide on the steps to success for effective scholarship outreach.
Local SEO Tools
Now that we’ve covered how to optimize your business for local SEO, let’s explore some practical tools you can leverage to improve your ranking in the areas where it matters most.
1. Whitespark Local Citation Finder
Pricing: Small Business Plan; $25/month, Specialist Plan; $50/month, Agency Plan; $100/month, Enterprise Plan; $200/month
A local citation is any online mention of a local business’s name, address, and phone number.
Citations matter because they help surface local businesses in online search, and when local businesses actively manage its sources to ensure data accuracy, it promotes trust in these online listings.
Whitespark knows this realm well — really well. Whitespark offers local listing management, recommends where to list your business, examines your competition, and robustly builds and monitors your citation growth for better local search rankings.
2. Screaming Frog
Pricing: Free Basic Version, Paid Version; $209/year
This desktop program crawls websites’ links, images, CSS, script, and apps from an SEO perspective. Curious if you have any 404’s? Or wondering about missing meta descriptions or H1s? Screaming Frog will analyze up to 500 URLs for free and unlimited URL analysis in its paid version.
3. Moz Local
Pricing: Lite Plan; $14/month, Preferred Plan; $20/month, Elite Plan; $33/month
Less expensive than most of its counterparts, Moz Local will ensure your business listing has been verified on Google and Facebook and distribute your listing across the search ecosystem.
Additionally, Moz Local will collaborate with data aggregators to help push listings, ensuring your business gains visibility.
4. Arel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hrefs
Pricing: Lite Plan; $99/month, Standard Plan; $199/month, Advanced Plan; $399/month, Enterprise Plan; $999/month
Arel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hrefs helps with backlink checking, which is essential as these links (directed toward your website) indicate website authority.
Arel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hrefs also offers competitor analysis, keyword research, and insight into other websites’ anchor text when backlinking to your site.
5. Buzzstream
Pricing: Starter Plan; $24/month, Growth Plan; $124/month, Professional Plan; $299/month, Custom Plan; $999/month
BuzzStream facilitates earning local backlinks, which helps you identify and build relationships with local influencers by researching influencers, tracking conversations, and providing reporting insights into your outreach campaigns, team performance, and link placements.
6. BrightLocal
Pricing: Single Business Plan; $29/month, Multi Business Plan; $49/month, SEO Pro Plan; $79/month
BrightLocal is a comprehensive SEO tool suite built explicitly for local business marketing needs.
The tool can help you generate and monitor reviews on local sites, understand your local search performance, and analyze nearby competitors.
BrightLocal also offers client access and white-labeled reporting — making it a solid fit for agencies and brands alike.
Improve Your Business Visibility with Local SEO
Local SEO is an integral part of any SEO strategy for local businesses. Local SEO will help your audience find you when they search online if you have a storefront or service area. We hope you find this article helpful in your journey to gain brand recognition and authority on the net.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
13 Essential Google My Business Optimizations to Rank Higher in Local Search in India
Any business today needs targeted visibility on Google. Most businesses know that this requires optimizing their website and Google Ads, but what most don’t know is that there is a third entity that also needs optimizing: their Google business listing. Officially known as your Business Profile, this powerful listing is a dynamic snapshot of your business that highlights your best features and enables potential customers to quickly find, learn about, and engage with you—all from the SERP. The best part? It’s completely free.
Click to view full-size image.
And yet, despite the 167 billion searches performed on Google each month, a BrightLocal study showed that the typical Business Profile only averages 1,260 views during that same period (that’s 0.00000075%!). Even worse, only 59 actions are taken from those 1,260 views. That’s less than 5%.
The problem is not the Google My Business platform; it’s that not nearly enough businesses take full advantage of its impressive features. And that’s why we’ve written this guide. Here, we’re going to share 13 optimization strategies:
- Claim your Business Profile
- Complete every section of your Google My Business account
- Be meticulous with contact information
- Select primary and secondary categories
- Mark off applicable attributes
- Write a complete “from the business” description
- Publish Google posts weekly
- Upload new photos weekly
- Answer questions
- Collect and respond to reviews
- Add your products and/or services
- Set up messaging
- Maintain your Business Profile
With these optimizations, you can turn your Business Profile into the best free customer acquisition tool you didn’t know you had. Let’s get into it.
Note: The more familiar term “Google business listing” is officially known by Google as your Business Profile, so we’ll be using “Business Profile” throughout this post.
What does an optimized Google Business Profile look like?
Before we get into the strategies, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what an optimized Business Profile looks like and why you need one. To help you visualize what you’re striving for and why, let’s take a look at a mockup of an incomplete Google Business Profile versus a complete and optimized one.
Click to view full-size image.
Here, Carl’s Google Business Profile is a short box, but Ernie’s Business Profile would show even more when you scroll. This diagram doesn’t encompass all of the features of an optimized Google Business Profile, but it does give you an idea of how much more attractive and engaging an optimized profile is.
Why you need to optimize your Google Business Profile
The comparison above makes it clear that an optimized Business Profile on Google helps consumers to choose your business over competitors, but there are other benefits to optimizing your Business Profile for effective local marketing.
Improve engagement
More and more, consumers are entering and exiting Google without going to any other website. Why? Because the information in search results pages themselves is fully answering their questions, resulting in “zero-click searches.” With potentially more consumers interacting with your businesses through your Google Business Profile than your website, you’ll want that profile to be optimized for quality engagement and conversions.
Boost your local ranking
Google’s algorithm for ranking Business Profiles does not just consider proximity and relevance but also activity and quality of information. Optimizing your Google Business Profile sends these signals to Google to rank you higher in local results. And higher rank, as you know, means more visibility and engagement with your business.
Optimizing your Business Profile can help your business to rank higher on Google Maps and on the first page of Google Search results like these.
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Convert more customers
A regular Google Business Profile alone doesn’t offer much in the way of acquiring customers. They can find out where you are located and read your reviews—if they know to search your business name in the first place (creative business name ideas here!). But with an optimized Business Profile through your Google My Business account, consumers can discover you in keyword searches, call you, visit your website, research your products and services, view/contribute FAQs, request a quote, book an appointment, make a reservation, and more. Plus, you can track clicks to your website, appointment, or menu link using UTMs and Google Analytics.
How to optimize your Google Business Profile
Now that you see that optimizing your Google Business Profile is the key to getting found in local search, standing out above competitors, and winning customers online, it’s time to get to work on doing just that. Here are 13 ways you can turn your Google Business Profile into a 24/7 marketing and lead generation tool for your local business.
1. Create a Google My Business account
First and foremost, it’s important to note here that a Google Business Profile is a separate entity from a Google My Business account. The latter is used to gain access to and optimize the former. Which means that in order to make the optimizations laid out in this guide, you need to have a Google My Business account and then tell Google to connect it with your Google Business Profile. To create an account, head to Google.com/business and sign in with the regular Google/Gmail account you use for your business (as opposed to your personal Gmail, if you have one).
2. Complete every section
The completeness of your Google Business Profile not only helps Google to rank you higher in local search results, but it also increases the number of actions customers take when they find your profile. There’s a lot of information to provide, so here are some guidelines for prioritizing.
These aspects of your profile should be completed right away:
- Name
- Address
- Phone
- Website
- Hours
These sections take a bit more time and thought:
- Category and Attributes
- Products and services
- From the business
- Questions and answers (Owner-generated queries)
These sections are ongoing:
- Posts
- Reviews
- Questions and answers (Consumer-generated)
3. Be meticulous with contact information
Here are the steps for optimizing the contact information in your Google Business Profile:
- Make sure your business name is identical to the one you use on your store signage. In other words, exactly as it appears in the real world. Adding location name (unless it’s in your brand name) or keywords is considered spam by Google and you could be penalized.
- Make sure that both your business name and address exactly match your other listings across the web. This means using “st” vs “street” or “co” vs “company” consistently. Google’s algorithm takes these inconsistencies into account when assessing your credibility.
- Indicate both your regular and holiday hours. This encourages customers to visit you, and also avoids the potential of a negative review left by someone who took the trip out to your store only to find it was closed.
4. Write your “from the business” description
The first thing to note is that the brief description that appears just below your business name in your Business Profile is not actually in your control. This is the editorial summary that Google writes to ensure consistency across the platform.
This description is not in your control.
Bummer, I know. But the good news is that Google does a pretty good job at coming up with descriptions.
The description you do have control over is the “from the business” section in your Google My Business account dashboard. This section appears lower in your profile, often under the reviews section.
To optimize the “from the business” section of your Google Business Profile:
- Use all 750 characters, with key information in the first 250 characters.
- Repurpose content from your “About Us” page or mission statement.
- Use keywords your audience uses to find businesses like yours.
- Don’t repeat any information already visible in the other sections of your profile. Use this space to talk about what sets you apart from competitors and what customers like most about your business.
- Don’t include links or HTML.
5. Choose a category
Choosing a category is a must for optimizing your Google Business Profile. Here’s why:
- Get found in discovery searches. A whopping 84% of Business Profile views on Google originate from discovery searches (meaning the consumer searched for a product, service, or categorical term and that business’s profile appeared), versus only 16% coming from direct searches (the consumer typed in the business name or address). This is especially true for businesses whose name doesn’t indicate their service (e.g., Fresh Express or Amelia’s Catering).
- Highlight category-specific features. Once you choose a category, Google makes available to you category-specific features that make your profile more attractive and effective. For example, restaurants can include a menu or reservation button; hotel profiles will pull in star ratings; hair salons can confirm that they have experience with thin or curly hair. These details can help consumers choose you over competitors.
Your category appears in the top portion of your Google Business Profile.
Google offers a set number of categories, so it’s important to choose the correct ones. Here’s how to optimize your Google Business Profile using categories:
- Be specific. If you’re a nail salon, choose “Nail Salon” and not just “Salon.” If you’re a restaurant, choose “Egyptian Restaurant,” “American Restaurant,” etc., rather than simply “Restaurant.” A drop-down list of categories will appear once you start typing, but you can also see a full list of GMB categories here to ensure you find the most specific one for your business (there are over 3,000 categories so it’s worth the look).
- Choose secondary categories. Many businesses fall into multiple categories. Set your primary category to your chief offering (for example, “Grocery Store”) and then choose additional categories that apply, such as “Grocery Delivery Service” or “Gourmet Grocery Store.”
- Don’t overdo it. You want Google to connect you with consumers who need your service, so choose only categories that match your offering. For example, if you’re an appliance repair business, select “Appliance Repair” only, not “Appliance Parts Supplier.” Technically you do supply service parts, but this is not a standalone offering of your business. (Pro tip: Don’t confuse categories with products or attributes, which are separate sections.)
Also, keep in mind that Google might ask you to verify your business if you edit your category list or add multiple. This is just to ensure accuracy across their platform.
6. Select applicable attributes
As we just mentioned, once you choose a category, Google will give you a list of attributes you can check off to further describe your business. Attributes are special features that potential customers seek out, like “gift shop on-site” or “free wi-fi.”
Attributes are not specific to the Google My Business platform (review sites like Yelp have them, too). But Google’s attributes get really granular, like “good for working on laptop” or “popular for travelers”. Check out this attribute list to see what I mean.
7. Add photos
Uploading photos to your Business Profile through your Google My Business account dashboard is important for three reasons:
- Ensure quality. Anyone can add photos to your Business Profile, which means you’ll get a range of quality. By adding your own great photos, you can ensure your profile looks its best.
- Be active. Adding photos regularly signals to Google that you are active with your profile and it is up-to-date, which positively impacts your ranking.
- Get images in results. Google is advancing in image recognition and starting to include photos in local results.
- Increase engagement. According to Google, customers are 42% more likely to request driving directions to a business if its Business Profile has photos, and 35% more likely to click through to its website. Furthermore, a BrightLocal study showed that businesses with more than 100 photos get 520% more calls, 2,717% more direction requests, and 1,065% more website clicks than the average business. Whoah.
This doesn’t mean you should go crazy and add a hundred images to your profile at once. Follow these tips to use photos to optimize your Google Business Profile:
- Add at least one new photo every seven days.
- For your thumbnail photo, upload your logo.
- For your cover photo, use something that best represents your brand—but don’t fuss over this because Google will display different feature photos depending on the search query.
- For other general photos, refer to Google’s photo guidelines for specifications, but be sure to include happy customers, interior and exterior views, and team photos.
- No stock photos, and no photos with special effects or branding. Google is trying to represent your business as it appears in the real world.
- Focus on quality images that have clear depictions (to align with image-enriched results).
Google will pull a specific photo from a Business Profile and display it directly in local results if it matches the keyword searched.
- Geo-tag your photos to further indicate to Google your prominence in your area.
- Add videos, too!
- Use Google’s Street View app to add a 360º photo to your profile.
8. Get Google reviews
If you were to get a list of businesses in search results like the one below, which one would you be most likely to choose? The one with four attractive yellow stars or one of the two below with no reviews at all?
Google knows that reviews are the #1 influence on consumer buying, so this is a key ranking factor in their algorithm. You can also see for yourself the impact of reviews on ranking. For most searches performed on Google, the first three local results that appear (in what is known as the “Local 3-Pack”) are the ones with multiple reviews and solid star ratings:
In addition, Google may also display a Business Profile in search results if it has reviews that contain those keywords.
Google will embolden keywords in your reviews to further validate relevancy.
To optimize your Google Business Profile with reviews, follow these tips to stand out from competitors:
- Start with your long-time, loyal customers to get the momentum going.
- Make it as easy as possible for customers by creating a review shortcut link or using Whitespark’s shortcut link generator (both are free).
- Ask! 62% of customers will write a review if asked. Do so via email, text, social media, and in-person conversations.
- Remind customers that reviews aren’t just for your benefit; they help people who have the same pain points as them to find a solution and make informed decisions.
- Have a “Reviews” page on your website with a CTA to leave one.
- Respond to reviews. This feedback incentivizes additional customers to leave theirs, reveals a lot about your business to prospects, and improves your local SEO.
For a deeper dive into this optimization strategy, check out this post on how to get more Google reviews.
Be careful not to incentivize reviews with discounts, gifts, or cash, though—that’s not allowed.
9. Post to your Google Business Profile
Just like with social media platforms, you can post to your Google Business Profile about announcements, offers, events, and products. Posts are created in your Google My Business dashboard and show up on the “Updates” section toward the bottom of your Business Profile. However, they might become more prominent based on the search query.
Here’s how posts help you to optimize your Google Business Profile:
- Posts increase the number of actions taken by consumers who find your profile.
- Posting regularly sends positive ranking signals to Google in the same way that adding photos does.
- Consumers have higher intent on search engines versus other posting platforms (i.e., Facebook and Instagram, where they are leisurely scrolling), so they are more likely to engage with your Google posts.
- Consumers can follow your Business Profile and get notified of new posts and updates.
Your Google My Business posts will even appear on Maps—it’s free advertising for your local business!
Here are your tips for optimizing your Google Business Profile with posts:
- Post regularly. Not just to send signals to Google, but also because certain post types expire every seven days.
- Use event and offer posts for marketing campaigns that have a timeline. You can choose a date range and the posts will stay live for the duration of that timeline.
- Include links and CTAs in every post.
- As of writing this post, there is currently a COVID-19 post type, which we’d encourage you to use to effectively communicate with your audience during the pandemic.
10. Ask and answer questions
Have you noticed on Amazon that in addition to the product description and customer reviews, there is a section for questions and answers? Google offers the same feature in Google Business Profiles.
Image courtesy of searchengineland.com
Answers to these questions may be the impetus for a customer deciding to choose your business. However, this section is particularly important to optimize because not only can anyone ask a question on a business’s Google profile but also anyone can answer. This can lead to inaccurate information on your profile, or even worse, something like the Q&A on this pizza restaurant’s profile:
You can’t turn off the Q&A feature of your Business Profile, but there are ways to optimize it:
- Set up alerts so you can stay on top of questions and answers posted to your profile.
- Seed your own Q&A section. Make a list of the most frequently asked questions your business gets. Then ask, answer, and upvote your answer on your own profile. This does not go against Google’s terms and conditions. In fact, Google encourages it.
- Keep keywords in mind. Questions and answers that contain keywords can help improve your Business Profile’s ranking for that keyword. So keep your keyword strategy in mind when seeding your Q&A section, but use them loosely and organically, and do not keyword stuff.
By monitoring and seeding your Q&A section, you can ensure accurate information, highlight your best features, and reduce common barriers to entry.
Note: Google has temporarily suppressed the Q&A section of most Business Profiles right now in response to COVID-19, so you may not see this option for yours for a while. For more help with Google My Business in relation to COVID-19, dbaPlatform offers some great tips.
11. Add products and services
Adding products and services is especially helpful if your offerings are not made clear in your business name. Populating this section also adds content to your profile that can help it to rank for even more relevant searches.
When adding products and services, include the name, description, and price (if applicable). The full description will show up once a searcher clicks on the product. Also, Google may link to your products from your category section.
12. Set up messaging
This feature gives searchers the option to send a text message to your phone directly from your Google Business Profile. With 82% of smartphone shoppers (92% for millennials) using their device for local search, this is a great opportunity for customers to get in touch with you.
To enable messaging, select the “Messaging” tab in your Google My Business dashboard, and you have the option to install this via Google Play or the Apple App Store.
Two notes on Google My Business messaging:
- You don’t need to worry about displaying your personal phone number, as you’ll use a different number via Google’s Allo app.
- Be sure to set up alerts for messages in your Google My Business dashboard. Head to settings and check off “Customer messages.”
13. Maintain your Business Profile with a solid Google My Business strategy
As you can see, a Google Business Profile is not a one-and-done marketing task. It’s a local marketing tool that requires ongoing action in order to increase your online presence and maximize your benefits. This includes:
- Updating information, even as minor as a change in suite number.
- Publishing posts and uploading photos each week.
- Keeping a steady stream of reviews coming in.
- Monitoring and responding to reviews.
- Staying on top of new features so you can ensure you’re using your profile to its fullest potential.
Just like any Google SEO strategy, your Google My Business strategy should center around providing as much quality information about your business as possible, not just in your Business Profile but in the sources that Google uses to populate it—your website, review site profiles, and even your social media accounts. We can’t ever know every specific ranking factor, but we do know their ultimate goal: to connect searchers to the best business for their needs through detailed, trusted information. So focus on using your Google My Business dashboard to get your Business Profile to represent your business as accurately and thoroughly as possible, and then make sure to maintain this, and you will reap its benefits.
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