Local SEO Best Practices

[ZacharyRussell]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to SEOmoz, I'm looking to use this as a tool to really help me, and evenually I can help others. I am an Web Developer with some online marketing experience. I did Local SEO a Few Years ago, and things have really changed since then. I know this Panda and Penguin update really is putting a hurting on the directory submission. Google no longer has 'Citations" on their places page, and many other changes.

With that being said, what are some best practices for Local SEO? I am a propeller head by nature, but am also very creative when I need to be. I have potental sites to market, anywhere from Holistic Medical Doctors, Plastic Surgeons Community Blogs, and Auto Repair Shops, Law firms (to give you some perspectic)

I also read Danny Dover's Book, to learn some more about SEO, the one thing that is unclear is how to acquire quality links

I would really appreciate any perspective on this, every little thing helps

Zach Russell

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Zach,

Welcome back to the Local jungle! The most significant change in Local that has taken place in the last year is how significant a part the website plays in a business' overall ranking abilities. If you were doing Local SEO a few years back, the SERPs were filled with business ranking highly (in the old pack-style rankings) that didn't even have websites. This is rare now. Instead, you've got to have a great website, a clean Places record, review acquisition, citation acquisition, and in competitive verticals or populous regions, good links.

Local business index listings are the first place to start with linkbuilding. I recommend that you read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors Report from 2011 to catch up on some of the top local business indexes. Also, read Myles' Anderson Top 50 Citation Sources for the USA and UK at Search Engine Land. While not all citations sources are link sources, many of them are.

Beyond this, what Matt Williamson is describing is pretty much what you'll be doing: building quality content that earns links. And, definitely take the time to memorize the current Google Places Quality Guidelines which have changed rather significantly over the past few years. Check back often because they keep changing them!

I hope this gets you off to a good start. Good luck and have fun! Miriam

[kbloemendaal]

Local is the only place I always recommend using local directories (Google Places, Yahoo Local, YellowPages, Hot Frog, etc...) the directory listings may not have much link value, but they definitely work to drive traffic and they usually rank well on their own.

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Zach,

Whether it is local or international the process for gaining quality links is the same you need to create great quality content and then you need to make sure that it gains the right exposure. This will bring you the quality links you desire to increase your sites rankings. There are lots of methods for creating decent content, such as product/service reviews, blogs including promoting guest blogging from authorities in your niche, examples of work you have carried out (case studies), content curation (see SEOMoz Blog)  and more.

To gain exposure it is important to interact with as many potential customers and also others involved in your niche as possible, this is where social networking comes in. Building up your social following and then interacting and building relationships with authority figures that are related to your niche will allow you to expose them to your content through passing on links through tweets etc. If you have built a good relationship this will cause your social followers to share it to their own network and then you will gain increased exposure which will lead to likes, G+'s, tweets and links from other sites. It is important to make sure you include social bookmarking on your websites to help facilitate this. If you are blogging and you have built relationships with authority figures you can then ask them to create a guest post on your blog - you might need to offer an incentive. They will bring the attention of their followers with them which will lead to more exposure and links - improving the authority of your site.

For local SEO it is so important to network online and identify local influencers as this will bring you business - I have found that social networking allows the online word of mouth about decent local business to happen an a much quicker rate - this is flourishing!

I hope this helps - one suggestion is you look into the link building discussions on here for more ideas.