Local SEO
-
To date local SEO seems to be the weak part of my SEO efforts. Are there any good references for local SEO?
-
Brett, another resource to consider would be a Local U session, either Local U or Local U Advanced. Local U is organized by Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm and it includes the expertise of faculty like Aaron Weiche, Matt McGee, Ed Reese, Mike Ramsey, Mary Bowling, and others. The Local U half-day sessions are scheduled around the country and Local U Advanced is next scheduled as a workshop following SMX Advanced in Seattle, June 13. If you're interested in attending Local U Advanced in Seattle, early bird rates expire on Saturday. There's more information about the curriculum at LocalU.org. I've attended two Local U sessions and Local U Advanced in the last year and it's transformed what I can do for my clients -- I recommend it! Good Luck! Paul
-
Most welcome, Brett. Main thing to keep in mind with local SEO is that citations are the local equivalent to links. (though links are still important, especially if they contain local intent e.g. Comox real estate agent).
Citations are essentially other sites mentioning your NAP or Name Address Phone. These don't even have to be direct links to your site.
Good luck and have fun with it!
Paul
-
thanks Paul, great list
-
thanks very much Kevin
-
For a real estate professional like you, Local SEO will likely become your bread and butter, Brett. It's a very challenging subset of SEO because its parameters and processes change even faster than general SEO. On the other hand, it holds tremendous opportunities because so few other small businesses are doing it well.
Here's a comprehensive list of Local Seo resources created by the guys at Whitespark - a Canadian bunch.
www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/9-essential-local-search-resourcesTheir blog is also useful because it gives Canadian perspective on some of the processes, which are substantially different from US. For example, here's their review of essential Canadian places to get reviews. Many of the usual recommended US sites just aren't that useful to us Canucks.
www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/10-canadian-local-business-reviews-ecosystemPaul
-
David Mihm seems to be a big local voice in the industry. I think this article on all of his ranking factors should give you a pretty good idea of what to do:
To build citations (similar to link building), you have a few options (or all):
- https://www.ubl.org/
- https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/
- http://www.neustar.biz/infoservices/solutions/localeze
Does this help?
Kevin Phelps
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwphelps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How long should the Image Alt Text be for SEO?
When it comes to creating the alternate text for images, what is the character length that I need stay under to rank well?
Image & Video Optimization | | Ytellsocial0 -
Local SEO Question: Domain Wide Vs Specific Page
Hey Moz Community, Question about Local SEO authority and how it applies to a domain vs. landing page. Let me elaborate... Company is launching a new local out reach sales channel and merging it with our inbound sales channel under one brand. The plan thus far is to create a targeted landing page for local customers/leads. I have been tasked with creating the written content and making sure we are optimized as much as possible for this landing page to show up for our city. Funny enough for a lot of relevant terms we are already in the top 10 with little optimization (Also due to low competition for most of these terms) Two questions: 1. Should the whole site be optimized for local - appropriate schema markup, G+ business local set up, contact page with correct address formatting, building citations/local links etc.? To accompany our targeted page? 2. Will taking a local first initiative hurt reaching our non-local target market? If so will a very targeted landing page for local customers do the trick minus rest of local optimizations ? I guess what the question really boils down to is will optimizing for local hurt our broader inbound search reach/ranks in the long run? I want to be sure we are competitive to our broader audience and local audience on the same site with trying to get into sub-domains or considering re branding what is essentially the same department but for local purposes. Responses and sharing previous experience would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | paul-bold0 -
Trying to Merge Google + Local and Google Business Page _ How to?
Hi I have been reading so many posts about merging Google Plus + (Places) accounts and the new Google + Business Pages. I am working with a business who has a verified account in both. How ( and in fact should we try and merge). The old Places page has a review the newly create Business Page does not but is better optimized. Any help would be gratefully received as my head is spinning/ PS based in New Zealand
Image & Video Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Looking for provider for Local Submissions and Feed management
I'm looking for a recommendation of a provider that can completely manage the submissions to Google, infoUSA, Localeze, and Axciom for a business with ~300 locations. Anyone have a good recommendation?
Image & Video Optimization | | DotCar0 -
Yext vs Localeze vs UBL for Local SEO
Which of these services is the best? Does anyone have experience with all three?
Image & Video Optimization | | nicole.healthline2 -
Page Extension for SEO Post Penguin
I am setting up pages for an SEO campaign. This campaign will focus suburb/area focused keywords to the home page and an inner page talking about the local area. My keyword I am targeting is "flower delivery brisbane" The keywords pointing back to both pages will be made up of brand and variances of the keywords so that is ok What I would like to know, am I know over optimizing the inner page extension "flowers delivery brisbane" as it is an exact match of the main keyword to rank since google penguin. I did this prior to google penguin and it worked well. the site address is
Image & Video Optimization | | VivaArturo
simpleflowers.com.au inner page is:
simpleflowers.com.au/flowers-delivery-brisbane Would love to hear your thoughts0 -
How many local citations directory listings are recommended to obtain a month?
Hi, I am interested to hear what others recommend for the amount of local references & citations to obtain a month. For example, have you found it is better to get listed in SEOMoz's top 50 Local Business Citation Directories over a 30 day period, or is it the same if you registered on all of them in 1-2 days. What about larger numbers, registering on 100 national local citation websites, 50 industry related websites, and 15 city related sites. Have you found any large negative ranking effects on registering on all of them for your clients in say a 10-20 period rather than stretching out the registration process over say 3 months.. Jeff
Image & Video Optimization | | WebBizIdeas0 -
As a whitehat SEO how do you manage in a highly competative market?
I have a competator that has literally hundreds of sites like this: http://www.wire-shelf.com/tag/cleaning/ that don't have a huge amount of page authority, but he is getting citations out of all of them. The site is obviously useless, and just a place for some SEO company to keep adding more links to their various clients, and creating google citations for them at the same time. Once you have filled out your information on every single local database and obtained all the legit citations you can, your competitors are still beating you by having more citations, from various sites like the one above. Is there any way to stay whitehat and actually succeed? or should i just follow suit, and make 100 crappy websites full of crap and put links in them. seems silly, but it seems like the only way to compete these days.
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0