A lot of local SEO questions from a newbie...
-
I've been doing basic SEO for customers for quite awhile now in terms of on-page stuff, but am starting to move into the arena of local SEO services and had a few questions that I hoped you guys could help with.
1. What services besides Google+ Local do you list customers websites in, such as Yahoo or Bing Local?
2. When creating accounts at the services listed question #1, do you have to verify the phone number that's listed with the business owner or is there any extra type of verification needed? How do you deal with getting all that verified for the company?
3. Do you create all these listings at Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. from the same account?
4. Does anyone know of a list of the top 50 places to get local citations such as Yelp or YellowPages?
5. When creating citations do you normally have to verify the phone number or address that you list and how do you deal with that with business owners?
6. Do you use the same accounts to create all the local citations or are different ones required for each listing?
7. What companies would you recommend that handle all the above for you, such as a setting up accounts at Google, Yahoo, and Bing - and then also creating around 50 citations for you? Of course all the login information would also need to be provided for everything they create.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, I look forward to hearing back from all of you!
-
Hi Chase,
You've gotten some good answers here to your specific questions, so I'd like to give you some more general advice, seeing that you are just dipping your toes into the big pool of Local SEO:) I hope this will be helpful to you!
-
First, ground yourself in the basics of Local SEO. I recommend you read David Mihm's 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors report. This annual survey has been the premiere local industry publication for many years running. It points out the things that make up local rankings, and therefore, the different things you'll need to study. http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
-
Next, I recommend that you visit the Local Learning Center at GetListed.org and read through some of the tutorials there.
-
Thirdly, one of the main tasks of a Local SEO is to keep on top of updates, because they happen so frequently in Local. There are a ton of great blogs on the topic of Local SEO, and here at SEOmoz, we publish some great local pieces, but I would highly recommend that you become a regular reader of the blog of Local Search Godfather, Mike Blumenthal. blumenthals.com/blog
Hope this helps!
-
-
-
Other than just Google+ local there are tons of yellow pages and data aggregation website that allow business to list their business and move from their accordingly... some of the other websites other them Google+local, Yahoo local and Bing local are yell.com, yelp.com, yp.com, truelocal.com and many more...
-
Some websites will only allow you to go live once they will verify your business through phone in that case the call will be received on your customer’s business address and upon verification it will give you a code that you can enter to verify your listing. I usually define the process to my client before going on with the process so he knew what is going to happen.
-
For most of the website you can use one account but obviously with yahoo and bing you will be needing their own email accounts.
-
Here is the top 50 list of local citation for US and UK (http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938) if you have a business in Australia then this is the dedicated list of business in AU (http://www.setalks.com/ultimate-list-of-local-citations-for-australian-businesses/)
-
You have to talk to business owner and explain the situation and why it is needed for their business before you actually step ahead and start submitting your businesses to local citations.
-
Few need a different accounts as mentioned above but mostly it works with a single account
-
Brightlocal, Getlisted there can be few more!
I hope I cover all the answers let me know if there is any new information you want!
-
-
Hey Chase,
Welcome... I've only been here a few months myself, but this is definitely the place to learn.
Reading over your questions, I've got a couple of places for you to start.
First of all... Search the heck out of the blogs and these forums, if you can't find a specific answer it's still very likely that you'll find something that will point you in the right direction.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo <--- When you're just getting started following the advice in here will almost always get you noticeable results right away.
Also, there is no magic formula. I run a few different sites, and after a very long period of trial and error I've just started to realize that while there are a few steps that you can take in the beginning to get some results, different situations call for different tactics and tools.
Last... You've got to be willing to put in the time and do the work. There are a lot of very tedious tasks that make up SEO and all of the related fields, and many of them are a necessary part of getting to where you want to be. There's nothing wrong with paying someone else to do the work, it's just a question of where your time and efforts are best spent. If you don't have time to crank out 50 citations (or search a forum) because you've got customers to deal with, or inventory to catalog, it might not be such a bad idea to hit up an SEO service, but if you're interested in how things work, and the gratification involved with watching your site work it's way up the SERP's or watch your analytics graph jump upwards... You're in the right place... Tear it up... You'll answer every single one of those questions better than I could and walk away with 20 more questions that will lead you to 20 more (in a good way.)
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
-
Can I make iframe video SEO friendly?
Hello there, Is it possible to make iframe SEO friendly? I have to use iframe to add video to the page. I know I can use the name and title attributes, but will it help to rank my page? Also can I put alternative content to describe the video? some iframe examples: <iframe<br>name="example-name-a"
Image & Video Optimization | | BBI_Brandboost
width="300"
height="300"
src="example-a.html">
Alternate content video a</iframe<br> <iframe <br="">name="Example-video-name-b"<br /> title="Example-video-title-b"<br /> width="300"<br /> height="300"<br /> frameborder="0"<br /> src="example-b.html"><br /></iframe>0 -
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 -
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 -
Setting Up Localized City Pages and Duplicate Content issues
We are setting up landing pages on our site that will cater to specific cities, in an effort to be more relevant to the users in those cities and also capture more localized traffic. These regional pages will each have a unique paragraph at the top, but below that is a sentence or two about each product line that would be difficult to rewrite with quality more than 10 - 15 times. Would the paragraph at the top of the page be enough unique content (about 4-5 sentences)? Obviously the duplicate content wouldn't be to my advantage, but is it really necessary to rewrite the other sentences about the product lines? What's the most efficient method to complete this project in a whitehat fashion?
Image & Video Optimization | | InetAll0 -
What is the best way to host a video on my site from a SEO perspective?
Hi, we are in the process of creating a video about a topic that is highly relevant for our customers. Once it is completed we want to offer the video to our customers so that they can embed it into their own websites for free. What is the best way to do this and still receive maximum SEO juice? If we use a a video service like youtube or vimeo, then the link will go to vimeo or youtube and not our site. One thing we are thinking about is asking our customers to link to our site in return for embedding the video, but if there is an automatic solution then this would be a lot better. Any tips will be highly appreciated! If you have anyother tips regarding video content then the same of course! Many thanks! Daan
Image & Video Optimization | | daan.loening0 -
SEO for a eSmoking eCommerce Client ?
We have a client, for whom we built a Magento website, where he is selling eSmoking products like eCigars, etc . Now, he wants us to do the SEO of his website. Im not sure, if the general practise is fine for him, because of the nicotine laws by the fda, yahoo and google will not do it. Let me know, how I should proceed.
Image & Video Optimization | | qubesys0 -
Will putting images in a light box or photo gallery affect my image SEO?
A website that is very image heavy and would like to enhance the user experience with a photo gallery. How will this affect the indexing of these photos? Can I still add alt. tags and title tags to these images?
Image & Video Optimization | | Unidev0 -
Multi-site listings in Google Local/Place pages
I've had problems with a client that is a local medical center with multiple sites/addresses. We've created a Place Page for each location and linked it to the location page on the client's website that matches the address on the Place page. But that means we're not linking to the medical center's home page -- and Google Places doesn't like that. I know this because after we'd owner-verified each Place Page, Google went in and just changed the website link that was a deep link to a location page and replaced it with a link to the home page. But now there's not an address match. How should we handle this? Related question: Does it make sense to claim a separate listing in Yelp and other local directories for each of the separate locations since they each have a unique address? Will Yelp & other local directories allow for links to non-home pages on the client's website?
Image & Video Optimization | | DenisL0