Learn Local SEO
-
What are best local SEO practices 2013 ?? to get website on top of all major keywords ???
-
Hi Mnkpso,
Marcus has done an awesome job responding to you. I will add just a few things here.
When I have clients who are completely new to Local SEO, I have them read these 2 pieces I wrote to describe both the technical and mental basics of Local SEO:
For the most complete description of the factors that make up local rankings, I point to:
Local Search Ranking Factors 2012
*Note that this last survey was conducted a year ago and that significant changes have taken place since then, but the basic factors are pretty much the same.
And, because a major key to success in Local is keeping on top of the news, I would recommend these blogs and fora in addition to the two mentioned by Marcus:
http://www.blumenthals.com/blog
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/blog/
http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/
There are other super Local SEO bloggers out there, too.
Hope these tips are helpful!
-
Hey, that is a great big question posed in a very succinct way.
As ever, there are a lot of moving parts and it depends on every keyword in every niche regarding how tough it will be to rank.
Main elements to consider are:
- Structured Address (NAP) + Consistency of Address
- Structured Citations - total number, quality
- Unstructured Citations - total number, location, relevance of citation site / page
- Optimisation of Google+ Local page (images, updates, video, completeness)
- On Page SEO for site
- Local Links & Citations
- Site Popularity (Search & possibly social)
- Reviews on Google+ Local and other popular citation sites
I wish it were just that simple though and any approach has to consider the industry and existing competition. We tend to review the competition, try to understand their strengths and weaknesses and use that to formulate a customised plan for each local / small business client.
Review the competition, find out who is where they are and how. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. Do the basics really, really well - citations, on page, Google+ Local page. Then, look at local links, general site popularity. Create review strategy and try to encourage (without cheating) mentions of your keywords and targeted location in the reviews.
Don't be tempted to cheat. Don't just buy 100 crappy citations. Do things properly, craft each mention, work on getting good reviews. Do real company shizzle #RCS. Consider each citation a possible advertisement. Love your customers, ask them to love you back.
I will stop here as this is starting to sound like Baz Luhrmann song:
"sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself."
You really have to avoid an SEO by numbers mentality though as it is easy to fall into that trap here and whilst you may see some initial flourish you won't win the race with that approach and returns will rapidly diminish and you may see a bell curve with an improvement and then a drop around low quality tactics.
One last thing, consider co occurrence, it is a hot topic but think about mentioning your keywords where you mention your brand, URL, NAP or elements of. If I was creating a citation or unstructured citation on a site then I would look at mentioning my brand, phone number, location and possibly URL - something like:"
"At Bowler Hat we concentrate on technical SEO Audits and small business SEO for companies in Birmingham. You can call us anytime for help on 0121 314 2001 or visit our site at www.BowlerHat.co.uk.".
The highlighting is mine to better illustrate the important aspects of that sentence and how it can be done cleanly and naturally without the need for crappy writing etc.
Citations often boggle people but they are just directory listings really - a little more on that here:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/types-of-citations-for-seo/Remember that citations are abused by folks in the medical world to artificially inflate the worth of a medical paper or report so as soon as you factor money into it and add the dirty SEO word then citation abuse can and will be rampant and google knows about this and is on the lookout for it. So... play nice!
Back to the original question - where to learn?
Well, here for starters, search the blog then:
- http://www.localseoguide.com/
- http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/
- https://getlisted.org/ - will get you on the right track.
Some good tools:
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Will including a global-site link in all 100 local-sites footer be considered spammy?
If I am a car manufacturer brand site(global), and I request all my location-specific domains include a link to the global site in their footers, would this trigger a red flag for Google? There are roughly 100 location-specific sites, but I would like to come up with a long term solution, so this number could be larger in the future. Is it best practice to only follow the footer link on each location-specific site Homepage, and nofollow the rest of the footer links on each site? Is it best to only include one followed link to the manufacturer brand site (global) on each location-specific domain? Is it best to not put this global link in the footer, but rather towards the top of the page only on the homepage?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
What do you think of this "SEO software" that uses Rand's "proven method" ?
I saw an ad on Search Engine Roundtable and the call to action was... "What is the #1 metric that Google uses to rank websites?" I thought, "I gotta know that!". (I usually don't click ads but this one tempted me.) So I clicked in and saw a method "proven by Rand Fishkin" that will "boost the rankings of your website". This company has software that will use Rand's proven method (plus data from another unattributed test to boost the rankings of your website). I am not going to use this software. The video made my BS meter ring. But if you want to see it.... http://crowdsearch.me/special-backdoor/ Rather than use this "software", I would suggest using kickass title tags that deliver the searcher to kickass content. That has worked really well for me for years. Great title tags and great content will produce the same results. The bonus for you is that the great content will give you a real website.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EGOL1 -
Competition cheating on seo
So im trying to rank for O'fallon lawn care. And my competitor bought a domain lawncareofallonmo.com and now ranks number one....there is even a link to "take me to my homepage" What is going on i thought this was so 2008 not 2014.....
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | grnside10 -
If I am getting links on competitor websites, is it safe to assume those competitors are doing this to hurt our SEO?
We have received a few notification from Google Webmaster Tools and Moz that our competitors have "mentioned" our page on their website. This is incredibly odd as you wouldn't think they'd want to do this. Further, when I go to the page that we are supposedly mentioned on, the link to our site is not on the page. What is going on? Thank you in advance for your insights!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brits0 -
Is Inter-linking websites together good or bad for SEO?
I know of a website that inter-links a handful of websites together (ex- coloring.ws interlinks to a handful of other sites, including dltk-kids.com, and others). Is this negative for SEO? I was thinking about creating a few related sites and inter-linking all of them together, since they will all be relevant to each other. Any thoughts would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Keywords in Google Local results
We have a client in the moving business and I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the "local" results and the number of them that are not following Google's guidelines for Google Local accounts. 3 of them are using exact match keyword strings as their company names. I've reported all 3, every week for the last 2 months and have not seen a single dip in the rankings. Meanwhile our client has a duplicate listing we've verified and "suspended" and it hasn't changed for 4 months! Any tips? I've attached a photo of the listings as well. xwWZWyT.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
Definition of Black Hat SEO
I recently had an old client that called me in a bit of a panic over a significant loss of rankings due to penguin. The internet marketing company she had hired, is actually a very large player in the industry, but because I'm not out to slander anyone, I won't name names. They engaged in some "link building" that resulted in the vast majority of the website's anchor text being keyword-rich, exact match anchor text from such gems as www.link-add.net. They also placed a couple dozen incredibly keyword-rich articles on the site that were clearly not meant for human consumption, and were only accessible through a footer link that's only located on the homepage. The client forwarded me a response from them saying, (quoting verbatim). "We have never engaged in any black hat SEO techniques, nor will we ever engage in any black hat SEO techniques. Just that notion is ridiculous" So clearly, the strategy I outlined above, in the mind of this company, is not black-hat SEO. So getting to my point: **if that's not black hat, then what is? ** I'm posing this question largely because I'm appalled that a large internet marketing company seems to be suggesting that the aforementioned techniques represent good, sound SEO, and I'd like to get an idea as to what people in our industry actually feel are good, acceptable practices. Where is the line? Can we not set higher standards for ourselves?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stevefidelity0