supercharge your local search
TRANSCRIPT
Jack CooperSearch Marketing - Strawberrysoup
Supercharge your local search
What is Local Search?
Getting to grips with Local SEO • Relevant to businesses with a physical location or to those
with a geo-specific product or service.
• Similar to traditional SEO in many ways, but extra attention should be paid to local specific ranking factors.
• Ongoing SEO should not be replaced by local search.
• Improving the visibility of your business locally to capture a wider audience at different stages of the buying cycle.
• Those using smart devices are more likely to search for local businesses.
• Optimising pages of a website to perform for location based search queries.
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Why Local Search?
Why optimise for location?• Significant massively since mobile (April 2015)
and pigeon (July 2014) updates
• Mobile searches overtake desktop
• 1 in 3 search queries have local intent
• 50% of local search lead to in store visits within 1 day
• 18% of local search lead to a sale
• 88% of online shoppers trust online reviews
• Over half of mobile users prefer a browser to an app
• More chance of featuring in ‘local pack’
• Users at a ‘ready to buy’ stage
• Drive footfall
• Competitors are doing it
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Local vs non geo-specific
The Key Differences• Local is the practice of optimising certain pages based on location.
• Link building, technical fixes, unique content and user experience are all still applicable.
• Link building is less about authority, more about location.
• Content is location and service driven.
• Local SEO is competitive based on location and business information
• Search queries will vary
• More mobile users will use local search
• Local SEO is the practice of building signals of reliability around a location, or series of locations.
• local SEO strategy involves corroborating location signals from a diverse number of sources
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What Google says…
Google on local search…Searchers use Google and other search engines to find information about a local business. Common queries include:
•Finding the location of a business or the nearest branch of a chain
•Opening hours, whether to find out if the business is open now or at a future date (such as holiday opening hours)
Such queries are answered when Google correctly identifies the page on the business's site containing this information, and then correctly extracts the information from the page.
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The Pigeon Update
Quality & consistency in local resultsSearching Google and searching Google Maps has often provided a very different set of results.
This changed after the rollout of Pigeon. The algorithm connects web search and map search in a more cohesive way. Pigeon update is focused on bringing local search more in line with existing SEO
Since this update, webmasters and businesses have taken local SEO much more seriously. Often with a separate location based strategy.
Location SEO extends to maps and mobile devices.
Aimed to improve distance and location parameters.
As with any update, there was a clear division between the winners and the losers.
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Steps to local SEO success
Local ranking factors• This chart from Moz shows ranking
factors within local SEO campaigns.
• Ranking factors and weightings are different when compared to a non-geographic SEO campaign.
• Links and on-page SEO factors still play a huge part. However the types vary.
• Social signals and mobile CTR are important signals of quality.
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Get on Google My BusinessAlthough not everyone is a big believer, Google will still use this information
Once you’ve set it up, you should include:
•Add a long, unique description that’s formatted correctly and includes links.
•Choose the correct category for your business.
•Upload as many photos as possible.
•Add a local phone number to your listing – in the correct format.
•Add your business address that’s consistent with that on your website and local directories.
•Upload a high-resolution profile image and cover photo.
•Add your opening times/days (if relevant).
•Get real reviews from customers
•Remove duplicatesStrawberrysoup
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NAP consistency is keyConsistency in name, address and phone number is key to helping search engines understand localized information.
On siteAddress across every page if possibleSame details/format everywhere – including business name
Off siteAny citations, directory listings and references off site must follow the same format as on site. This is to avoid confusing Google with multiple formats and helps display the correct data. Take extra care with formatting of phone numbers.
Schema Mark upStructured data helps specify important data such as contact details and physical addresses. You can also provide social media channel and local event information.
Consider Bright Local… [email protected]
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Get more local reviews• Local reviews have a direct impact on local search rankings, so
you’ll want to spend some time acquiring them.
• This doesn’t just mean Google reviews.
• You’ll also want to focus on getting reviews on your Yelp page (they’re used by Apple maps), along with other local directories.
Review Acquisition
• Incentivize• Add a /how-to-review-us page?• Contact existing customer base
Users can now search and filter by star rating ß Take note!
• For Google reviews, include this string at the end of your Google Plus Local link: ?hl=en&review=1Now, when customers click the link, the review window will automatically pop up when they land on your Google Plus Local page (so they don't have to find the link!).
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On page considerationsOn-page SEO for local businesses conforms to some pretty ‘old school’ SEO tactics. There’s quite a large weighting towards the on-page content in the local search listings, so it’s important that, where possible, you squeeze the most value out of your content.
On page points to consider…
• Location and product/service in title tag• Location + keyword in H1• Location + keyword in URL – keep it clean• Location and keyword also consistent in page content• Image alt tag• Embed a Google Map – that links to listing, not just location• Opening hours• Domain authority – remove bad links, internal linking strategy, useful content• Internal linking• Index-able content• Reviews
Example: These can be applied to product and service pages. Instead of a service page that with the title ‘MOTs’, try ‘Hampshire MOTs’.
CTR is an important ranking factorStrawberrysoup
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Create unique contentUnique content is still paramount to SEO, especially local.
Blog about local events, add localised content to your strategy.
Write content specific to your business products and services, relevant to the location.
Now 7 pack down to 3, traditional SEO is more important than ever. Things such as content could be the difference between competitors.
Write unique content about your products and services.
Keep content fresh and engaging
Better the competition with more valuable content
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Create location pagesCreate unique location pages with reviews, information, opening hours and other information. As opposed to about us or contact us with all data.
A location page is a general term covering any page that has information about a business. It can be an individual page for a single-location business (for example, a restaurant) or it can be a page that's part of a store locator of a national chain with thousands of locations.
A typical location page includes information about:
• The address of the business• The opening hours• The phone number• The services or departments are available at the business, for example:• A bank can have an ATM and lobby service• A supermarket may have a pharmacy in addition to selling food and household goods• A clothes shop may have a tailoring and alterations department
For some locations, the different services or departments have different contact information or different opening hours.
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Mobile UXIs your site mobile friendly?
Adding phone number and directions to your site can help geo-specific users
Update as recent as August saw 7-pack local search results reduced to 3. Across all devices and in all countries. This is to keep mobile and desktop UX a similar experience.
CTR figures count towards ranking – if gaining impressions but no clicks, this will negatively impact
Mobile page speed will help with local search
Use the mobile page tester
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Local links and citationsLink building within local SEO campaigns is incredibly important and it’s also something that’s often overlooked.
Compared to standard SEO campaigns, local SEO relies much more on links from other local websites that are really relevant to your business and citations
This means that local directories are a useful resource for link building, especially when it comes to building citations.
Audit any existing citations you have and then update them so that they’re all consistent.
Fix any inconsistencies – important to retain logins
Add missing ones – there are lists on trusted location citation sources
Work with local press
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Building for local…Like any content webmasters want to surface in Google search results, good location pages are easy to crawl by Googlebot and their content is easily indexed. Specifically:
Have each location's or branch's information accessible on separate webpages
Allow Googlebot to discover and crawl the location pages
The location information should be presented in an easy-to-understand format
Use schema.org structured data markup
Many users access location pages using their smartphones. In addition to the specific guidelines above, make sure that your site is optimized for smartphone devices, and that the information you share on the location pages is easily consumed on smartphones.
Use top level domains - Better using .co.uk rather than uk.example.com or example.com/uk or example.com?country=uk for better location signals.
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Avoid JavaScript…To help Google's systems index a location's page, it is recommended each location's information be accessible on a unique URL
You should avoid showing important location information using complex Javascript.
Store location pages should ideally contain as much information as possible when the page loads. If additional data needs to be loaded after an action, such as a user click, it is preferable that the additional data is present on a separate store-specific URL and linked to using a simple HTML link rather than Javascript.
As much as possible, try to avoid using Javascript for showing location information.
Also, make sure the site's robots.txt file does not disallow the crawling of the Javascript and other page assets such as CSS and images.
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PPC can be local too.
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PPC advertising can be local too
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• Good for brand awareness
• Avoid budget depletion with bulk location targeting
• Include local phone number in ads
• Include location keywords in ads
• Create ad groups based on locations
• Make callouts and site links local
• You can include postcodes in ad copy
• Relate to locals using knowledge
• Add distance info – only 2 minutes from…
• Add location extensions
• Direct users to local landing pages
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