Local SEO

Guide Book

How To Dominate The Local SERPs

Create & Enhance your Google My Business listing

Stick to the rules: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177

Don’t do old school SEO

Keyword stuffing and any forms of spam won’t help you, and can actually harm your page.

Specify your list of services

Specify your list of services, having an overview of all the services you provide as a business is
important for your customers but also for google.

Write a killer Description:

Remember your USP and UVP? Now it’s time to put them to action. Make sure you include a
Call to Action too. Add social proof (years in business, number of customers served, satisfaction
ratings, celebrities served, etc). Add anything that differentiates your business from the crowd.

Fill out all the details

The more information you give, the better. But you don’t need to write lengthy paragraphs or
anything like that. Just make sure you’re not leaving anything behind.

Pick the most accurate categories possible, and don’t go overboard.

It is preferred that you pick only categories that make 100% sense to your business. Don’t pick
any categories that aren’t strictly related to your business

Accurate service-area settings.

If you indicate to Google that you always travel to your customers (rather than meet all of them
at your place of business), Google won’t show your address on your Google My Business page.
Google used to be touchy if you owned a service-area business and didn’t hide your address for
any reason. Now, whether or not you “hide” your address is not a big deal. If Google doesn’t
want your address showing on your page, they’ll simply change it for you (rather than whisk your
page off the map).

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It should be on your building, and preferably on the specific part of the building your business is
in.

Best landing page URL.

You’re more likely to rank well if your Google My Business landing page is your homepage,
rather than another page on your site. If you’ve got multiple locations and want to point each to a
city-specific landing page, that’s fine, but you’ll probably need to rustle up some good links to
those subpages. If you’re not willing to go to that effort, you’re probably better off using the
homepage on all your Google My Business pages and on most or all of your other local listings

Create citations.

Whenever your business Name, Street Address, Phone Number and Website information
appear on the web, that’s a citation. It may be coming from a listing website like Yelp or similar
variations of it, it may be coming from someone else’s website, or even social media properties.

Do your homework with your On-page SEO

The same general principles that apply to other types of website apply to local website.

Duplicate Google My Business pages

Remove any duplicate google my business pages that you can find in Google Maps.

Google Analytics & Google Search Console

Make sure you have Google Analytics installed. Also it is important to have your property added
to google search console.

Review your content pages regularly

Review your content pages regularly and keep adding more content to make them more in-depth
and helpful

Put your name, address and phone number on each page of your site

(even if it’s in the footer). Make sure the syntax is consistent with the citations you have.

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Make a document to copy and paste the following information: Business name, Street address,
City, state, and postal, Phone number, Website URL

Find directories and business listing websites in your niche, and add your listings to
them.

The more relevant and specific to your niche, the better.

Optimize your Title Tags

As a general rule, for your home page and other non-specific pages, you can use a syntax for
titles as below:

[Niche or Specialty] in [City] - [Business name]

[City] [Niche] | [Professional’s name] | [Sub-niche] | [City ZipCode]

Here are some examples of well optimized title tags:

Concrete Driveways, Patios – New Brighton MN – Creative Concrete Inc.

Criminal Defence Lawyers Edmonton | Pringle Chivers Sparks Teskey

Nashua Dentist | Todd G Pollack DMD | Cosmetic Dentistry | Nashua NH 03064

Furniture Store – Northern NJ, Bergen County & Princeton | Design Spree

For Service Pages, you can repeat the same syntax, but replacing [Niche] with the specific
Service of that page

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Be proactive

Don’t think that just because your service is great and awesome that everyone will post reviews
at will.

Always ask for your new and existing customers’ emails

Find a way to make it worth their while.

Leverage the personal contacts

When you have your clients in front of you, show them on their phones where and how they can
submit reviews

Encourage people to leave reviews

Put together an SMS or Email sequence reminding your clients to leave reviews on your
Facebook page, Google My Business and other relevant listings you may have.

Make it easy to leave spontaneous reviews

Add links to a couple of your listings to your email signature, put a gentle nudge on your
invoices or receipts, and link to some of your listing from your site - preferably with noticeable
“buttons” or graphics.

From time to time, ask 4 or 5 existing customers to leave a review in one of your listings
a few days later, follow up with them to see if they did.

Continue asking small groups of customers – like 2-10 – every week for reviews

It doesn’t need to be the exact-same number every week. But don’t ask zero customers one
month and then 40 the next month. Be somewhat consistent.

Respond to any reviews you can.

People appreciate seeing that you as the business owner are paying attention to their feedback
and are willing to respond to it.

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Don’t be offended by negative feedback, and know how to answer it. Don’t overreact and don’t
take it personally. Give yourself a 24-hour cooling period if you’re not able to respond politely
and courteously.

Don’t be defensive or angry

Your response should not try to change the reviewer’s mind or dispute the facts as set out in the
review.

Acknowledge that you’re paying attention to their feedback

Tell them that when someone has a problem, your business will hear them. It doesn’t matter if
the reviewer lied or only told half of the story – own whatever issue they wrote about.

Apologize for the bad experience

It may not be your fault, but someone got upset. Make sure you show deep respect for their
aggravation and are sorry for what happened.

Offer to fix the issue

Although you can’t always fix every issue (sometimes you don’t want to), your offer to fix a
reviewer’s problem is a great marketing investment. In the response, suggest that they contact
you directly so you can try to resolve the issue.

State that you’re taking measure to make things better in the future

A critical part of any response is to tell your prospects that something has changed and this
issue will not happen to them. This is a golden opportunity to market your business.

Correct any factual errors - but don’t argue about opinions and include your contact
information or a way for them to follow up

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focus on the fundamentals - fill your site with in-depth info on your services, make sure your
local listings are correct, earn links, and earn reviews.

Don’t build citations that aren’t relevant to your business

Focus on building citations that are either from the top citation-building websites, or relevant to
your niche or industry.

Repeat high-value activities and be consistent

Content creation

Any content that helps customers solve their problems, understand what options they have, and
realize that you’re the ultimate way of solving their problems, as to how they relate to your
expertise.

Keep searching for link opportunities (at least once a month):

Analyze the backlink of competitors of other players in the same space as you are, but in
other local areas (once a month).

You can check other businesses in the same niche as you that aren’t competitors of yours, and
check their backlink profile using Ubersuggest. This will give you ideas of other links you can
build for your business.

Revamp your “Service pages” regularly

Find short, undetailed pages on your site and beef them up with all the info a potential customer
might want to know. Focus on pages where you describe a specific service you offer. If
possible, find pages that rank very low on page 1 or somewhere on page 2. Those pages may
just need a little life breathed into them to start moving in the rankings.

Fill in the gaps

Do you have a giant “Services” page with one paragraph on each service you offer? Break it
up. Create a separate page for each service, and go into more detail on each of those
pages. You can keep the main “Services” page if you want: just add some links to the more-
specific subpages.

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