Over the weekend I wrote a comprehensive guide to Local SEO on Work.com for small business owners. Here’s a small gist of what’s covered:
In summer 2009, TMP Directional Marketing and comScore found that and 46% of local online searchers contacted a business by telephone after Web research, and 37% visited in person.
For a service based or retail business, traffic to local search results now account for as much as 30% of the total number of searches being conducted on a monthly basis. This makes it imperative for a business to be ranked prominently within the local maps search listings on the 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing).
Local SEO consists of 8 major steps which are as follows:
- Market Research
- Keyword Focus and Use of Local Modifiers
- Optimizing Your Website for Local SEO
- Creating or Claiming Existing Local Business Listings
- Optimizing Local Business Profile Listings
- Building Citations and Links to Enhance Listing Rankings
- Encouraging Customer Testimonials and Reviews
- Staying Up to Date with Changes in Local SEO
Head on over to read Guide to Learning Local SEO and Local Search Optimization at Work.com. If you find the content to be useful, please share it with as many people as possible by blogging about it, linking to it, tweeting it, or bookmarking the article. Go ahead and rate the guide and leave comments at Work.com as well, and I’ll respond back to you there if you’ve got any specific questions.
Cheers,
Dev
Dev, outstanding outline! One note–the link to create a Citysearch listing only allows an individual to create a new user account (in the section Building Citations and Links to Enhance Listing Rankings). Citysearch currently accepts new listings through data providers and new advertisers only.
Hi Dev, My first time here – very interesting reading! The only thing that I would like to add is that when creating a local business listing or profile, make sure to always use the same info.
Things like name, website, email and phone all being the same will make life a lot easier for the search engines and thus the consumer. Putting more money in your pocket at the end of the day!
@Tom Thanks! I’ll update it to reflect the change with City Search.
@ Scott – Thanks for visiting and for your comment! I included the concept NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) consistency in the tips section of the article here:
Tips & Tactics
Ensure that you have consistency in your Name, Address, and Phone number. The address format you use in any of the major search engines to list your business should be EXACTLY duplicated when filling out citation sources.
I think you’ve written a very helpful guide that will come in handy to many business owners. I have several recommendations that you may want to add:
(1) When optimising a local business listing, do not stuff/spam the business name field with the location and excess keywords!
(2) Google Maps hardly ever shows the exact location of a business. Therefore, when creating or claiming your local business listing, place the marker on the correct building and not in front of it! This is especially useful when there are several businesses in the immediate vicinity of yours.
(3) Quite obvious, but often overlooked: If the contact details of your business change, don’t forget to update the address and location in your local business listing and on your website too!
When reading your guide, several questions came to my mind:
(1) What exactly do you mean with “Once you pass 5 stars in Google maps reviews, you will be awarded a boost in your rankings”? Five stars is the maximum, so how can one possibly receive more than that? If possible, how much will your listing be increased when this threshold is passed?
(2) To what extent does the “usefulness link” next to a user review in a Google local business listing affect its ranking?
(3) How will the business deal between Yahoo! and Microsoft affect Yahoo Local? Will it still be there in a few years time?
Kind regards,
Reinier
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Links from local yellow pages and authority websites (e.g. website of local chamber of commerce) works wonder for Google local listings.
Thanks, exactly what I’m looking for. As you might imagine, few people (myself excepted) travel very far to get to church on a Sunday morning, so this will be very helpful for us.
Interesting Guide to Learning Local SEO and Local Search Optimization thanks for this