Google Maps, Yelp & Local SEO In 2015

When it comes to digital marketing, we tend to focus heavily on our websites. But columnist Rachel Lindteigen reminds us that optimizing external web properties is crucial.

When it comes to digital marketing and SEO for your business, it’s important to look beyond just your website. For local businesses, a strong online marketing effort requires an investment in local directories, maps and review sites, too.

If all of your optimization efforts are spent on your site, you’re likely missing out on opportunities.

Google’s Pigeon algorithm update, released in July 2014, gave more prominence to local map and directory sites such as Yelp. In many instances, Yelp listings now rank above the business’ website.

For example, when you search on the query [bakery phoenix], you have to scroll past three map listings and three organic listings before you finally see a local business website listing. That first local business website is in position 7, essentially.

How many potential customers are going to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to find your actual website? Nowhere near as many as are likely going to click on the map or directory listings that are more prominently positioned at the top of the search results page.

Thus, it’s important to make sure you’re watching these listings on a regular basis and optimizing your presence in the map and directory sites.

Step 1. Set Up Your Google My Business Account

The most important thing is to make sure you’re listed and your information is correct. You can do this for Google maps via Google My Business. Google My Business provides an easy way for a business owner to create a listing or claim an existing one, allowing them to ensure that their information is accurate and complete. Best of all, it’s free.

If you were signed up and verified through Google Places or Google + Pages, you should automatically be moved over to Google My Business.

Step 2. Get Started With Yelp

Claim your business listing on Yelp. Once you’ve claimed your business, you can update information, respond to reviews, upload photos and more. Yelp is the most popular consumer review site, and as such, it’s important to ensure your information is present (and accurate) on their site.

Step 3. Optimize Your Listings

Once you’ve claimed your listings and verified that your contact information is correct, it’s time to optimize your business information. You can add photos, hours of operation, contact information, your URL, and other information to make your listing more robust (allowing it to stand out from the crowd). You can also create deals, respond to reviews and more.

Step 4. Gather Reviews

Gather great reviews on your listings. I know, that’s easier said than done; this is one of the more critical and more difficult tasks to coordinate.

There are a few methods you can use to generate reviews. Some will advise you to “just ask for them,” but honestly, that’s not very organic. Yes, you can ask people to write reviews or offer an incentive to someone who reviews your business; however, you should be cautious with that type approach, as many review sites (including Yelp) discourage review solicitation.

As with everything else, Google wants to provide the best information to their customers (searchers), and that means it wants honest, reliable information. If you offer great products, provide great service, and take care of your customers, they’re going to be inclined to review you on these sites whether you ask them to do it or not.

Step 5. Engage With Customers Online

Respond to reviews. It’s likely you will have a mix of both good and bad reviews on Google Maps and Yelp. That’s normal.

Unfortunately, customers are often more inclined to leave negative feedback than positive – that’s why it’s critical that you respond.

There will of course be some customers that can’t be satisfied, and in certain instances you may feel that you were in the right and they were in the wrong. However, if you have multiple negative reviews that all talk about similar issues, that might warrant double-checking the situation to see if maybe what they’re saying is true.

In any case, respond, acknowledge their concerns and try to make them right where you can. It’s not necessary to air the entire concern publically; rather, respond and provide an email address or phone number where they can contact you further to work to resolve the situation.

Final Thoughts

By now, you understand the importance of working with local maps and directories such as Google Maps and Yelp. In today’s post-Pigeon world, this type of site will often rank above your own website – as such, you must be present there.

Managing your business on these sites needs to be part of your ongoing SEO strategy — in other words, it is not a one-time task. This “set it and forget it” mentality could leave you with outdated information, negative reviews that are unanswered, and other issues.

It’s likely that more customers will be exposed to your business through these sites than your actual website, at least initially. By including these sites in your overall strategy, you will be able to build your customer base and, hopefully, grow your business.

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/google-maps-yelp-local-seo-2015-210846

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Simple Tips To Set The Stage For Local SEO In 2015

After Google's most recent local algorithm update, the rules have changed for local SEO. Columnist Greg Gifford discusses how you can do well in local search in 2015.

The year is almost over, and many businesses are starting to look forward to 2015 and discuss their marketing plans. Luckily, David Mihm, the local search guru at Moz, just released his annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which helps give us local marketers more insight into which ranking factors matter the most.

The survey shows a definite shift toward more traditional web ranking factors. Last year’s Local Search Ranking Factors survey had Google Places and Citations weighted heavily, but this year’s study shows that on-site signals and links are the most powerful factors.

This shift is consistent with Google’s recent local ranking algorithm update, Pigeon. Many Local SEOs claimed they weren’t hit by Pigeon – but it’s more likely that, because they took a more wholesome approach to local SEO, their sites simply had more authority to begin with.

The most important point we try to hammer home to potential clients is that you can’t fool the nerds at Google. Everything you do, both on and off your site, should be working toward the end goal of making your user experience awesome… not trying to fool Google into placing you higher on search results pages.

So, taking what we’ve been able to figure out about the Pigeon update and adding in the results from the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, here are two simple tips to help you set the stage for Local Search success in 2015:

1. Be Awesome
2. Earn Awesome Links

Yes, it’s really that simple… but at the same time, it’s really not that easy for local businesses. Take a look at your competitors in your vertical – nearly every website has the same or similar content, and most sites don’t have that many inbound links.


Okay, So How Are You Supposed To Be Awesome?

The best thing you can do for Local Search success in 2015 is to take all the energy you put into trying to fool Google and instead use that energy to make your site better.

Take a long, hard look at your site and look at your competitors’ sites. What can you do to be better? You know that your potential customers will be looking at multiple sites, so make your site the best in your vertical.

Make sure you’re avoiding these common pitfalls – they’re all basic, but we still see far too many sites tripping up on these:

1. No Home Page Content. Your customers (and search engines) need to know what you’re all about. If your home page has a slider/banner and just a few sentences, you need to add more useful content there immediately.
2. Only A Few Sentences On A Page. Your customers (and search engines) are checking your website for useful, relevant information. If you offer a product or service, don’t just say, “We sell X, call us for more information!” Today’s shoppers want immediate information, so you need to pack every page with useful content.
3. Spamming Keywords. Far too many websites rely on this outdated tactic. You’re not going to rank well everywhere in your state simply because you listed out 100 cities separated by commas on your home page. Does that huge list of cities provide useful information for customers? No. Does it help you rank in Google? Definitely not. Get rid of the junk and populate your site with relevant, informative content instead.
4. Awful Title Tags. You’ve got about 500 pixels of width for your title tags; anything longer will be truncated when it’s displayed in search results. The title tag should summarize the page – it shouldn’t be a huge chunk of keywords you’re trying to rank for. Put your primary keyword phrase at the beginning and your business name at the end. If you’ve got 100 keywords stuffed into your title tag, you just look desperate.

Don’t Forget Your Local Optimization

With on-site signals now carrying so much weight, it’s more important than ever to have your local optimization ducks in a row. It won’t do you any good to bang out a ton of citations if your site doesn’t include the local signals that Google expects it to have.

Again, these are old-school basics, but we hardly see any websites correctly optimizing for local areas:

1. Include City/ST in your title tag. Remember, the title tag is incredibly important for optimization, and including your city and state is an important signal for local relevancy.
2. Include City/ST in your H1 heading. It doesn’t have to be the entire heading in and of itself — what’s important here is to include your city and state in the page heading to further show local relevancy.
3. Include City/ST in your content. Far too many sites forget to include City/ST information inside the site content. Optimizing for local search won’t work unless you’re talking about your local area in your content.
4. Include City/ST in your alt text on images. It’s amazing how many times we see sites that don’t include alt text. Remember, Google can’t see what’s in your images, so alt text helps provide a better understanding of your page content. Including City/ST information can really help boost local relevancy.
5. Include City/ST in your URL. If you’ve got the ability to edit your URL structure, try to include your city and state information in your URLs. Again, this can go a long way toward providing a stronger local signal to both customers and Google. Important Note: if you’re going to update your URLs, don’t forget to set up 301 redirects so that the old address is permanently pointed to the new one.

These are all just specific tactics to help with the main goal: to make your site more awesome. Stop thinking about how to make your site rank, and start thinking about how to make your site the best in your niche. That’s how you’re going to get your site to rank better and convert more visitors.

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