5 hours of work to increase your local rankings

5 hours of work to increase your local rankings

When it comes to local SEO and increasing your rankings, there are a few ways to easily do it without having to pay much.  There are services that can help you out, but they aren't always needed because you can usually do it yourself.  Now I do go ahead and use these services because they save me a tremendous amount of time, and I'll explain why in this discussion. 

Local SEO isn't something new, it's actually been around since the beginning but no one actually targeted it because they were more worried about ranking for their main keywords.  Focusing on your local market was never something the big marketers did because we were always trying to cash in on the global clients, which means we didn't have to target 1 or 2 towns in the area and hope to get some foot traffic coming in to our stores. 

In todays world, small businesses are getting more and more into SEO and it's pointless for them to target the entire world when they can only sell to people within 50ish miles.  This is why they are now focusing more on local SEO and not general SEO like the majority of us do

Below are 5 ways to increase your local SEO rankings by investing just 5 hours of work.


1. Set up your Google My Business page.
It's surprising how many businesses overlook this simple little thing.  All you're doing is registering your page on Google in order to show up on Google's search pages and Google Maps. 

Let's say you run a pancake house and someone types in "Pancakes" or "Breakfast Diner" into their search bar.  If you didn't register and set up your page on Google My Business, then you're likely going to lose this sale.  People will type in their keyword "Pancakes" and if you're within range, they will see a little pin marker on the map of where you are located.  They will be able to see any reviews that have been left for you and that's one way they will decide on whether or not they want to come in.

Not having your physical business location on Google My Business is just dumb.  You'd be amazed at how often people would come in your doors just to try out your services because they've never heard of you but found you when they did a basic search

This step usually takes around 10 to 20 minutes and is very worth your time.



2. Submit your website to local directories
Just setting up your website and business on Google My Business won't win the internet for you.  You will still have to do some work and it's totally worth your time, trust me   If you do a basic search for "(your town) directory" you will likely see a good amount of sites pop up and offer free listings.  You can submit your information and this will show Google that you're putting your information across the internet, and even getting local listings which will help you in your overall local SEO campaign

Doing this part of the job could take days, so you might want to outsource it to a credible company.  If you did this entire step yourself, I would have had to name the discussion "36 hours of work to increase your local rankings" and no one would want to read it lol.

You can look through Moz Local or Yext to see if they have a pricing structure that fits your needs.  They will add your website to a lot of directories, not always local, but it will help you out in the long run.  You can also choose to work with a freelancer here and they will list your website in any general directory they can find for only a few bucks.

After you pay for one of these services, you will notice your website and business starting to show up on MapQuest, FourSquare, Yahoo Local and Yelp (and many more). This entire process will take you around 30 minutes to complete if you're outsourcing it, which I highly recommend you do.

Be sure to have consistency throughout your listings.  If you're using ave. for avenue then you will want to stick with that across all your listings.  Don't change it up at all because that could just get confusing for some people and possibly Google.  And you never want to confuse anyone lol.


3. Reviews
I always get asked if reviews will increase my rankings, and I can't give you a definite answer to this because it's extremely hard to tell.  The one thing that it does help is closing the sale before they even walk in the door because they see all the positive comments on your pages and they decide to come in and try for themselves

It's good to start collecting reviews when you're starting out, but it's never too late to begin so don't think you're missing out just yet.  Start asking your customers to leave 5 star reviews on your Google My Business page or even your Facebook page in exchange for a discount on their meal or service.  You'd be surprised how many people will leave a positive 5 star review in exchange for 10% or 15% off their bill

This won't take long since you just have to set it up once.  You can capitalize on your current traffic and put an advertisement in front of them on their table, or even add it to their receipt for the next time they come in.


4. Local Backlinks
Now this isn't just focusing on the local directories, you will also need local businesses linking to you.

This will take the majority of your time because you will have to contact a good amount of website owners to see if they would be willing to link to you.  Now you won't be sending out unique emails to each business, you'll be writing up a compelling email that will ask them to link to you so you can increase your own rankings.  You can link to them as well, but remember, recipricol linking doesn't work as well as one way linking.

You won't be contacting businesses in your own industry because they will never link to you.  I mean, if you can find someone that will do this, then you're golden lmao   But likely they will never link to you because it's like they're promoting a competitor.


5. On Page Optimization
Google wants to see what your website is all about, and if you don't have any on page optimization, how will they know anything?  You will need to show them that you're a lawyer or plumber in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc.  To get local listings, you need to show they where exactly you're from and to do this, you need on page optimization

You will want to edit your titles, descriptions and content in order to show exactly where you're from.  You will also have to write up content that focuses on your location and keywords so that Google will know to rank you for those specific keywords

Be sure to add your business name, email, address, phone number and anything else you can think of that will show where you're from, to the footer or header of all your pages.

You'll need to think about keyword density when writing content.  You won't want to overdue it and say you're a Chicago Lawyer 100 times on your page because that would just look horrible.  You'll need to remember that Google wants people to have a good time on your site, and if your content is lacking order, Google will think you don't need to be at the top of your local rankings.



In Conclusion:
Instead of putting a "Closed for Business" sign on your front door, why don't you invest 5 hours of your time in order to be more successful when it comes to local SEO and your rankings.  It doesn't take much time and you can even outsource all of this if you really want to, but you don't need to.  Contacting the local businesses in your area should most definitely be done by you because you'll need to know who might be contacting you and you wouldn't want a freelancer contacting people in the wrong areas.




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Thanks!

Razzy