Local SEO can be a daunting task for busy SMB owners in today’s ever-changing local search landscape. Will Scott presented to AZIMA members “Transforming Local Searchers into Customers.” From local citation consistency to on-site and off-site SEO, attendees learned best practices for local search optimization.
High organic ranking + High Local Ranking = Dominating blended results on Geo-specific search terms
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2223241/Revenue-from-Localized-Mobile-Ads-to-Reach-5.8-Billion-in-U.S.-by-2016BIA/Kelsey says that mobile local ads offer marketers better relevance, immediacy, and consumer-buying intent. However, the company reports that mobile ad spending has seen slow adoption rates because of the steep mobile marketing learning curve. A major factor in the firm’s projections is that marketers will master the learning curve and mobile marketing products will get easier to use over time.
According to Greg Sterling via Constant Contact survey of SMBs….
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Don’t Confuse Google!Your NAP should be in each of these places:WebsiteSocial media pagesBusiness directories – called “citations”Number of citations is Important, but consistency is more importantYour NAP is your local search fingerprint
How Can an Audit Help?Determine Local Search strengthsFind weaknesses that affect rankingsDiscover optimization opportunitiesPrevent duplication & data corruption
By doing a search for your client’s phone number, you can see record of their local citations. When you are trying to improve their local SEO ranking, it can be invaluable to know about their existing citation building activities before doing your own.
In addition to Local Citation Finder returning results that are relevant to a city and key phrase combination of a phone number, it also provides a list of the top 30 general citation sources for the searched city.
If you are aware of a incorrect address or phone number do a google search with business name and incorrect address or phone number to discover where all that incorrect information is showing up. Example "search influence" + "1539 jackson"
Gather a list of existing listings for the business on the directory specifiedOn Google, you can search site:directory.com “business name”
On Google, search: site:directory.com “555 555 5555” (ex. site:www.yelp.com "business name" and ex. site:www.yelp.com "555 555 5555") Be sure to wrap the business name and the phone number in quotation marks.
Duplication Examples
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You can go further using authorship and other markup to make the business stand out.
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Google guide to dealing with duplicates/inconsistent NAP data : 1st report a problem or edit, wait and if it doesn’t work, use the troubleshooter forms.
Google guide to dealing with duplicates/inconsistent NAP data : 1st report a problem or edit, wait and if it doesn’t work, use the troubleshooter forms.
Select “Place is a duplicate of another place” and give the link to the correct listing in the comments section.