Most Badass Local Seo Tips?

Reputation management is a pretty easy sell, finding companies with bad reviews, and coming up with strategies to combat this is worth a lot to small businesses.

Otherwise I would get your foot in the door by building them a free facebook page or mobile site, then talk about marketing!

It's all about citations. Citations, citations, and more citations.

I have had success packaging local SEO with other lead generation methods for small businesses and and also online presence and branding. One stop shop. At the end they have an SEO friendly site (thanks to my web designer), a top spot on the SERPs (that's me ), a consistent representation of their company across the internet (branding), they are cracking on social media and they have several other sources for traffic/leads so that they are never fully dependent on Google. I know "full service" doesn't work for all kinds of SEO but for small businesses it has worked great. My clients are too busy running their businesses to worry about hiring a different company to do each thing.

What other sources of traffic to do you use fakeit?

Does social media work well for small businesses?

Thanks!

For example service based businesses can get leads from sites like thumbtack, angie's list, and niche specific service directories. Email marketing can also generate non-Google traffic. Free classified sites can be great depending on the niche and what's popular in the local area. Craigslist is of course the big one but backpage, ebay classifieds and others can be good if they are popular in the geographical area where the business is located. Know the area, know the niche, find local lead sources for the client and they won't cry every time Google does that little dance Also... offline. If you can advise them on offline lead generation then you will have more referrals than you know what to do with. HTH

PS- I look at social media in local SEO as more about online presence and PR than real traffic generation. (flame away!) Though when you start reaching out to local people that aren't already your clients there is always a potential for new business. The keywords there are "local people"

Increasing activities in those area where you can find local forum, local classifieds sites, local social networking sites, then it would work good, there is no doubt to it.

Also, you can make use of flyer ads, it would help for popularity and building brand names as well.

Awesome stuff guys.

One question I have wondered is, how does one find the traffic in local keywords?

For example, I live in Anchorage Alaska and I am sure people search for AK locksmiths or Anchorage sushi restaurant all the time, alas Google's keyword tool wouldn't show up the volume simply cause there is not enough volume to be recorded.

I would love to get advice on targeting high volume keywords in a local area and how to do it.

Setup authorship, google places, then get citations, local directory mentions, social likes from people in the area, etc....

Wow local SEO in Alaska... Hey maybe you'd have a monopoly I think you really can't determine the number of searches if Google won't tell you because that data can only be obtained from Google.

Alaska is an interesting setting for Local SEO, on one hand you have to figure that most of the population is native, born and raised. So those folks know what they need and they know where to find it. People that would be searching would be seasonal workers and tourists. So the big search terms for Alaska are going to be geared towards them in areas where they arrive and live (temporarily). The hospitality/entertainment sectors would be a good market for SEO services, then too medical facilities, emergency services (like locksmiths but good luck with that ) and any business geared toured tourism.

Probably not a great answer to your question, I'm just thinking out loud. Fascinating stuff.

I don't worry about using microformats for small business websites UNLESS my competitors have implemented them. Then I will implement to level the playing field. Honestly, I feel like it's overkill for most local SEO clients. JMO

Good local SEO is difficult to define in a few words, one could write a whole book about it. Various users already mentioned the basics of local SEO: First of all make sure you inform your customers well about where exactly your business is. Best thing to do this is to include the business address on all your site's pages. Afterwards go to Google, Bing and Yahoo maps and create local map listings for your business. The next two important things that count are:
1. Citations - get your brand mentioned all over the web (on local blogs, portals and directories)
2. Reviews - ask your clients to rate your business and leave reviews on your Google+ page.

I agree, you could definitely write a book about this and still not have covered everything.

However, I can tell you what I've done for my local business. Usually my main focus is just domination. Having a strong presence in as many different places as possible.


1) Google+ and all the top local directories (yelp/yellowpages/yahoo/insider pages/etc etc). But don't just get a ton of citations, actually work on promoting all of these listings. Get reviews on all of them (slow is better than doing it in waves). Get likes on their yellow pages listing. Get reviews on their site AND their google plus so they get that dual counter in google SERPs.

2) Local Website SEO - Geotarget as many different towns as possible. Get a youtube video on the bottom of every page. I noticed if you do this, google will sometimes show the video thumbnail next to your site, like it does for youtube.

I also noticed since I started outsourcing SEO on my site, my google local has rocketed up ther SERPS for various keywords. So website SEO definitely helps with with google local rankings.

Get the site ranked for big keywords and tons of long tail/geo targeted keywords.

3) Youtube domination - Youtube is so freaking awesome its unbelievable. I Geotarget on youtube targeting as many local towns as possible. Then I do some quick backlinking in scrapebox. Whats awesome about youtube is you can rank these geotargeted videos above google places in a very short period of time. And you can also use these geotargeted youtube videos on geotargeted pages of your site. Link from the video those pages as well, so google knows they're yours.

With these 3 alone, you can wind up with your website, google places, AND youtube videos showing up in the top 5 for many different long tailed searches. Its a great way to really fill up the SERPS.

4) Craigslist - I don't personally care about backpage or ebay classifieds, I prefer to just saturate the crap out of CL. I use simply image ads, but I don't go insane with graphics. I use a yellow background on all my ads, and highlight parts of my copy to appeal to ADD type folks. I also track impressions using imgur to know what the best times are to post. I've been going back and forth for a while now between paying a guy on BHW to do the posting (guy has tons of accounts), and some months I'll use my own 11 accounts to do the posting. Which are registered to the numbers of friends & family. But for certain niches, especially home improvement, craigslist is a blessing. Always be sure to tag underneath the image ads with as many relevant keywords as possible. So they pop up when people search. And use the "location" part to its fullest extent. You can extend your headlines this way.

5) Local website/forums are great. For my state, there is "NJ.com". There is always a lot of local folks on that site so I do some posting there as well. You should see if your state as its own website just make sure it actually gets decent traffic.


additional:

About finding keywords with the adwords tool.

For local keywords, you need to make long lists and run them through 100 at a time. This is how I do it. And I was able to find a lot of towns that have recorded traffic, so I make it a point to target those a bit heavier.

What I do is go on wikipedia and find a list of all the towns in my state. I copy their chart, then paste it into excel. Then I highlight the towns column, copy it again, and paste those words in an msword document. So I get a list of all the towns.

Then I spend an hour or so adding/finding/replacing keywords, so I wind up with long lists of towns, with various different keywords. Here is a short example -

I'm not posting the entire list (its looooong) but enough for you to get the point.

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Mold Remediation Atlantic County nj
Mold Remediation Bergen County nj
Mold Remediation Burlington County nj
Mold Remediation Camden County nj
Mold Remediation Cape May County nj
Mold Remediation Cumberland County nj
Mold Remediation Essex County nj
Mold Remediation Gloucester County nj
Mold Remediation Hudson County nj
Mold Remediation Hunterdon County nj
Mold Remediation Mercer County nj
Mold Remediation Middlesex County nj
Mold Remediation Monmouth County nj
Mold Remediation Morris County nj
Mold Remediation Ocean County nj
Mold Remediation Passaic County nj
Mold Remediation Salem County nj
Mold Remediation Somerset County nj
Mold Remediation Sussex County nj
Mold Remediation Union County nj
Mold Remediation Warren County nj

Mold Removal Atlantic County nj
Mold Removal Bergen County nj
Mold Removal Burlington County nj
Mold Removal Camden County nj
Mold Removal Cape May County nj
Mold Removal Cumberland County nj
Mold Removal Essex County nj
Mold Removal Gloucester County nj
Mold Removal Hudson County nj
Mold Removal Hunterdon County nj
Mold Removal Mercer County nj
Mold Removal Middlesex County nj
Mold Removal Monmouth County nj
Mold Removal Morris County nj
Mold Removal Ocean County nj
Mold Removal Passaic County nj
Mold Removal Salem County nj
Mold Removal Somerset County nj
Mold Removal Sussex County nj
Mold Removal Union County nj
Mold Removal Warren County nj

Mold Testing Atlantic County nj
Mold Testing Bergen County nj
Mold Testing Burlington County nj
Mold Testing Camden County nj
Mold Testing Cape May County nj
Mold Testing Cumberland County nj
Mold Testing Essex County nj
Mold Testing Gloucester County nj
Mold Testing Hudson County nj
Mold Testing Hunterdon County nj
Mold Testing Mercer County nj
Mold Testing Middlesex County nj
Mold Testing Monmouth County nj
Mold Testing Morris County nj
Mold Testing Ocean County nj
Mold Testing Passaic County nj
Mold Testing Salem County nj
Mold Testing Somerset County nj
Mold Testing Sussex County nj
Mold Testing Union County nj
Mold Testing Warren County nj

Mold Inspection Atlantic County nj
Mold Inspection Bergen County nj
Mold Inspection Burlington County nj
Mold Inspection Camden County nj
Mold Inspection Cape May County nj
Mold Inspection Cumberland County nj
Mold Inspection Essex County nj
Mold Inspection Gloucester County nj
Mold Inspection Hudson County nj
Mold Inspection Hunterdon County nj
Mold Inspection Mercer County nj
Mold Inspection Middlesex County nj
Mold Inspection Monmouth County nj
Mold Inspection Morris County nj
Mold Inspection Ocean County nj
Mold Inspection Passaic County nj
Mold Inspection Salem County nj
Mold Inspection Somerset County nj
Mold Inspection Sussex County nj
Mold Inspection Union County nj
Mold Inspection Warren County nj

Mold Inspections Atlantic County nj
Mold Inspections Bergen County nj
Mold Inspections Burlington County nj
Mold Inspections Camden County nj
Mold Inspections Cape May County nj
Mold Inspections Cumberland County nj
Mold Inspections Essex County nj
Mold Inspections Gloucester County nj
Mold Inspections Hudson County nj
Mold Inspections Hunterdon County nj
Mold Inspections Mercer County nj
Mold Inspections Middlesex County nj
Mold Inspections Monmouth County nj
Mold Inspections Morris County nj
Mold Inspections Ocean County nj
Mold Inspections Passaic County nj
Mold Inspections Salem County nj
Mold Inspections Somerset County nj
Mold Inspections Sussex County nj
Mold Inspections Union County nj
Mold Inspections Warren County nj

Mold Cleanup Atlantic County nj
Mold Cleanup Bergen County nj
Mold Cleanup Burlington County nj
Mold Cleanup Camden County nj
Mold Cleanup Cape May County nj
Mold Cleanup Cumberland County nj
Mold Cleanup Essex County nj
Mold Cleanup Gloucester County nj
Mold Cleanup Hudson County nj
Mold Cleanup Hunterdon County nj
Mold Cleanup Mercer County nj
Mold Cleanup Middlesex County nj
Mold Cleanup Monmouth County nj
Mold Cleanup Morris County nj
Mold Cleanup Ocean County nj
Mold Cleanup Passaic County nj
Mold Cleanup Salem County nj
Mold Cleanup Somerset County nj
Mold Cleanup Sussex County nj
Mold Cleanup Union County nj
Mold Cleanup Warren County nj


Mold remediation Newark nj
Mold remediation Jersey City nj
Mold remediation Paterson nj
Mold remediation Elizabeth nj
Mold remediation Edison nj
Mold remediation Woodbridge nj
Mold remediation Lakewood nj
Mold remediation Toms River nj
Mold remediation Hamilton nj
Mold remediation Trenton nj
Mold remediation Clifton nj
Mold remediation Camden nj
Mold remediation Brick nj
Mold remediation Cherry Hill nj
Mold remediation Passaic nj
Mold remediation Middletown nj
Mold remediation Union City nj
Mold remediation Old Bridge nj
Mold remediation Gloucester nj
Mold remediation East Orange nj
Mold remediation Bayonne nj
Mold remediation Franklin nj
Mold remediation North Bergen nj
Mold remediation Vineland nj
Mold remediation Union nj
Mold remediation Piscataway nj
Mold remediation New Brunswick nj
Mold remediation Jackson nj
Mold remediation Wayne nj
Mold remediation Irvington nj
Mold remediation Parsippany nj
Mold remediation Howell nj
Mold remediation Perth Amboy nj
Mold remediation Hoboken nj
Mold remediation Plainfield nj
Mold remediation West New York nj
Mold remediation Washington nj
Mold remediation East Brunswick nj
Mold remediation Bloomfield nj
Mold remediation West Orange nj
Mold remediation Evesham nj
Mold remediation Bridgewater nj
Mold remediation South Brunswick nj
Mold remediation Egg Harbor nj
Mold remediation Manchester nj
Mold remediation Hackensack nj
Mold remediation Sayreville nj
Mold remediation Mount Laurel nj
Mold remediation Berkeley nj
Mold remediation North Brunswick nj
Mold remediation Kearny nj
Mold remediation Linden nj
Mold remediation Marlboro nj
Mold remediation Teaneck nj
Mold remediation Atlantic City nj
Mold remediation Winslow nj
Mold remediation Monroe nj
Mold remediation Manalapan nj
Mold remediation Hillsborough nj
Mold remediation Montclair nj
Mold remediation Galloway nj
Mold remediation Freehold nj
Mold remediation Monroe nj
Mold remediation Belleville nj
Mold remediation Pennsauken nj
Mold remediation Ewing nj
Mold remediation Fort Lee nj
Mold remediation Lawrence nj
Mold remediation Fair Lawn nj
Mold remediation Willingboro nj
Mold remediation Long Branch nj
Mold remediation Deptford nj
Mold remediation Garfield nj
Mold remediation Westfield nj
Mold remediation Orange nj
Mold remediation Livingston nj
Mold remediation Voorhees nj
Mold remediation Princeton nj
Mold remediation Millville nj
Mold remediation Nutley nj
Mold remediation Mount Olive nj
Mold remediation Neptune nj
Mold remediation Pemberton nj
Mold remediation Lacey nj
Mold remediation Rahway nj
Mold remediation Ocean nj
Mold remediation East Windsor nj
Mold remediation West Windsor nj
Mold remediation Englewood nj
Mold remediation Bergenfield nj
Mold remediation Bernards nj
Mold remediation Stafford nj
Mold remediation Hamilton nj
Mold remediation Paramus nj
Mold remediation Wall nj
Mold remediation Mahwah nj
Mold remediation West Milford nj
Mold remediation Randolph nj
Mold remediation Bridgeton nj
Mold remediation Ridgewood nj


Mold remediation Rockaway nj
Mold remediation Lodi nj
Mold remediation Vernon nj
Mold remediation Maplewood nj
Mold remediation Cliffside Park nj
Mold remediation Scotch Plains nj
Mold remediation South Plainfield nj
Mold remediation Roxbury nj
Mold remediation Medford nj
Mold remediation Plainsboro nj
Mold remediation Lower nj
Mold remediation Carteret nj
Mold remediation Cranford nj
Mold remediation Burlington nj
Mold remediation Morris nj
Mold remediation Montgomery nj
Mold remediation Raritan nj
Mold remediation North Plainfield nj
Mold remediation West Deptford nj
Mold remediation Montville nj
Mold remediation Summit nj
Mold remediation Hillside nj
Mold remediation Jefferson nj
Mold remediation Roselle nj
Mold remediation Barnegat nj
Mold remediation Moorestown nj
Mold remediation Lyndhurst nj
Mold remediation Hazlet nj
Mold remediation Pleasantville nj
Mold remediation Millburn nj
Mold remediation Little Egg Harbor nj
Mold remediation Sparta nj
Mold remediation Palisades Park nj
Mold remediation Elmwood Park nj
Mold remediation Maple Shade nj
Mold remediation Middle nj
Mold remediation Hawthorne nj
Mold remediation Glassboro nj
Mold remediation Washington nj
Mold remediation Morristown nj
Mold remediation Point Pleasant nj

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I basically just use find and replace to replace the keywords and generate more lists.
Then I run these through adwords 100 at a time, and depending on your niche, you'll notice various towns pop up with traffic. Its not as much work as it sounds like. My list is about 60 pages long which = about 30 searches using the keyword tool.

Even though my ultimate plan is to target every town in the state, I promote the towns/counties with traffic more. I also reduce the list for all those locations, then make a seperate list just for keywords with traffic.

Anyway, thats basically how I do it!

Good luck - Red

Others have already covered the month important ones, plus you can always post a local number within the site. Search engines do understand the area codes and addresses on the site and you probably would get a bit of boost, if you have these on the site.

If you want to go above and beyond than any other company, you need to have smart Marketing Strategies, Social Networking and Reputation Management.

Citations are the biggest factor for success at Local SEO. You will want to develop a system. Here's mine...

1) Have complete and accurate information for the business before you begin so you can compare it to existing listings and of course for the creation of your new citations. You'll want to make sure the company information matches across the board, that's your goal.

2) Locate all existing citations for the business, noting any discrepancies in the company info and also any listings that aren't completely filled out as well as duplicate listings. You can run the free scan at Yext to find some but if you do a high volume of citation work White Spark is pretty good for this too.

3) Fix as many of those "problem listings" as possible. Claim those that are unclaimed, you can contact the site administrator as a last resort as well. Try to get duplicate listings removed (duplicate as in two or more listings of the business in the same directory.)

4) Now it's time to create your new citations. There are plenty of good directory lists out there so I won't bore you with mine Make sure to keep track of the citations you create. Make it easy on yourself and try to use the same username and password for all of the listings. As a matter of ethics your client should get a list of the citations you've created along with the logins.

5) When you've covered the big directories it's time to spy on the competition. Locate all of their existing citations and submit your business to the best of those too. Mike Friedman has an excellent video on how to do this with Scrapebox.

6) Locate other citation sources in the local area where the company does business. This is really an art, practice makes perfect. Don't submit just to submit, you can afford to be choosey. Look at PR, submit where it makes sense to legitimate pages.

Pretty basic stuff, hope that helps.

Though it can be hard to rank for generic terms in search engines, if you add a geolocator term to the search queries you would like to optimize for, you have a much stronger chance!

For example, if you're looking at providing local SEO for a veterinarian in Columbus, Ohio, you would provide the highest value to your client by focusing optimization around terms like "veterinarian in South Columbus, OH" or "veterinary services in south columbus, OH", rather than "veterinarian" or "veterinarian in Columbus" in general. By adding a geolocator term, you indicate to search engines that you're looking for a result within a local area.

After all, if your veterinarian client is in Ohio, they won't care if they show up in search results in Alaska -as it will provide no value to their business.

So in terms of rankings, this can be a great start!