Top local seo strategies for 2014 and beyond

THE TOP LOCAL SEO STRATEGIES IN 2014

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THE TOP LOCAL SEO STRATEGIES FOR 2014 AND BEYOND How to Dominate The Local Search Results Post-Pigeon

A Publication of

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bernard May, CEO – National Positions Bernard May is the founder and CEO of National Positions, an industry-leading digital marketing agency based in Agoura Hills, CA. Bernard started National Positions in 2004 out of his garage in Calabasas, California.

Ten years later, the company has worked with thousands of companies and has over 500 employees, with offices in the US, South America, Europe, South Africa, and India.

In 2012 after seeing great results with local clients, Bernard launched a new division of National Positions called Local Positions. This new division has successfully helped clients maximize their online presence and increase their rankings, leading to more traffic and sales.

Bernard has more than 20 years’ experience in digital marketing for some of the worldwide leaders in technology and innovation. Prior to founding National Positions, Bernard served as Vice President of Marketing at First Advantage Corp; Vice President of US Search.com; and Senior Product Manager at Symantec Corp. Bernard earned a bachelor’s degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and a Masters of Commerce in marketing and information systems from the University of Natal, South Africa.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................... 4 Getting to Know Google’s Pigeon Algorithm........................................................ 5 Making the Case for Local SEO.............................................................................6 TOP 10 LOCAL SEO STRATEGIES IN 2014..........................................................................8 Understand your Competition................................................................................9 Have a Site that’s Technically Sound....................................................................10 Optimize Your Local Maps Listing........................................................................12 Create Phenomenal Content................................................................................15 Start Garnering Great Reviews.............................................................................17 Build Authority with Quality Backlinks..................................................................18 Appeal to Mobile Users........................................................................................20 Optimize Site Experience Through Conversion....................................................21 Spread the Word Through Social Media...............................................................22 Grow Your Online Footprint..................................................................................23 HOW TO TRACK YOUR RESULTS.......................................................................................24 WHO WE ARE......................................................................................................................26

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INTRODUCTION In late July of 2014, Google rolled out a new local search algorithm targeted specifically at local results. The local algorithm update, dubbed ‘Pigeon’ by industry experts, has completely rocked the local search results and changed the way local businesses must optimize their sites and their overall organic presences to get exposure at the top of the search results today.

This ebook examines the impact that Pigeon has had on local businesses, what local ranking factors now matter most to Google’s algorithm, and discusses the top 10 strategies you can use to ensure your site is optimized to rank today.

In this ebook, we’ll discuss the following topics: • Online

marketing and why it’s critical to small businesses

• Understanding

the local landscape and how Google’s Pigeon Algorithm has impacted local online marketing

• The

top 10 strategies needed for your marketing campaign to succeed. We’ll be looking into what’s working and what isn’t today—as well as where you should be focusing your attention post-Pigeon.

• What

to track to truly understand your online ROI

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GETTING TO KNOW GOOGLE’S PIGEON ALGORITHM

Google’s Pigeon Algorithm has transformed how customers find local businesses online.

Before the algorithm, 12.1% of all Google results were returned with local ‘six-pack’ results, but after the update, many of these results disappeared—as many as 25%.

Additionally, the number of results in the map listing dropped significantly, from an average of 6 or 7 down to 2 or 3, which has a significant impact on local businesses that rely on traffic from the exposure they got from these first page results.

While the local maps and “6 pack” results began dropping from the top of the 1st page results, local directories saw a spike in rankings. Since Pigeon, sites like Yelp, Citysearch, Travelocity, Angie’s List and more have risen in the ranks and are now getting more organic exposure than ever.

Google’s Pigeon algorithm ties local results more closely to traditional web search results. Exposure in the search results is now increasingly competitive for local businesses and the factors determining their rankings have become increasingly complex. It’s clear that local businesses that hope to stay competitive will need to update their marketing strategies to reflect these changes and overall marketing trends.

Before Google’s algorithm update, a local business needed only to optimize their Google local profile, have an effective local landing page and garner a few client reviews, in order to generate results.

Now, however, you need much more: • Technically optimized website • Domain Authority & quality backlink profile • Google Maps/Google+ • Local Business Directories • Citations • Sharable content on and offsite • Reviews and more

Percentage of Google Searches with Local Results

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MAKING THE CASE FOR LOCAL SEO Traditional methods are less effective If you think about traditional marketing channels like radio, television, newspapers and tradeshows, you’ll find that these have become more expensive and less effective today, largely due to declining popularity. Fewer people are reading newspapers, DVR allows TV viewers to fast-forward through commercials, and more people are listening to personal music players rather than the radio. Moreover, these traditional marketing methods rely heavily on push marketing techniques that try to create a market. Online marketing, on the other hand, focuses on pull marketing strategies, techniques that are based on tapping into an existing market.

A user who needs a dentist in Los Angeles, for instance, will most likely begin by searching for one online. Online marketing is often the exact opposite of “push” or outbound marketing, instead it’s a way to attract leads to your business. Local SEO allows you to reach motivated, targeted customers right when they are actively looking for your products and services.

Consumers search with their location and proximity in mind

Where your local business is located in relation to a searcher is crucial. It’s not only search engines that geo-target a user’s query. Searchers are looking for products and services with proximity in mind—and they’re much more likely to convert (and quickly) when making those local searches.

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Consumers prefer and act on location-based ads You’ll note that the influence of the smartphone is quite significant; in fact, more smartphones are being used online than desktops!

Consumers make local searches at every stage of the buying cycle From the initial spark of interest where a customer becomes aware of their desire to make a purchase, through the researching phase to the purchasing decision—your customers are looking for the information they need on search engines like Google first. Stats like these show the immense power that local search has in influencing every part of a purchasing decision.

Google 2014 Study – Understanding Consumers’ Local Search Behavior

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The Top 10 Local Search Strategies Post-Pigeon Google’s algorithm is growing more and more sophisticated, and that means more ranking factors are impacting the kinds of exposure local businesses are capable of seeing at the top of the search results.

Let’s now take a look at the top local search factors in order of their importance to Google’s new algorithm and discuss some of the strategies you need to adopt if you want to get your site ranking in 2014 and beyond.

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UNDERSTAND YOUR COMPETITION

As simple as it sounds, the first step to being successful online is to get to know your competition. So often, we see campaigns being run without a thorough competitive analysis.

Why is this important? Evaluating your competition can give you valuable insight into what your customers are looking for when they visit your site—and what you could be doing to drive and convert more traffic.

Start with a search and see which of your competitors shows up at the top of the results. Then analyze what they’re doing right when it comes to ranking. Each industry is different—use your direct competitors successes as guidelines to what it takes to rank in your industry.

A website for a storage company for example, might typically rank with only 5-7 pages of site content, while an attorney’s website might require hundreds. Inbound links and authority might vary as well; where one website might have a lot of domain authority generated by many high quality links from around the web, another may only need a few citations in niche directories.

One Google+ profile may be basic, but another may be comprehensive: filled with comments, images, and videos.

A thorough competitive analysis is a good place to start and can help you create an SEO strategy designed to meet the standards of your industry and the needs and expectations of your customers.

A great way to determine how competitive the market is for your keywords is by looking at how much a click costs for your most important keyword. Location keywords with high perclick costs are likely highly competitive. For instance, if you’re a DUI attorney in Los Angeles, you’re in a competitive industry within a (probably) very dense population, meaning you likely have a lot of competition to contend with. An agricultural pump manufacturer in Idaho, however, is in a much more specialized in industry in a less dense area, meaning competition might not be as aggressive and gaining local rankings may not require as comprehensive an SEO strategy.

Rank Owner Verified Description Added Categories Photo Reviews Ratings Content www.localpositions.com

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HAVE A SITE THAT’S TECHNICALLY SOUND

The first task of onsite optimization is all about the technical elements of SEO. Begin by choosing your targeted keywords, and mapping those keywords to the most relevant pages on your site. Ensure that meta tags, title tags, headers and content are well optimized, then create a comprehensive site map, and incorporate logical interlinking within your pages to give your site a clear flow that tells both search engines and visitors what information can be found and where to find it.

Ask yourself the kinds of questions that matter most to your searchers and to Google’s algorithm:

Have you chosen relevant keywords? Does your site speak to those terms?

How quickly does your website load? Are there any canonical issues, broken links or frustrating redirects?

Do you have optimized title tags and meta data?

Is your content high quality? Are there internal links connecting it all?

These are just a handful of the questions that have a dramatic impact on a user’s experience— something that search engine’s take into account when ranking your site. Even just ensuring your site loads quickly and features high quality content arranged in a logical way, will give your site a serious competitive edge.

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MOST IMPORTANT ONSITE FACTORS

Search Metrics 2014 Study

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OPTIMIZE YOUR LOCAL MAPS LISTING

Optimizing your local maps listing is key if you want to get exposure in the limited, and incredibly competitive, maps results Google returns thanks to Pigeon.

It all starts with a strong Google+ profile. Make sure your profile is claimed and categorized properly, and that any relevant profile information is available.

We’re not just talking about the basics—like an accurate name, phone number and address— but anything that a user (and Google) would recognize as relevant too: hours of operation, directions, images and videos. Google weighs these elements in determining a business’ authority, credibility and relevance.

You’ll also want to link to a landing page on your website that is optimized. KML (Keyhole Markup Language) can be used to describe your precise physical location in longitude and latitude, increasing the chances that they’ll include you in map results.

Having local business schema—a kind of programming mockup language—on your local landing page allows Google to index your business information, as well as details such as the types of payment you accept, event details, and photos. And don’t forget to include an optimized footer as another simple way to show Google key information.

Outside of your Google listing, your address and phone number should be listed in as many off-site platforms as possible – Yelp, Yellow Pages, CitySearch, niche directories, and on content links from things like press releases, presentations, and infographics.

There are a number of other local search specific factors—some in your control and some out of it—that determine your rankings. Here are ten of the top factors Google’s algorithm considers before returning their local search results:

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Physical Address Located Within the City Being Searched Is your address located within the city the user is searching in?

Google only displays businesses located in proximity to the searcher’s query.

Accurate Category Selection How accurately do your claimed categories reflect your business?

If you’re in a niche market, have you created a custom category to accurately match what your customers would be searching for?

Proximity to the Center of the Area Being Searched How close to the center of the city being searched does Google deem your business?

CITATION

Quantity of Local Business Listings/Citations How many online directories has your business been listed in? These “citations” act as references validating your physical location to Google.

Authority of Online Citations How authoritative are the directory listings or citations associated with your business’ NAP information?

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Your Website’s Domain Authority How established, relevant and authoritative is the domain of the site associated with your Google+ Local page?

Beachville, CA

WEBSITE

Address Above the Fold Are the city and state where your business is located in the header of your page?

Online Reviews & Ratings How many reviews are associated with your business?

What is your overall star rating?

Consistent NAP Information Is your business’ name, address and phone number consistent on your site, directory listings, and so on?

Area Code on Your Google+ Local Page Are the city and state where your business is located in the header of your page?

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CREATE PHENOMENAL CONTENT

Optimized onsite content is a crucial component of a site’s rankings.

How many pages of content do you have? How well-written and relevant is it? Are keywords in your content? Are they in your title tags? Are you making sure to link internally within your site?

Keywords in places like title tags are key as they confirm to the search engines that the term a searcher is looking for is relevant and important to that specific page on your site. Also keep in mind that keywords towards the beginning of a title carry more weight than those at the end.

Never force a keyword though, if it’s going to be at the cost of quality. The days of keyword stuffing and spammy content are over; content should be written for the searcher, not just for the search engines. So create content that’s as natural and organic as possible.

Because Google not only looks at the individual pages but also the overall depth of the content on the site, content silos can be a helpful strategy. Begin by creating themes and expand on them with categories and subcategories of relevant content.

A dentist, for example, might build a silo around cosmetic dentistry or teeth whitening, with sub-articles about financing your procedure, image galleries of before and after photos, and articles explaining the procedure or process involved; all of which interlink with each other, showing Google a clear hierarchy of pages that support each other.

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Promoting content on and off-site builds authority and increases exposure.

While onsite content lends itself to establishing your site as an authority. Offsite content can drive traffic, further your reach, and build quality links.

When promoting content around the web, you need to determine what’s most sharable, relevant and engaging for your audience. Sharable content offers real value, establishes credibility and emphasizes your brand.

According to a recent study (Search Metrics report – August 2014) the following content types are the most important to the search engines:

Onsite Content

Long Form Content

Blogging

Social Media

FAQs & Resource Pages

Infographics

Ebooks & Webinars

Audio & Video

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START GARNERING GREAT REVIEWS

Having reviews—even if they’re not all positive—is crucial for establishing credibility, in the eyes of the search engines, and trustworthiness, in the eyes of potential customers.

The number of reviews and the overall review score are both important factors that search engines use to evaluate your site’s credibility and authority. Google weighs Google+ reviews most highly, but reviews from sites such as Yelp and niche directories all matter.

Unfortunately, we’re all too familiar with the reality that customers are often more inclined to leave negative reviews, than positive. In order to generate more reviews, encourage satisfied customers to give their feedbackyou can also make it easy for them by emailing a link to where they can leave a review, also make sure to express thanks in advance for them sharing their experience with your business.

Collecting and syndicating positive reviews, and managing and mitigating negative ones, is key— especially for local businesses whose customers can be strongly influenced by the comments and feedback of others in their area.

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BUILD AUTHORITY WITH QUALITY BACKLINKS

Backlinks are links from around the web that point back to pages on your site.

Keep in mind: number of backlinks is important, but quality is much more significant. Since Google’s Penguin update, which targeted sites with poor quality link profiles, links have been a fairly touchy subject in the SEO world. But no matter what anyone says, links still matter.

To ensure Google sees your link profile as natural and high-quality, look at the quality of the linking site and its relevance to your industry and your keyword; whether the link is a follow or no-follow, the velocity and consistency of linking activity, and the percentage of backlinks containing of exact-match anchor text—something you have to be careful to limit.

A few authoritative links from reputable websites can go a long way, and are far more beneficial than a high volume of low quality links. Quality links can take a great deal more work to earn, but they are well worth it both for the SEO benefit and the increased visibility you’ll be generating around the web.

Links can be earned in a variety of ways.

Outreach links are those that you earn by reaching out to bloggers, journalists and other site owners and asking them to link to your site’s content. Often, they will agree, as it enriches their own site with engaging content that they didn’t have to create.

Press releases are another form of outreach, and can often create a great number of high quality backlinks from reputable news sites.

Content sharing links come from things like presentations, videos, and infographics published to other sites. They can give you excellent link value from high quality sites and—even better—increase your visibility on these influential platforms too.

The better the quality of the content, the greater the chances that users will share them, driving even more organic traffic.

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Promotional linking such as coupons can generate linking, as many sites are eager for promotional content to share with their users.

Citations and niche directories are a crucial way for local businesses to build high quality relevant links since these directories are, by definition, relevant to your industry. This is where you find the listings containing your name, address and phone number. Search engines and visitors alike expect to find this information on your site and listed in directories around the Internet and the higher the authority of the citation, the better.

Social media bookmarking back to Content and articles published on external sites. Building links on sites such as StumbleUpon is a great way to increase the visibility of your content while generating additional links.

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APPEAL TO MOBILE USERS

More local shoppers are using smartphones and tablets to get online than ever before.

A higher number of local searches are made on mobile devices than any other. And mobile searchers are more likely to take action faster than those searching on desktops—often calling or visiting that business’s store within the day. That means that if you’re site and your business isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re not going to be ranking on those mobile searches and you’re going to be losing an incredibly high portion of your local market.

Mobile users are frequently looking for telephone numbers, hours of operation, directions and more, and they want this information to be easily accessible and easy to use. Be sure to provide these in a form that is easy to interact with on mobile devices. Have clickto-map and click-to-call buttons to make converting easy for your customers. Your landing pages should be either responsive or adaptive as well, ensuring that you’re providing the most positive mobile experience possible when a lead lands on your site.

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OPTIMIZE THE SEARCHER’S SITE EXPERIENCE THROUGH CONVERSION

As a local business it is crucial that you are able to convert the traffic that comes to your website, if you want to see ROI from your online marketing.

The most important thing is to try to identify how users might traverse your website. What factors help them stay on your site rather than leaving for another?

Good images, clear calls to action, risk reversals, a personal appeal, ad copy, and trust icons are all important conversion elements that can encourage visitors to take the next step.

Identify high traffic pages, those where people are abandoning the website, and pages with a high bounce rate where they arrive and leave from the same page. Our conversion team can help you identify the causes of these issues and how to resolve them using split testing and multi variant testing. Content experiments to see which pages do be better than others, allowing you to choose strategies that work best.

Conversion analysis techniques include:

VISITORS

• Analysis

• Conversion

Optimization • Split and Multi-Varient Testing • Online chat Installation • Call tracking

LEADS

Bear in mind that in many cases, traffic may not convert on the site, but may result in a conversion through a phone call, email or a visit to your physical location, all of which are perfectly valid forms of conversion.

CONVERSIONS www.localpositions.com

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SPREAD THE WORD THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is a very important factor in a site’s overall organic presence.

According to a Searchmetrics study, Google+ is the most important social media profile in terms of SEO, but in terms of customer engagement Facebook shares and comments, as well as Pinterest and Twitter activity reign supreme.

How active and expensive your social media strategy needs to be should be based within the context with your industry. Let’s all be honest here. Some businesses just aren’t quite as “sexy” as others. What we mean here is that some brands naturally lend themselves to social media more so than others. For example, it’s probably safe to assume that a greater number of local customers may want to engage with the tweets of their neighborhood pub more often then they would with the company they purchased their garage door installer from. A scuba diving shop may have a lot more engagement on their Instagram or Pinterest account then say, a tax attorney. And while, LinkedIn may be a better channel if you’re for a B2B business, Facebook might be more appropriate if you’re B2C. Social media is an important channel, but the extent to which your brand engages or needs to engage on any given platform is entirely dependent on the nature of your business and the make-up of your audience.

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GROW YOUR ONLINE FOOTPRINT

We’ve spoken about your website and the factors that make your site an authority on the web, but building beyond your site is just as important.

Imagine your website as the center of a complex network of connections, with multiple channels pointing back to you. People may find out about you via social media, or multimedia content such as YouTube and Slideshare. Popular websites that rank well can lend a great amount of link value and build visibility. The SEO value may be indirect, but this is an important way to build visibility and earn rankings.

Increase your footprint on the web by leveraging content and engagement wherever possible. This eBook for example, will be expanded upon in a webinar. And that webinar will be turned into a video published on YouTube and a presentation that’s posted on SlideShare. We’ll blog about it, we’ll tweet about it. We’ll get a landing page up on our website dedicated to it and we’ll link to that page from all over the web.

And that’s just one eBook. Always ask yourself where your customers are and what they’re searching for, how you could enhance your site, how you can expand your reach, and where you can build authority and engagement.

The wider your footprint, the greater the chance is that your site will begin to rank.

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MEASURING THE RIGHT METRICS: HOW TO TRACK YOUR SUCCESS With all of these factors affecting your site’s visibility in the search results, how can you figure out how well you’re doing? As ranking factors become less and less important, it’s important to look at organic traffic numbers – even if your site is ranked at the bottom of the first page, if it’s growing traffic, it’s a good sign that you’re doing something right.

There are a number of ways to get data that you can use to evaluate your succes – go to Google Analytics and look at Organic search. While this information is not necessarily the most precise, it is easy to access and can give you a good general feel for how people are finding your site, and how they’re interacting with it once they get there.

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Take a look at the data for organic landing pages – which pages are optimized for each keyword?

Are they drawing traffic based on searches for those keywords? Which pages are getting traffic and what kind of conversion rates do they see? Pages that do not perform as well may need additional optimization.

Using Google Webmaster Tools, check out Google My Business. This can give you insight into how many impressions your site is earning, and how important your brand name is considered. You’ll also be able to see how often the information from and about your site is showing up on the web.

Clicking for driving directions is also available in Google Webmaster tools and can be very helpful; hyperlocalized information, can let you see how effective your efforts are in the neighborhoods and suburbs you’re trying to reach.

In order to gauge success, there are areas that we need to look at: organic results, local places results, directory rankings, and the quality and quantity of your citations.

Local Listings

Directory Reviews Regular Organic Paid

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WHO WE ARE Local Positions is an industry leading online marketing company that specializes in helping local businesses use the Internet to boost visibility, traffic and sales.

We’ve created millions of leads for thousands of businesses across the country.

Our parent company, National Positions, is one of the biggest Internet marketing agencies in the country. For the past four years, we’ve been named one of the fastest growing private companies by Inc. Magazine.

Local Positions has taken the methodology and customer service that’s made National Positions an industry leader and brought it to local businesses everywhere. We’ve taken our proven Internet marketing solutions to fit the needs of your local business so that you can create online visibility and drive customers to your door.

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NOT SURE WHERE TO START? ORDER AN AUDIT. At Local Positions, we can build a comprehensive audit that provides in-depth insight into how your site is doing, and how you can improve your site for better results:

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Examines the key SEO factors which affect your ability to rank

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