Local SEO is a potent way to drive people to your physical business location. It also helps ensure that your business appears real, legitimate, and authoritative within the Google search results of nearby potential customers.

Consider these 5 things when optimizing your website for Local SEO in 2022:

Local SEO Thing #1: Optimize For Voice Search

No one thinks that customers always and only search for things with their voice (although 41% of users now search using their voice once per day). However, we strongly suspect that the way your customers search for your product or services is closer to the way they speak; people tend to search with natural language (phrases or meaningful sentence fragments) more so than with the keyword-only searches typical in the past.

When someone is out on the town and feeling hungry for pizza, they do not typically Google “Pizza.”

Instead, they will look for ‘Pizza Near Me’ or ‘Best Pizza In [CITY NAME].’

Optimizing your site and content for the way people actually look for things online will help you rank better for these localized searches. It will also futureproof your site for the continual growth of voice assistants.

For more talk on voice search, check out How to Optimize for Voice Search.

Local SEO Thing #2: Be Consistently Consistent

The little details matter when it comes to Local SEO. Presenting your business information consistently—especially the physical address—is crucial because Google assesses your legitimacy through such consistency.

It may sound like nitpicking, but if your business is located at 123 North Christmas Ave, then you should always refer to it as such—and never 123 N. Christmas Ave. Be consistent with your location information because it helps reduce issues with local listings, and it shows the bots you care about your local business data.

Local SEO Thing #3: Actually, this is Hyperlocal SEO

You don’t just live in your city, you live in a neighborhood. So do your customers.

When optimizing your content for hyperlocal SEO, make sure you include the neighborhood you are located in and also the locations your customers may live, work, or shop in. This helps drive local searches including those specific keywords, as the algorithms will understand the local nature of your content and deliver it to local searchers.

If you have a business in Bushwick, Brooklyn, your business is located THERE—not just the more general New York City. Optimizing for all three—Bushwick, Brooklyn, and New York City—will net you the best possible ranking potential.

Thing #4: Own Your Listing

Your Google Business Profile listing is one of the most important tools in driving local traffic online. Make full use of it.

If you haven’t already claimed your listing, do so. If you have, then optimize! Here are five easy to complete areas you can use to improve your Google Business Profile listing.

1. Flesh out your business description to include language that will drive a user to want to engage with your business.
2. Showcase your products directly within your listing.
3. Add photos. Photos help boost engagement on your local listings.
4. Use the Posts functionality of Google Business Profile; it’s like a micro-blog for your local listing page that gives information to users directly within the search results and allows you to promote sales and products to local searchers.
5. When it comes to your Primary Category within GMB make sure you choose wisely. If you are a pizza place, make sure you choose the category Pizza Restaurant and not just Restaurant. This attention to detail is necessary for Google to understand when to show your business over another location.

The more you put care into your business information online, the better it will likely perform in search.

Thing #5: Show Authority

It’s not enough just to rank locally. If potential customers have doubts that you are a reputable business, they are not likely to spend their money on your goods or services. To satisfy the need for credibility, you need a local review strategy.

Encourage your customers to leave 5-star reviews when they are satisfied with your business. Whether this is via a card you hand out to a customer or through a follow-up email, reviews are a major factor in convincing a local customer to make a purchase. They will have a big impact on your local performance.

Once you have reviews, show them off. Use plugins to feature the reviews on your website, and share every good review you get on social media. Respond to the reviews you get from customers on Google and Facebook. It is this attention to detail and care that may sway another customer to your side. And it shows local searchers that you are to be trusted.

When it comes to local SEO, no one of these tactics alone will bring your business success within the search engines; rather, a finely optimized and cultivated combination of the 5 areas above can help drive traffic with higher buyer intent.

At DOM, we’re local SEO wizards and more than ready to get you optimized for local traffic. Feel free to reach out today and let’s put together a plan that works for your SEO needs.

The post How to Do Local SEO in 2024 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Imagine that it’s 1984 and you have just earned your business degree. Your father, Mick, owns a tavern and has always instilled in you the importance of hard work. Unfortunately, his tavern is on the verge of bankruptcy and you realize that maybe, just maybe, you can help!

Your first job, prior to college, was at a local pizza restaurant and you got pretty good at making a superior-quality pizza. So, you swallow your pride and sell your most-prized possession. A gorgeous 1971 Z28 Camaro for $2,800.00.

You use the money to buy used restaurant equipment and turn the broom closet at the back of the tavern into the perfect spot to make your pizza.

Fast-forward one year. Your pizzas are delicious; the locals love them: you are able to open your own space (close to the tavern, of course).

Do you know whose story I’m telling yet?

Fast-forward 15 more years to 2001, and now you are the first pizza chain to offer national online ordering. Fast-forward a further 7 years to 2008, and you have topped $1 billion in e-commerce sales and $1 million in mobile web orders.

Does “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.” Ring a bell? If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am telling the story of John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s.

Why Is an Online Marketing Company Telling This Story?

Why is an online marketing company telling stories about a pizza chain?

Well, thank you for asking!

Tomorrow, Google will be joining us as we host an interactive digital marketing seminar in Louisville, KY. Before this event, we wanted to point out some of the online marketing wins of one of the major employers in the area. And who doesn’t LOVE pizza?

Headquartered in Jeffersontown (a suburb of Louisville), Papa John’s continues to be on the top of its game when it comes to technology and its website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

Local SEO Tips For Better Search Optimization

What Do Papa John’s Best Local SEO Tips Teach Us?

There are a number of key factors that should be considered when optimizing your website’s franchise location pages for local search engine optimization.

For the sake of this post, let’s take a look at the Papa John’s franchise located at 5709 Bardstown Rd., Louisville, KY 40291.

1. Search Engine Friendly URLs

The first thing that Papa John’s did right for local search engine optimization was creating a dedicated page for each franchise location. In such a situation, the URLs should include the country, state, town, zip code, and street address.

https://www.papajohns.com/locations/usa/ky/louisville/40291-1913/5709-bardstown-road/10

While this may be a bit long for some types of franchises to duplicate, it certainly helps your customers and search engines determine where each franchise is located. Keep in mind that when your customers do a search for your products or services, Google usually knows where they are located and will serve results that it believes to be most relevant to that user. Including location information in the URL can boost your local SEO efforts.

2. Meta Titles for Local SEO

While meta titles cannot be seen on your site itself, they are one of the first things that visitors will see in search engine results. Meta titles are the bold headings above each search result. Below, you can see the meta title for the page that we are reviewing.

The title includes the street address, brand name, city, state, and zip code. When optimizing for local SEO, keep in mind that you want to use the most relevant keywords for each page. You should also keep your title between 50 and 60 characters (although Google has been displaying up to 70 characters in the recent months). The more relevant your meta title is, the less likely Google will re-write it and the more likely it is to catch your customer’s attention!

3. Meta Descriptions for Local SEO

Like meta titles, meta descriptions are not visible on your site, but rather in the search engine results. You want to think of this as being the place to describe what the page is about while including relevant keywords ranging from 150 to 160 characters. Google will bold the words that match those in the user’s query.

We can see in the image above that Papa John’s included their top keyword “pizza” as well as the street address, city, and state in their meta description. They also let the searcher know that this page will give hours and contact information for the exact location being searched.

4. On-page Local Search Optimization

Let’s now take a look at some of the tactics that Papa John’s has used for on-page local search engine optimization.

Each page on your website should have one heading or H1 tag that contains your top keywords and one that tells your visitors what the page is about. Since this is a franchise location page, it makes absolute sense to include the brand name (Papa John’s Pizza) and the city and state (Louisville, KY). Directly beneath that, the street address (5709 Bardstown Road) is tagged as an H2, as well as the second mention of the address beneath that.

Mobile searches are popular. So it’s a great idea to have the phone number prominently displayed and coded so that a user can click on it and instantly be connected with the store to place an order.

5. Local Citation Link Building Best Practices

As an agency that offers local SEO services, we can assure you that local citation link building must be one of your first off-site tactics. Once you have your location pages optimized, you’ll want to then ensure that you list your NAP (name, address & phone number) consistently across all areas of the local search ecosystem.

In general, the top citation sites are the same; however, Moz has published a super helpful list of citations by city that links to each directory in the order of importance for that area. If nothing more, you would want to ensure a proper listing in each of these sites.

If you need to check the status of your local listings, Moz Local will show you where your listings are complete, incomplete, and inconsistent, as well as if you have any duplicate listings.

Using these resources as a guide will help ensure that you have a good basis for local link building by displaying exactly what is missing to ensure a complete profile on each site.

A Great Story Always Ends “Happily Ever After!”

Just like John Schatter’s “happily ever after” of having the world’s third largest take-out and pizza delivery chain AND getting his 1971 Z28 Camaro back in 2009 . . .

. . . we hope that these local SEO tips from Papa John’s will help you optimize your company’s location pages and have a “happily ever after” of your own.

PS – this post from our friends at DesignRush have even more helpful trends to take advantage of as part of your efforts to improve SEO for franchises.

The post 5 Local SEO Tips for Your “Happily Ever After” appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

This time, we are excited to announce that we will be attending the Google-hosted, Let’s Put Charleston, WV on the Map this Wednesday, September 2nd at the Clay Center.

We certainly are not the only ones that see the importance of this to West Virginia business owners, as Senator Shelley Moore Capito has partnered with Google.

The event will open to the public at 9 a.m. and conclude about 12 p.m. There will be 3 sessions:

• Get Found on Google Search & Maps (30 mins)
• Grow Your Business Online (1 hr)
• Build Your Free Website (1.5 hrs)

Register and find further details on the Charleston GYBO Event page.

What is GYBO?

Simply put, GYBO is Google’s initiative to get every business (large or small) online, and to make doing so fast, free, and easy. The program rolled out back in 2011, and Google has since traveled to all 50 states and helped thousands of businesses claim their local listings and establish a web presence.

What if my business doesn’t have a website?

To address small local businesses that don’t have a website, Google partnered with StartLogic to provide one along with a domain name and hosting for one year. Once you have signed up and chosen a template, it’s as simple as a drop and a drag to set up; most websites are online in less than an hour.

We’ll see you in Charleston!

We will be present during the presentations to assist with any questions. We will have a table set up, so please make sure to stop by and say hello! If you are unable to attend but know of some businesses in Charleston, WV that would benefit from this awesome event, please be sure to pass this on!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as Google Partners before you reach out.

The post Hey Charleston, WV…It’s Your Turn to GYBO! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

A couple interesting things here, but the one I want to talk about is that it will now show ALL reviews it has for a business.  But why should you care?

Well, Matt McGee did a rundown at SearchEngineLand and here’s the money part for purposes of this post:

The second change that Yelp’s making in response to the lawsuits is to show all the reviews it has about a business, including the ones that its algorithm has filtered/removed from the business profile pages. But the link to see the full set of reviews is buried at the bottom of the business page.

Says CEO Jeremy Stoppelman about these changes:

Lifting the veil on our review filter and doing away with “Favorite Review” will make it even clearer that displayed reviews on Yelp are completely independent of advertising — or any sort of manipulation.

What type of reviews have they been filtering out automatically with their algorithm?  Among others, negative reviews by competitors and astroturfed positive reviews by business owners.  Frankly, that’s the best case scenario – that they’re just filtering them out.  What unscrupulous business owners need to be scared of is that those are not just being filtered out, but rather that the various review sites and local business listings are penalizing those companies for their actions.

Bottom line for small businesses and local business owners?  Just don’t do it.  It’s not worth it – for more than just the reasons written about here and by SEODog.

The post Want to Blast Your Competition? Don’t Try Yelp appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

I think we’ve talked quite a bit about the geo-targeting capabilities of pay per click accounts like Google AdWords (although it bears repeating that you can draw any kind of coverage map you’d like, including picking a 20-mile radius around your physical location).  And while the ability to place AdWords ads within local business listings is potentially interesting, that option is still in beta for folks in the San City Twins (San Francisco and San Diego).

What we’ve been somewhat remiss in discussing (at least me, maybe not Paul as much) is local SEO.  So, whether you’re looking for a Pittsburgh SEO firm or to rank in Pittsburg, Kansas, this article will explain a bit about how the process works.  Many of these same principles work in other countries as well as we’ve used them on clients in the UK and Germany, but let’s focus here on the good ol’ U.S. of A. for simplicity’s sake.  Learn more after the jump.

Local Business Listings Can Put You on the Map

Each search engine has its own form of local business listings to index and call attention to organizations of all sizes in their local towns or cities.  Each is cleverly named: Google Local Business Listings, Yahoo! Local Listings, and bing Local Listings.  Got that?  I can wait until you’ve had time to digest.  Good?  Good.

You’ve already seen these when you’ve done any kind of geographic search:

Here’s your ‘What’s Interesting about that Picture’ quiz.*  The pay per click ads are at the top, but then what’s next?  The map, or Google Local 7-Pack as it’s known fondly in some circles.  10-pack sounded a lot better, but then the big G had to change the number of listings.

*Having kids allows you to experience things you hadn’t thought about in years.  Like Highlights magazine.  If I’m sitting with the buckaroos at the doctor’s office, and assuming I’m not playing with those shape roller coasters, I’ll open up that magazine and immediately flip to the ‘What’s different between these two pictures’ page.  For my kids, obviously.  It’s not like I sit there and time myself in my head as I see how many I can find.  And the kids danged well better not spot a difference before me or that magazine’s going to end up in the fish tank!

What that means: you may have a perfectly optimized site and rank #1 for your most important geographic term, but still not get first crack at searchers in the organic section.  That’s because…

Local SEO Plays by Its Own Rules

Local search results utilize their own formula.  Some of the ranking factors are the same as your daddy’s Web search, but many are different or weighted differently.  Just like Web search, the search engines may pick up your site without your doing anything, but you have the opportunity to claim this listing (or create a new one) and own another piece of the Web like you would with a twitter or LinkedIn profile.

While local SEO is becoming big business in many industries and locales, it still presents a huge opportunity for many of you to better compete against the big boys in your local market.  Plus – you don’t even need to have a Web site to have a local business listing (although it helps your local search optimization efforts tremendously).

If you’d like to learn more about local SEO, please give our Pittsburgh Marketing Agency a call at 800.979.3177.  We have packages available for organizations ranging from pizza shops on tight budgets to national law firms with multiple physical presences.  In some instances, value packages with small one-time fees are available.  So call now – operators are standing by.  Unless it’s night time, in which case we’re sleeping, but will call you back first thing the next business day.

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