enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 9 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Google Local optimization underlies a strong online strategy for any business with a physical presence or storefront. An estimated 73 percent of online activity relates to local. In other words, people regularly use the internet to find information about businesses and other places of interest around them.

What brands should pay even closer attention to, however, is the impact of these local searches on business. Customers look for local information throughout the buyer’s journey, and when they reach the conversion point, local searches are twice as likely as non-local searches to result in a purchase. In fact, an estimated 78 percent of local-mobile searches resulted in a purchase often within a few hours.

For brands to succeed on a local level, they need to prepare for their regional audience. Even if you regularly work with people well outside your geographic area, failing to optimize for the local users will hamper your reach, reputation, and business growth.  

What is Google Local?

Google Local involves making your page more locally relevant for users looking for businesses or places of interest that are geographically near them. This refers to queries such as “SEO companies near me” or “pizza places open now”.

When people conduct local searches, Google will currently present to them three main businesses, which are featured on the local 3-pack. These three businesses are at the center of the page with their name, address, number of stars, and a photo, immediately drawing the eye. Underneath these results, users have the option of clicking to see more businesses or just scrolling through the organic results. The high-profile location of this 3-pack makes it particularly important for those who want to optimize their content for local search.

Optimizing your content for Google Local, therefore, means designing your site and your Google+ page to improve the frequency with which you appear in this 3-pack and the positive impression you make upon users who see it. As in all SEO efforts, high rank means awareness and traffic and an implied endorsement from Google.  

How do I succeed with Google Local?

Pay attention to the NAP

The NAP refers to your name, address, and phone number. Google wants to see businesses that keep this information consistent across all websites and listings. When the NAP is consistent, the search engine can be confident that it is displaying the right information to users on the SERPs. Google wants to provide its users with an optimal user experience, and inaccurate information would confuse people and detract from this goal.

Every time your name, address, and phone number are written online, it can create a listing in other directories. Regularly monitor the web for mentions of your brand and reach out to sites to correct any incorrect information. If you find one that needs to be updated, look for the "Claim this business" or similar link to update and control the information,

You want to create your own listing on the various popular online directories, such as Yelp, to ensure that they receive the right information. Style the name of your brand always the same way, ensuring consistency with ‘and’ versus ‘&’, for example. When your NAP is consistent, it can influence the performance of your brand properties on Google Local by as much as 16 percent.

Fill out your Google+ business profile thoroughly and correctly

Google Local pulls from your Google+ business profile when creating your listing for the local 3-pack, so you want to make sure that you pay attention to how your brand is presented on the popular social media platform. Therefore, fill out your profile thoroughly and correctly. This means paying attention to the categories you select to ensure that they accurately reflect your type of business. Use keywords when describing your brand, including both your products and services as well as your location. One study found that using notable keywords, the right categories, and being located near where the person performs the search can impact your performance in Google Local by as much as 19.6 percent.

Attract reviews on Google

Reviews can be very influential on the results that you are listed for as well as the amount of attention your listing receives. As an example, here are the results from the query ‘pizza near me’.

Then here are the results, ‘best pizza near me’.

According to Nielsen, 92 percent say that they trust earned media, such as reviews from friends or family, more than all other forms of advertising. The reviews on your website might not be from someone that a particular user knows personally, but they do offer third-party validation of your brand and can help you lay the foundation for building a relationship of trust.

There are a few ways that you can encourage your customers to leave you these valuable reviews. Consider:

• Letting customers know after they make a purchase, such as in a follow-up email, that reviews are appreciated.
• Include links to your Google+ profile on your brand’s correspondence, such as emails and newsletters.
• Invite people connected to you on Google+ through your circles to leave you reviews.

How BrightEdge can help with Google Local

As you begin to develop your optimization for Google Local, use a platform with the ability to help you throughout the process. BrightEdge has numerous capabilities for businesses interested in growing their local audience.

Content creation

The BrightEdge Data Cube will help you uncover local keywords that you can use throughout the optimization process. For example, your local keywords can be used to produce content that is geared towards your local audience. The keywords can also be used in your brand description on Google+ and your website. This will help you improve your relevance to your local audience, and appear higher on organic queries.

Creating local keyword groups

As you uncover the important local keywords that you want to optimize your site for, you can create a keyword group to use to track your progress. You can create charts that monitor the correlation between your local keywords and the brand’s growth and revenue.

Monitoring your appearance with Google Local searches

When you open the BrightEdge Data Cube, you can also perform a site analysis that will enable you to see how your site is performing in the universal search results. You can also narrow your data down to show just how you appear in local 3-packs. This will allow you to see your progress and the keywords for which you are successfully appearing in these local searches. You can then do the same for your competitors to gauge their progress as well.

Local search engine insight

BrightEdge also provides local SEO support for more than 100 cities throughout the US and around the globe. You can use these Google local tools to look directly at your search performance and that of your competitors in your targeted geographic area.

Google local is a powerful means of reaching out to the customers in the same area as you. Customers often like to do business with those in their region, so optimizing your page to meet these customers can help you grow your business and improve your reputation.  

Case study – see how Yelp did it

gerald

M Posted 9 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

When 91% of people have their mobile phone within a 3-meter radius 100% of the time, businesses need to evaluate the importance of mobile SEO and devising and successfully executing a mobile marketing campaign. Additionally, there are now more searches carried out on Google on smartphones than there on tablet and desktop devices combined. Add this to the recent behavior associated with the finding of information through micro-moments, AMP, and the expected enhancement of Google's algorithm, it is clear that mobile SEO and on-the-go marketing should be carefully considered and addressed in your marketing roadmaps.  

But first - mobile marketing may not suit every business. The first thing you need to do it get a device breakdown by visits and revenue to see which devices your visitors are using. This will determine the impact of implementing for your website. On the BrightEdge platform, this can easily be done through StoryBuilder. There are several options available to help you understand your audience, including 'How well is mobile driving traffic to my site?' and 'What part of my site received the most mobile traffic?' It may be that you need to rewind and develop a more robust content marketing strategy by using personas so you know who your audience is, in the first place.

Mobile SEO and marketing

There are a few requirements before you can successfully begin mobile SEO optimization:

• A responsive website is fundamental so your website is displayed in the best possible way for all potential devices
• Fast mobile loading times, which is not only likely to grow in algorithm weight in the coming months, but also provides a positive user experience
• Analytical software so you can allow data to be the compass of your mobile SEO campaign

Once you have identified that you have a mobile audience who engages with your content and products, it is time to grow this audience through mobile SEO and marketing.  

Mobile SEO and content marketing

Earlier we discussed how to determine if your audience engaged with mobile or not, there are some instances when this may not be the case. For example, sole eCommerce websites, with limited informational content, might virtually only have an I-want-to-buy audience. Now we need to dig deeper. The first step we need to take is 'audience metrics'.  

Publishing mobile marketing content

Effective mobile content marketing should be published to suit your audience, not you. To do this, go to your analytic software and filter the results down by day and hour-of-the-day as well as by device. This will show you when, and by what device, your audience is viewing your website's content. Is it the case that your mobile audience is at a peak on Tuesday's before the rush hour at 8am? This is the time you need to publish more mobile-friendly content to strengthen your mobile marketing campaign. Mobile-friendlier content can include:

• Making more use of bullet points to aid with content scanning. Writing a quick summary can also help with I-want-to-know moments
• Write succinctly. Quick information is quality information
• Enable easy social sharing icons to encourage content sharing and reach
• Think about content formats. Are you reaching an audience interested in scanning a quick blog post on the train to work? Are you catching people along in their offices enjoying watching videos with their morning coffee? The intent journey is fundamental to mobile SEO.
• Optimize for mobile keywords, such as voice search and long tail keywords

More in-depth information can be found in Search Engine Watch's Handy Guide to Mobile Content Marketing.  

Why are mobile and desktop rankings different?

Whenever we carry out a search, two systems are considered: paid and organic. We found in a recent study that paid, otherwise known as PPC, searches 4-pack results were triggered for 23% of all queries. One of the huge advantages of organic search is that it is triggered for every single query - it's no surprise that SEO makes up 51% of traffic for most web sites. When it comes to organic search, several indexes are often searched and displayed on one SERP. When we type in a query, the top results from relevant indexes are displayed on one interface. If you do a search for 'San Mateo,' for example, regular web listings and images are extracted and the top results of each has a place on the SERP.  

Mobile and desktop keyword rankings differ because the ranking signals are different. On mobile these are often referred to as citation signals whereas on desktop these are referred to as ranking factors. Note, that soon mobile will have its own index, but for now it runs off the same web search index that desktop uses. To gain a higher presence using mobile marketing, for example, customer ratings play a part whereas on desktop this is not the case. It is important also to not forget that physical distance plays a role on mobile ranks. Mobile searches tend to display more local information which can push regular web listings further down the SERP. For these reasons mobile and desktop rankings are different.  

Local SEO citation signals

Summary available below, more explanation is given here:

• On-page metadata

Carry out localized keyword research, constantly thinking of local dialect terms and phrases to strengthen your advanced on-page seo and insert these, naturally, in the places where search engines look, such as titles, headers, body of text etc.

• Name, Address, Phone (NAP)

An essential requirement of mobile marketing, and Local SEO, is to have a physical address. Local SEO is very effective at increasing footfall into stores which your staff can help to convert into customers just as placing a buy button on a website does.

• Google+

Register for Google My Business and to ensure efficiency, use the bulk upload feature. Register each of your stores with their unique information. And like metadata, use local dialect in the descriptions etc to make the content and location as relevant as possible.

• Reviews

Encourage your customers to write reviews for your stores. There are lots of tactics in which you can do this. If you are a BrightEdge customer, ask one of our Client Service Managers or Professional Services Managers to advise you on this. Mobile SEO and mobile marketing are an important part of a thorough digital marketing strategy for many brands. Understanding the impact of mobile on your business and how to optimize your site and content for on-the-go users can help you grow your brand and your reputation.