5 Local SEO Musts ~ Imagine Visibility

Tuesday, 11 August 2009 00:26

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Learn the most important things you can do to improve your site's ranking using Local SEO

There are an endless number of places on the web where you can list your business. But which sites does really matter to get listed on and why? If you follow these 5 easy suggestions, you'll be in much better shape to compete for local searches.

1 — Add your business to the major listing sites

The first place to add your business is the Google Local Business Center. Google uses this information for local searches so your business shows up on local business map. The intro video is also informative; if you're new to local search, check it out.

Google also uses these trusted information providers for basic listing information of local businesses. Make sure you are listed and that your business information is consistent wherever your business information is listed in the web. Here are the three most important local business listing pages:

Beyond these three, make sure that wherever your business is listed, the address and phone number are consistent.

Visibility TipA great, free tool for checking the way your site is seen on Google maps, yahoo local and other local search engines is GetListed.org.

2 — Get Your Categories Straight

Google Local Business Center lets you choose up to five categories for your business. Make sure that you choose at least two categories that are a complete match. Also ensure that you've chosen the same or similar categories on trusted information providers' sites.

3 — Get Listed on Location Specific Sites

Is there a local yellow pages site for your neighborhood, town, city or region? If so, and they're free, submit your listing. You could also add yourself to the local chamber of commerce site, anything site that is related to your geographic area.

Visibility TipTry to get listed on local blogs, I've seen a listing on a local blog alone boost a site's rank by 10 positions. You could give away a free sample whatever is your business provides in exchange for a review. Everyone loves free stuff.

4 — Get Some Reviews

Make sure that you're on all of the major review style local business sites like yelp.com and citysearch.com. Now get some reviews! Volume is more important than rating, but rating is also weighted to determine your position on the google local map results. Getting reviewed on Google reviews, Citysearch.com, and Insiderpages.com will help boost your profile. Remind your clients to review you as often as you feel you can get away with. Make it easy for them, include a link in an email or a twitter update, and gently remind them.

Visibility TipOne method of finding local review sites that Google is tracking is to do a search for businesses in your category, and click through to the review results. See if you can get your business listed on those sites also. See the illustrations below. In this example, I googled "restaurants seattle, wa". I clicked through to see the top local result's reviews and found two sites I wouldn't have thought of: tripadvisor.com and frommers.com. googlelocal2

googlelocal3

5 — Find Industry Specific Sites

Try to find Union pages, industry specific blogs, listings of professionals in your line of work. Try to get a link from a the page of class you have taken or a certification you have received. Getting listed on these kinds of sites can dramtically improve your pagerank.

I hope you find some of these tips helpful, please RSS this blog for more local SEO help.