Local SEO

Local SEO Quick Tip – Get 5 of These and Your Stars Will Shine

Search Engine Optimization / By Dean Mercado

Does your business serve a local market?

If so, giving your business an edge, any edge, in Google’s local search engine listings could be quite useful… agree?

In this video, I provide a quick local SEO tip intended to point you in the direction of edging out your competition.

Hi! Does your business depend on the local community whether it be other local businesses or local consumers for sales? For revenue? For income? If it does you’ll want to tune into this local SEO quick tip for the day here. I call this “Get 5 of These and Your Stars Will Shine”.

So what am I talking about here? I’m talking about if you need that local community, you need to show up in the search engine results. The local search engine results. In order to do that effectively there are lots of things that have to happen. You need to have a local focus on things with your website and other online presence no doubt.

The quick tip I’m sharing with you here today is for the majority of the people who will be searching for you, the majority of them are visual. They get attracted to images. When you pass or you get five online reviews on Google, what happens to your local SEO listing is you automatically have stars placed next to your listing. So if you’ve got five 5-star reviews, you’re going to have five stars, gold stars right next to your name.

So if your competitors who are listed next to you whether they are above you or below you don’t have the stars, your listing is the one that’s going to draw the eyes to it the most. Very important that you get five online reviews on Google. That’s your quick tip for today. That will help your listing in the search results stand out among the clutter of possibilities that your target market has.

What’s The Difference Between Organic SEO and Local SEO?

Search Engine Optimization / By Dean Mercado

In this video segment I simplify and answer the often asked question of differentiating between organic SEO and Local SEO. Additionally I will answer whether or not focusing on SEO is still a relevant strategy for businesses.

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What’s The Difference Between Organic SEO and Local SEO?Read More »

3 Steps to Local SEO Domination

Search Engine Optimization / By Dean Mercado

Does your business depend on local traffic to get clients? Dominate your local market with this 3 step process!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Try This! => FREE Local SEO scanner tool. See how your business stacks up!

Video Transcript

And for those of you who would prefer to read, here’s the transcript:

Hi, this is Dean Mercado of Online Marketing Muscle and I’ve got a huge question here for you today. Do you depend on the local economy, local people, local businesses to purchase your products and services? In other words, from a more technical standpoint, is local SEO important to you? Is it important that when somebody locally searches for what you do, that your business shows up and not someone else’s, not your local competitors? If so, you are going to really want to tune into this conversation here today as it’s hugely important!

I’ve titled it: 3 Steps to Local SEO Domination. Now, keep in mind, these three steps are not little steps, they are huge steps – and I don’t expect you to do them all. I don’t even expect you to fully understand all the details about them. What I wanted to get through to you today and help you understand was what they are; so this way whether you are doing this stuff yourself, whether you are outsourcing this stuff – you know where you need to go… you know what you need to accomplish to some degree. So, let’s dive right into this.

Citations

First big step are what I call ‘Citations’. Now, that is a technical term. You may have heard it; you may not have heard it. It is one you are going to want to know what it means. Essentially what it is is another site – another reputable site – that contains your contact information on it. So in other words, sites like Superpages that has a listing on it with your business name, your address and your phone number. Or, sites like Manta that has your business name, your address, and your phone number. Even the Facebooks of the world and the Google Plus’ of the world and the Bing locals and the Yahoo locals, if your contact information is on all these reputable sites – that is called a Citation.

It doesn’t need to be a link coming back to you; just the fact that they are mentioning your business with those three core pieces of information is a solid citation for your website – your business. It is a third party endorsement, so to speak, saying that you are who you say you are. Again, your website is important, but the Google’s of the world, the Yahoo’s of the world, the Bing’s of the world – they don’t really care so much what you say about yourself – they care that other people are saying these things about you.

Online Reviews

That leads us into the second piece or the second step, online reviews. Whatever you need to do, you know…legally, right? Ha-ha, nothing silly here! Do whatever you need to do to build a deep enough relationship with your clients to get them willing to and to get them to write those online reviews for you.

There are tons of online review sites – Yelp.com, Google My Business – all of these are great review sites that you can use. One caveat: a lot of these sites do require people to login… have an account with them in order to do it. So, find ways to get your clients – find out what accounts they do have and get them up there to get those reviews going for you. You need to have them, folks. It is not ‘a want to have’ or ‘a nice to have’ – you need to have them. The more reviews you get, the more likely you are to show up towards the top of the local search rankings. It is very important, so set a little goal for your big action items. Set a little goal. Five… get five online reviews on one of the major online review sites.

Your Website

The third big step that I want you to take into consideration is your own website. It should just ooze local. It has to have your contact information on there – on every page preferably. It has to talk local, it has to reference local, it has to link out to local sites and local stuff that is important… have other important reputable local sites linking back into you. Have local community engaging your blog, in other words, commenting and sharing your content out to other places – very, very important. Your website plays a huge part in this as well.

So, again to reiterate the three big steps:

1. Citations

2. Online Reviews

3. and your Website

In future videos, what I will try and do is systematically break them down a little bit further for you – give a little more detail to how to do that. But, these are three core areas that you are going to want to start thinking about, talking about, learning about.

So from me, Dean Mercado and my team, Online Marketing Muscle – here’s to your success!

5 Categories of SEO Citation Sources for Local Business

Search Engine Optimization / By Dean Mercado