Optimizing listings for local searches is something that should already be done by local businesses. Many companies can benefit from local listing optimization. However, it’s easy to make mistakes and go against what you should be doing. This blog covers some of the most common mistakes with citations.
If you’re listing your business on local directories for example UK local directory listings you need to make sure you are doing it right. There are a lot of things you can do to make sure your listings are optimized for on-page SEO and that you are getting maximum exposure.
Optimize Your Google My Business (GMB) Listing
GMB is Google’s online directory and the best way to get found on search engines. It’s also the first thing potential customers will see when they look you up.
What can be confusing is that you have to have a separate GMB listing for each business location. Also, each business profile needs to be unique, so if you run a chain of restaurants, you will need a separate GMB listing for each restaurant. Even if your business name is the same across all of your locations, for example, “Blue Ocean Diving” or “The Wine Barrel” (both hypothetical examples), you’ll still need one GMB listing per physical location because these are two different businesses and you want each one to get credit for their reviews and ratings independently.
If your business has multiple locations/business names, check off which ones from this list:
Local Business ____________
Local Business ____________
Local Business ____________
Add all of your physical locations here:
Business Address 1: 123 Main St. #1, City, State 12345
Business Phone 1: 555-123-1234 ext 10#
Business Hours 1: M-F 9am – 6pm Sat 9 – 5 Sun closed
Cover Photo & Profile Picture 1: http://imdgur/M9hdbjy5 http://imgur/M9hbjy5
Add Social Media Links to Your GMB Listing
- With the Local SEO section, we’re going to focus on how to optimize your small business’s Google My Business listing. Here’s how it breaks down:
Fill out all sections of your GMB listing. Your profile must include a physical address, phone number, website URL, and hours of operation in order to appear in mobile search results. Be sure to fill these out if you want your business to be found by potential customers looking for local businesses. - Add social media links to your GMB listing. In addition to filling everything else out, it is absolutely vital that you add links for a variety of social media accounts that people can follow/find you on—especially Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn (if applicable). Google will show the first three social media links you add on this page; be sure these are the most important ones for branding purposes. You may also include the link for your website at the bottom of this section as well—in fact, it will probably help with overall optimization!
Create Geo-Tagged Content with Place Names and Addresses
What does local SEO have to do with creating new content for your website? A lot, actually. Not only are geo-tagged posts a good way to ensure you reach people looking for your business in their area, they also give search engines something to crawl and index.
In order to rank higher in local search results, you need to let the search engines know where you are and it is possible only with local citatations That’s why you should use place names and addresses when relevant: not just your store’s name or address, but the actual name of your city or street where it is located. Search engines use this information as an anchor text (text used by Google and other search engines) when crawling and indexing the web pages on which that data appears. When these links appear on high-ranking websites within a certain radius of your business—or even better, on websites that have good authority in general—it can help raise your site up in local SERPs overall.
The first step is to make sure you’re using accurate location information with every post you create about your business or industry. Using geotags for every post allows the user visiting from anywhere in the world to easily find out more about what’s going on locally around them at any given time. It makes it easier for users searching through specific locations by providing them with instant access to any post-tagged relevant keywords within a mile or two from their physical location at that time—and it makes creating “citations” much easier as well (more on this below).
Use Schema Markup to Stand Out in the Results Snippets
In order to get your business to show up in the search results of Google, Bing, or any other search engine for that matter, you need to make sure that your website has the proper web markup. Web markup is a special type of code that you can add to your web page in order to help search engines understand what the page is about. This will ensure that people are able to easily find and navigate through all of the content on your site.
There are two main types of web markups: written markups and visual/image-based markups.
Written Markup – written markup includes such things as, and tags. These tags give search engines (and users) an idea of the different levels within a web page and how they relate to each other. Visual Markup – visual markup includes such things as headers, logos, images, etc… The purpose behind this type of markup is so that a website’s content can more easily be identified by machines (and users) when viewing it visually rather than in a text-based format.
Local SEO is crucial to small businesses that want to appear prominently in search results for keywords related to their industry.
It’s a big world out there for local businesses. To help them compete, search engines like Google and Bing give preferential treatment to local companies in their results. That means that if you’re a small business owner in Los Angeles, your company will probably show up on the first or second page of search results when people are searching for “Los Angeles lawyers” or “best restaurants in Los Angeles”. As an example of this phenomenon, note that the first result above is the official website for a law office located in downtown Los Angeles. This section provides a comprehensive overview of local search engine optimization (SEO), with information on how to optimize your website using various strategies and tools if you’re looking to take advantage of these powerful ranking factors.
You can optimize your local citation with the help of a citation building services agency.