why local seo is important for your business- ebriks infotech

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MAKING THE

CASEFOR LOCALSEARCH

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We operate 123 stores in 30 states

Such as our Seattle Flagship Store:

222 Yale Ave. NSeattle, WA 98109

Oooooh, a citation!

Traffic to our store pagesfrom local organic searchis growing at +25% YTD

%

It wasn’t always this way

Just 2 years ago, we weren’tgrowing our organic trafficto local store content at all

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Photo © Flickr user Petereed at flickr.com/photos/petereed/496392956/

Other priorities

Better opportunities

Right idea, Wrong time

Wrong idea, Wrong time

No budget right now

Who willown it?

This is not what we do

This not howwe do this

Someone else’s job

Someone else’s budget

Someone else’s metrics

Someone else’s fault

It will take too long

ROI can’t be measured

How do we find this?

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Photo © Flickr user Thomas Hawk at flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/540936323/

By assigning value to indicators of off-line

activities.

Photo © Flickr user Thomas Hawk at flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/540936323/

• Store locator use

• Store page views

• Rentals pages

• Local event pages

• Local class pages

• Local volunteer opportunities

• Links, Likes, Tweets for local content

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They’re all worth something. So make an estimate.

Don’t fall into the trap of making your estimate perfect.

Perfection takes up lots of time and stops good work from happening.

Just be reasonable.

Use these values to estimate the worth of total off-line activities

Voilà! Now you’ve created a simple

business case

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…and a vocabulary that you can teach

to your organization

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But how do you convince the

HiPPOs?

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Bring in the

BIG GUNS

We engaged David Mihm to audit our local visibility and help us understand the total landscape of opportunity.

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The result:A prioritized series of changes and optimizations, big and small, that we could pursue.

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chose the SMALL onesand that was ENOUGH

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We used our new “value vocabulary” and

business case to win tiny bits of support

from all our partners

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The low-hanging fruit

of local search, if you will

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We optimized a few ofour <title>s here…

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Wrangled a tiny UX improvement there…

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Ran a quick A/B test onour content here…

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We even ran a tinylocal Link campaign

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Mad props if youknow who Link is!

Our data-intensive reporting and incremental gains caught the imagination of leadership and garnered further support

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Because they had the vision to be able to see

that this isn’t about SEO.

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It’s about the cross-channel

customer experience.

A cross-channel story is one that everyone in your organization can support …because it’s all about the

customer, not about you.

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Success often breeds success.Little changes lead to big wins.

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Now our mobile app helps you find our

physical stores

Now we provide local store product inventory

visibility on our site…

As well as on Google.

Now we’re working with an agency to manage our local information across Google properties, IYPs, wayfinding services, etc.

Now we’re running local/social presences all across the country

Now we’re running local/social presences all across the country

Now we’ve marked up our local store content with Schema.org microdata

Now we’ve got local staff engaged in creating local

media… with our members!

…is just the beginning.

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Our conclusions:

1. Shrink the change by starting off small

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Our conclusions:

1. Shrink the change by starting off small

2. Use data to tell your story

Photo © Flickr user jayneandd at flickr.com/photos/jayneandd/4450623309/

Our conclusions:

1. Shrink the change by starting off small

2. Use data to tell your story

3. Don’t chase the perfect at the cost of getting things done

Photo © Flickr user istolethetv at flickr.com/photos/istolethetv/3887342134/

Our conclusions:

1. Shrink the change by starting off small

2. Use data to tell your story

3. Don’t chase the perfect at the cost of getting things done

4. Seek outside counsel and guidance from experts

Photo © Flickr user iL.C.Nøttaasen at flickr.com/photos/magnera/3157602186/

Our conclusions:

1. Shrink the change by starting off small

2. Use data to tell your story

3. Don’t chase the perfect at the cost of getting things done

4. Seek outside counsel and guidance from experts

5. Small changes lead to big wins for you and your customers