A THREE-PART GUIDE TO INCREASING YOUR ORGANIC LOCAL VISIBILITY WITH THE AIM OF DRIVING FOOTFALL TO YOUR STORE, SHOP OR BUSINESS.

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PART 1: Website – Local Optimisation • Google My Business

Andy Robson Senior Search Marketing Consultant

CLICKS BRICKS

Okay, so you feel like you’ve either cracked SEO and your website is getting great traffic, or you’ve got the hang of it and it’s

certainly heading in the right direction, BUT your actual in-store footfall has either dwindled or become stagnant.

Put bluntly, those who didn’t survive became victim to their own websites – or worse, they didn’t take their digital presence seriously enough.

A perfect recent example of this was BHS, who were not only late to the ‘digital era’ but their digital strategy did very little to support their physical stores. In today’s modern age, increasing your SEO visibility on a local level is crucial if you expect your physical store to survive and complement your whole retail offering.

Fortunately, an increasingly large number of our retail clients are beginning to see the benefits of long term Local SEO strategies, and the benefits of turning those digital clicks to visited bricks.

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At one point a few years ago, retail stores shutting up shop was certainly something that hit headlines almost monthly, and whilst this was largely down to the recession (and I’m not knocking that this was a significant factor), I believe our buying habits have not only forever changed the way we live our lives, but changed the way retail businesses are run.

SO, WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT LOCAL SEO?

Well… whilst a large number of elements used in search engine optimisation are also applicable to local, there are a few unique elements.

We’ve developed this short guide, split into 3 parts, with the aim of guiding you through the ‘must-haves’ of any Local SEO strategy.

The guide is very much a top level view of any local search strategy, so if you need to go a little deeper to achieve very specific goals, talk to us for further information.

Now, before I get stuck in – a bit of data to support why this stuff is so bloomin’ important:

Consumers search with their location and proximity in mind • 4 in 5 consumers use search

engines to find local information.

• They search on smartphone and computer/tablet for: store address, business hours, availability and directions

Local searchers take action • 50% of consumers who conducted

a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on a computer/tablet did the same.

• Local searches lead to more purchases than non-local searches. 18% of local searches on smartphone lead to a purchase within a day vs. 7% of non-local searches.

Consumers prefer and act on location-based ads

• 4 in 5 consumers want ads customised to their city, post / zip code or immediate surroundings.

• More than 60% of consumers have location information in ads. They say it’s important to have store address and phone number in ads on computer/tablet, and directions and the call button in ads on smartphone.

OPTIMISING YOUR WEBSITE FOR LOCAL SEARCHSo, if you hadn’t already noticed, Google* (and yes, Bing* too) have become pretty good at detecting your location when you conduct a search, both on mobile and desktop.

That means if your website isn’t locally optimised for your products or services, then you’re going to struggle to stand out to Google.

At worst, you’re not appearing in these searches at all, and at best, you got lucky and will most likely be providing a very poor experience for your website visitor, who probably has to dig around for the right information.

Not good enough in this day and age, I’m afraid.

*Other search engines are available.

INDIVIDUAL PAGES FOR EACH LOCATIONIf you have access to create pages on your website then I highly recommend creating an individual page for each physical store location. This gives you a greater chance to optimise said page for each location, creating unique and relevant information for that store/shop.

I have seen instances where some clients have 3 or 4 stores so decide to bung them all on one page, and whilst this does achieve some level of success, I would still recommend separating them.

And of course, if like one of our clients, you have 97 locations then a page for each location is a must.

A B

Include the city/location in the title tag of the location page

Sometimes this is super obvious and other times, it’s surprising how easy it is to forget but title tags still carry a lot of weight when it comes to signal for local relevancy

Include the city/location in your H1 heading

Don’t get carried away here, it still needs to be natural, but including the city/location in your H1 tag adds to the local relevancy

Include the city/location in your optimised on page content

Okay, so I say this with trepidation but this will obviously add to the local relevancy of a page, but if you’ve got more than one location, don’t just change the city/location in the content then use it on every page. Ensure the content is unique to each location page

Include the city/location in the meta description of the location page

Again, this might seem super obvious, but not only can it help local relevancy but don’t forget it’s title tags and meta descriptions which can be the call to action which means a user clicks on your website rather than a competitors

Include the city/location in your alt text on images

Okay, you can be forgiven for forgetting this one, but it’s still surprising how many people don’t include alt text on their location imagery – but remember Google can’t see what’s in your images so alt text helps provide better understanding of your pages content

WHEN IT COMES TO OPTIMISING YOUR STORE/SHOP PAGES, ENSURE THAT THE ‘CORE LOCATION’ IS INCLUDED IN THE FOLLOWING ON-PAGE KEY ELEMENTS:

TITLE

H1

CREATING A DIRECTORYAll location pages should be accessible through a traditional store directory such as ‘Find a Store’.

Ideally, this should be linked from your primary navigation, or sub-navigation. Whilst it is okay to use ‘fancy features’ such as search by postcode, it’s still best practice to provide an alternative hard coded path for each one of your location pages, as otherwise Google will unlikely be able to crawl it.

A UNIQUE URL FOR EACH LOCATION

The website structure of, one location = one page is essential if you want any chance of achieving organic local visibility, but by ensuring that each location has its own unique URL can also positively impact your search results.

Include opening hours (where relevant) on each individual location page.

Include an embedded Google Map of the location, and no, a screenshot won’t cut it.

If you have locations which are close to one another, try linking between them to provide additional options: i.e., were you looking for our other London branch?

If possible, include your brand name in the title tag of each location, along with locality based info.

The full address, and phone number, known as a NAP (covered in Part 2 of this 3-parter!) should appear on the page and be appropriately marked up with Schema.

TECHNICALLY SOUNDThere are a number of things that - if you get them right -

will certainly go a long way to providing more strength to your Local SEO campaign.

OPEN

YOUR NAME HERE

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MOBILE FRIENDLY Thanks to Google’s roll out in April 2015 and the subsequent media attention it drew, most people have now heard of ‘Mobilegeddon’ although, honestly it really wasn’t as exciting/bad as people made out it would be.

But for those of you in need of a refresher; Google rolled out an algorithm update, which essentially meant users conducting a search on a mobile device, i.e. an iPhone, the search results they see, will be influenced by whether or not a website is considered mobile-friendly by Google.

So, in a nutshell, if you’re looking to make an impact on your local rankings, if your site isn’t considered mobile friendly then your rankings will suffer. You can check whether Google deems your site mobile friendly with their PageSpeed Insights.

Sites ticking the mobile-friendly box look like this in Google search:

Top Google points for us, as you can see!

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS

OKAY – YOU GOT ME... *Technically* a Google My Business listing can be classed as a citation, (something we’ve covered

in more detail in Part 2) but I consider Google My Business as THE local directory, and given the sheer

volume of users of Google I decided to dedicate a singular section just to this, and why getting it

right can have a huge impact on your organic local visibility.

You may well already have a listing in place, but GMB has gone through many re-brands over the course of the years and you may well know it better by Google Places for Business or Google+ Pages Dashboard – and all previous accounts have been upgraded and

migrated to GMB now.

SO, WHY JUST GOOGLE AND NOT YAHOO & BING TOO?

You’re right, they are important but if your time is limited (or even just valuable) then I certainly suggest focusing your energy with Google. Trust me, it’ll have

a far better impact.

If you want to appear in Google’s Pack listings (see below) then the only way to do this is by having a

Google My Business listing, and whilst you may still achieve organic rankings for the long tail key phrases, which will lead directly to subpages of your website,

having a GMB listing is THE only way to appear in pack listings.

GET VERIFIEDLike, seriously! Get verified! Once you create your listing, you’ll then need to be verified, and remember there’s a lot of stuff we’ve listed below that you can’t do, i.e. respond to reviews and add extra photos etc., until you’ve verified your location.

If you have 10 or less locations, you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way – Google send you a postcard with a unique 5 digit code, to the address you have entered. Once you receive the code, pop it in and voilà you’re verified.

Imagine doing that for potentially hundreds of locations! The stress, the hassle, the horror!

Thankfully Google saw the light, and for those of you with multiple locations (in this case 10 or more), your account can become verified, which means you can verify your locations without the need for snail mail.

In this case you might want to consider using Google My Business’s bulk upload function, using their template, you can upload a mass amount of data about a number of different locations, then at this point you’ll see this;

Fill it in, and go through the verification process to have yourself anointed. Google have provided more information about the bulk verification process.

Add a phone number to your listings (the same one as your website and the ones you’ll use in the citations too).

Add/ensure the physical address of the location and ensure it matches the website and local directories (citations).

Upload hi-res photos, you can now segment these by including your logo, identity photos, photos at work, team photos, interior and exterior shots, and your products.

Choose as many categories as possible, although ensure you use the pre-filter option by Google which generates the options as you begin to type.

Add a unique description of your business, and make sure it’s optimised accordingly, but this really is the chance to sell your business, and using a few carefully chosen keywords might be smart too.

OPTIMISING THE LISTINGIt seems really obvious to say it, but simply setting up a Google My Business listing with nothing but the basics

won’t get you far. There’s a ton of information you can provide to Google so grab this opportunity and maximise it.

Add the types of payment you accept – it may not seem important but the more complete your profile, then the more you’ll look like teacher’s pet to Google.

Add your opening times (and be sure to add special hours for things such as Christmas and bank holidays).

Add a virtual tour of your business – essentially this is an indoor version of ‘street view’ which lets you see a location through a 360-degree photography. You can add a business view by hiring a Google-approved photographer.

Get reviews! (I cover this more in Part 3).

USING THE CORRECT LANDING PAGEWhen you optimise your Google My Business listing, ensure that the website link URL for each store, goes directly to the individual store pages, it makes for a better user experience and will be favoured as such by Google.

GOOGLE+I know. Don’t shoot the messenger, but Google+ and Google My Business have a lot of overlap, but because of that it’s not bad practice to post to your G+ page every now and again, as a rule of thumb I try to do it every week.

So I’ve covered off the first stepping stones to increasing your local organic visibility, but how do you now step it up a notch and become an authority for your products or services locally?

In Part 2 I discuss more about putting meat on the bones of what you’ve built out with your on-site local optimisation and the creation/optimisation of your GMB listing.

CONTACT US FOR TAILORED ADVICE ON BUILDING A BUSINESS CASE FOR DIGITAL INVESTMENT, OR ANY OF THE OTHER TOPICS COVERED.

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Now you’re well on your way with the basics of bossing Local SEO, check out the next titles in our series:

PARTS 2 & 3 COMING SOON