mixwest 2014 local seo strategies & secrets

LOCALSEO

Local Marketing Secrets

www.SiteStrategics.com

Who We Are

Site Strategics understands the art and science of properly structuring your web, mobile and social media programs. The metrics of search engine optimization (SEO) are increasingly complex and our experts rule the tools that provide the research required to satisfy stringent new search engine requirements.

Site Strategics curtails its business to Indianapolis, Indiana – but also works nationwide.

AN indianapolis internet marketing Agency


About UsEarly adopters

Site Strategics was established in 2004, with a primary focus on web site development for small, medium and large businesses in Indiana that not only were appealing designs, but focused on Success!

We pride ourselves on our ability to manage the intricate balance between marketing strategies, media vehicle selection, campaign management, creative thinking and application.

All areas are carefully considered to maximize your advertising effort.

SEARCHOPTIMIZATION SEARCHMArk

etingSOCIALMANAGEMENT

mo

08day

20yr

04

WEBDEVELOPMENT

LOCALOPTIMIZATION

CONTENTMARKETINGAPPDEVELOP

MENT


ERIN SPARKSSenior SEO CONSULTANT

Erin sparks

Professional skills

Erin Sparks is the owner and president of Site Strategics, a company he founded in 2004 that specializes in high-end Web services for small, mid-sized and large businesses in a format and language they can afford and understand. The company’s goal is to not only help its clients look good on the Web but to also help them be found by potential customers.

SEO D ESI GN COD I NG SEM SOCI AL R AD I O Voice

93

60 65

83

65

80

Erin SparksTHE DUDE


Our ShowWe love it – every

week

WWW.EDGEOFTHEWEDRADIO.COM

PODCASTS, VIDEOS : every Saturday

Local Landscape

Where your Customer is Looking

Search Engine Real Estate

PPC / SEM

Regular SEO


Local SEO

Regular SEO


Local SEO

Reviews


Location Impacts Results

What Local SEO is:“The practice of improving the quantity and the quality of traffic from search queries with a geographic intent” - MOZ

LOCAL SEO IS CHANGING:

competitorsreviews

Google Venice update

personalized search

Google+ local

Moving Field

Google Pigeon update

www.companydomainname.com

Venice Update

The Google Venice Update

• February 27, 2012• Local Results Returned• Localized results could be

pushing your rankings down• You don’t even need to be

logged in to see local results


Venice Update

“Local Intent” search = local results

I’m not even logged into Google

How do I get in here? I want it!


PigeonUpdate

PIGEON UPDATE : JULY 24th, 2014

• Deep Impact for Web Results• Does impact local search results rankings • Some local businesses may notice an increase or decrease in web

site referrals, leads and business from the change.• Deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds

of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.


PigeonUpdate

PIGEON UPDATE : JULY 24th, 2014What we see

• Local directory sites are getting better visibility in Google’s search results.• Google has fixed its “Yelp problem” and is now showing Yelp

pages at the top of search results when queries specifically include the word “Yelp.”• Well-known directory-style sites like Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor,

Yelp, and OpenTable


PigeonUpdate

JULY 24th, 2014What we see

• Similar things are happening on other search queries — but not all:• A search for “miami hotels” shows individual hotels in the carousel, followed by

nothing but directory-style pages in the organic results below — URLs from Hotels.com, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Kayak and even a list of hotels from Marriott’s website. Individual hotels don’t show until page two.

• A search for “chicago pizza” shows individual restaurants in both the carousel and almost completely through the first page of organic results.

• Searches for “dallas dentists” show several individual practices in the organic results, but “dallas restaurants” shows nothing but directory-style pages outside of the carousel.

Search Engine Land, Matt McGee, July 26

LOCAL SEO


What Affects Local SEO?

Getting LocalGrooming the results

On PageOptimization

Citations

Local Profiles

Reviews

Social Media


ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATIONAffecting changes on your site and blog to reflect LOCAL references

TITLE TAGS & META

NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER

CONTENT

BLOG

RICH SNIPPETS





Include your location in the title tag

TITLE TAGS & META




TITLE TAGS & META

Include your location in the META DESCRIPTION


CONTENT


CONTENT

CONTENT : Most common placing for address is in the Footer >>


ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION


How to use your Blog

BLOG

• Sponsoring a local event? Write about it

• Write about events in your area – are you involved?

• Include your location in posts mentioning your business directly




How to use your Blog

Don’t Forget about Authorship



“Structured markup is a way of annotating information already on your website to help Google and others understand information more precisely.”


RICH SNIPPETS

Place

Restaurant

Product

Review

Aggregate Review

Event



http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


RICH SNIPPETS : TESTING TOOL


LOCAL SITES & PROFILESSites with Local Intent:



LOCAL SITES & PROFILES


Make sure your address is consistent across all profiles




Verify all of your profiles, by email or phone call

Fill in as much information as possible, all are important areas

Local Sites

Newspapers Local Press

TV Stations

Radio

Local Charities

Local Business

Directories

Your County Council

Social for Local

BRAND INTERACTION


Social media


FACEBOOK

TWITTER

GOOGLE LOCAL / MAPS

PINTEREST / FOURSQUARE / YOUTUBE / FLICKR

ALWAYS LINK TO YOUR SITE FROM YOUR ABOUT US SECTIONS


Social media


• Photos• Videos• Payment Options• links


Social media


GOOGLE LOCAL

• Get your business on Google Local• Verify with Google (phone call or

postcard)• Include all information about your

organizationG

VERIFY YOUR SITE ON GOOGLE+


REVIEWS


• Major Factor In How Customers View Your Service

• Customers Look At That Before Even Seeing Your Site

• Weighing Factors : Negative Vs. Positive

• Top Salesman For Your Local Listings


REVIEWS : DO’s


• Be Prompt• Make it Easy• Follow up Your Initial Email• Be Creative


REVIEWS : DOn’ts


• DON’T offer an incentive• DON’T ask for Yelp Reviews• DON’T dictate what should be

written• DON’T send a link to review on

Google unless they have Gmail• DON’T pose as happy customers to

increase your review count

Don’t get angry if you receive a bad review


CITATIONS

“Citations are defined as “mentions” of your business name and address on other web pages, even if there no link to your website”



CITATIONS

• Company Name, by itself.• Company name & phone

number.• Company name, phone

number, & address.• Company name, phone

number, address, & link.• etc.



CITATIONS

• Structured Citations

• The most common citations are found on business listing sites like yellowpages.com, yelp.com, superpages.com, etc. These are referred to as structured citations.



CITATIONS

• Unstructured Citations

• Citations can also often be found on blogs, newspaper websites, event listing websites, job websites, government sites, etc. These are referred to as unstructured citations and can be extremely valuable to your local rankings.



CITATIONS

• HOW TO FIND THEM?

• USEFUL TOOLS:• Whitespark.us


https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder

MOBILETHE LOCAL EFFECT


Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). Mashable called 2013 the Year of Responsive Web Design

RESPONSIVEWHERE YOUR

CUSTOMER IS


March 18th Article in TheNextWeb.com:

NPD: US homes now hold over 500m Internet-connected devices with apps, at an average of 5.7 per household.


CUSTOMER IS


Bounce rate• Although this may not be the most talked about component of SEO, bounce rate

it is still very important to your rankings. Search engines take note if a user

clicks on your website and immediately returns to the search engine page. To

search engines, this means that the user did not find what they were looking for

and, worse, your site may not be the best option to rank high for that term.

• If your mobile site does not include all of the content from your desktop site

users may become frustrated when trying to find something that does not exist

on their device. If you do not have a site optimized for mobile viewing users are

more likely to leave and return to the search engine to find a site that is easy to

read and navigate on their screen size.


CUSTOMER IS


Best practices on mobile

SEO• Responsive web design. Considered industry best practice and is

recommended by Google. This includes using CSS media queries for

device rendering, and using uniformed HTML across all devices.

• Maximize Site Speed. A faster site will provide a better mobile user

experience.

• Sites first, apps later!. Apps are limited in their reach, while sites

will drive traffic. 50% of consumers would not recommend a

business with a bad mobile site, while 40% said they would use a

competing business if it provided a better mobile experience.

• Researching your mobile audience. Prior to creating your mobile

site, it is imperative to understand the wants and needs of whom

you are trying to reach.

• Optimize your mobile content. Mobile users are often on

the go and do not have the same goals as those sitting

behind a computer. Create custom mobile content to give

researchers exactly what are looking for.

• Accessible desktop pages to mobile searchers. Point blank:

An unreachable desktop page is unusable to mobile

searchers.

DO NOT:

• Separate mobile URLs.


CUSTOMER IS


FREE MOBILE HEALTH CHECKhttp://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-healthcheck-go/(Sign up for Basic)

CRAZY EGGhttp://www.crazyegg.com/overview(Mobile Click Tracking Tool)

iPAD PEEKhttp://ipadpeek.com/

Tips for MobileGet started!

ready.mobi PAGE TESThttp://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN

RESPONSIVEPXhttp://responsivepx.com/(Variable Screen Sizes)

http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-healthcheck-go/



http://www.crazyegg.com/overview

http://ipadpeek.com/

http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN

http://responsivepx.com/

MobileSearch

What about Mobile Search?

ROUGHLY 40% OF ALL MOBILE SEARCHES ON GOOGLE HAVE LOCAL INTENT


DownloadeGet started!

EDGE OF THE WEB RADIO SHOW

DOWNLOAD THIS PRESENTATION

Give Usa Shout!


Contact UsLOVE TO TALK

plus.google.com/+Sitestrategics Linkedin.com/SiteStrategics

skype.com/SiteStrategics

youtube.com/SiteStrategics twitter.com/SiteStrategics

facebook.com/SiteStrategics


3725 East Southport RoadSuite AIndianapolis, IN 46227

[email protected]

+1 317 882 8500

Site Strategics goal is to bring high-end Web services to small and mid-sized business owners in a format and language they can afford and understand. The Indianapolis company’s goal is to not only help its clients look good on the Web but to also help them be found by potential customers.

Contact UsWHERE WE ARE


Our ShowWe love it – every

week

WWW.EDGEOFTHEWEDRADIO.COM

PODCASTS, VIDEOS : every Saturday

Thank You

mixwest 2014 local seo strategies & secrets

Marketing

local search results

web results

search queries

local businesses

local results im

web search capabilities

search features

com local intentsearch