- If you have a local business, then one of the single greatest marketing strategies available is showing up in the Google local maps, or a three-pack as it's often called,when someone's searching for a business just like yours. In fact, it's the closestthing to a magic button that I've ever come across.
Simply show up there, and get more calls, more clicks, morecustomers, and more sales and revenue for your business. That's why in today's video we're talking all about local SEO, and howto show up in the Google Maps. Let's get to it. Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart, modern marketing strategist, and welcome to the Modern Marketing Show, where we help you makemarketing that matters.
So if you're interested in learning about the latest and greatestmarketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks and tactics, well you may want to consider subscribing. All right, so it's no secret that SEO or search engine optimizationis a fantastic way to get more calls, more clicks, and essentially moretraffic to your business. I remember back when Ifirst started my agency years and years ago, I basically focused almost entirely on SEO.
Not just for my clients, butalso for my own business, and it was responsible formassive, massive uptick, and a huge growth in business over a very short period of time. So, I've seen the power of SEO firsthand on just how much of anincredibly positive impact it can have on your business. Which is why I'm such a big proponent and advocate of it, andwhy I still recommend and offer it to clients.
Because again it really justhas such a powerful impact on driving more traffic andcustomers to your business. But, SEO today isn't like it used to be. In fact there's been a lot of changes, and there's gonna continueto be as we move forward and into years to come. But one of the biggestand most notable changes is essentially user behavior. Meaning, most of yourcustomers are now searching from their mobile devices,and this is why things like the Google local maps, andthe three pack as it's called is so profoundly important.
And essentially makingsure that you're doing everything in your powerto optimize your business to show up in those top three results, especially when people are searching on their mobile devices. Now, I'm no mathematician or statistician, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that with over half of all searches taking place on mobile devices, and with the top threerankings getting somewhere between 38 and 49% ofclicks, depending on which source you check, well it's no secret then that those top threelistings are prize position, and are gonna get aton of business, right? It's the old Pareto principle 80/20 rule. Well, the top 20% of businesses are gonna get 80% of all the clicks, and therefore all therevenue opportunities. So how do you go about securing one of those rare, covetedand incredibly valuable top three rankings? Well that's what this video is all about.
So without further ado let's dive into my five top tips on how to optimize your business for local SEO, so you canappear in the Google maps. Now, tip number one is less of a tip and more of kind of awarning or an explanation of how all this stuff works. You see, over recent years, Google has been continuing to prioritize local listings, and essentiallyit's kind of trending towards voice search.
Meaning, a lot of people are asking their devices, asking Siri, asking Alexa, asking, oh Alexa is gonna start talking now. Alexa, stop. Yeesh. Anyways, so people are using these devices and essentially asking themfor, where is a dentist near me? Or where is a restaurant near me? Or, where's the closest chiropractor? Or things like that. So as these voice searches increase and we're seeing an upwardstrend and rise in them, well as they're gonnaincrease, Google is obviously going to continue prioritizing the results to give people what they want. So, this is one of thereasons that proximity is really important. Meaning, you do actually have to be kind of in the same city or same area as you're trying to rank for.
This is something that I've come across, and we've always tried to find little workarounds. We're gonna touch on onein just a few points, but it is important to notethat the closer you are to the area that you're trying to serve, the better your results are going to be, at least in regards to the Google maps. That's just one factor, right? So it doesn't mean that evenif you're right next door to the person searchingthat you're gonna appear first necessarily, becausethere's a ton of other factors that come into it, whichessentially is what we're gonna cover now with our next tip.
All right, so tip number two is all about on-page optimization. And when we're talkingabout on-page optimization, we're actually not talking about your Google business listing at all. We'll get to that in just a second. But rather we're talkingabout your website, which is going to link toyour Google business listing, and ideally your Google business listing is gonna link back to your website. And that's why this is allconnected and all important. So even while we're nottalking in this video about organic SEO, ororganic search engine optimization rankings, meaningtrying to rank your website in all the terms that aregoing to appear below the ads, below the maps, and essentially all the organic listings below,even though we're not talking about that, yourwebsite and how it's setup, and how it's structured,and how it's optimized is still incredibly importantwhen appearing in the maps. Now, by far the single most important tip when it comes to yourwebsite is making sure that your website is mobile responsive.
What this means is thatit's gonna look good across all sorts ofdifferent screen sizes. Whether we're talkingabout Apple or Android, or on a tablet, or whatever it is. It needs to look good, andin fact it should probably be designed for mobilefirst, and desktop second. Bit of a switch we've seenover the last couple years. Next, you want to makesure that you're using those relevant keywords inregards to your business, the category you're in,the city or province, or state, or country. Whatever it is, you want to make sure that you're including those keywords in the URL ideally, the title if possible, the H1 tags, H2 tags. All this kind of nerdy, techy stuff, that if you don't know at leastyour web developer will know and you can make sure that you're getting those proper keywords andrelevant keywords put on the page. Now, when I mentioned categories there, what we're talking about here is what category your business falls under.
Could be something like chiropractic, or accounting, or lawfirm, or whatever it is. Essentially whatever category is gonna be described as your business,whatever somebody would be searching online for,you want to make sure to include that relevantkeyword inside of your website. All right, the next thingthat we have to talk about, and now is as good atime as any, is the NAP, and the nap stands for Name,Address and Phone number. And the thing that you have to remember when we're talking about theNAP is consistency is key. Absolutely without a doubt,you need to make sure that the way that your business name, and your address and your phone number are written out stay the sameacross all of your profiles. Whether we're talkingabout your online website, whether we're talking aboutyour Google business listing, or whether we're talking about citations and directory links, whichagain we're gonna talk about in just a second. So, just how strict do you have to be when it comes to the NAP? And the answer is, very, very strict.
Almost no exceptions apply where you can deviate from the standardway of writing out your business name,address and phone number. This needs to be the same all the time. So, take a bit of time ahead of time, that's a lot of time, and really make sure that you're ironing out exactlywhat you want to be called, how you want to describeyour business address, and what format of phonenumber you're gonna use right down to the brackets and dashes. Once you've got this all ironed out, and seeing as we're still talking about on-page optimization for your website, one of the best places thatyou can put this information is right in the footer of your website. The beauty here is that it's gonna appear across all the different pages, and really send a tonof good quality signals back to Google, lettingthem know that your business is indeed local, andis located in the area that you say it is.
All right, so one quick questionthat people always ask is, what do I do if I have multiple locations, or we serve a wide area? And the answer here is,location specific pages on your website. Let's use Vancouver as an example. Let's say that your business is located right in Vancouver, but you also serve north Vancouver, west Vancouver, maybe Surrey, maybe Langleyand maybe Burnaby as well. Well what you would want to do is you would want tohave each one of these have their own dedicated location pages. You'd want to make sure to reference them on your homepage, and thenlink to those dedicated location pages throughout your site. This is gonna give enough of a signal back to Google that you should hopefully be able to appear in some searches, even though it may not be enough to appear in the Google local maps.
All right, moving on, tip number three is all about Google business optimization. And this is where therubber really hits the road. After all, this is goingto be the actual listing that appears inside of those Google maps. This is gonna be the thing that you really want to make sure isoptimized and setup correctly. Fortunately setting this up isactually not too complicated. There are a few gotchas though, so we'll make sure to cover them now. For starters, remember the NAP, right? That name, address and phone number, and make sure thatwhatever you're inputting into your Google business page is identical to what you want to call and reference yourbusiness on your website, and your business cards,and any other kind of marketing material you use.
Also, we talked about what category your business fell under,whether it was chiropractic or accounting, or a lawfirm, or whatever it is. Well, now's your opportunityto input that category right into Google Business as well, which is gonna allow you to appear when someone's typing in that search term. You also have the opportunityto type in other categories, but make sure they're relevant, and make sure they're something that your business actually offers.
After all there's nopoint appearing for terms that you don't offer orhave no interest in doing. From there, it's reallyjust a fill in the blanks type of exercise. You'll want to add your business hours, your services, where youoffer your services to, and whether clients come to you or whether you go to them. And all the usual things like that. Now where you're reallygonna want to spend a little bit of extra time isin your business description, because this is going to be essentially describing to Google, andof course to your customers, what your business does,where it's located, who you serve, what youoffer, all of that stuff. So, really take some time to carve out a truly professional and accurate, and search engine optimizeddescription for your business.
This means including relevant keywords about your business, the typeof category that you're in, the service area that you offer, and all the services that you provide. Next, your Google business page has a lot of space for photos, and you don't want to neglect this. So make sure to upload a ton of photos of the interior of your business, the exterior of yourbusiness, people at work, the videos if you have any,and also branding images like logos, things like that. Hmm, am I missing any? Interior, exterior. Ah yes, your team. So, pictures of youand your staff members, and any other team members you have.
Make sure to upload asmany pictures as possible. Now here's a little bitof an insiders hack. What you want to do here isyou want to label the pictures again with your business name,the category that you're in, the city or province, orstate or whatever it is that you're living in and trying to serve. And make sure to include all of that inside the picture name,because these are gonna provide valuable cues to Googleabout you and your business. If you want to get super, super nerdy here you can also use somethingcalled geo-tagging, which we're not gonna get into right now. But if you type in geo-tagphotos just into Google, you'll find a number of services available that'll allow you toupload a photo to them, and then actually map imprintthe location of the photo. Again, just one more cue to Google.
We've had pretty goodsuccess with it though, so if you don't mind alittle bit of the tech stuff, might be worth trying. All right, so we're almost done optimizing your Google business listing,but there's two more things we need to cover. Number one is you're going to want to try to get as many reviews as possible. Not just any reviews, five star reviews. This means being very selective about who you're tryingto get the reviews from, making sure they've hada positive experience, and then encouragingthem to leave a review. Now, getting Googlereviews isn't quite as easy as many other services. Because people are gonna needto have a Google account, meaning a Gmail addressor something like that. So, if you can find these people, you can encourage them to get a review, and you can get that five star review, it's gonna be a goodboost for your rankings. Lastly, Google Business is gonna give you an opportunity to write new posts, talk about events, essentiallyjust use their platform like they want you to use it. And my recommendation here is to do so, by creating a post or an event, or something like that atleast once every seven days. Which again will show that you're actively involved in the business.
All right, so now that we'vegot all that taken care of it's time to move onto our next tip, which is all about citations. Now fortunately we alreadytalked about the NAP, that name, address and phone number. And this is where it's gonna become more important than ever,because what we're doing with citations is we're going out and we're creating kind of mini-links or citations really of your business on different websitethat are gonna link back and essentially show that thisis where your business is, and provide more authority.
Maybe even drive some traffic. Now when it comes to collecting citations, there's three steps you want to take. Number one is by far the most important, and that's to make sure thatyou're being consistent. Again, name, address and phone number. The next thing is youwant to find any citations you may already have, andcorrect any inconsistencies. This means finding out ifmaybe your name was misspelled, or maybe your address wasformatted in a different way. Or maybe it doesn't even includeyour phone number at all. You're gonna want to takesome time to go out there and correct these citations,because bad citations are gonna kinda cancel outsome of your good citations.
And in the end, it's about good citations and really getting as many asyou can that move the needle. And that's pretty much our third point. You're going to want toget as many citations as you possibly can,especially relevant citations. Meaning, ones that are on the major sites like Yellow Pages, orYelp, Facebook, YouTube, that type of thing. All those count as citationlinks back to your site. But also maybe some niche ones, or ones that are in your local market.
Do some research and find outwhat your competitors have that you don't, and goabout acquiring all of them. If all that soundscompletely foreign to you and you don't even know where to start, great resources available. My choice is Whitespark. They offer a citation serviceas well as some research tools that you can use, no affiliatelink, just check them out. And the last thing that we needto cover here is backlinks. And, backlinks are essentially links that you're gonna get backfrom different website. Super original, right? Now unlike citations,we're gonna try and get pretty much as many as you possibly can. Backlinks you do wantto be selective about. Gone are the days of spamming your site with tens of thousands of backlinks from all over the world,all of which are gonna negatively impact your searchengine optimization rankings, and really tank your site.
So, you want to be careful, and you want to opt forquality over quantity. So, where's a good spot to start? Well, there's a couple here that are just proven optimizers forsearch engine optimization. Number one is the Better Business Bureau. Again, a massively powerfulsite with a powerful backlink. If you can get one ofthese and have it pointed to your website, fantastic. Number two is any localchamber of commerce, or business organizationsor anything like that in your local area.
Again, these tend to have a tonof clout and a ton of power. And again, they signifyboth relevance and power. So you're gonna get that realgood boost to your website. Lastly, there are a tonof local directory links, I know that are in your areathat you can reach out to and possibly get a backlink from. You may need to offer one in exchange. Not too negative, butobviously it's gonna be best if you can just get most ofthem coming into your site. Because that's gonna providemore of an authority signal to Google, and really helpto boost your rankings. Now, when it comes to,where should you be sending these links, and whatshould you be linking to? Whether we're talking aboutlinking to your website or linking to yourGoogle business listing, my recommendation is toprioritize your website, but if you can also get a link to your Google businesslisting, that's good as well as a secondary measure.
But again, prioritize your websites, send as much powerthere, and then make sure from your website you're linking to your Google business listing. I know it sounds a little bit complicated, but in the end this is the best way to kind of flow link juice allthe way through your network, and boost all your properties at once. All right, so there you have it. Now for some of you this isgonna be more than enough to get you started and well on your way increasing your localsearch engine optimization, and ranking in those local maps. But, if you'd like some additional support and someone to handle this for you, I'll make sure to link up my agency in the description below, sowe can take it off your plate if that's something youwant to have a chat about. All right, so thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the episode.
If so, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel and say hello in the comment section below. Also, I'll make sure tolink up a couple other great videos right here on the screen for you to check out that'll really help to take your business andyour marketing results to the next level, and way beyond that. All right so thanks so much for watching, and I'll catch you next time on the Modern Marketing Show.
Comments
Post a Comment