Local SEO
Search engine optimization and local SEO, the organic component of search engine results, essentially make or break local businesses. Most business owners think of people searching for their brand. When it comes to Google search outside of referrals, it’s all about the local search intent of site visitors looking for specific product/service offerings. Any deviation from this very targeted focus or vague content can prevent your business from being found by people looking for what you offer. We start every client with a free local SEO consultation and assess the general situation and set goals with you to put you in front of customers on top of search.
Google Business Profile (GBP), also formerly known as Google My Business (GMB), requires a lot of attention for managing your local search business listings and, more importantly, being found for them. Fortunately, we do digital marketing for you to ensure your physical location and online presence to cover your service area ahead of your competitors. We follow the algorithm trends from Google and Bing so you can rest comfortably knowing your online presence is fully managed without getting caught up in the ongoing minutia of SEO. When working on client sites, we consider all local search ranking factors, both internal and external. Before starting any campaign, we build you a custom local SEO strategy tailored to your business and client needs.
How Much Does Local SEO Cost?
Our local SEO pricing depends on needs, but you can expect to pay upwards of $1,000 per location per month in North America, and $750 for each additional location. What sets one location apart from the next is the work required to get you ranked and the region’s overall competitiveness. We perform full technical SEO, local SEO, and content audits as part of the service package to immediately outline what that looks like. We’ve found that most of our customers require copywriting to optimize and better target pages, based on our local market research. Typically, SEO copywriting is priced separately, but you’d know exactly what you need in our initial local SEO audit. With new clients, we require a minimum of a 90-day commitment to ensure you get the most value from our work. After this, unless otherwise specified, we’re on a month-to-month basis, and you can cancel at any time with 30 days’ notice. The fact that some of our clients have been working with us since 2010 gives you a sense of how confident they are in our work. For those who just want a general idea of where they’re at and some feedback, we offer hourly consulting at $250/hr, with a minimum of 2 hours. Never underestimate how much you can do in a day, month, or year.
How Long Does Local SEO Take?
We’ve seen top local SEO results as fast as within a day. Much of it depends on Google and the popularity of the search query, as well as on what’s already been done. It’s a pretty good feeling to see top 10 results within a couple of days when everything goes perfectly, but it can take up to 3 months from the time the new content and main adjustments are applied because of the complex way Google’s indexer sorts web pages. Google’s crawl rate often depends on the integrity, authority, and popularity of your site, as well as the popularity of the search query people are using. We have ways to get Google to see new content, but realistically, 3 months after web page changes is when you should start to see your site really improve for pretty much any marketer in the areas worked on and published. While nobody can guarantee top Google results, we can tell you it’s never been more evident to us which local SEO ranking factors matter. You risk nothing by doing a preliminary FREE local SEO audit with us to determine where you stand.
Google Maps
Start getting people to search for you locally by earning positive reviews and being seen on mobile searches, which make up the majority of searches for local business owners. If you’ve ever seen what’s known as the map pack up top, aka map pack, you’ll want to show up first there, as it’s generally the first impression people get of your business.
Local Business Profile Management
We offer local SEO audits to optimize your local business search presence so you can start showing up for the exact services you want to be known for from people actively searching for your product service offerings. Whether it’s Apple Business Connect, Bing Places for Business or Google Business Profile, we have your local business presence covered. Whether you’re a small business or franchise with thousands of locations, we’ve got local SEO strategies to manage and optimize your local business profiles to put them ahead of the crowd, even against serious competitors with serious reviews. Every detail from the business owner type, date started, products, to accessibility entered in full with the right information is critical.
Local Business Citations
We will run a local SEO business citation search on your industry and competitors to find local link-building opportunities. Unlike our competitors, we focus only on sites that are well-indexed at the top of search results and relevant to your client’s interests. It’s often said that citations are dead, and that’s true for spammy business directories. However, for high-authority links, we’re seeing clients secure business for even the most competitive local SEO terms. A couple of new business clients here and there really can add up fast!
Local Search Presence
Most business owners don’t have the time to do social media marketing, directory listings, link building, and monitor their local search results, never mind cleaning up their phone numbers across the web for directories. When it comes to showing up locally in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), you will need your name, phone number, and address, all consistently listed across platforms, with backlinks known as local business citations. Consider directories we all love to hate, like Yelp and thousands of others, looking for your business name. You’ll want to ensure your Google search presence is consistent to gain more authority.
NAP Management and Cleanup
Name, Address, Phone number (aka NAP) needs to be consistent across primary ranked websites, but in general, those hawkers of this are selling kind of a useless service, as most directory pages are neither visited nor indexed well enough for Google to care about. We focus on relevant websites that rank well, as this impacts your lead flow and authority.
Local SEO Keyword & Intent Research
When it comes to knowing what services you offer to the common searcher looking for that specific thing, your on-page strategy has to be perfect to show up in the organic results. There is probably no single part of online marketing that will generate more leads for you than search optimization more cost-effectively. We provide SEO copywriting at pretty affordable prices that help you turn more local website visitors into paying customers.
Local SEO Tips To Rank Higher on Google:
Prompt Service
Answering your phone and any messages promptly is key to getting pushed ahead of slow-to-respond competitors in the Google local pack, also known as the map pack.
Negative Review Management
If you want to do well in the long term with local pack results, you’ll inevitably get a bad review, and it’s best to respond immediately with an authentic, empathetic response that doesn’t divulge any personal details. More often than not, we’ve found that a majority of people, if followed up with a call, will remove their negative review from your local listing. We educate clients on how to earn more reviews organically in a manner that is respectful to all parties and keeps your business growing on autopilot.
Consistent Local Business Listings
Being consistent in your hours, services, and descriptions, especially your NAP, will make you more likely to appear on top of search engine results. It’s surprising how many businesses don’t keep their details up to date, and one of the top results we see for negative reviews is hours that don’t reflect their operations.
Local SEO Ranking Factors
Local SEO ranking factors include responsiveness to calls, client reviews, responsiveness to any form of contact, consistent information across NAP and profile details across the web and highly focused content that closely matches your local business profiles. Google considers consistency across local link directories, known as business citations, to be an important factor in whether to trust a local business enough to place it at the top of the map pack.
Google’s ranking is based on Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust among hundreds of signals. You’ll want to showcase all of this with complete marketing signals to stand out. Google largely weights local signals in local SEO to deliver excellent customer service and is looking for consistent behaviour rather than fly-by-night operations, which tend to be inconsistent. We know exactly what that looks like and have mentored hundreds of businesses, from SMBs to enterprises, over the past 20 years. Incomplete profiles do not look good to users nor signal to Google that you’re trustworthy. If you’re confused, schedule a FREE local SEO consultation, and we can help manage this for you!
On-Page SEO
Potential customers will be looking at your website, so your on-page content strategy for local SEO has to match the services and products listed on your Google Business Profile. Our keyword research using NLP (Natural Language Processing) analyzes search queries across the most competitive regions in North America, giving us the exact terms we need to match what Google/Bing are actively looking for when users commonly search for your business’s product or service offerings.
Link Building for Local SEO
Local link building and local citations are signals to search engines like Google and Bing that you’re an authentic business worthy of appearing in front of potential customers. We’ve noticed that when a business is first submitted to a prominent high-authority directory, Google Business Profile approval is sometimes skipped. Getting the right links from the right places can be time-consuming, but we’ve got that down to a science and can handle the heavy lifting for you. It’s unlikely that most fake listings would go to the trouble of Yellow Pages and other important local listings if they were fake. Putting in the effort in these areas is the trust symbol Google seeks to often weigh the authority and authenticity of your business reviews, including.
Local SEO Audit
We have mastered local SEO and developed our own proprietary local SEO audit, which we use to work with businesses and agencies alike to help businesses’ online search presence in the map pack stand out ahead of the crowd. Missing the small details can be the difference between the first and last. A common misconception about local SEO is that you’ll only show up for the services listed in the first few spots, but the truth is that Google scans your website and others to discover what your business is about. In our local SEO audit, we’ll verify and check that you show up first in the map pack by hitting all the local search signals.
Local SEO Schema
Location schema structured markup is one of the many factors to consider when ranking locally with an on-page strategy. It allows Google to pull the information from the page and ensure it aligns with the location profiles. If they’re consistent, it’s another signal of trustworthiness and a ranking factor for search engines.
Local Business Profile Management
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile GBP, formerly Google My Business listing (GMB), will be one of your most clicked-on and highly converting pieces of marketing online locally at the very lowest cost. If you want your Google Business Listing to stand out, you’ll need help, and we’ve been doing this for our customers since it first came out, when it was originally named Google Places in 2008. Yes, that’s right, Google’s now changed its name 3 times, and we’ve seen it all! What remains the same is consistency and maintaining strong, consistent quality in your online marketing efforts. So whether you’re still calling it Google Places or a GMB listing, we don’t mind. (but if it’s an SEO in name, that’s your first red flag).
Apple Business Connect
The newest addition to the local marketing space is Apple Business Connect, which requires your DUNS and Bradford number to be entered, along with the relevant authenticating business documents. Consider that over half of all online searches are conducted on mobile phones, with half on iPhones. As Apple Business Connect is fairly new, you’ll want to jump on board and trailblaze with us as we stand out from the crowd, generating new leads with little to no effort!
Bing Places for Business
Many businesses don’t know this, but over 10% of all searches are conducted through Bing, and having a Bing Places for Business Profile is low-hanging fruit to rank over competitors who have ignored one of the cheapest forms of marketing, with generally the least competition.