5 Kick-Ass Methods to Optimize Your Local Search Marketing — #1

#1 Maximize Your Local Business Listings

By Lissa Monroe

IMHO, this is one of the most effective ways to bolster your local SEO.  Claiming, verifying and optimizing your business listing information ensures availablity and consistency. No missed phone calls or lost patrons due to bad info on the web. One bad listing can affect dozens of others, perhaps even hundreds across third-party sources.  

Search engines are constantly sweeping third-party sources to gain a stronger understanding of your business. When your business information isn't there or incorrect or incomplete, this absolutely drops your rank in search results.

What you can do now:

1. Find the leading local listing sites, including root directories, to make sure your business information is there, is correct and complete, that you have claimed and verified your listing.  Delete duplicate listings. Take the time to get it right the first time.
   
   
2. Content, content, content!!  Pack as much key information as you can on your local sites.  Content makes your listings more informative, useful to potential customers.
   
   
1. Website link
2. Videos
3. Photos are great tools for SEO. Geo-tag them with relevant keywords and location information. 
   
   
3. Make sure your business is listed in the correct categories. Your results will be diminished if your information is not properly categorized.
   
   
4. Automate updating your core listing information by using root directories such as Neustar Localeze or Acxiom.
   
   
5. Create separate listings for each location. This is not to be confused with service areas!

A Layman's Take on Schema.org

Let me start off by willingly admitting that I am not a coder. Or a programmer. Or whatever other title you give to the Brilliant Ones that see a bunch of numbers and //'s and  make sense of it all.  That is not me.  But, because I am a web designer, local marketing consultant and SEO'er, when schema.org came to the forefront, it got my full attention. Yes, it's that cool, that necessary and even a bit revolutionary (more on that below).

For the laypeeps, here is a quick, simplified  rundown....

Three very big search engines, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo (uh... what?! Three huge competing search engines working together for the benefit of webkind??!! Revolutionary.), got together to create a structured data markup, (information formatted in a universally understandable way), to improve the web, help understand info on webpages and provide richer search engine results. 

Schema.org provides this common language that can shared and understood by the major search engines.  Search Engines use schema.org to create rich snippets (the few lines underneath a search result). The more enticing the snippet, the greater the likelihood of that impression becoming an action. It is a great way to add more information to your website for users to discover and search engines to use.

To get started, check out these resources:

schema.org
support.google.com/webmasters
www.searchenginejournal.com

And there's even a plugin for Wordpress here. (Don't say I never gave ya nothin')

Be on the Lookout for Review & Confirm Listing Emails from Google Places

From Jade:

    We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we’re asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time.

    We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled “Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing”.

    If you did receive this email, don’t worry. Please log into Places for Business, take a look at your business information, update it if necessary, and click “Submit.” You’ll need to do this for all listings in your account by February 21, 2014, so they can stay on Google Maps. Otherwise, you’ll need to add your business information and undergo PIN verification using Google Places again.

    If you have any trouble going through the above steps or need assistance updating your business information, please send us an email, and we’ll gladly assist you.

    Thanks again for your time.

    Jade Wang, Google Business Community Manager

#5 The Google+ Widget

By Lissa Monroe

The most under-utilized Google+ feature in the universe.

Embed this fantastic script in for a company page or personal G+ page directly in a website page or post. The widget allows you to show visitors of your blog or website that you have a Google+ account. A great opportunity to grow your follower base!

For yours, visit widgetsplus.

Need help? Email lissa@freshmintmarketing.com.

Good Googley News!

Google is now offering a 'preview' of an unpublished, unverified Business Page. Prior to this change, owners were unable to see how the Page would look until the verification process and publication time was complete. Often, three to five weeks would pass before seeing finally seeing the hard work in pixel.

A big plus to this change.... since you can preview before publishing, watch for any awkward images or wording you would previously have sees post-publication.  Sparing you the agony of editing the content and waiting another few weeks for the changes to publish.

From Jade (Google's Local Expert and liaison to people like me):

    If you’re creating a listing in the new Places for Business dashboard, now, you won’t have to wait to complete PIN verification before you can see the +page, for most businesses. Just follow the link from your dashboard to see the new page. You will be able to use Google+ social features on this unverified page, but please note -- you still need to complete PIN verification before the page will start showing up in Google Maps and across other Google properties.

    If you’ve got an unverified local Google+ page (made using Google+ in the local business/place category), then we still encourage you to PIN verify this page so that it can start appearing in Google Maps and across other Google properties.

    If you’re creating a local Google+ page (using Google+ selecting the local business/place category) for a business that we think is already in Google Maps, then you may need to go through both PIN verification and our admin request flow before you can manage the page.

#4 Rock the Vote

 By Lissa Monroe

Install the Google Plus (+1) voting script on your Homepage.

Social sharing buttons are not used enough. They're simple, effective... and did I mention free??  Attract new followers and garners some pluses on your page just by installing the script. No brainer, huh?

If you need assistance installing sharing buttons on your site, please email lissa@freshmintmarketing.com. We'll be happy to help!

#3 Be Organic

By Lissa Monroe

Avoid a B*tchslap

Having 1,000 active and engaged followers is a whole lot better than 10,000 inactive, bored, irrelevant or fake followers.  This also protects you from the Penguin-style Google bitchslap for  abusing circle shares and fake follower schemes

In terms of SEO, your goal should be to organically build a collective group of followers that actually want to follow you for your content, comments and shares.  By working to build a quality-based following, you can create a super-channel for content distribution that will amplify discussion and rippling effects….all of which filter back to Authorship which in turn helps SEO.