Tag: local seo

  • Before You Change Your SEO Strategy

    Before You Change Your SEO Strategy

    I had a call from a client in the auto repair industry. He asked if I’d be willing to talk to a fellow owner of several shops about a sales performance issue at one of their locations. He’d fired an agency, and after a few months, his new agency wasn’t faring any better, or at least the shop wasn’t. He didn’t want to change agencies; he just wanted an outsider’s perspective. So, of course, I was happy to talk with him.

    SEO Audit Conversation

    The initial focus was on the repair shop’s SEO performance. He wanted to know if there was something about the optimization for that shop that would cause it to underperform the other locations. On the surface, this seems like the right question. And, it was something to look into. 

    So, I agreed to draft a proposal for an SEO audit. But before we did that, I wanted to better understand the markets and the marketing they were doing for each location because he mentioned a couple of things that stood out to me.

    Likely A Market Issue

    First, there was an assumption that the demographics of the poorly performing shop should lead to higher revenue.  Of the three repair shops, its area had the highest average household income: about $250k. 

    The second thing mentioned was the type of promotions. They were discounts, free oil changes, and other price-driven incentives. But, no matter how good the promotions were, they didn’t drive new customers to the shop.

    I thought this might be a case of being too close to the issue to see it clearly. If you are familiar with the core market in the automotive repair industry, you might sense where I am going with this. 

    The short version is, high income does not universally equate to a good target market.

    For auto repair services, vehicle ownership and age in the area are key factors. To a large extent, they make up the addressable market. The best average age range of the vehicles is 6-12 years. At that age, they are owned (not leased) and require regular maintenance and repairs. Owners also tend to look for non-dealer resources due to cost – either real or perceived. 

    High-income households’ vehicle ownership is not a good profile for an auto repair business. They have newer vehicles. The younger cars tend to be under warranty, are often leased, and owners feel more comfortable going to the dealership for repairs and maintenance. 

    Local Auto Repair Market Analysis

    Before we ran the SEO audit, we conducted some research. We ran an in-depth review of the areas around the three repair shops. The report showed what our instincts and experience hinted at. The markets were substantially different. From the demographics, to the presence of high-end dealerships, to the density of repair shops-to-population, the high-income area screamed for a completely different approach to local marketing strategies.

    So, we’ll conduct the SEO audit. But SEO wasn’t the core issue. 

    Serve The Repair Shops’ Actual Customer Base 

    From a marketing perspective, this is where it gets interesting and fun. The high-income market is not concerned with discounts and free oil changes or tire rotations. Their vehicles are high-end and, even if older, well cared for. They want great service, convenience, expert certified mechanics, and confidence that the person taking care of their vehicle actually cares about their vehicle. 

    To attract these customers, highlight offerings that appeal to them. Look at things along the lines of:

    • Online scheduling and visibility into car history – Convenience.
    • Transparent, full diagnostic reports with each visit – Trust.
    • Concierge benefits – Service.
    • Friendly, courteous staff – Respect.

    Essentially, when a high-income customer is in the shop, they have to feel like they are the only customer. To a greater extent than others, they need to feel special. A discount won’t overcome a perceived issue or inconvenience.  

    Importance of Trusted Agency Partnerships

    The other aspect of the conversation that struck me is that his exchange with his current agency didn’t seem to transcend digital marketing, and in particular, SEO. I kind of get that. That’s the agency’s scope. And, to be honest, our tertiary review showed they were covering the bases quite well. I would not encourage him to leave them. 

    My suggestion to business owners is to strongly encourage your marketing partners to look outside their scope. Agencies are reluctant to do so at times because it might look like they’re trying to place blame elsewhere. But this isn’t about blame. It’s about helping clients succeed. And sometimes clients have to help agencies to help them.

  • Citation Building for Local SEO: A Beginners Guide

    Citation Building for Local SEO: A Beginners Guide

    Local Citations & Linkbuilding

    There are tons of components that go into a successful local SEO strategy. But for digital marketers and business owners, building citations is one of the easiest and most effective steps to building a comprehensive local SEO program.

    In this blog post, we’ll provide a beginner-friendly guide on the process of building citations and links so that you can begin optimizing your website and draw more customers through organic search results. Read on to learn the basics of citation building as part of a successful local SEO strategy.

    What are Local Citations and Why are They Important for SEO

    Local citations refer to online mentions of a business’s name, address, and phone number (sometimes abbreviated as ‘NAP’) on various directories, review sites, and blogs. 

    Citations on reputable directories and review sites like Yelp, Open Table, and Angies List, signal to Google and other search engines that a website is trustworthy and relevant to a particular locality. 

    With local search becoming increasingly competitive, having a robust citation and link profile has become paramount in improving a website’s search engine rankings and driving more traffic to a business’s website.

    How to Find the Best Citation Sites for Your Business

    We’ve all heard of the big business directories. Angi, Yelp, etc. And there are tons of lists and resources out that can point you towards some of the lesser known, but still important, national directories.

    But to really maximize the benefit for local SEO, it will be important to find niche or local-specific directories. How do you find these?

    One of the best ways to find these directories is to simply Google the keywords that you’d like to rank. 

    For example, restaurants can Google “best restaurants in [town].” The results page will contain a mix of restaurants but more importantly the directories, and review sites that cater to your niche and location.

    From here, you can begin to either claim your business profile if it already exists or sign up for the website and create a profile yourself.

    Finding the right citation sites can take some time and effort, but it is well worth it to ensure your business is seen by the right people in the right places.

    Creating a Consistent NAP Profile Across All Directories

    One of the critical elements of citation building is ensure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are the same across all directories. 

    If your business has been around for a while, chances are that some of the information has changed. Maybe you’ve relocated or altered the services you provide. 

    Most aggregators and directories don’t spend a whole lot of energy keeping their listings up to date so it falls on the businesses themselves to ensure everything is accurate.

    Doing so will solidify the authority and trustworthiness of your business and increase your chances of ranking for the keywords that matter to you.

    Citation Builder Tool

    Of course, most business owners are pressed for time as it is. So most folks don’t have the time nor the patience to scroll through SERPs and creating profiles and verifying emails.

    That’s why there are many tools and citation building services out there such as SEMRush, Moz, BrightLocal and many more.

    Services like these will recommend directories and other sites to create new NAP on. And many will even create these profiles for you.

    Wrapping up

    In conclusion, local SEO is an important tool for any business to stay competitive and gain visibility in the current digital marketing landscape. 

    By building local citations and links with consistent NAP profile, businesses are able to improve their visibility on search engine results pages. 

    With these best practices, businesses will be on their way to optimizing their local SEO rankings for maximum online success.

  • Service Area Pages

    Service Area Pages

    How Location Pages Can Boost Your Local SEO

    Service area landing pages are a critical–if sometimes overlooked–tool used in local SEO.

    Whether you call them location pages, town pages, areas served pages, or service area pages, they’re all essentially the same.

    In this article, we’ll take a look at how service area pages fit within your SEO strategy before going over best practices. 

     (And by the way, we’ll assume that readers will have a basic grasp of local SEO. But if you need a primer, check out our local SEO guide here).

    Service Area Pages & Your SEO Strategy

    What’s the point of creating service area pages? Why do we need them? 

    In short, it allows us to effectively target a larger, more diverse set of locally focused keywords. For example…

    Let’s say you own a moving company in the heart of Salt Lake City.  Most of your target keywords are going to include queries like moving companies, movers near me, movers in salt lake, etc. 

    These local-focused search queries will bring up the Local Pack on the results page. If you have a Google Business Profile (and you absolutely should!), many of your website clicks will come through these local pack results.

    Limits of Google Business Profile 

    But here’s the issue: 

    Local Pack results lean heavily on proximity. Meaning closer businesses will tend to rank higher than businesses far away. 

    Makes sense. 

    However, consider the consequences for our moving company example. Chances are, a Salt Lake City moving company wants to serve movers throughout the ENTIRE Salt Lake metro area. Not just those within a few-mile radius of their office.

    Salt Lake Local Map

    This is the problem: Your company wants to serve this entire map, BUT your Google Business Profile listing might only show up for someone searching from point A–next to your office in the heart of the city. And you probably won’t show up for someone searching from points B and C.

    This puts a huge cap on the effectiveness of your Google Business Profile listings and severely limits the reach of your local SEO and digital marketing.

    So now what?

    Well, in order to rank for relevant search queries at points B and C, we need to tell Google that your business serves these areas as well.

    And this is where service area pages come in.

    Expanding Organic Reach

    In order to reach users searching for moving companies out in Draper and Park City–points B and C–we’ll need to create pages that target geo-modified queries such as moving companies draper ut. 

    This allows us to target both (1) users searching for geo-modified queries like moving companies draper ut and (2) users searching for generic queries like moving companies from Draper. Without a service area page, we likely would not have ranked for either of those queries.

    Service area pages without a physical location will typically show up in the organic results (as in the image above) instead of the local pack. 

    Within our SEO strategy, service area pages generally target more specific geo-modified queries that are lower in search volume but also less competitive and, therefore, easier to rank for. 

    How to Build Service Area Pages

    Now that we know how these pages fit within our SEO strategy, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty. How do we best design and write service area pages for SEO?

    Step 1: Identify your locations. If your business has multiple brick-and-mortar locations, this part is easy. Create a page for each location. 

    On the other hand, if you have a single location or run a service-based business such as a handyman, plumber, moving company, construction, home improvement, etc., you’ll create a page for each town you want to do business in. 

    Step 2: Write your pages. They should provide a relatively comprehensive overview of the services you provide. Best practices suggest at least 300 words split into manageable paragraphs with informative header tags.

    Don’t be afraid to use (but not overuse) industry jargon. Nowadays, Google expects to see more than the keywords you’re trying to rank for. They want to see ‘secondary’ keywords that are related to your primary keywords.

    For example, if we want our moving company to rank for movers draper ut, we need to include secondary keywords such as household movers, international relocation, furniture hauling, full-service moving, etc. 

    Check out some of the top pages that rank for your target keywords and see what kind of language they incorporate.

    Step 3: Optimize your pages. Ensure your keywords appear in your URL, title, header, and meta descriptions. For example…

    LocationDraper, UTPark City, UT
    URLexample.com/areas-served/draper-ut-movers/example.com/areas-served/park-city-ut-movers/
    TitleMovers Draper, UT | My Moving CompanyMovers Park City, UT | My Moving Company
    H1Draper Moving CompanyPark City Moving Company
    Meta descriptionsMy Moving Company’s team of Draper movers provides unbeatable relocation services…My Moving Company’s team of Park City movers provides unbeatable relocation services…

    Step 4: Place a prominent call-to-action. There should be no question about how to engage your services. Whether it’s a big colorful CALL NOW button, a contact form, or directly scheduling service, clear calls-to-action will ensure higher conversion rates and more business.

    Step 5: Implement linking schemes. Without links pointing to your page, Google’s crawlers have no way of finding them. Link to your location pages from a parent /areas-served/ page, from the main navigation menu, or in natural locations in page copy throughout your site.

    Step 6: Add schema markup. This part is a bit more technical. If you have a dev team for your website, this is something they can help with.

    Schema markup is little bits of code that tell search engines exactly what your page is about. For example, if you have your office address on your location page or in your website footer, you can add markup that explicitly tells Google that this is your business address.

    This helps Google to make better sense of your page as well as provide information for Rich Results; additional information on the results page.

    Local SEO is increasingly becoming an essential part of any digital marketer’s toolbox, and building a reliable location page setup is a key part of that. Leveraging local search features can help businesses reach potential customers, boosting their visibility and benefitting both the customer and the business itself.

    Here is a bit about the concerns of duplicate content when building areas served pages.

    With this in mind, it’s important to take time crafting quality location pages for maximum impact – something that will benefit you for years to come!