Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

I like to think of SEO as points google and other search engines gives you for doing the things they want you to do. The more information you give Google the more points they give you and the higher your business will show up on Google search and map results. There are two types of SEO. Local SEO, which is what we are working on now, that helps you appear on local searches like “Best Plumber in my area” and then there is general SEO for searches like “How do I unclog my sink”. Your Google My Business profile is the most important step for local SEO so I have created a class all about your Google profile. 

The three main categories Google uses to rank your business for local searches are relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is based on how you fit the specific search. So if someone searches for “plumbers that specialize in kitchen sinks” and “kitchen sinks” is listed as one of your services you have a higher relevance than a plumber who doesn’t. Distance is based on the location of the person searching. If someone searches for “plumbers in Schaumburg” and that is one of your service areas then you are better off than someone who doesn’t take the time to list all their service areas and just relies on their address. Last prominence is based on your standing in the market. If someone searches “coffee near me” Starbucks is going to have more weight behind it because of its prominence. This is something you will continue to build as long as you have a business. Getting reviews and making sure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is in as many places as possible are two ways to raise your prominence.

Sign up or search for your business at https://biz.yelp.com/. Click manage my free listing. Search for your business name and zip code. If your business isn’t on yelp yet it will step you through creating your own page. Below are free options from Yelp for Business.

• NAP (Name, Address, Phone, URL) Make sure these are identical on each site.
• Add up to 3 business categories.
• Service Area. Add up to 6 service areas by their Neighborhood, ZIP, City or County. If you add a service area you are given the option to hide your address in the case you don’t see customers at your location.
• Amenities. These will be listed on your profile.
  • Accepts Apple Pay, Credit Cards, Google Pay and Cryptocurrency all as their own option.
  • Wi-Fi.
  • Offers Military discount.
  • Open to all.
  • Black-owned, Women-owned, Latinx-owned all as their own option.
  • Masks required.
  • Contactless payments.
  • Social distancing enforced.
  • Temperature checks
  • Staff wears masks
  • Hand sanitizer provided.
  • Staff wears gloves.
  • In-person visits.
  • Sanitizing between customers.
• Hours. You can use the Add more hours button in order to add breaks like lunch breaks.
• On the hours page you can close your location.
• Special Hours like thanksgiving and New Years.
• Specialties, History, Meet the business owner. All three sections give you the ability to write about the categories. On the business owner page you can add an image of yourself.
• Photos and videos. Yelp decides the order of these unless you pay for the Slideshow add-on.
• Maybe most importantly you can response to reviews written on Yelp.
• People can also message your business directly through Yelp. Make sure to respond in a timely fasion because Yelp will list your average response time.

Paid for options. These are listed under Page Upgrades.

• Business Highlights $2/day. Allows you to list business attributes like Locally-owned, Certified professionals, available by appointment, and more.
• Slideshow $1/day. This shows multiple images from your business in a slideshow format.
• Logo $1/day. Add your logo to the top of your page.
• Remove Competitor Ads $2/day. Yelp will show ads for competitors on your page if they are available. You have to pay in order to remove them.
• Call to Action $2/day. Add an offer like 20% off.
• Portfolio $2/day. Create projects with multiple photos showing off each product.
• If you pick all of the upgrades you get 40% off for a total of $6/day.
• Yelp Connect $180/month. Unlimited posts on your Yelp Business page. Anyone who contacts you, visits your page, or leaves a review will automatically be added as a follower.
• Gift Certificates. Yelp takes 30%. The gift certificates are listed as deals so you offer an amount of money they can use on your business for a lower price. For example $100 for $75. Yelp shows the discount percent on the deal box.
• Ads. You can set up your daily spend to make sure you don’t pay too much every month. Ads are limited to a photo, your business name, business categories, a few lines of text and a button. You might be offered $300 for ads when you sign up. So ads won’t cost any money until all $300 is gone.

• Claim your Google Business profile at business.google.com 
• Once you fill out your info you will receive a post card in the mail with a code to verify your business location. This allows you to use all the Google Business functions. 

For a detailed breakdown of everything Google My Business see the full post. 

• In order to create a Facebook Business page you need to first have a personal account. Once you log into your personal account click the plus button at the top right of the page. Choose “Page” from the dropdown.
• To create your page you need a page name, up to three business categories and a page description.
• The business page is pretty simple to fill out with your information, pictures, videos, posts and more. You can run ads, put up offers and events as well.
• Below are some of the options on your Facebook Business page, but an entire post is coming soon. 

Page visibility

• If you want to take the page down for updating this allows you to unpublish and only managers of the page will be able to see it.

Visitor Posts

• Facebook allows others to publish to your page by default.
• You Can either turn this off or set it so you get to review a post before it is published to your page. Keep in mind that if you allow publishing from others even if you don’t approve a post it may still appear in search, News Feed and other places on Facebook.
• You can also allow posts, but not allow photos and videos to be uploaded to the page.

Post and Story Sharing

• You are able to turn on or off the ability for others to share your page’s posts, events and stories.
• Posts and events are on different toggles than stories so you can have them on or off independent of each other.

Audience Optimization for Posts

• This gives you the ability to target or exclude specific audiences from your posts. This is just turning the option on or off. You can target by factors like age, location and interests.

Messages

• People can message your business through your Facebook page or posts you add a contact button through. This will turn that feature off and hide all posts that have the contact button. The only reason to take this down is if you will never chat back with someone. If you have the Facebook messaging app on your phone this is an easy way to answer questions from customers and Facebook even gives you suggestions as answers.

Tagging Ability

• This gives followers the ability to tag items and people in your images and videos. This is turned off by default.

Others Tagging this page

• This allows others to tag and image or video and say that it is your page/business in that photo. So if someone takes a picture of your building and puts it in their timeline they can then tag the image as you.
• You can also let people who tag you in an Instagram post and then send that post to Facebook to transfer that tag to your Facebook page. You need to link your Facebook and Instagram accounts for this option. That will be covered in a future lesson.

Country Restrictions

• You can hide your page from different countries by either put it on a “hide this page” from that country list or if you only want to be in a few countries you can add those countries to a “only show this page” in those countries.

Age Restrictions

• Limit to 17+. 18+, 19+, 21+ and labeled as alcohol related. If you pick an age restriction then people under that age will not be able to visit your page.

Page Moderation

• Clock posts with specific words or emojis. You can do this word by word or by uploading a spreadsheet.

Profanity Filter

• You can set this to moderate or strict and is based off of what the Facebook community sees as inappropriate words.

Similar Page Suggestions

• On by default this allows Facebook to share your page to others who visit pages like yours. This is a double-edged sword. If you want to show up on other’s pages you must allow them to show up on yours in a similar pages section.

Page Updates

• This creates a post every time that you update a detail on your page. This is on by default and can be a little much if you are making lots of changes. Also if you are trying new headers and logos best to turn this off so you don’t post 3 headers you will end up not using.

Post in Multiple Languages

• You can write a post in different languages and Facebook will show the language that is most relevant to the visitor.
• Any comments will be posted below all languages so those aren’t broken up depending on who is viewing them

Translate Automatically

• If a visitor comes onto your page and there is a language available that they speak it will automatically be translated for them.

Comment Ranking

• This favors posts with the most likes and replies. Also verified pages and people will be at the top. This can be confusing for visitors because the most recent comments might be farther down the page.

Content Distribution

• This will either let people or stop people from downloading your videos from Facebook.

Download Page

• This shows a link that takes you to another page where you can download your data from Facebook. This can be done by specific groups like page settings or posts, or you can download all the data at once.

Merge Pages

• If you have two pages with similar names and topics you can combine them into one page. Facebook has to check and allow your pages to be merged.

Remove your page

• Use this to delete your whole facebook page.

Page Info. This is where you can edit your general information.

• Username – With a username you can create a shorter URL to share with customers.
• Description – This is a shorter description of your business page. Father down the page info section is a longer description box where you get up to 1000 characters. These are shown right next to each other on your page so you want them to work together and not repeat e the same things.
• Location – you can have a full address or as little as your zip code. This is good if you don’t have a physical location.
• Service area – you can have up to 10 service areas
• Privacy Policy – you can link to a privacy policy on your website
• Impressum – This is specific business info that is needed in Germany and a few other countries.

Sign up your business: https://www.bingplaces.com/ 

• Bing allows you to import your google my business info which is not only a great time saver, but you know all you information will be exactly the same
• You can even have your business profile sync so when you make an update on google it is reflected in Bing.
• Once you sync bing will step you through finishing your profile.

Sign up your business: https://www.yext.com/pl/yahoo-listings/index.html

• You will put in your business info and it will scan for your business.
• You will now get a long list of websites your businsess is on and what is wrong or missing.
• Skip to the end of the page and click on “Fix all errors”
• You will see your general business info. Make sure this is correct and continue.
• You will now see a sales page to use their product. Below the table is a link that says “Claim your Basic Listing only on Yahoo here.” Click this and then fill out the following form.
• You will receive an email to verify your business
• Click on the link in your email and pick a password.
• You can now go in and edit the rest of your listing.

Sign up your business: https://mapsconnect.apple.com/

• You need an apple ID to connect with apple maps
• You then search for your business and claim it or create a new one.

Sign up your business: https://getstarted.thryv.com/free-listing-yp/ 

• You search for your busines and if not there you can fill in info for your business.
• They call you to verify the account with a 4 digit code they give you.
• You are then able to either add to your profile or scan your other online listings.
• Business Name*
• Business Address*
• City, State, Zip*
• Business Phone*
• Business Owner Name*
• Business Email*
• Web Site
• Business Category*
• Description
• Hours, products and services
• Images
• coupons

Sign up your business: https://www.thumbtack.com/pro 

• This directory is a little different because the only way to show up is to sign up. The profiles are more robust.
• You first tell thumbtack what you do and where. They will let you know how many people are using Thumbtack to look for that service each month.
• You will then walk through making your profile.
• You pay for the leads that you get through thumbtack. You are able to prepay for packs that come with extras like webinars and guides
• You will set up the parameters for what jobs you can accept and how much the lead costs is dependent on these parameters. So someone with a budget of $500 will cost a lot less than $5000
• You can set up your max weekly spend to make sure you don’t spend too much each week. The lead might end up not doing the job so if you have 10 people back out you don’t want to owe too much.
• The more photos, projects and reviews you have on your page the more leads you will get. So take your time and fill out the page.

Sign up your business: https://knoxville.app.bbb.org/accounts/login.html and click on “don’t have an account yet.”

• Once you create an account and validate your email address log in
• Click on the “add Business” button
• You will serach and if your business exists you can claim it or add you business if it doesn’t.
• Fill out a simple form and wait for the BBB to accept your business

Sign up your business: https://www.manta.com/add-your-company

• Manta Claims:
  • Business listing with 60+ directories
  • Featured business listing on Manta.com
  • Online Visibility Report
  • Google My Business setup coaching
  • Duplicate Listing Removal
  • Monitor customer reviews across Google, Facebook, and Yelp
  • Ongoing professional support
• Price: $99/month ($74.92/month if paid annually)
• Where they list:
  • Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, Foursquare, Amazon Alex, YellowPageCity.com, Citysearch, Dun & Bradstreet, MerchantCircle, Local.com, Superpages, ShowMeLocal, LocalDatabase, EZlocal, YellowMoxie, CitySquares, ChamberofCommerce.com, USCity.net, AmericanTowns.com, eLocal, Yasabe, GoLocal247, YellowPagesDirectory, Pointcom, ABLocal, Opendi, 2findlocal, My Local Services, iGlobal, Soleo, AroundMe, HotFrog, Insider Pages, Find Open, Banks.com, Pitney Bowes, YP.com, TripAdvisor, Fliggy, Yandex, Apple, TomTom, TeleNav, MapQuest, LocalPages, Navmii, Cyclex, iBegin, Credibility Review, LocalStack, Yalwa, Brownbook.net, Bizwiki.com, HERE, Baidu, CK Map, Avantar, Where To?, Tupalo, 8coupons, Factual, Zomato, Postmates, Property Capsule, Uber.

• Moz Local Claims:
  • Listing Management & Distribution – Actively manage location data to optimize local search performance. Partners include: Bing, Foursquare, Apple Maps, Waze, & Factual.
  • Reputation Management – Respond to the latest reviews and analyze review sentiment on the most popular sites without having to visit them individually.
  • Deep Google & Facebook Integration – Gain valuable insights into your Google and Facebook presence, and publish your data to the platforms with ease.
  • Automated Duplicate Deletion – Eliminate confusion with our fully automated process for identifying, confirming, and deleting duplicate listings.
  • Social Posting – Engage with consumers to share news, offers, and updates across Google, Facebook and other directories, the moment it matters most.
  • Activity Feed & Notification Alerts – Stay up to speed about updates and interactions with your locations, reviews, and items requiring attention.
• Price: Lite – $129/year, Preferred – $179/year, Elite – $299/year
• Where they list:
• • All Plan Levels.
    • Google, Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing, Baidu, Foursquare, Factual, Infobel/ US INFO, hotfrog, ShowmeLocal, Navmii, TomTom, HERE, Waze, UBER. 
  • Elite plan.
    • Car (Audi, BMW, Mercedes, etc.), DexKnows, SuperPages.com, YP.com, tupalo, whereto, Yalwa, Brownbook, Opendi, iglobal.co, Manta, mylocalservices.com, Localstack, Judy’s Book, Citysquares, UScity.net, EzLocal, n49.com, ChamberofCommerce, acompio.com, Pages24, Cylex, find-open.com,