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Get your local info right!
If you run a small business focused on a local market or you city, then most likely you have to carefully consider the budget you can afford to put towards internet marketing efforts. There are a number of items within internet marketing which you are trying to factor into your budget, whether its web design, social media, SEO, pay per click, online advertising and more. It’s not always easy to know where you marketing dollars should be spent. In most cases, clients come to us knowing full well they need SEO services but often they aren’t sure what SEO really involves nor do they realize that a successful SEO campaign involves a certain amount of tailoring of services to meet their specific business, target market and competition.
Online Business Profile Consistency; One of the Keys to Local SEO
If your business serves the local market then local SEO is an important part of your internet marketing and will heavily dictate how an SEO campaign is run. One vital part of local SEO is maintaining your online business profile consistency. When we talk about consistency in local SEO we are referring to using the same specific details about you business that the search engines look out for. The most important details are your business Name, Address and Phone number – also known as your NAP. The search engines use these particular details to identify exactly where you are and also build a ‘local profile’ for your business by cross-referencing NAP information on your own website, Google+ Local page and other local citation sites like Yelp.com, Citysearch.com, SuperPages.com, and so on. That sounds easy enough doesn’t it but you must remember that we need to make sure all that information is consistent across the web. To put it another way, you must make sure your listings all use the exact same business name, phone number and address. This can get complicated if your address can be written in a few different ways.
SEO TIP: If you are managing this yourself, you should obviously be tracking all your listings and it is a good idea to have your NAP and other important in a document you can copy and paste from. This will ensure your details are consistent which is vital.
If you are starting from scratch and your business is brand new then this part is easy as you probably don’t have any listings at the citation sites that you need to update / remove / claim. It’s a really time consuming job researching existing listings, claiming them, deleting duplicate listings, updating info to use you current address instead of a previous one or the correct phone number. Another problem we also come across is usage of the official business name instead of a name with keywords added or something missing.
If you remember nothing else from this blog post, remember that keeping your NAP consistent across all your online listings is very important and effective and well worth the effort in the long run.
Reviews On Your Local Citation Listings
As well as a consistent NAP, the search engines use reviews found for your business at citation sites as ranking indicators that will influence high high your site is placed in a search. Getting reviews from genuine customers on various citation sites should be part of your local SEO effort. If you hire us to manage your SEO, you get a customized Local Citations Review Sheet complete with your logo, business information, and recommendations on where your customers can post reviews. You can email this sheet or print and hand out to your customers in order to encourage them to review you. BTW, Google states you should not provide customers with any ‘reward’ for posting reviews about your business.
So Can Local Search Citations Give You a Competitive Edge?
Most definitely, yes they can…providing the planning, research, creating, editing and management is carried out correctly – did I mention anything about consistency?
A professionally managed local SEO campaign involving the targeting of local citation sites can make a world of difference in you rankings. This is why any online marketing activities for your local business must include local search citation building methods.
Need Some Help with Your Online Marketing?
If you have any questions about using citation sites to help with your ranking efforts just post a comment below. You can also get in contact with us to talk about how our professional services can help you business.
The post How Powerful Are Local Search Citations in Your Local SEO Campaign? appeared first on AtoZ Houston SEO.