How to Optimize for Local Search

  SEO   12 Comments

 

This blog post is an attempt to rank high both in Google Local Business Listing (LBL) and regular web results. For LBL listing first register your website with Google Local business listing, Yahoo local Business Listing and Bing local business listing.

I have used Google as an example because it has more than 80% market share in the search industry and in some countries more than 90%. Also I think that if you rank high in Google, then ranking in other search engines is quite easy. I will proceed with an example:

As you can see the business drshoshany.com has no. 1 ranking on both ‘Google Local Listing’ and regular local listing. Lets find out why.

I think the various factors behind local rankings can be divided into four categories:

  1. On-Page LBL (local business profile) factors.
  2. Off-page LBL factors.
  3. On-site factors
  4. Off-site factors

 

On-Page LBL Factors

Google strives to give best user experience to its users, therefore it makes sense to provide as much information as possible in your LBL profile:

  1. Name of the business
  2. Complete physical address of the business (street address; city, state & country; pin code, e-mail address; website address; land-line number,alternate number, mobile number, fax number)
  3. Description of the business (max. size 200 characters)
  4. Categories which best describe your business (you can add up to 5 categories)
  5. Hours of operations
  6. Payment options
  7. Photos of the premises/products (you can add up to 10 photos)
  8. Videos of the premises/products/services (you can add up to 5 videos)
  9. Additional details (like specialties, language spoken, parking facility etc)
  10. Coupons

 

Note: Add coupons to your profile to promote special offers. Every coupon has a coupon code and expiry date. It can be printed and later redeemed by a visitor to avail special discount etc. Coupons improve the CTR (click through rate).

Tip: Use geo-targeted keywords wherever possible (in an intelligent manner) esp. in the company’s name, description and categories.

 

Off-Page LBL Factors

  1. What people are saying about
  2. Reviews
  3. More about this place

 

 

As you can see Google uses citations, references, reviews and ratings a lot to rank a business in local business listing. If you check the websites from where Google is pulling out the data you will find that majority of them have a no-follow back links. This means citation is not just limited to back links. In fact any mention of your business name along with its address is counted for ranking in local business listing. Therefore it makes sense to list your business in all major local business directories, yellow pages and local review sites (like insiderpages.com, citysearch.com, judysbook.com, yelp.com, superpages.com, supermedia.com, infousa.com, traveladvisor.com, epinions.com, etc) irrespective of no-follow links. Encourage your visitors/clients to rate or write reviews about your products on local review sites. More reviews/ratings your site gets, the better it is for local business rankings.

 

On-site factors

These are the on-page factors of local business’ website like:

  1. Title Tag
  2. Meta Description Tag
  3. H1 Tag
  4. Page Content
  5. IMG Alt tag
  6. Contact Us Page

Use native language on your site. For e.g. if you are targeting France then use french, if you are targeting Germany then use German etc. Display local business address on every page of your website including city code, state code, zip code and phone number(s). Use geo-targeted keywords in the title, meta description, H1 and alt tags as well as in the body text. Link out to Google local business listing by displaying ‘Google map’ on the ‘contact us’ page. All this will help in getting high rankings in regular local web results.

 

Off-site factors

These are the off-page factors of local business’ website like:

  1. Country Specific TLD
    Use country specific TLD according to your target location. For e.g. if you are targeting UK, then use .co.uk as TLD. If you are targeting India then use .in as TLD etc.
  2. Location Specific Host
    Host your website in the target location. For e.g. if you are targeting London, then ideally you should host your website in London.
  3. Registrant Address
    Google can access the whois database of a site to get information about the registrant. My belief is that Google also matches the registrant address with the business location while determining relevance. So if possible keep both the registrant address and local business address the same.
  4. Association with a geo-location
    Associate your website with your target country through Google Webmaster Tools.
  5. Local links
    Get as many local links for your local business website as possible. Each local link act a local vote for the site and helps in improving the overall local rankings.

 

If you like this post then you should subscribe to my blog and follow me on twitter.

 

Other Posts you may find useful:

 

Himanshu Sharma About the Author: is the founder of seotakeaways.com which provides SEO Consulting, PPC Management and Analytics Consulting services to medium and large size businesses. He holds a bachelors degree in ‘Internet Science’, is a member of 'Digital Analytics Association', a Google Analytics Certified Individual and a Certified Web Analyst. He is also the founder of EventEducation.com and EventPlanningForum.net.

My business thrives on referrals, so I really appreciate recommendations to people who would benefit from my help. Please feel free to endorse/forward my LinkedIn Profile to your clients, colleagues, friends and others you feel would benefit from SEO, PPC or Web Analytics.

 

 

  • http://www.gervaisgroupllc.com/ gervaisgroupllc

    I’m re-thinking what I thought I knew before reading this. Thanks for a well written piece that breaks through the fog to present a clear picture on a fascinating subject.

  • John

    Awesome Post. Thanks :)

  • Holly

    Thanks for taking out so much time for writing this post. I can help you with your arrows ;)

  • Scott

    Hi Himanshu! My first time here. Very interesting post. I would like to add few things here:

    1. When creating a LBL or any local listing, maintain consistency in your name and address. For eg. use same name, phone number, e-mail address and street address across all local listing.

    2. Keep up to date with changes in local search.

    3. Don’t spam the categories field with your keyword.

    4. Claim all LBL listings as soon as possible.

    5. Do what your competitors are doing for local search

    • seo himanshu

      Thanks scott. Your contribution is greatly appreciated. Hope to see you a lot on my blog :)

  • Erica

    Thank you so much for this article. I am forwarding it to my client.

    • seo himanshu

      Pleasure is mine :)

  • http://www.smartfindslocallisting.com Melih Oztalay

    Hi Himanshu,

    I am in complete agreement that local business listings are the way to go for any local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue. This is a good point in time in which the Internet is a good local marketing tool to be found on web searches and mobile searches.

    What I am most concerned about are small and local businesses having to contend with multiple websites when it comes to their local listing. What I’m really talking about are “time resources”.

    Afterall, there are over 60 websites in four different categories specifically geared towards local listings. How can a local or small business have the time resources to cover this space?

    Even if you made a conscious decision to not manage all 60, there are well more than Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. The space goes to Local.com (they went public), Yelp, Merchant Circle, and many others.

    Consumers will be the ones deciding which of these local listing websites they will go and post their experience through consumer reviews. This adds to the burden that no one single local listing website will do the trick.

    Our firm’s local business listing management services was reviewed at KillerStartUps. You can read about this at KillerStartUps here:

    http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/smartfindslocallisting-com-be-found-online

    It is a changing world and the local business will benefit. Good information from your post and hopefully varying opinions help give perspective.

  • http://www.clubparadisephilippines.com/ Robin

    Hi Himanshu! My first time here. Very interesting post. I would like to add few things here:

    1. When creating a LBL or any local listing, maintain consistency in your name and address. For eg. use same name, phone number, e-mail address and street address across all local listing.

    2. Keep up to date with changes in local search.

    3. Don’t spam the categories field with your keyword.

    4. Claim all LBL listings as soon as possible.

    5. Do what your competitors are doing for local search

  • http://www.liveinternet.ro Andrei Radio

    I am not new to blogging and really appreciate your blog. There is much original content that peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your site and keep checking you out.

  • http://www.mynorway.co.uk/ Jon

    Google are not a big fan of using other keywords in the business name and doing so can get your listing banned, so have to be careful.

    Although, for search purposes it does help to have a few local area names and keywords as you have shown above.

    (just dont tell Google)

  • http://www.trusstechnosofts.com chandrashekae reddy

    Excellent information about local search engines optimizing. thank Himanshu.