The Five Areas of Local SEO
Have you ever wondered what goes into the monthly tasks for local SEO to work, but you don’t want to get swamped with technical jargon?
Or maybe you don’t even know what questions to ask?
In this article, I’m going to quickly breakdown what goes into monthly SEO services minus the technical nerdtalk.
If you have no clue what SEO even means, you may want to read Get a basic understanding of SEO first, then come back to this article.
OK, to begin with, there are five areas that should be worked on or monitored every month to get the most out of search engines and get more leads for your business.
Since the spots at the top are limited, local SEO is a competition. So, the percentage of time spent in each area will depend on the condition of your website compared to the condition of the websites of your competition and your monthly investment amount.
Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is the free business listing that shows up in Google Maps. The key is to be in the top three rankings when someone looks for your service.
For a local service business, it’s often the first thing a customer sees.
While it doesn’t need as much attention as your website does, there are some things that should be done regularly.
If Prime Web Design didn’t set up your profile, then we spend some time in the first month claiming it, filling out every section completely and making sure your name, address and phone number match what’s on your website and your directory listings.
Each month after that, we do the following.
Categories, Services and Details
Review your primary category, service list, service area and hours, then update as needed.
These are the settings Google uses to decide which searches you show up for.
Small corrections can put you in the map results you may have been missing out on before.
Customer Reviews
Once the profile is correct and up to date, the next biggest factor are consistently collecting customer reviews.
We help give some guidance and methods for how best to ask for reviews that is both ethical, authentic and customer-centric. We reply to every one, good or bad.
Reviews are one of the biggest reasons a ‘ready to buy’ customer picks you over the competition, but there is a right way and wrong way to do it.
Disputing spam reviews would also be done if needed.
Posts and Photos
We publish updates, offers and photos to your profile every month. While this doesn’t directly affect how high and how often you rank, Google favors profiles that stay active.
And a customer comparing you to your competitors, tends to call the one that looks like it’s still active.
So posts and photos help with increasing engagement from prospective customers that see your profile.
Sitewide Technical SEO
In order for Google, or any search engine, to want to show your website, it needs to meet some minimum technical and security requirements. Otherwise, it will be met with suspicion as a possibly untrustworthy website and it won’t get any search ranking love.
If Prime Web Design didn’t build your website, then we will invest some time in the first month to do a full analysis, identity and repair all items until your website is exceeding all security and technical standards.
We will monitor these standards monthly moving forward and tweak and adjust as needed.
Sales Pages
Sales pages are what comes to mind when we think of a website:
- Homepage
- Services pages
- About page
- Contact page
If Prime Web Design didn’t build your website, then the first few months will be spent on optimizing your sales pages.
We want to get your business in front of your ‘ready to buy’ customers as soon as possible, preferably into the top three ranking positions.
We do the following.
Pick The Sales Keywords
We research and select the most appropriate sales keywords for your industry, services and city. Then we assign one to each page.
Examples: ‘residential landscapers San Antonio‘ or ‘commercial pest control San Antonio‘.
Write The Content
We analyze the top three ranking websites for each of your sales keywords. Then we write the appropriate amount of content in a way that appeals to search engines, outranks the competition and persuades your visitors to want to do business with you.
Build the Sales Pages
We do all of the technical things on the page that search engines want to see.
Once we optimize all sales pages, we will monitor them monthly and make tweaks to increase your rankings to get to the top of the search pages.
Educational Articles
Oftentimes, sales pages will only rank so high before more support is needed.
That support comes in the form of Educational articles (i.e. blog posts or blog articles).
Because it has the biggest impact on traffic leads and sales over the long term, most of the time each month will be spent creating educational pages.
The pattern is the same as the Sales pages, but the audience is a little different.
Instead of talking to ‘ready to buy’ customers, these pages talk to your ‘not ready to buy’ customers.
The people that are still researching and educating themselves as they move closer to making a purchase.
These are your future customers.
We do the following:
Pick The Educational Keywords
We research and create a long list of educational keywords that line up with the questions your future customers are asking now.
This is known as a Content Schedule.
Examples: ‘what are the benefits of {your service here}?‘ or ‘how much does it cost to {insert service} in San Antonio?‘
Your future customers are researching their problems online long before you ever meet them.
We use the content schedule as the guide to write pages weekly/monthly that answer those burning questions.
Write The Articles
Every month, we analyze the top three ranking websites for each of the educational keywords. Then we write the appropriate amount of content in a way that appeals to search engines, outranks the competition and persuades your visitors to want to do business with you.
Build the Educational Articles
We build the articles with all of the technical SEO things that search engines want to see for the best possible results and interlink the educational articles and sales pages.
Backlinks
A backlink is when another website links to your website.
It helps search engines verify that your website is legitimate and helps with rankings.
If your website wasn’t built by Prime Web Design, then we spend some time in the first month creating all the standard backlinks from sources like social media, directory listings and industry associations.
Each month after that, we monitor the quality of your backlinks, address any that may be considered toxic and create links from high authority websites in your industry.
As the content on your website grows, it will begin to collect backlinks naturally.
Because the content is so good, other sites will link to your site as a source.
This tells Google that your website is an authority that can be trusted, which will help all pages rank even higher.
Conclusion
If these areas are worked on diligently month after month, your business will reap the benefits for years to come.
Want to get into the finer details? What is local SEO and how does it work?
Want to see SEO in action? How we ranked a local business on Search in nine days.
Want to see if we can help? Done-For-You Local SEO services.