What is Local SEO and Why Does it Matter?

What is Local SEO?
Let’s start off with the basics.  Local SEO is how your company shows up locally in search results.  Think of local SEO as the YellowPages of 1990.  If you wanted to find a plumber in your area, you would go to the plumber section of the yellow pages and give them a call.  Today, you simply go to Google, type in “Cincinnati Plumber” and you are on your way.  So here’s the question, how do you currently rank for those types of keywords such as “Cincinnati Web Designer” or “Cincinnati Deck Builder” or “Cincinnati {insert your keyword here}? That’s what Local SEO is all about.  Let’s dive into what we believe here at WebTec makes up “Local SEO”.

Google Business/Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local
Today on Google, if you search a local keyword such as “Cincinnati Web Designer”, a map shows up with 3 listings (image on right) that Google thinks best fit your search.  How do you get on these map listings? It all starts with your Google Business page, Yahoo Local Page, or Bing Local page, all of which are free to create.  In our eyes, this is the 1st and most important step to getting your local SEO in line.

Accuracy of Information
Now we do want to point out that if your information on your website does not match your Google Business, Yahoo Local, or Bing Local pages, it’s believed that this can negatively affect your rankings on the maps.  We also feel that if you have a lot of mixed information out there on the web on other sites such as yellowpages.com, yelp.com, etc those could also negatively affect your ranking.

Other Important Sites/Directories
Let’s talk about those other sites such as yellowpages.com, yelp.com, citysearch.com, foursquare.com, and the other 100 local sites that out there.  Will creating accounts on those websites draw in local traffic as well? Absolutely.  The only key here as we mentioned before was make sure that your information matches across all sites.  Now, does anyone realistically have time to create 100+ different accounts? I know we don’t!  That’s where our Local SEO software comes in.  We can actually put your information into the software 1 time, and it blasts it out to the 100+ websites that are out there.  It sounds pretty easy but it does require a lot of follow up because the software picks up on duplicate listings and incorrect listings that are out there on the web that need corrected.  It’s by far one of the best advancements we have seen in local SEO and you should definitely take advantage of it if you haven’t already.

This post has become pretty lengthy, so I’m going to go ahead and cut it off here but even just with these 2 items I mentioned above, you will be leaps ahead of your competition more than likely.

Hopefully you’ve learned a lot and I do have more to share about local SEO so stay tuned for a part 2.  If you don’t have time to do all of this yourself, you better believe we offer this as a service (and more than what’s described in this article) for our clients.  Please give us a call at (513) 426-7441 or fill out our Request A Quote and we can get you more information.