SEO for Local Business (Brick and Mortar)

[mikesath123]

Hi

I work in a family owned company and I redone our website at the beginning of the year and with the SEO Basics. We are finally generating leads (6 months later). However the traffic is 100+/- per day which is not enough and we currently rank well for a few of our keywords

Recent routine SEO updates:

Social media: pinterst, facebook, google+ and twitter (only natural likes and re-pins so far (everything is under 40))
Submitting to business directories
Submitted to Dmoz and Bing (google was done months ago)
New content is currently being written professionally

Is there anything else I should be doing?
buying social media services?
more quality content?
Look into more keywords?

Please note this is a real business that can't afford to be sandboxed

Thanks to everyone on the forum, I knew nothing about SEO until I started found this site last year

 

[Sephirot_90]

I suggest that you:
1. register your business to Google-Local, this way you can have your site in google maps and a g+ business page
2. Take all the long tail keywords you got (if you rank highly for some stronger words, long tail usually follows) put them in keywords tool, see which has any traffic and do some link building. You can find them in google webmaster tool.
3.Find some harder keywords and try to rank them. You can find service here that do just that if you are not familiar.

Hope this helps.

 

[stgermain]

Hi Mike, this might be an interesting link for you then:
http://searchengineland.com/best-worst-ways-to-influence-local-seo-rankings-169840

check out the overall (local) ranking factors bij Moz too

 

[Abstroose]

You want to make sure you're targeting the right keywords. Have you used the Adwords Keyword Tool to determine the search volumes for the keywords you're currently targeting?

 

[Endire]

Mike,

It seems like you are off to a good start. Keep up with the content production. Do you have a blog? If not I would start there and produce content that is relevant to your target market.

You should also focus more on building links to your site. If you are interested in local traffic, try looking for other local entities to reach out to for links. For example local chambers of commerce, BBB office, local community colleges (if you have job opening that could be your "in" there), local directories, etc. Be creative. Think of how one business might want to draw attention to your business for its customers.

Hope that helps,

Shawn

 

[mikesath123]

Hi Sephirot

1. I have registered the business with google, I like the google maps feature
2. Will give that a try now, I recently did a SEO check and it said my keywords where different to the ones I intended but I still ranked top 3 for for the keywords I intended to use. Don't completely understand what happened there but having the new content written should sort it. Also I currently have a keyword density of 2% my understanding is it should be just below 5%
3. I think I will give that if I don't come right, just started buying services now

Thanks so much for your help

 

[mubbshir]

Hi there,
First of all, You should need to select the right Keywords (Find out Best Keyword Result on Google/adwords)
2nd: try to select long tail key words, because single keywords are very Strong you can't optimized single key words,
3nd: Hight Quality Content
4th: Social Bookmarking + Local Bussiness + Fourms
5th: Try to make a different blog
These all are basics Requirements if you done this all, hope you get a great feedback...

Regards:

 

[sudorank]

I'm guessing you have one major keyword that you want to rank for. Say for example "plumber in London". Small brick and mortar sites are a little different than large sites because the long tail is normally a waste of time. So few people are searching on a keyword there is no real layoff into longer tail terms.

I own a bunch of these sites, it's how i earn my money and i attack them like this:

- Get no1 for the main term.
- Get top 3 (In the top pink bit) on the PPC
- Get myself in the 3 pack local listings

Here is an example here of what i mean:



Getting each part of the picture down takes a little time and although some things cross over (Link building benefits everything generally) they are different types of SEO with different tactics.

Getting no1 in the organics

It's all about links really, especially with local SEO. Build up a social media presence, fake followers on FB / Twitter and stick your NAP citation (Company Name, Address, Phone Number) on those media pages.

If your stuck for link building ideas then pay for someone like sakar or others in the services section to build them for you.

Top 3 PPC

Simple really, just setup an account and play about with it. Local PPC is easy as most companies have people with little knowledge looking after the account.

3 Pack Local Listings

A little tricky to get down. A Google local listing is helped by links to your main site but the real heavy lifting is done by NAP citations (Company Name, Address, Phone Number). A quick search of Google will give you information about that. Get your company listings on yelp, white pages, yellow pages... whatever! If you Google "List of citation websites" you should get a nice list of where to submit too.

Again, you can pay for people to sumbit these things on your behalf. It's up to you really, I do my citations myself as some require a phone-call (Generally to sell you crap) to verify your listing.

That's it really

If you have a plan and see all these things through for a few months your should be sitting pretty. If you want more traffic again your into long tail expansion and basically dragging as much traffic through the thing as you can. Title optimization is also a good idea too. No point being no 1 if your not offering what the people want!

 

[mikesath123]

Hi Mike, this might be an interesting link for you then:


check out the overall (local) ranking factors bij Moz too

Hi Stgermain

Just read the article, very eye opening, can definitely see some room for improvement

Thanks

 

[mikesath123]

You want to make sure you're targeting the right keywords. Have you used the Adwords Keyword Tool to determine the search volumes for the keywords you're currently targeting?

Hi Abstroose

I used it when I first redone the site. Just checked a few after reading your post, the local searches are between 2000 to 6000 per keyword. Will have a look at all again and re-evaluate maybe there are better words I should be targeting

Thanks so much for your help

 

[mikesath123]

Mike,

It seems like you are off to a good start. Keep up with the content production. Do you have a blog? If not I would start there and produce content that is relevant to your target market.

You should also focus more on building links to your site. If you are interested in local traffic, try looking for other local entities to reach out to for links. For example local chambers of commerce, BBB office, local community colleges (if you have job opening that could be your "in" there), local directories, etc. Be creative. Think of how one business might want to draw attention to your business for its customers.

Hope that helps,

Shawn

Hi Shawn

We do currently have a blog but its not utilized effectively, normally a post only gets made when we do a donation or a free workshop which is 3-4 times a months roughly. Perhaps it should be more geared to towards our industry, services and products.

Will definitely give that a try, focusing on other local entities, have already started doing something similar but not quite to that extent. Perhaps that's what our site needs, more quality links.

Thanks so much for the ideas

Mike

 

[dinkish]

Products reviews, how-to guides, etc. are fairly easy to accomplish with a blog if you know your business and what customers want well enough.

The more content you have, the more will be indexed, and the easier it is to have desired keywords listed. Blogs are very easy to achieve this with.

 

[WebMeUp]

In addition to the suggestions above I'd advice that you aim at getting more local reviews and recommendations on local directories - Yelp, Citysearch, Google+ etc. The thing is that reviews and star ratings have a positive effect on local SEO and will give you additional benefits with regard to visibility and traffic (and buying decisions). And Google+ local reviews have especially positive impact on SEO.

You may use different methods of encouraging customers to leave reviews: send them a reminder via e-mail or in the newsletter, or ask them right at checkout.
More to that, providing customers with a clear instruction sheet on writing a review of your business on Google+ is also a good idea.

 

[AFSTER]

some great info, useful post

 

[john1444]

Use Google Keyword tool to find more keywords related to you niche, optimize your page for it and build more quality backlinks. It's also imperative to have a blog attached to your sites where you should be consistently blogging about current updates in your industry. Lots of people will see it and you will enjoy free targeted traffic.

 

[mikesath123]

I'm guessing you have one major keyword that you want to rank for. Say for example "plumber in London". Small brick and mortar sites are a little different than large sites because the long tail is normally a waste of time. So few people are searching on a keyword there is no real layoff into longer tail terms.

I own a bunch of these sites, it's how i earn my money and i attack them like this:

- Get no1 for the main term.
- Get top 3 (In the top pink bit) on the PPC
- Get myself in the 3 pack local listings

Hi Sudorank

Thanks for sharing your strategy, I can definite see how that can be very affective.

We have a main keyword but also more product specific ones

Currently ranked number 1 for certain keywords but after reading some of the other members posts, realised there were better words we should been aiming for.
our face book likes are lacking, thinking about going for one of the facebook services on the forum with real likes, Doubt any or them target South Africa but we are export ready.

Tried google local before but we are currently moving inbetween offices, don't know how to get around that with the post card verification

Thanks so much for your insights, definitely provided me with a new way of looking at for our major keyword

 

[mikesath123]

Products reviews, how-to guides, etc. are fairly easy to accomplish with a blog if you know your business and what customers want well enough.

The more content you have, the more will be indexed, and the easier it is to have desired keywords listed. Blogs are very easy to achieve this with.

The product reviews for the blog is a great idea, I could create a form which we could send each of our clients for feedback and polish it up for the site or asked them to submit a review to yelp. Either would be great, it would have to be straight after the order as chasing them up again later is a nightmare.

We just had some new content written, probably double our content overall and currently touching up our keywords. We have our blog but its not used often perhaps with the reviews it will make it simple and less time consuming. considering having 15 articles written a month and then drip feeding it manually

Thanks for your post

 

[mikesath123]

HI Webmeup

I don't think we have many star ratings as I just registered us on some online business directories, however I noticed the governmental organisation that registers companies in South Africa actually gives you a star rating.

I think for us, we would be able to contact our customers shortly after delivery, this would a simple practise to implement.

Also was thinking after reading your post, I could create a small one page for customer feed back with list of links where they will be able to leave feedback, simplifying the process for us and them.

Thanks for your post, will implementing this for all orders in the futures

 

[mikesath123]

Use Google Keyword tool to find more keywords related to you niche, optimize your page for it and build more quality backlinks. It's also imperative to have a blog attached to your sites where you should be consistently blogging about current updates in your industry. Lots of people will see it and you will enjoy free targeted traffic.

Hi John

Currently going through each page individually and optimizing.

We have a blog but its not used as often I'd like it to be, perhaps with industry updates it would be easier to blog more consistently

Thanks for your post

 

[lenmgom]

All great stuff here -

What is the store about -

Think in terms of thought leader on the web for your service - personally like to blend in slideshare and presentation platforms with a social site like "academia" - for local I would go to google, filter out local blogs and write to them - NAP citations are good - Also add the schema tag + sitemap to your www...

Just with that you should fill organic listings for kws