Looking for help with local SEO for my business.

[glambutang]

Hey everyone, I never really posted but been lurking a lot on this forum and wanted to thank everyone for sharing their knowledge.
Now I wanted to ask a couple questions about SEO campaign im doing for my local business, seems like im really missing something as I don't see the results. Some information on where I stand: I have a electronics repair shop, there is really only 1 main competitor in my area. So far I have optimized google+ page, verified google listing, I have good citations in a lot of directories all are consistent and verified/claimed. The website is well optimized. On google maps my store shows up as a little red dot, and competitors have a shopping bag. Social media profiles are well optimized as well and have something posted there constantly. But seems like my website does not rank. I started 2 month ago but see minimal results. on moz local and yext i get better scores than competitors. When searching for keywords my business only shows up after companies in different cities. So is there something that im doing wrong? Am I missing something? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[vanio]

After two years asking myself the same question I saw it... backlinks, backlinks, backlinks! Make a blog network if you dont have one. I am not a pro, but after i concentrated on links everything started to move up

 

[glambutang]

After two years asking myself the same question I saw it... backlinks, backlinks, backlinks! Make a blog network if you dont have one. I am not a pro, but after i concentrated on links everything started to move up

I see, I have actually been looking into pbn but I see that there a risk of loosing rank, would it be a good idea to make another website with links to main site and do pbn for that, so if it gets banned at least my main site does not suffer?

 

[SEODEMON]

No Local SEO just have to be really careful with. Local SEO can be hard in some niches now but if you do not have much competition its still very easy. I bet the problem is with your onpage seo.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

Moz Local only tracks a handful of citations, they're important, but its really just a handful of sites. Are you showing up in the 7 pack when you search your main keywords?

 

[glambutang]

Moz Local only tracks a handful of citations, they're important, but its really just a handful of sites. Are you showing up in the 7 pack when you search your main keywords?

I do not and neither is my competitor, only businesses in nearby cities/state show up. My competitor is really only pops up through yelp, adwords, and newspaper article.

 

[Techxan]

OP,

PM me your site and google + page and let me look at it.

Your on-page SEO is off, I suspect.

 

[OpenArms]

use search function , many seo guys here

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

OP,

PM me your site and google + page and let me look at it.

Your on-page SEO is off, I suspect.

Almost always that is the issue for starters... on page is usually off at the very least and more often than not a total mess.

Techxan will get you covered and is 100% honest... shoot him your stuff to look over.

 

[myopic1]

Yeah Techxan is your man for this but other than on-page factors, I'll echo some of what I've seen him and others advocating in the past...

Try and get reviews to your citation sites and preferably real ones. Encourage your customers to leave good reviews on your Google Plus page, Yell and other citation sites. I don't know what your niche is but there are a variety of ways of doing this, such as in person, via email with an invoice, email, post or if you were say a restaurant you could offer discount on their next meal if they review you on a site etc. Reviews on citation sites (especially Google Plus) are a major ranking factor for local SEO.

 

[SEODEMON]

OP,

PM me your site and google + page and let me look at it.

Your on-page SEO is off, I suspect.

Homeboy seems like he knows whats up. Also PM me I will look at it when I have a chance. Ill tell you whats going on.

Reviews may effect rankings a little but they are more for consumers. I rank sites with no reviews above businesses with tons of reviews.

From my experience this is more of a myth just like how all of these guys say that Youtube vid views and likes increases rankings in the SERPS.

 

[mbreezy]

It is hard to say without getting my eyes on your page and your competitors.

One thing that I think is true is that on-page SEO is more important than ever. Reason being is the algorithm update dubbed by SEO blogs as "Pigeon". The update wasn't geared toward penalization; instead, the update started looking at the website that was linked with your local Google+ page. The local listings that are now ranking better are supposedly the sites with the best on-site optimization. The algorithm adjusted to put more weight on traditional on-page organic SEO signals.

I am going to assume you on-page is on point. My strategy would be diverse titles and meta data on each page, unique content on each page, NAP in the header or footer of each page, local schema on your contact page at least, and embed a Google Map of your business. Also put the Google+ widget on your site linking to your local G+ page.

It is debatable how much engagement on the page affects your visibility (ie +1's, reviews, CTR, time on page). These metrics are boosted through users engaging in your content in ways such as clicking through to read your reviews or flipping through your photo gallery. I notice well known local brands and establishments rank really well; it is my theory that the engagement on their page helps. You will find local businesses with really strong brands competing with some of the best optimized local campaigns. I think the reason for this is the amount of Clicks that the pages are getting. If Google is all about user experience, then it would be wise to show their users the great content that everyone else is clicking on.

 

[Techxan]

As I suspected the onpage seo is a mess. I have send you a PM with some details and reports for you to look at.

 

[SEODEMON]

I sent him a rather large report on what I think. Took me over an hour to type it up.

 

[snoopdogg1]

Hey everyone, I never really posted but been lurking a lot on this forum and wanted to thank everyone for sharing their knowledge.
Now I wanted to ask a couple questions about SEO campaign im doing for my local business, seems like im really missing something as I don't see the results. Some information on where I stand: I have a electronics repair shop, there is really only 1 main competitor in my area. So far I have optimized google+ page, verified google listing, I have good citations in a lot of directories all are consistent and verified/claimed. The website is well optimized. On google maps my store shows up as a little red dot, and competitors have a shopping bag. Social media profiles are well optimized as well and have something posted there constantly. But seems like my website does not rank. I started 2 month ago but see minimal results. on moz local and yext i get better scores than competitors. When searching for keywords my business only shows up after companies in different cities. So is there something that im doing wrong? Am I missing something? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

off topic a bit but agree seo is king but for a local business we use PPC, this brings us 40% of our products sold at a cost of 12% at the moment. worth a thought. This is us selling products and did take a bit of work to get down to 12% but so much easier than affiliate marketing.

 

[mikestern]

After two years asking myself the same question I saw it... backlinks, backlinks, backlinks! Make a blog network if you dont have one. I am not a pro, but after i concentrated on links everything started to move up

i kinda agree, im 2 years promoting my own local business and as for now i can say that 2 things affected at most:
1. Private blog network and in general getting good contextual backlinks (but there is always concern your page will get penalized so do it carefully)
2. Reviews, Reviews, Reviews ! ! this as affect more then any other thing i tried so far. and listen to this, i even dont have a google + page since this a-holes removed me for spam suspicious.
so im mostly relay on Yelp, Yp, etc....all are REAL reviews.

if you like to spent energy and get fast results, spend it on how make people post a review for you.

 

[ranjim]

As I suspected the onpage seo is a mess. I have send you a PM with some details and reports for you to look at.

Is there an online tool to check for onpage optimizations or do you them manually?

 

[BreaknBrix]

this is more of a myth just like how all of these guys say that Youtube vid views and likes increases rankings in the SERPS.

"Myth".... if you think that's a myth dude I doubt you've ranked any competitive YT videos in the SERPS.

You >>NEED retention views to rank on youtube. You >>NEED to rank on page 1 of YT (90% of the time) to rank on page 1 of Google. For local keywords if there's no competition than no, it obviously doesn't matter. But you are NOT ranking in the SERPS for any competitive YT keyword w/out lots of views.

I've ranked hundreds of videos on G and I guarantee you won't outrank any of my competitive keywords without a hefty amount of views.

-BB

 

[FutureProofSeo]

"Myth".... if you think that's a myth dude I doubt you've ranked any competitive YT videos in the SERPS.

You >>NEED retention views to rank on youtube. You >>NEED to rank on page 1 of YT (90% of the time) to rank on page 1 of Google. For local keywords if there's no competition than no, it obviously doesn't matter. But you are NOT ranking in the SERPS for any competitive YT keyword w/out lots of views.

I've ranked hundreds of videos on G and I guarantee you won't outrank any of my competitive keywords without a hefty amount of views.

-BB

Is it because the more views and interaction you have, the more your video is "suggested" on the side of other videos, and so more internal PR is pushed to the video, making it more powerful + relevant and making it rank higher?

 

[Techxan]

Is there an online tool to check for onpage optimizations or do you them manually?

Its a combination of tools and manually doing it using my experience.