By Team Inbound | March 18, 2021
What do you do when you cannot afford to hire an SEO expert, in-house employee or software for your business’s local presence on Google, Bing, and Yahoo? Simple, read this article and follow these basic recommendations. This is a do it yourself local SEO article for the business owner who doesn’t have a clue what they are doing. This guide will help any business that is trying to rank on Google maps. From attorneys, b2b, and local small businesses this guide is perfect for the DIY business owner. I will keep it simple, and highlight the most important tactics, so you can easily follow a few steps and get your business ranking on Google, Yahoo & Bing.
How do you rank on Google Maps and what exactly does Google look at in order to rank a business? Well it’s pretty simple and complicated at the same time. The basic explanation is that Google looks at many signals to decipher whether they trust your business enough to show it to their customers. Some of those signals are as simple as positieve reviews, your website, listings on citations like Yellow Pages or social signals like Facebook and so much more. Your job is to send signals and give Google reason to trust your business.
I will go over the major signals below and reference several authoritative sites with more detailed information. I see no reason to recreate the wheel, when so many folks have put so much effort into creating detailed articles and research. Think of this DIY put together by many sources. Here is a page by Moz going over some research on what Local SEO signals are the most important. Google also gives some info on how to improve your local rankings.
For this article we will focus on how to optimize your Google Business listing so that it ranks in Google. The same tactics apply to Apple Maps (Yelp), Bing and Yahoo. This will also help you rank organically in the map pack, and not just Google Maps.
Head on over to Google My Business and create an account and create your listing. Use a Google account that you are familiar with and regularly use. You don’t want to lose this, it’s a pain to re-claim your listing if the original account is somehow forgotten or lost.
After the account is created, Google will ask you to find your business in their database. Yes your business might already be listed, but not verified, and all you have to do is verify the listing. More on that later.
If your business is already available in search, you will be given the opportunity to verify the listing and start filling out missing information that will help Google connect your services with the people searching for them. If it isn’t, you will be able to fill out your business information to get a listing created. Fill these out fully and as accurately as possible. Don’t skimp! A listing with a fully filled out profile is the first step to ranking locally on maps.
Here is an article by bright local (a local SEO tool we use) that goes into detail on how to create a listing properly.
Having a website is important, but not vital. It depends on the industry, competition and location. For cities with less competition and population you can rank without a website, we’ve even seen this happen in bigger cities, but it’s rare. For those of you who have a website, here are a few suggestions you can follow to help your business grow on local search and improve your Google business listing’s reach.
Google will analyze the website and look for signals relating to usability, content quality, speed, mobile friendliness, and other signals like comparing your address on Google Business versus the address on the website. They want to show their customers businesses they trust. They also use your website to identify your services and ultimately which keywords you can show up for.
Google will look at authoritative websites like Yellow Pages, Bing Local, or Avvo and Zocdoc for doctors and attorneys with a goal of generating trust and collecting data on your business. Your job is to make sure this information is consistent, and complete. That means get rid of any duplicate listings and make sure you get some review on the high traffic listings like your Bing listing or Yelp.
The easiest way to do this is by subscribing to citation management tools like Yext or Moz Local. There are many more, but these two offer the best bang for your buck. These two citation tools will distribute your business across thousands of websites and allow you to manage listings on their networks within minutes. Trust me this is so much easier than going through 100 listings and manually creating logins and updating them one by one.
These are large data bases that mine and gather information like your NAP or citation. They are used by sites like Yellow Pages to gather new business listings and import them into their website. This allows them to keep their listings up to date and add new businesses that have recently joined the economy. When you use a service like Yext or Moz Local, you are sending these data aggregators your NAP and making sure they distribute that across the globe’s citation sources, ensuring everything is accurate, and up to date. This includes getting rid of duplicates or incomplete listings, which may affect your trust with Google. The major data aggregators are Acxiom, Neustar / Localeze, InfoGroup, and Factual.
Don’t stop at the major directories! Find your major niche directories for your industry. Here is a list of top local citations organized by business category. Here is another indepth list at Moz’s directory of citations. Not only will potential customers find you at these directories, they allow you to build citations with industry relevance showing Google you have links coming from websites in your industry. I will save you the details, because this is supposed to be a simple DIY for business owners, not someone who is learning how to become an SEO expert.
Go to that site above and choose your industry. Now click on the D.A. (Domain Authority) column and start with the highest DA website. Next start with the free listings and simply register an account and fill out your information. Create a file on your computer that contains your business description, hours and other information you will use over and over again to create these citations. This includes photos and any other information like certifications, accolades and awards. You want to fill these out 100%. These directories have their own mini search engines and you want to make sure potential customers are shown a strong profile and not a partially filled out profile. Tip: Higher domain authority websites are more trusted by Google, and industry specific directories carry more credibility in Google’s eyes when they compare you to your competitors. Your competitors are probably in this directory, and you should be as well.
Paid links are valuable and separate you from the competition who do not spend money on their SEO. A website that charges per listing is more accurate because they usually have a human editor ensuring the listings on their directory are accurate. You also get listed on a website where some competitors might not be listed and this increases the value of your website. That’s because every link pointing to your website is like a vote. Keep in mind quality links matter more than the quantity. It’s better to have 10 high-quality links than 100 free low quality links. When you use the list above to filter for free listings, choose the best paid listings in your industry and get listed. Play within your budget and create a game plan to acquire more of those listings in the months and years to come. Tip: Use Google and see which directories show up when you look for your business in your city. For example an attorney might want to show up on Avvo, because they show up for terms that you want to optimize your local business for. For example if we are doing SEO for a personal injury lawyer, we would type in “personal injury lawyer near me” and get listed on any of the directories that show up on page 1 and 2. This should help you generate traffic from the directories and create a new source of revenue for your business. For attorneys (we specialize in law firm seo), we always list our clients on FindLaw, Avvo, NOLO, Lawyers.com and Expertise.com. Some are free and some are paid, but all of them have been known to rank well organically for terms that represent law firm seo.
Here are a few guides on how to research and build links. It can be as simple as typing in “Law firm directories” or “lawyers near me” and looking for directories that rank well. Tip: Focus on quality and a simple rule of thumb is to avoid websites that are built for seo, talk about seo or offer seo benefit.
Obviously this is not a signal, but it is a tool that will come in handy and help you track the performance of your SEO campaign. This tracks every source that sends traffic to your website down to the user level. You might not ever look at the details, but you might need this data in the future. Maybe you hire an SEO agency, or you decide to learn more about SEO. You might even find that your business is suffering and need to do some fact finding and figure out which traffic sources have stopped sending you traffic. Read this guide on installing Google Analytics in WordPress for beginners. Here is a course on Google Analytics for beginners by Google.
Don’t set and forget your campaign. Continue managing your local seo. Stay on top of your work. Stay organized and keep detailed notes. Go back every so often and regularly visit your properties,
If you ever get stuck or don’t know what to do next, check out the references below. You can also find SEO experts that work on an hourly basis or simply Google it.
Local SEO References
https://moz.com/blog/nonprofit-local-seo
https://www.semrush.com/blog/diy-seo/
https://www.localbizfirst.com/diy-local-seo-blog
https://hawkfeather.com/diy-local-seo
https://referralrock.com/blog/local-seo-audit/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/10/12/local-seo
https://moz.com/learn/seo/where-to-get-local-citations
https://moz.com/learn/seo/citations-by-category
