The regional battle for first page rankings now involves fighting the Superpowers; national and regional power players occupy more top rankings than ever before.
Expand Your Online Strategy for a Changing Local Landscape
- How will you improve Web and map rankings when Google detects the searcher’s location?
- How will you improve Web and map rankings when the search phrase references location?
- How will you address mobile opportunities?
Place Page Signals
- Claim and carefully complete your Google Places for Business page with your legal business name, description, photos, and appropriate categories
- Find and eliminate any duplicate or incorrect Place pages
- Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) appear authoritative
External Local Signals
- Claim and ensure consistent NAP for your business on prominent local sites like Yelp, Internet Yellow Pages, etc.
- Work to eliminate conflicting business listings
- Cultivate structured (business listings) and unstructured (media coverage, blog posts) “citations” with consistent NAP, especially from local websites
Traditional SEO Signals
- Use your NAP on each page of your site with Schema markup
- Cultivate domain authority and inbound links
- Reference your city and state in your Web page titles
Review Signals
- Earn “native” reviews on Google+ Local
- Cultivate reviews on 3rd party websites
- Work to attract “authority reviewers” and detailed rich text reviews
- Be consistent
Awesome tips. Learned a lot. No mention of what to do if you are a multi location business. We have 6 med spa locations so listing all the addresses on every page might work but what about if we grow to 20?
Thanks for the great info.
Matt Carroll, CTO
SkinBodySoul.com
Hello Matt, and thanks for asking a great question. Multiple locations need to be handled carefully. It is not a good idea to try and put the NAP of each location in the footer of your site, that would create confusion and weaken the authority of your NAP. Etna would create a location and directions page on your website for each location. Your main, or primary, location should be the only NAP on every page of your site in the footer. But you can list the cities or areas where the other locations are on every page, and include a link to the locations and directions page that’s created. Each separate location should claim its own Google Places for Business page and link back to the location page with that location’s NAP on your website. This allows each location to show up for local searches in their home town. Take a look at this article for some excellent tips on how to deal with this situation.