I probably tire you with my endless emphasis on the necessity of social media in online marketing generally and SEO specifically. Yet, I must reiterate my point in the context of local promotion.
What is local SEO?
Local promotion is a practice aimed at promoting business sites in search engine results, focusing on the businesses’ locations. Local search filters search results based on user queries and their location at the time of the query. For example, if Yossi from Nazareth and Dina from Jerusalem are searching for car rentals, Yossi will receive different results from Dina because they are in different cities. Moreover, if one of them searches from their mobile device, it is likely that they will receive even more specific results based on their exact location at the time of the query. For instance, even if the same list of car rental companies in Nazareth is shown, it will be organized according to the user’s distance from the various rental companies.
So how do you influence search results in a local context?
Real business address
Display the full business address on the website, preferably throughout the site as part of its template, for example, in the footer. In any case, it is highly recommended that the “Contact Us” and/or “About Us” page display the business address including a detailed map or a link to such a map (Google Maps can be used for this).
Name and phone number
The business name (and sometimes its owner) and phone number (with a local area code!) should also be clearly displayed on the site. This includes the use of the rel=author tag when a local writer can add points to defining the business as local.
Mentions in relevant, reliable, and authoritative sources – Referring to articles, posts, reviews, etc., in a local context that deal with the business. Such sources include social networks like Google Plus and Facebook, but also guides, indexes, and local review sites like Google Places and Yellow Pages.
Location as a keyword – The target city (the city where the business is located) should appear in the title tag and headings on relevant site pages, as well as in inbound links to the site.
Inbound links from relevant sources
This item is actually a combination of the two previous items. For a local business to be recognized as such, various sources should talk about it as such and accordingly link to it using relevant keywords that include the business’s location. These sources can be local indexes, local portals, various social networks, articles, and blogger reviews, and so forth.
In this context, it is important to set up a business page on Google Plus, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks and even ensure local advertising on relevant platforms including local press and other offline sources.
Content with local relevance
Content is still king in SEO, including local promotion. Thus, updating the site with quality content that has local relevance can significantly help the site’s positioning in search results on relevant terms. For example, a local business selling mobile devices could update about promotions, review new devices not yet launched or available in the country, inform about relevant local conferences, and more.
The social aspect of local promotion is quite clear when looking at the factors that can assist in such promotion. At the end of the day, even if a particular business has a local physical address, if people don’t know about it, and accordingly don’t talk about it – no one will come to it, and the same goes for the different search engines.
Additionally, if it is already in the headlines but the tone is negative (complaints and negative reviews on review sites, forums, etc.), then search engines will not place the business’s site at the top of the search results relevant to the business niche and geographic area in which it is located. Search engines strive to display the most relevant outcomes to users, in accordance with the content of the site but also, if not primarily, according to the feedback received from the general public.
Want to read the full Moz research on the factors influencing local search placement? Go here: https://moz.com/blog/local-search-ranking-factors-2013
