Leave it to our clever Event Director Aaron Weiche to come up with, “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at,” as the name for the sixth edition of Search Snippets focused on Local SEO. I’m sure you’ve seen the SEO rap songs from Mike King and Aaron Goldman, but have you seen an SEO event named after the lyrics of a hip hop song? Now these are my kind of people!
Checkout our Search Snippets: Local SEO event video coverage if you missed the good company, fun and knowledge shares from our last Search Snippets event. The presentations and top 6 local SEO take-aways are also available below.
Scalable Local Search
Presenter:Spyder Trap Search Marketing Manager Daniel Hollerung
Local SEO can be really challenging for businesses with multiple locations. It can take a lot of elbow grease to manage multiple business listings across many sites. Daniel shared these smart tips on how to save time and scale the management of multiple business listings:
- Use bulk listings: If you have a company with 10 or more locations then bulk listings make it easy to export data and manage listings. He notes that bulk verification for Google Places listings can take more than a week.
- Leverage Resources: There are many partners out there that can help make managing business listings easier. Yext offers a free scan to better understand a company’s local footprint. Neustar Localeze offers a simple interface for managing multiple business listings called Business Registration Manager (BRM).
We Reap What We Sow
Presenter: FindLaw SEO Coordinator Matt Gregory
52% of consumers are more likely to use a local business if they have positive reviews and 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Sounds good? Now here’s how Matt recommends getting and managing reviews:
- Utilize GetListed.org’s ‘Best US Citation Sources’ tool: Make sure your business has a business listing to leave a review on. GetListed.org can help you do a quick check on how your company is taking advantage of free business listings at major search engines. To get higher Local SEO rankings use GetListed.org’s ‘Best US Citation Sources’ list to see where else you should create a business listing.
- Create a feedback page on your website: Add a contact form to your site with fields asking the user to rate their experience. If excellent was chose then redirect them to a page with the option to leave a review on Google+ Local, Yelp or an industry-specific review site. If poor was chosen then redirect them to a different page thanking them for their feedback and make sure to contact the client directly to address the complaint.
Napping On Your NAP?
Presenter: Three Deep Marketing SEO Specialist Scott Dodge
Local SEOs really like getting consistent NAPs. Sure, we like naps if we stay up all night geeking out on a special project, but here we like NAP because we need the Name, Address and Phone Number to be consistent across multiple business listings and search engines. When Google doesn’t get consistent NAPs, they get easily confused … and who wouldn’t? Scott shared these sweet tips on how to get NAP consistency:
- Resolve issues present in the big three data partners: Make sure you have NAP consistency with InfoGroup, Localeze and Acxiom. Scott starts with Factual to find incorrect business listings, then he uses WhiteSpark to find incorrect citations and finally he uses Screaming Frog to sift through and group data.
- For overachievers: If time and/or money aren’t an issue then it wouldn’t hurt to also check Universal Business Listing, Yellow Pages, Yext, CityGrid, Google Places for business, Google Map Maker and Google+ Local.
Watch the Local Search Event Video
We’ve recorded the presentations from Local Search: It’s Not Where You’re From, It’s Where You’re At. Past event videos can also be found on our MnSearch YouTube Channel.
Special thanks to our event sponsors Whitespark, Celarity, and Internet Exposure. We’re really grateful for their support of the local search community. Feel free to send them a shout in our comments.
Lela Phommasouvanh, Marketing Director at MnSearch, and marketer on FRWD’s media team. Connect with her on Google+ and Twitter.