A lot of local SEO questions from a newbie...
-
I've been doing basic SEO for customers for quite awhile now in terms of on-page stuff, but am starting to move into the arena of local SEO services and had a few questions that I hoped you guys could help with.
1. What services besides Google+ Local do you list customers websites in, such as Yahoo or Bing Local?
2. When creating accounts at the services listed question #1, do you have to verify the phone number that's listed with the business owner or is there any extra type of verification needed? How do you deal with getting all that verified for the company?
3. Do you create all these listings at Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. from the same account?
4. Does anyone know of a list of the top 50 places to get local citations such as Yelp or YellowPages?
5. When creating citations do you normally have to verify the phone number or address that you list and how do you deal with that with business owners?
6. Do you use the same accounts to create all the local citations or are different ones required for each listing?
7. What companies would you recommend that handle all the above for you, such as a setting up accounts at Google, Yahoo, and Bing - and then also creating around 50 citations for you? Of course all the login information would also need to be provided for everything they create.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, I look forward to hearing back from all of you!
-
Hi Chase,
You've gotten some good answers here to your specific questions, so I'd like to give you some more general advice, seeing that you are just dipping your toes into the big pool of Local SEO:) I hope this will be helpful to you!
-
First, ground yourself in the basics of Local SEO. I recommend you read David Mihm's 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors report. This annual survey has been the premiere local industry publication for many years running. It points out the things that make up local rankings, and therefore, the different things you'll need to study. http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
-
Next, I recommend that you visit the Local Learning Center at GetListed.org and read through some of the tutorials there.
-
Thirdly, one of the main tasks of a Local SEO is to keep on top of updates, because they happen so frequently in Local. There are a ton of great blogs on the topic of Local SEO, and here at SEOmoz, we publish some great local pieces, but I would highly recommend that you become a regular reader of the blog of Local Search Godfather, Mike Blumenthal. blumenthals.com/blog
Hope this helps!
-
-
-
Other than just Google+ local there are tons of yellow pages and data aggregation website that allow business to list their business and move from their accordingly... some of the other websites other them Google+local, Yahoo local and Bing local are yell.com, yelp.com, yp.com, truelocal.com and many more...
-
Some websites will only allow you to go live once they will verify your business through phone in that case the call will be received on your customer’s business address and upon verification it will give you a code that you can enter to verify your listing. I usually define the process to my client before going on with the process so he knew what is going to happen.
-
For most of the website you can use one account but obviously with yahoo and bing you will be needing their own email accounts.
-
Here is the top 50 list of local citation for US and UK (http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938) if you have a business in Australia then this is the dedicated list of business in AU (http://www.setalks.com/ultimate-list-of-local-citations-for-australian-businesses/)
-
You have to talk to business owner and explain the situation and why it is needed for their business before you actually step ahead and start submitting your businesses to local citations.
-
Few need a different accounts as mentioned above but mostly it works with a single account
-
Brightlocal, Getlisted there can be few more!
I hope I cover all the answers let me know if there is any new information you want!
-
-
Hey Chase,
Welcome... I've only been here a few months myself, but this is definitely the place to learn.
Reading over your questions, I've got a couple of places for you to start.
First of all... Search the heck out of the blogs and these forums, if you can't find a specific answer it's still very likely that you'll find something that will point you in the right direction.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo <--- When you're just getting started following the advice in here will almost always get you noticeable results right away.
Also, there is no magic formula. I run a few different sites, and after a very long period of trial and error I've just started to realize that while there are a few steps that you can take in the beginning to get some results, different situations call for different tactics and tools.
Last... You've got to be willing to put in the time and do the work. There are a lot of very tedious tasks that make up SEO and all of the related fields, and many of them are a necessary part of getting to where you want to be. There's nothing wrong with paying someone else to do the work, it's just a question of where your time and efforts are best spent. If you don't have time to crank out 50 citations (or search a forum) because you've got customers to deal with, or inventory to catalog, it might not be such a bad idea to hit up an SEO service, but if you're interested in how things work, and the gratification involved with watching your site work it's way up the SERP's or watch your analytics graph jump upwards... You're in the right place... Tear it up... You'll answer every single one of those questions better than I could and walk away with 20 more questions that will lead you to 20 more (in a good way.)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Negative SEO with Google Images
We have a client in the heavy equipment industry that is trying to "push down" images in a Google image search that are associated with an accident over ten years ago. This client has launched a new website, and we have applied the best practices of on-page SEO (page titles, unique meta-descriptions, alt-image tags, focused keyword targeting, etc.). The challenge we have is with Google Image results. It seems the image results shown in the Google Image search rankings are often not inline with how images have been labeled in the alt-tag section. I have checked these images with the Moz Chrome extension, and I have often found the way the image is labeled in the alt-tag is not related to the search query made within the Google image search bar. I certainly may not be factoring in other weighted items when it comes to how images are ranked. Are there other ranking factors associated with Google Image results outside of the Alt-Image Tag? If so, what are those factors? Our ultimate goal is to provide a strategy that would allow us to tag images within this specific sector that are relevant to this specific heavy equipment product, and at the same time, "push down" the rankings of the images that have a negative association to them. We certainly want to take the right approach here, and want to earn these rankings. However, the way Google ranks images seems to be a mystery of sorts. Is there a specific strategy relevant to Google Image rankings that would fall inline with the challenge listed above? I appreciate any advice on this topic. Thank you.
Image & Video Optimization | | JaredBroussard0 -
Local Listing Directories value
Hello fellow mozzers, I would like to start a discussion on whether certain local listing directories are worth it. Most people are of course familiar with Google+ Local(Google Places), Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yelp, Hotfrog etcetera.. I know there are a lot more of these big local listing directories. I am situated in Holland and we have a lot of small local listing directories.
Image & Video Optimization | | WesleySmits
Some of these directories are not really good quality. For example:
http://dordrecht.cylex-bedrijvengids.nl/bedrijf/pizza-presto-dordrecht-12014914.html This domain is filled with ads in prominent locations. They have a domain authority of 44 and as far as i can tell there are close to 0 reviews on companies. (So not a very active community). When you perform SEO for a local business you want the business to be found in the local search results. Google goes around the web to see if the business information (contact and address information, website etcetera) is consistent on different local listing directories. The links from the directories are still links and therefor they pass a certain amount of PageRank. How much value do you think local listing directories such as the links i will provide below will add to a business? Do you think it is worth the time to find these small directory sites and fill in information about the business there or is your time better spent on other SEO activities? I would love to hear your input on this subject Links http://dordrecht.cylex-bedrijvengids.nl/bedrijf/rietveld-doe-het-zelf-j-10800715.html
http://adviesbureaus.zoekeensop.nl/0392908-parket-expertise-bureau-etten-leur/
http://www.allewinkels.net/ijzerwaren-en-gereedschap/rotterdam/henk-schell-ijzerwarenhuis/0 -
Blocking Google From Accessing Our Images - SEO Impact
We recently discovered that we were blocking Google from crawling our cdn, cdn.yournextshoes.com, where all our images are hosted. Unfortunately this went on for several months, and I wonder if this could explain our horrible SEO performance. Basically, I would like to know if this has impacted just our performance in Google Images (obviously our images have not been picked up by Google Images), or if our regular SEO has been impacted as well.Right now we're just receiving around 13% of our traffic from search, so we're trying to find out why Google does not like us.
Image & Video Optimization | | Jantaro0 -
Should I be submitting to Google Places AND Google + Local?
I hear there is a merging between Google Places and Google + but I still see a sign up page for Google Places is live? Could anyone tell me if I should be submitting to both Google + Local and Places please?
Image & Video Optimization | | Clicksjim1 -
Video and SEO
I am planning on placing some short how to videos on my site. My question is what is the best way to implement video. Youtube Vimeo Self Hosted Video How do I ensure that the video can be viewed by all devices if it is self hosted?
Image & Video Optimization | | bronxpad0 -
Local query doesnt trigger local maps listings?
Hi guys, Ive been doing local seo for quite some time and had great results from both organic listings and local maps listings (and a merged listings). However ive noticed time and time again that local maps listings dont appear in serps on all local searches, even the most popular local search terms. Take the phrase "marketing company glasgow" local phrase,local intent but no maps results. But if you click on maps on the laft hand side, theres clearly tons of mpas results. Any ideas why google dont display local businesses on certain local intent phrases? Is there any way around this? Even with good on page seo, and good rankings organically, it would be great to get the maps listing on page 1 too. Thanks Robert
Image & Video Optimization | | glasgowseoguy0 -
SEO for Explicit / Medical Pictures - Will It Hurt Rankings?
I have a client with page 1 rankings for several keywords. He wants to make some updates to his website. He is offering a new service and wants to show before and after photos of the procedure. He is an OB/GYN, so the before/after pictures are very explicit and have full nudity. How will this affect his rankings? Is there something that I can do to tell Google and other SE's that these photos are medical and not pornographic? Should I host them on another domain? Just looking for thoughts and insight. Thank you in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | itrogers0 -
Rejected Yahoo! Local Listing Submissions
I'm working for a nationwide agency that has local agents scattered throughout the nation. I manually inputted each agent's listing and over half of them were rejected. I'm trying to find the common denominators among those that were approved and those that were rejected, but I can't find any. Does anyone know a way to get all of these locations approved?
Image & Video Optimization | | Caitlin.Adria0