– Welcome to The Journey.
I'm Nealey.
– And I'm Morgan.
– And today we're gonnagive you eight quick tips to improve your local SEO.
All right Morgan beforewe dive into the tips, it's probably a goodidea to really understand what is SEO and why is it so important? – Yeah.
The reason we use search engines is because they haveproven time and time again that they provide the best answers to the questions that we're searching for and if your website doesn't appear on the first page of the search results, then you're nowhere.
And so SEO stands forSearch Engine Optimization and it's work that you doto make sure that you prove to Google and other searchengines you're the best.
So for SEO, I like to use the analogy of all the work that you need to do is like a 1, 000 piece puzzle.
And you and all of your competitors, you all have the same puzzle and we're trying to proveto Google who's the best, which one of these puzzlesis the most complete.
– My puzzle's best, definitely the best.
– Yours is definitely the best.
We know that.
Does Google know that? We shall find out.
– Right.
– But the thing is noteveryone has all 1, 000 pieces.
Some people are new.
Some people have beendoing it for a long time and Google doesn't necessarily care that you have all the pieces in.
The thing that Google cares about is that you have more than the next guy.
You could have maybe 10 pieces and if you're in not a verycompetitive space then yeah, you're going to appear on the first page.
So these eight tips thatwe're going to talk about are going to help you tostart putting those pieces in to get started on your SEOjourney for local businesses.
– Perfect, so let's jump into the tips.
What's tip number one? – Tip number one for local businesses.
Everybody needs this is you need to create or claim your Google My Business Profile.
Google My Business is thistool that Google has created that allows users to see allof your business information in one place.
We did a video all aboutthis so go check it out so you can deep dive but basically, if you don't have a profile, you need to go create one and if you haven't claimed your profile meaning that your profile exists but you didn't necessarily doit or some user created that, you need to claim itso that you can update it with all the right information.
– Right.
You need to make sureit's in your control.
Don't let it out to theworld for anyone to add.
It's yours.
– So tip number two is that you need to optimize your profiles.
It's great to have it created but if you don't have all the information that Google is looking for, then they're not going to recommend your business over someone else.
So that means having yourbusiness name correct, your address, your phone number, your hours of operation.
Those are the basics that most people do, but optimizing it reallymeans going a level below that so adding photographs, adding your logo, adding pictures of your building so that was when people areactually going to your business, they know what it looks like.
If you're a restaurant, include pictures of dishesand what you're known for so that way people havelots more information when they're looking at yourGoogle My Business page.
So those are the key thingsthat you need to do to optimize.
If there's reviews that are outstanding, you need to respond toall of those reviews.
You need to encourage yourcustomers to go and leave reviews because that also plays a partin how you're going to rank against other local business profiles.
– All right Morgan, what's tip number three? – Tip number three is youneed to add your business to relevant business directories.
These are other sitesthat their main business is promoting otherbusinesses like yourself and so you need to makesure that your business not only is there but theinformation is correct and the great thing, it's an easy back link.
– Absolutely.
– So it really helps with your SEO to makesure that your business, anywhere people are lookingat these business directories, your business shows up.
– All right, which bringsus to tip number four.
– Tip number four is toadd your business address to your website.
It sounds pretty plain and simple but a lot of websites don't have that.
So again, to increase your rankings, this is one thing that notonly Google is looking for, but your users, if they're wanting to visit your business, they want to have the addressvery prominently placed.
So put it in the footer.
Have a separate page about your location.
Just make sure that it's there, visible, and very prominent.
– All right, so shouldwe put a Google Maps thing on the site too? – Yeah, that helps.
That's visual.
People can click it.
They can see exactly where you're located, the cross streets, so that'salways helpful as well so just make sure that you actually have the address called outand written out next to that.
– Perfect, which brings us to tip number five.
What's tip number five? – Make sure that your NAP is consistent across the web.
– What's NAP?- Name.
– I like naps.
– I mean, well (laughter).
Name, address, phone number.
So you need to make surethat those three things are consistently formatted everywhere.
So pick one and thenupdate it on your website.
– [Nealey] Stick with it.
– Update it on your Google My Business and then update it anywhereelse where your website appears.
If you don't own those websites, email the owner and say, “Hey, can you update this?” And most likely they will but just make sure it'sconsistent everywhere.
– Perfect.
To number six, what do we got? – You need to update your home page's meta title and meta description.
The meta title and metadescription are things on your website that you control how your website showsup on the search results.
So whatever the meta titleis, that's what will appear on the search engine results page and then the little description below.
This is a great opportunity for you to let your clientsknow what you're about.
So if you are a coffee shop in Seattle, maybe you should havethat in your meta title and description.
Put your location.
Put more information about your business so that way your usersknow what you're about.
– Right, and most website builders or applications that you use have a section for youto add a meta title, a meta keyword, and meta descriptions.
If you don't know how to goin the backend and do it, which most of us don't want to, right? So if you need help, just contact whoever you'rehosting your site with.
They'll probably be able to help you get that information therebecause if you don't set anything Google will just assumewhatever it wants to put there and it may not always be relevant to what you want toinvoke to your audience.
All right Morgan, what dowe got for tip number seven? – Tip number seven is just to make sure that all of your otherSEO elements are in place.
Make sure that you have greatcontent on your website.
Make sure that yoursource code is formatted in the way that Google likes to see it.
Make sure that you have a great number of high-quality backlinks that are pointing back to your site.
All of this will help with your local SEO.
We actually did an entire videoall about the basics of SEO, check it out right here.
– So it's super relevant to make sure your site is structured in away that Google basically wants so on your site, those H1tags like you mentioned, it's basically a codeon the site that says “This is my most relevanttag line, ” if you will.
So only one H1 tag per site.
Images are super importantbecause Google cannot read images but it can read text so that's that little description there.
Most website builders orapplications like Word Press has a place for you to add those.
All right Morgan, we'reon the very last tip.
It's been an incrediblejourney, #thejourney.
What is tip number eight? – Tip number eight isto consider launching paid ads or Google guarantee.
So if you're not gettingthe results fast enough or the traction that you needusing steps one through seven and appearing in the organic sections, then this is where paid ads and the Google guarantee comes in.
So you can consider doing these things.
Paid ads, obviously it's pay to play.
Whoop! You appear right at thetop of the search result.
It's amazing but onceyour ad budget is gone, you no longer appear there.
But people click on the ads.
They're very effective.
– So I love paid ads.
It gets you right to the top but I'm not really familiarwith what Google guarantee is.
Give us the low down.
– So the Google guaranteeis basically paid ads supercharged.
So you could pay, anyone really can pay to have their businessappear in the paid ads but the Google guaranteetakes it to the next level where if someone purchases the service through the Google guaranteeand they're not happy, they can get their moneyback, which is really awesome.
So it's Google vetting certain businesses and making sure that theyprovide a great experience.
There's extra levels youhave to do to qualify for the Google guarantee but it's really great andstands out in the search results and people love it.
All right, guys.
Those were our eight quick tips to help improve your local SEO.
I hope you liked it.
I liked it.
Did you like it?- Loved it.
– I thought you would.
– Make sure you like this video.
Comment below on justsomething you learned today.
Subscribe.
Ring the bell so youknow when these videos are coming at your first.
This has been The Journeyand we are signing off.
.
