First things first, go claim your listings on Google, Yahoo and Bing. This will get you off on the right foot. Fill out your listing completely. Use a full description, images, videos, coupons, and your logo. This makes your page more trustworthy and will rank higher from the start.
You can then start getting listed on all the internet yellow pages and local websites that qualify for your service. Sites like superpages, yelp, citysearch, localize, best of the web, and universal business listings will help you rank well in local search results. Please note that some of the listed services are not free.
A couple more places to promote your business would be local classified sites like Craigslist, Backpage, Judy’s List, Angies List, or USFree Ads. People look at these sites every day. Consumers trust them and they could attract more leads and business.
To get your customers to trust your listing and search engines to respect it, be sure to ask your website visitors to leave feedback. Heck, even ask your employees and friends to leave a review for you. Just keep in mind that searchers who see 50 great reviews without a single negative review will know they’re stacking the deck. So yes, even negative reviews can be good and make you seem human. Nobody is perfect and search engines know it.
On your website, make sure your business address and phone number are included and exactly match your local listing. No 800 numbers, they make your listing look fake to search engines. On your contact page have a Google or Yahoo map with directions. Put your address in the footer of every page. Just a few easy steps can get you ranking well in local search results.
Local SEO has gotten incredibly serious over the last year. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, to name a few, have launched local campaigns. With more and more people doing searches from their phones, local SEO is becoming a service that a local business owner can’t ignore.
Follow these simple steps to get started, but ultimately you’ll want to hire a local SEO expert to make sure your local listings are optimized correctly.