A Guide to Local Search (2nd Edition)

About The Author: ........................................................................................................ 4

About This Whitepaper: ................................................................................................. 4

On Page Local SEO ....................................................................................................... 5

Title Tags .............................................................................................................. 5

Meta Data .............................................................................................................. 5

Address Details ...................................................................................................... 5

Local Phone Number ............................................................................................... 5

On Page Content .................................................................................................... 5

Official Listings ............................................................................................................. 6

Google+ Local ....................................................................................................... 6

Bing Local .............................................................................................................. 6

Yahoo Local ........................................................................................................... 6

Google+ Local .............................................................................................................. 7

Reviews ....................................................................................................................... 8

Company Reviews .................................................................................................. 9

Microformats, Mark Ups and Rich Snippets .............................................................. 10

Directories ................................................................................................................... 11

Local Portals ......................................................................................................... 12

Social .......................................................................................................................... 13

Other Links ........................................................................................................... 14

Citations ...................................................................................................................... 15

Summary .................................................................................................................... 16

A Little Bit About Koozai: Koozai are a multi-award winning Digital Marketing Agency.

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies having been ranked 23rd in the

Deloitte Technology Fast50.

We help businesses connect with their customers online – providing a range of industry

leading services from Organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC)

Management, Social Media and Brand Management.

We thrive on building long lasting client relationships and delivering true value for money.

We’re passionate about what we do - and that shows in our work.

At Koozai, there are no lengthy contracts, just world class Digital Marketing. Koozai will help

you build your brand online and achieve a ROI that can be clearly measured against your

bottom line.

How To Get In Touch: If you would like to get in touch with us, please visit the website (www.koozai.com) or use

one of the methods below:

About The Author: Andy Williams has vast experience in Digital Marketing having worked in the industry for more than 8 years, including 2 years as the in-house SEO consultant with a leading web design company. An IMA Award Winner and DADI Award Winner for Best Use of Organic Search, Andy has also written for leading industry blogs on the topic of local search. Working with a wide range of Koozai clients, Andy has improved their online presence and sustained first page rankings across a number of sectors. Andy specialises in SEO, local search, link building and social media, helping customers maximise their online visibility.

About This Whitepaper: Using SEO strategies for local search can help your website to appear for location-specific

keywords.

For example: Pizza London

This whitepaper explores local SEO in greater detail. As a result, you can increase your

website’s chances of appearing for local terms, helping you to reach customers in your

target area.

On-Page Local SEO

When it comes to local SEO, you must consider the following on-page factors:

Title Tags

Include the location within the Title Tag of the page you are looking to target. For example:

Meta Data

Look to include the location within the description of the page you are working with.

It’s also good practice to include the location on all description tags within the site if

possible. This may lead to a listing for an individual product page.

Address Details

Including the address within the footer of each page will help the search engines understand

the location of your business.

Having this on all pages will help target a localised version of the search terms you are

working with.

Local Phone Number

Include the phone number of your business on each page. This can either be within the

footer alongside the address, or it may already be part of the page design.

Be sure to use your local number and not an 0845 style one. Your number should also be

displayed as readable text, and not an image.

On Page Content

Where possible, include your location within the content of the page.

Official Listings

Obtaining an official listing with Google, Yahoo and Bing is essential and will also help you

achieve local rankings very quickly.

Google+ Local

You can add your business to Google+ Local via: http://www.google.com/places/

Bing Local

UK Bing Local listings can be made here: http://www.marketlocation.com/changereq

For US Bing Local listings visit: http://www.bing.com/businessportal

Yahoo Local

UK Yahoo Local listings can be made here: http://search.infoserve.com/index.asp

For US Yahoo Local listings visit: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

Google+ Local

Google+ Local has taken over from Google Places.

If you had an existing profile with Google Places, don’t worry, it would have migrated across

onto the new Google+ Local platform automatically.

You can still manage the account from your existing Google Places dashboard.

If you don’t have a Google+ Local profile, start by logging onto Google+.

Down the left hand side of your main screen click on the last option “more” to reveal the

Pages icon:

Create your “Local Business” profile by filling in all the fields presented to you:

Once completed, create the page and you’re done.

Reviews

With the introduction of Google+ Local it is now more important than ever for you to gain

reviews.

Google have changed the way their reviews are scored. This used to be a ‘five star’ scoring

system, and has now changed to an ’out of 30’ system with the inclusion of the Zagat

scoring system (http://kooz.ai/NtW0mg).

For those who wish to leave a review, they need to do so via your Google+ Local page.

Reviewers need to be logged into their Google account.

As you can see, the review page is different to the old Google Places reviews.

You can now score for Appeal, Facilities and Service to create the new ‘out of 30’ score:

Encourage your customers and clients to leave reviews. This will strengthen your local

profile.

Company Reviews

Whilst obtaining reviews through Google+ should be your main priority, it is still worth

receiving customer reviews from 3rd party sites. These reviews (or snippets) are still shown

within the likes of Google+ Local listings (see below). Whilst 3rd party review sites hold less

value in terms of Google+ Local listings, they are still worth pursuing.

An example of some 3rd party review sites include:

www.yelp.co.uk www.reviewcentre.com www.brownbook.net www.qype.co.uk www.tipped.co.uk www.bview.co.uk www.freeindex.co.uk

Reviews from these sites can gain their own rankings for the company name, so receiving a

good review here can also add an extra listing for the company.

Microformats, Mark Ups and Rich Snippets

Microformats provide search engines with important information regarding the location of

the business.

Microformats are bodies of code that wrap around information on a site, such as an address.

This code is then turned into a snippet of information which then has a chance of appearing

within Google’s SERPs.

Microformats can promote locations, personal information and reviews.

Google currently encourages users to utilise Schema for this coding.

A good starting point for marking up your address is here: http://schema.org/Place

Once your information is marked up you can test it here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

For more information regarding Schema, please visit:

http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/introducing-schemaorg-search-engines.html

Directories

Internet Yellow Page Sites:

The importance of Internet Yellow page sites has been questioned recently; however it is

still beneficial to make sure you submit your site to these types of sites:

Your site should have listings in the following important directories:

www.yell.com www.city-visitor.com www.thomsonlocal.com www.192.com www.scoot.co.uk

www.local.co.uk

Search Engines take a lot of information from influential business directories. Therefore, it is

highly important that you have listings within these directories.

Whilst directories are important to your local SEO efforts, you should ensure that you obtain

an entry within the local maps sections of the main search engines.

Local Portals

Linking to and gaining links from local companies or sites that have some relevance to you

will also help confirm your location to the search engines.

The following local portals are trusted by Google and use local categories:

www.hotfroguk.co.uk www.freeindex.co.uk www.smilelocal.com www.applegate.co.uk www.citylocal.co.uk www.thebestof.co.uk

Social

With social media playing a vital role within Digital Marketing, you should ensure that you

have business profiles on all major social media platforms. From a local SEO perspective, it

is essential that you include the location of your business within your descriptions (as well as

the URL of your business website).

Twitter

Include your location in the description:

Facebook

You can specify a specific location via Facebook:

Google+ Business

Location again included within the introduction:

Other Links

As with any natural listing, link building is highly important.

Including the location within any submission to these sites will help. Ideally this should be in

the Title of the link rather than just a description.

So again, ‘Digital Marketing Agency Hampshire’.

Internal links could also be optimised in this way where possible.

Citations

Citations are reviews or mentions that don’t necessarily have links back to your site.

An inclusion of your company, complete with address, can be classed as a vote for the

quality and relevance of the site.

Researching sites to gain these types of links can be done by reviewing competing sites

within their Google+ Local page

If you scroll down to the bottom of their Google+ Local page (below their Google reviews),

you will see links to further reviews and mentions:

Clicking these links will take you to their profile pages on these sites.

Summary Thank you very much for reading this whitepaper. I do hope that you have taken some tips

from it that you can put into practice.

You are now ready to get those all important rankings for location based terms.

If you do need any further information or assistance, you can get in touch with us easily

using any of the options below.