local search marketing strategies

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Local Search Marketing: Strategies: What’s Working Now and What’s on the Horizon A workshop for associates & clients of Well Done Solutions Ltd To mark the opening of the new meeting and training room.

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Local Search Marketing:

Local Search Marketing:Strategies:

Whats Working Now and Whats on the Horizon

A workshop for associates & clients of Well Done Solutions Ltd

To mark the opening of the new meeting and training room.

What I hope you understand by the end of this session:The importance of:KeywordsWebsite StructureCitationsGoogle My BusinessOptimisationBacklinks

Local Marketing in CumbriaComes in 3 Flavours:High Pike:The summery Lakeland stroll of marketingHelvellyn Striding Edge: Straightforward but can look daunting to the uninitiated!Scafell The Pinnacle in Winter! Technical, challenging and often requires tenacity and commitment!

Basic Local Marketing for Low Competition: The High Pike Approach!

3 or 4 local competitor websites some directories and an off-comer or 2 trying to rank in your patch!

You havent made it onto page 1 for any queries you can think of

The competitions websites look good but dont really say much

Not very active on social media

A simple but time intensive boost is needed to get you started and get you seen locally.

The Striding Edge Approach to Helvellyn

Youve done the basics but you still arent being seen or getting phone calls Doing the basics has got you onto page 1 local searches for a couple of searches

Nobody says theyve found you on the website

It feels like the 400 you spent on the website is wasted

You do put SOMETHING out on social media every week

You notice that sometimes there are odd listings that have the wrong information

You know that some of your local competitors are getting sales because people have found them on the web!

You NEED to attract the local customers who still dont really know who you are!

Its time for a more methodical, carefully focussed chunk of work to make sure you are X% better tuned in to local customers than the competition AND your website is answering THEIR queries not simply regurgitating your view of what YOU offer!

Scafell The Winter Crags

Its a whole lot more complicated! Youve got lots of shops or locations and youre being beaten online by national chains and booking websites so you have to pay a fortune to them!

Multiple locations and premises

Independent competing against a wealthy local dominant trader with multiple premises, websites and local ads

You know you offer a better value local deal

You are always at the bottom of page 1 or on page 2 or lower. Its time to get committed and get technical! You will need to get all the basics right, ensure your local citations are up to par, the website is quick and well optimised for the locality(ies) and your products. You will need to invest time and money into attracting links from other websites. Your content marketing will need a very professional edge to overcome the strong competition of the established local market leader.

How Prepared are You to Compete?Which Approach Does Your Business Need?

Before you go anywhere or do anything else make sure your website is mobile responsive! You Are At the Mercy of a Zombie Invasion!

80% of internet users own a smartphone

Apps account for 89% of mobile media time !!!!

Tablet devices account for the highest add-to-cart rates on e-commerce websites at 8.58%

57% of users say they wont recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site!!!!

http://wearebumbl.co.uk/8-mobile-marketing-stats-to-help-you-plan-for-2016/Why so Fussy About Mobile?

People are Researching & Buying More Stuff via Mobile particularly for local services!

People are much more comfortable making payments with a mobile device!

Which of these businesses is likely to keep the visitor hanging around to book a table or research a car?

If they cant use or read your website easily Youve lost them!

Which Car dealer encourages you to hunt for the second hand deal of the century?If you want local customers to use your website and find out where you are you need to be mobile friendly! It works!

Why Trust Me?With My Little Client base

Because this isnt just based on a couple of my clients progress its advice built up from over 5 years immersed in Local SEO, lots of trials, tribulations and a steady growing stream of client successes.

5 years studying what the leaders of this branch of marketing have discovered

4 years absorbing the lessons of the Local ranking Factors Survey and applying them in a Cumbria and UK context.

Several speaking and training engagements in Cumbria and the North East!

What the Big Studies Say!The mysteries of MOZ Local and the Local SEO Guide!The biggest studies in this field of local marketing are annual. The major one that provides the trusted benchmark across the English speaking world is MOZ & David Mihms Local Ranking Factors report which is due to surface in a couple of months again. This is a predominantly US dominated set of data and anecdote with big contributions from Canada and smaller inputs from Australia, Malaysia and the UK Usually its Hallam Internets Susan Hallam or the Bowler Hat guy Marcus Miller.

The Overall Picture From The 2015 Survey.

https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

This is a very broad brush view of whats working for hundreds of businesses.

The Devils in the Detail!There are fairly subtle details in how your marketing focus should be applied depending on whether the target Keyphrases throw up a local organic result or a local snackpack result!

Local results come in many varieties and these are just 2 variations.

Main lessons from the survey!

When your market is competitive locally then these are the kinds of shift in focus you need to be aware of.

While these are things you should avoid doing!

The Local SEO Guide Local Ranking Factors Survey May 2016

Their conclusions are broadly similar to the Mihm / Moz survey 8 months earlier with the clearest message being that the importance of backlinks has become even more pronounced than just 2 years ago.

High Pike Digital Marketing

Local Digital Marketing TacticsWhat You Need to Focus on when theres not much competition online.

Simple keyword research: products and services

Make sure you use those keywords on the right pages

Update Google My Business Listing (Map marker)

Check and update ALL your citations.

This works really well where local competition is low.

Keyword Research The Basics

Use your Google account to sign up for Adwords you wont have to pay yet!

Use the Keyword Planner Tool to discover the important keywords for each of your products or services. 30 minutes to 3 or 4 hours depending on how many products or services you offer.

Download the lists of keyword suggestions as a spreadsheet.

Pick out the most RELEVANT keywords. Most will be obvious but you will find surprises most times.

Improve Your Website Content

Local marketing visibility and SEO Check up

Rewrite each product or service onto its own page!!

Use those keywords in the description a couple of times as well as any variations... without making it sound spammy. ;-)

Use local images or video if possible to enrich the content.

Improve Google My Business Listing

If you are a location business this is crucial! Even if you dont have people visit you at the office, but work from there and meet them at their place or in cafes and coffee shops ... Its still crucial but you have to tell Google that! You are a service area business in SEO speak!

Make sure Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP) data is correct and matches the format of your address on the website.

Write a GOOD UNIQUE description of your business that contains the important service or product keywords and dont spam it with loads of extra place keywords.

Unearth the nearest Google Local Business category even the UK version is still horribly Americanised!

Mike Blumenthals lbc search tool helps http://blumenthals.com/google-lbc-categories/search.php?q=&val=hl-gl%3Den-GB%26ottype%3D1

Add lots of images to the photos tab. Make the filenames relevant to the business and its products use the keywords!

Copy the written info to a spreadsheet or notepad swipe file for reuse later. This will help to achieve consistency of your business descriptions and categories.

GMB Dashboard

Click on the red button to edit information!

Editing Panel

Click on the pen symbols to edit each individual section.

In August Big G stripped out your ability to write your own description in GMB. Now You have to go to your Google + Page to do that!

Click on your profile icon or picture at the top right of your Google+ Page.

Click the icon for the Brand Account to access the page for the business or organisation.

Local Business Data Swipe File!

Citations

Citations are the extra credentials of local search and the simplest, safest, easy backlinks to acquire.

Use the same data as your GMB listing COPY FROM THE SWIPE FILE.

For business descriptions build up a bank of different length business descriptions and category titles.

Create as many listings as you can, starting with the alleged Top 50. Most of us are interested in the UK. So here is SearchEngineLands assessment of the most important core citation sources. However these arent necessarily the ones that your industry needs!

Top 50 UK Citations Sites

SearchEngineLand.com 2016

If you can find industry focused or locally important directories then thats another way to gain authority for your business website.

Example local citation sources are:

Cumbria Chamber of Commerce ???- wheres it gone?

Cumbria24 - http://www.businesscumbria.co.uk/cumbria-business-directoryNew but should gain authority quickly its actually a small part of another larger directory organisation!

Cumbria Open For Business http://www.cumbriaopenforbusiness.co.uk/comdir/High(ish) authority but a rubbish interface!!

Growth Hub http://www.cumbriagrowthhub.co.uk/businessdirectorySlightly iffy website that doesnt get the traffic it should but the citation is useful!

iCumbria http://www.icumbria.info/advertise/Low authority but good local relevance.Local (Cumbria) focused Citation Sources

Directories Appropriate for Different IndustriesWeb design http://smartbusinessdirectory.co.uk/web-design.html

Italian restaurants http://smartbusinessdirectory.co.uk/restaurants.html

Kitchen Fitters http://www.kitchenfitterdesigner.co.uk/pages/registration.php

Bookkeepers http://www.bookkeepers.org.uk/MyICB/Create%20Account/

Disability Scooter Shops https://disabled-directory.co.uk/products-stores-showroomsregional/

Complementary therapists http://www.therapy-directory.org.uk/

And many more!! There are over 500k citation opportunities in just the UK apparently!

Helvellyn Striding EdgeMarketing Approach for More Competitive Local Markets

Whos it For?In Carlisle this would possibly be the best approach for restaurants, IT Sales, shops with an ecommerce aspect, local complementary therapy providers and event managers, tipi rental agencies and the like or manufacturers who are targeting a regional market such as those in Cumbria, trying to supply product to the Energy Coast marketplace.

The High Pike approach has got you close to the first page compared with previous invisibility.

Visibility and consequent leads have started to decline.

The website (400 - 4,000 investment) was designed by a graphically competent branding agency with no idea & no discussion about search optimisation the most cost effective channel for new customers!

This is easy enough to do provided the company is prepared to invest the time or the money to get the extra work done over a period of time. Look to invest for at least 6 months to a year and remember that once people are competing with you then your work needs to be long term, consistent and high quality.

Detailed Local Marketing AuditDeeper keyword research by a person or service with experience: multiple seeded lists, recombination and identification of keyword groups (topics) relevant to your products and services.

Keyword ranking analysis

Technical SEO analysis

Detailed Citation audit

Google Business Listing audit

Review Audit

Google Analytics and Search Console Analysis

Duplicate content analysisCompetitive analysis of at least 1 major competitorReappraisal of page structure of the website

Website Content UpgradeDetermine which page content is weak

Develop plan for additional page content

Develop blog schedule and identify keyword focus of posts

Develop a content sharing calendar for social media profiles to put new content in front of your social audience

Rectify the awkward and sometimes costly errors not dealt with in first phase of web marketing development

Ensure that good internal linking is in place

Develop a Backlink Attraction Strategy

Decision time!

Dedicate staff time for outreach, to negotiate links with appropriate website owners or engage an agency? This is the hardest but most useful activity long term.

Engage a writer or set aside staff time to develop blog/ podcast / YouTube/ Vimeo content useful to clients / customers to attract further high value links naturally.

Full Scafell Winter Climbing

An Approach for a Tough Local Market

When the Going Gets Tough!

This approach is necessary when you are a multi site operation with premises or service centres in multiple locations in the country but you need to attract customers local to each outlet. Or you are a small independent company trying to compete with huge national chains.

Audit locations and ensure each location has a separate GMB listing that links to a specific landing page for each premises on the main website.

Write unique content with local references for each location!

For each location where competition is tough, develop a website silo structure which has a series of subsidiary pages with locally relevant content. Customers, reviews and testimonials

Invest in paid Adwords or FB Ads

Invest in stronger social media presence on the channels where your customers are found.

Local Cumbrian PerspectivesWhile its important to understand the big trending effects in marketing, there is also a need to get to grips with any quirks in your own local marketplaces!

I approached a number of competitor and collaborator agencies and a couple of them got back to me with tips they were prepared to share from their experience with local clients in and around Cumbria.

Oliver Warnes Web Industry Ltd

Olivers observation was that they had had a lot of success for local marketing clients through geotagging images with location data before uploading them to websites. This is a practise I started to use on some sites last year and is also borne out by several commentaries on local seo blogs. http://webindustry.co.uk/

Dean Duffield: A Digital(formerly Armitage Online)A Digital are a similar business to Web Industry in the type of clients they attract. Dean was hard pressed to pick any one thing that stood out in the sea of complexity that local SEO has become, until, after several considerations he came back to the work he and his colleagues do on outreach and link building. http://adigital.agency/

Into The FutureWhats on the Horizon?

So Where Does Social MediaFit In?Its an important background signal.

If youve optimised to hell and back

but nobodys talking about you;

Google can smell the silence!

Which Platform?Find out where your clients are connecting!

Join them

Dont be too overly promotional

Be social, helpful or informative.

The Future

No doubt that the scene will continue to evolve!

Social media platforms and search engines will increasingly force businesses to pay to play!

The days of pure organic are numbered but Google is increasingly facing competition from other search engines and they are slowly chipping away at its dominance.

Voice search is also altering the way people access services and products online: Siri and Cortana will have a lot to answer for in years to come. They will drive the evolution of content creation towards much more natural language a better experience for users.

Augmented reality gamification will begin to impact location search. Pokmon Go lures are being used to bring players into shops and other spaces. However breaking them out of zombie mode is another matter!

Consulting Cumbria LtdContact me for all your digital marketing needs.

Consulting Cumbria Ltd9 St Nicholas StreetCARLISLECumbriaCA1 2EFUnited Kingdom

If you want to talk:T: 01228 907 795M: 07576 893 178raycassidy@ consultingcumbria.co.ukTw: @consulticumbriahttp://consultingcumbria.co.ukGet a simple audit of your local presence free!http://climbhighseo.localscorereport.com/Or scan the QR Code below!