We’re really glad you asked! Local SEO, or LSEO is a specialized kind of online marketing that increases visibility for businesses interested in ranking for geographically-related keywords. A large part of Portland LSEO involves ranking in algorithms designed specifically for your geographic area such as Google Places, Google Plus, Google Maps, Facebook Pages and any of these engines’ counterparts, as well as ranking well in organic results for local keywords.
- If your business has a physical location, you’ve undoubtedly been told that you need local SEO. But for many business owners, local SEO remains shrouded in mystery; what does “Local SEO” even mean? What do you need to do? Why do you need it?
- Businesses targeting customers or clients locally should consider local SEO. Restaurants, retail outlets, doctors, dentists or lawyers, real estate agents, Portland digital marketing and internet marketing firms – the list goes on. If you have a physical address in a city and expect people to go there, you should be doing local SEO for that location.
- For LSEO you need to create and claim a local profile on Google (and other platforms as desired.) Your local listing is what will show (usually) for localized search results.
Make a citation. A citation is any place online that uses your company NAP (name, address, phone number) all on the same page, in the same format as your local listing. This same format bit is pretty important. While Google is pretty smart, it’s best to make sure that your local citation efforts match your local listing as closely as possible. Don’t abbreviate in one and not the other (St. vs Street, (800) vs 1-800, etc.)
Get lots and lots of reviews (preferably really good ones.) Quantity and quality of reviews left for your business on your Google Places page is one of the most important local ranking factors.
Make sure your name, address and phone number are used on every page of your site, in the same format as your Google local listing (in the footer is an ideal location.) And use your City and State names in your Title tags, Meta descriptions, and the content on your site (as it fits, don’t just force it in there.)
Persuading your customers and clients to leave great reviews on your Google local page is the single most important thing you can do. Let your customers or clients know that they can rate their experience with you on your Google Places profile. Have logos up in your windows or in your office showing the places where people can leave reviews. Include your profile links in your email communications (particularly in follow-up emails after a purchase or visit), direct mail, and anywhere else you can think of to get it in front of customers.
Google uses “centroid bias”, which means that if someone searches for “Portland Dentist” there will be a bias towards the dentist locations that are closest to the center of the city. For this type opf search, if you’re on the outskirts of a city, or in a city neighboring a major metropolitan area, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.
Local SEO via an agency could range from $100/mo for the most basic work all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars per month for a competitive space with hundreds or thousands of locations. Pricing will be based on the competitiveness of your space and the number of locations you have. In-house, you could be paying $2.50/hr for someone in the Philippines to build citations, all the way up to $100,000+ for a top notch in-house SEO. When it comes to SEO, local or otherwise, you typically get what you pay for, and cheap = risky.
There’s an upfront set-up cost for LSEO, along with an ongoing component. You should be getting new citations, reviews, social mentions and links each and every month.