Local Search Optimization | Five Cards to Play Immediately for LSO

Five Cards to Play Immediately for LSO

Written by Local Search Specialist

The Royal Flush of Local Search

Choose your cards wisely and get started ranking on the first page of local search! If you took nothing else but these five actions, you would already be so far ahead of the game of your competitors. Only 15% of American businesses have even taken step one. (However, realize that quality LSO takes time and consistency so please check out the rest of this blog for in depth tactics and strategies to increase your visibility in the local search market.)

Ten of Hearts) Claim or verify your profile on Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.

Few business owners realize that just because they show up on Google in the balloons, doesn't mean they have personally verified the listing. Take a moment to click on your listing and claim it. You can either phone verify or receive a postcard in the mail to PIN verify this listing.

Jack of Hearts) Complete your search portal profiles 100%.

As you're filling out Google Places, it will indicate the percentage of completion. Make sure you have loaded up as many relevant photos that you can, answered every question and described your business in full detail. A simple step, but a powerful local search ranking factor.

Queen of Hearts) Get reviews, but start mainly on Yelp and Google (especially because of the effect on Siri.)

Voice assistants like Siri pull data from Yelp and Google Places. Visually on a mobile device, sites with positive Yelp reviews will show up more prominently in search results. If you're searching for a listing on your mobile phone, your eye will move rapidly to the listing that has four stars and a bunch of reviews, you may check. Especially a restaurant, venue or something immediate you are looking for.

King of Hearts) Keep SEO in mind when choosing categories and keywords.

This seems like something simple, and many portals are limited by preselected categories and keywords. However, utilize the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to run some keyword combinations, check out Cost-Per-Click and daily search volumes. Also utilize Google Insights for Search to compare keyword volume of terms your customers are most likely to be searching for.

Ace of Hearts) Harness the power of YouTube video.

YouTube is the second largest seach engine on Earth accounting for 25% of Google's search volume, so never underestimate its power to make your presence in search portals stand out. Even if you take 5 photos and create a video slideshow quickly on Vimeo or Animoto, you'll be ahead of the game by loading this up on a YouTube channel. With 4 billion hits per day, YouTube is an opportunity for exposure you cannot afford to miss. For visual oriented surfers, having a video that plays from your Google Places page for example, will add value and increase ROI.

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