Hey y'all. welcome to another WordPress Wednesday.
My name is Kori Ashton and today's topic is all about local SEO.
If you're familiar with our channel, you know that every single Wednesday we're
releasing some sort of video like this, that's gonna help you with your
online marketing and we focus on the world of WordPress.
So, today I'm gonna give you 7 tips to help you (actually today) go to your
website and improve certain specific key elements that Google, and Yahoo
and Bing are looking for, in order to help you outrank your competition.
7 specific things and stick around until the end of the video; because, I'm gonna
give you a link to a PDF file where you can download a full complete check list
of a lot of stuff that you can check off your website and be sure that those
key things are in place, so that you are outranking your competition.
What's the very first thing you need to be doing in order to make sure that Google
loves your website and to improve your ranking for Search Engine Optimization?
Believe it or not, the very first thing I'm gonna suggest to you
is responsive design.
So that, when someone comes to your website on a cell phone
they're able to see everything clearly without any zooming options.
Your menu is very clear for them to be able to open and close easily.
So, responsive design is going to be an absolute must-have
when it comes to your local SEO.
One of the easiest way for you to check and see
obviously, is just to get on your phone and look up your website
and if you don't have to zoom in, then you're probably responsive.
Another easy way is to do a Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
I'll put the link to this in the description box below.
Or you can simply Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
You'll be able to just come here and type in your web address and it will
do a quick analysis of your website and tell you whether or not you pass.
If your website is in fact mobile friendly or if it is not.
Awesome, WebTegrity's is mobile friendly.
It will give you a cool little screenshot of how it looks.
So, again, I'll put the link to that one in the description box below.
That's #1!
Ready for this?
Alright, #2
The next thing you need to be doing, and this is a huge one.
This is one that you could go today and make a change and it could
ultimately make a ranking difference, today, right now.
Your page title must include your city location.
So, if you have store that people come to or if you have a service that is location
centric.
Meaning, that if you are a roofing company and you only service your city.
You only provide roofs to residential and commercial people in your city,
then you are location driven.
Your city location must be included with that key term that you're going after.
So, if you're a roofer and you're going after "roofing services" or "new roof",
then you want to have your city right in front of it.
So, for ours, I'll show you this.
For WebTegrity, it's "San Antonio Web Design: WordPress Web Design"
That is our page title. That is our homepage, page title for
WebTegrity's website.
So, what you want to do is definitely have your key phrase in there.
Ours is "WordPress Web Design"; but, you also want to have your city location.
Even though, our company is actually international, it doesn't matter.
If we can dominate San Antonio because we live in such a large city,
that's gonna be good enough for us and so, really (initially) that's what
we're focused on.
Location driven "San Antonio".
So, you do that inside your page titles.
If you're not sure what that is and it's sounding a little foreign to you,
be sure to check out a plugin called Yoast.
Y-O-A-S-T
and I've done a whole series on that.
I'll put a link to that playlist in the description box below.
Check out that plugin. It's a free plugin from WordPress that will
help you overwrite those page titles so that you're sure to be able to
put in your key city.
It's super important that they're inside your header tags and your page titles.
You want to sprinkle in your location, down that page.
So, let's say that you have multiple locations. How do you do that?
Another awesome thing that you do and the third tip I want to give you
is a unique landing page. Either per service that you have or per location.
Or perhaps even a combination of both.
So, let me explain that one briefly.
Obviously if you have multiple services, what you should not do is a page that
just says "services" and just bullet point lists each thing that you have.
That doesn't give Google enough substance to sink it's teeth into and really want to
present to people searching.
What you want to do is have a major landing page that talks about each and
and every service.
So, for ours we would have a major service, specifically for
"Search Engine Optimization Services".
We would have a major landing page on our website, specifically for
"WordPress Web Development".
That's the way that works.
If you have multiple locations, I'll show you an example here.
We've got a company up in Canada that has multiple locations and what they do is
on their "Contact" page, they have listed out different sales reps that rep
different areas of a very vast territory that this company sells window shades to.
So, let's say we wanna connect with Nicole.
Nicole has her own landing page. She's one of their sales reps.
She has her own landing page that has unique content on it.
They've got her picture on it, with a little bit of her bio on it.
They have a unique phone number on here, specifically for this
territory (specifically for Nicole) and they also have unique testimonies
specifically to her and customers working with her.
One of the reasons why this is super important is that you want a page
on your website to have the page title for this specific location or city that
you're working in. That you're servicing; but, that cannot have duplicate content.
For instance, you can't just make a template for all your cities and then
just go in and change the city name or the phone number on each one.
You have to have unique content on each and every one of your major
landing pages.
I hope that makes sense.
If not, get back to me on that and we'll talk about it.
The next thing I want to talk about (obviously) is social media.
#4, you've gotta be using social media.
Hands down if you're not using that you're gonna struggle with your local
outreach.
So, you want to be sure that you're active over on FaceBook for sure, and be sure that
you're active on Instagram.
It really depends on where your audience is; but, social media is going to be a
key tool in your local outreach.
Google wants to see you doing it.
Plus, your customers want to be able to click on your social media icons and see
that you're active there and kind of interact with you, first, before they
fully trust you.
One of the key resources you can do to make sure that things are correct across
social media is a tool called Moz Local.
I'll put a link to this in the descirption box below.
I'll show you how to use it really quickly.
If I type in our name "WebTegrity" and I put in the zip code of our business
and I say "Check My Business Listing",
It's gonna do a quick search to find me and see if I'm in their directory.
I am in fact, in their directory.
So, I'm gonna click on that link.
What it's doing right now, is it's searching across the board for all these different
social media networks and directory listings
to see if I have a correct score inside of all of these different social networks.
So, right now I have an 88.
So, there are some things I could do to improve that.
I could come here and see my incomplete scores here and it will tell me,
"Hey, over on Super Pages, you need to do this."
"Over on Yellow Pages, you need to do this."
It's pretty cool that it will let me know that I may have missed one completely.
One I didn't even know about.
I need to go add my listing on there.
So, check this out. Run your business through this and it
will help you have that consistency across the board when it comes to
your local listings.
The other thing you want to be doing while you're doing these social media
networks is reviews.
So, over here on WebTegrity, you see that we have 30 Google reviews.
It is very important that you have your customers review your company.
Whether it's here on Google Plus
or on Yelp, or on Bing.
You want to have those reviews happening.
Even over on Facebook. That's great too.
I know that's probably the easiest place for people to go and review your company.
#6
We're gonna look at actually going out into the community.
This sounds pretty wild, I know.
But, if you're trying to reach your local community, one of the best things you
can do is get out into the community.
Here at WebTegrity we teach free classes for WordPress for our
WordPress Meetup group.
So, we've got all sorts of classes going on monthly.
So, we're actually leaving our local business,
(our brick and mortar)
and going out into the community and giving back and reaching that
local community.
Of course, the whole time we've got our business cards with us
We're handing those out.
We're networking and asking people to visit our website.
All of that absolutely helps.
The 7th thing I want to tell you about.
#7
Is Google Analytics
If you are not tracking your Google Analytics (Right now, today)
You will never know if all of this stuff you've been doing is even working.
Your phone might start to ring more; but, you won't necessarily know where those
leads are coming from.
Google Analytics is a free option for you and it will tell you that your social media
is working.
It will tell you, "Hey, your Facebook brought in 300 leads, this month and your
Instagram only brought in 4."
Don't be using Instagram anymore or reevaluate how you are using Instagram.
It will help you be accountable to all the time you're spending
writing blog posts, adding fresh content, putting new pictures and new products.
It's all gonna be important for you to monitor and it's inside of Google Analytics.
Here is the free PDF that I promised you.
It is actually from Moz Local. It is a full check list.
I'm gonna put the link to this in the description box below, so you can
go check it out.
I really hope you do it. It's super important that you just read through each one of these things
step-by-step and figure out how to improve your website for local SEO.
If you have quesitons further about this topic (because, I now I went really quickly)
Please put them in the comments box below and I will get to them
as soon as I can.
I will see y'all next WordPress Wednesday.
Be sure to subscribe.
Bye, y'all.