The Local SEO System!
If you are up in arms about what to do with your online presence you have come to the right place. The local SEO system I am about to show you will work for any business that wants to catapult their brand to new levels! While the way I do Local business marketing is different, anyone can read my steps and accomplish this by themselves. I am not holding anything back from you and it is your choice to do it yourself or pay me.
Client Onboarding
The first step is having a zoom/skype call and getting to know each better. I will discuss with you what you are looking to accomplish in the next 6 to 12 months and how we fit in. I will get to know the main players in your team and who will handle what kind of questions. We give you an in-depth questionnaire to understand business priorities and to be able to do industry research. You will also give us the appropriate access to your website, Google Analytics, Social Profiles, and any ad campaigns. I will then do a quick presentation to your main stakeholders explaining the SEO process. I also like to set aside 15 minutes or so to answer any questions you may have about the Local SEO System. After this onboarding call has been done, We need to get you set up in our system, make sure we can access the necessary information and finish the on-boarding.
Where Does Your Local SEO Stand?
Every good Local Search Engine Optimization plan starts with the baseline of where you currently are. An audit of your website is essential so we can see the past work and where the holes are. we will also set you up with a rank tracker so we can see actual progress.
Google Analytics Audit
Data allows us to see your campaign set up and what is happening with your site in the last year or so. We also need to see if your Analytics and Google Search Console are set up correctly to show and record data. This audit will look at all the events, uncover any deficiencies, and find any tracking issues you might have. Finally, we will give you ideas on how to improve the analytics and how to possibly measure your business better.
Competitor Research
One of the best ways to improve your website is to understand what your competitors are doing better than you. It is imperative to create a plan that will beat them in Local SEO. By running head to head against each of your competitors in the top 20 of the serps, we can put together a complete plan to outrank them.
Technical Audit
A Local Technical SEO Audit is getting into the weeds and finding all the little things that might be holding you back. It is like fine-tuning your engine before a race or getting a tune-up before you take the family car cross country. The bottom line is everything needs to be running as well as possible so that all the other changes can work. The technical audit which covers over 215 checks gets into every aspect of your site to make sure Google will love it.
Implementation Stage – Onsite SEO
Now that we have the baseline set, we start doing work on your site. Our engineers look at the Technical Audit and start fixing all the areas that will help the most first. It all depends on how your site’s health is to determine how long this will take. While that happens, we are planning and starting the next stage of the Local SEO System.
Keyword Research
We have several tools that help us find the perfect keywords for your campaign. Not only do we use the best tools, but we also have some manual techniques to find underground keywords for your company. There are two types of keywords; Informational and buying. The key to finding superior keywords is being able to determine which ones can generate profit for your company and which ones will drive traffic looking for information. Both are important and do different things. It is not all about targeting high volume keywords but finding the ones that drive buyers into your store and ranking your site for them.
Content Creation
Once we know the keywords that we want the site to rank for, we start creating content that Google will love. We do a content analysis of the top 20 sites for your keyword to find out how long it needs to be, what kind of search terms are they using and what on-page techniques are prevalent. Based on what is ranking we can then put together unique content that will rank well and also drive your potential customers to your doorstep.
Landing Page Optimization
Every page on your site can be a potential landing page for a visitor. By looking at analytics and comparing visitor actions we will be able to tell what the important pages are. If there is a hole in your content we will write a brand new page to target it. Now that we have content and keywords it is time to optimize the individual landing pages to rank in google. Each page should target one main term and several smaller related terms.
Implementation Stage – Off-Page SEO
Once the engine(your website) is running optimally, the next step is to get backlinks pointing to your site. There are a lot of techniques that can be used to gather links, and many can hurt your site. We only try to get the best backlinks and do it above board so Google will love your site. Always be careful of someone who will get you links as you never know how or what they are doing.
Backlink Audit
As with every other process, we have to go through a baseline audit first. We need to know what your most important content is and what pages/posts have generated the best response. What links are already pointing at your page or what websites have mentioned your page before! We are also looking for bad apples in the group so that we can get rid of them.
Remove Bad Links
While we need to gather links, it is also necessary to get rid of the backlinks that we don’t want to point at you. Sometimes competitors will automate black hat negative links at your site in hopes that Google will lower your ranking. While Google claims this doesn’t happen, we have many cases of negative SEO working.
Advanced Skyscraper
Brian Dean originally coined the skyscraper technique as a way to get backlinks through writing better content. The premise of the method is finding popular articles and making your post even better than that (like building the tallest building). We do something similar but a little more automated to get people to link to your site. We handle the content creation, outreach to other sites and follow up that is needed to get links.
The Review Stage
This stage is the checkup to see how the campaign is going and what tweaks may be needed. In reviewing the steps we have just done, we may see something that needs improvement and will implement it. We might also find specific techniques are working exceptionally well and spend more time disseminating that to other parts of the site.
User Experience
While working on the site, we will try to make changes that help the user experience for your website. These changes will have to do with best practices in conversion rate optimization with the idea that small incremental changes lead to big profit increases. We can do an analysis and see how much improvement we have made in conversions, goals, and time on site through better content. While content can lead to improvement so can other things like calls to actions, buttons and internal links.
Analytics Review
A review of analytics will tell us a lot about what has worked and what needs are still there. First, we will look at the bounce rate and time on site. Those metrics, along with exit pages, will give us an idea of how the new content is doing. Then we will check the queries report and see if any of the terms we started targeting are driving traffic. The audit is a small part of the overall checkup using Google analytics.
Ranking review
The last area we will check is how the website ranking is? Since we had a baseline, we can easily see the improvements that we made in the six months we have been working together. If any pages haven’t improved enough, we will prioritize their changes going forward. We will also be able to see what techniques Google seems to like based on above-average changes.
As the owner, you are the only one who knows what the goals and ambitions of the business are going forward. We try to meet those lofty goals with a thoughtful process towards Local SEO. while we realize online marketing is not the only channel towards growth, it has proven to be the most effective. Hopefully, this article lays the foundation for what we want to do or what you need to do. Local SEO is a long term strategy and we look forward to helping you achieve your business goals through hard work, advanced SEO techniques, and resiliency.