Common sense local SEO is what’s needed by most local businesses, not expensive SEO consultants.  Many local business owners have no idea what’s involved in ranking well in local search.

It can be very complicated just like regular SEO, but, like anything, there are a few common sense local SEO things you can do that will help a lot without paying large fees to SEO firms. Here they are:

1. Fix your title tags

Especially the title tag on your home page. A common mistake is to have too many keywords and to be written for search engine robots, not people. Keep it to no more than 3 keywords.

2. Make sure your name, address and phone number is on every page of your site.

This makes it easier for humans to find you and search engines like it too.

3. Make sure your contact info is the same and is on all the local directory sites.

This is the one of the biggest causes for poor rankings other than being delisted by Google. Sites like mybusinesslistingmanager.com or expressupdate.com can help.

4. Make sure to have reviews and have a plan for getting more.  

Since Google has made it much easier for people to post reviews so you need to be asking your customers, clients and patients for them. customers, clients or patients. The most important place to have reviews is on Google + (we’re talking about Google rankings after all . . .)

5. Have a separate page on your site for each product/service you offer.

This will help you in that some of these pages may rank on their own in addition to your home page.

6. Take the time to make your listings on local directory sites more complete.

These are called “citations” and should include info on all your services, not just your name, address and phone.

7. Be careful of duplicate content or too many links on one page using the same keywords.

If your content does not read well or “flow” for human readers, it will not rank well either.

8. Do not try to “trick” Google!

They are a lot smarter than either of us, so how about focusing on giving your visitors what they were looking for when they searched instead?

Google makes their billions on ads, not search. So, in order to make sure people continue to prefer Google over other search engines (so they can sell more ads), it makes sense that Google pays close attention to how relevant a search is for their users.

Two of the ways they do this you can see for yourself in your Google Analytics data. (you do have Google Analytics on your site, don’t you?)

If someone comes to your site, then promptly leaves and goes to another search result, Google rightly figures that means they didn’t find what they were looking for. They measure this with two metrics, “time on site” and “bounce rate”.

If your “time on site” stat is a couple seconds, Google will figure you need to be ranked lower than another site where someone stays for 5 minutes.

Another sign of “engagement” is “bounce rate”. A high percentage on bounce rate (bad) means people did not click to go to other pages on your site, they just left (“bounced”).

A low percentage on bounce rate (good) means they went from the page where they landed on your site to another page on your site.

If you’d like some help with all this common sense local SEO stuff, give me a call at 720-890-8760 or email joemcvoy@gmail.com and let’s talk.

One of the things you can do to get ranked on Google and get more clicks is to change your “meta description” text.

Your “meta description” text no longer counts for SEO purposes, but it’s what people see under your title in the search results.

What I just learned today, is that after 155 characters, it will get cut off. What you want is a well written description along with a “call to action” that gets the searcher to click on your link, not someone else’s.

In a survey reported in the SEmoz newsletter you can see only 34% of all companies are doing this correctly!  They either don’t even have a “meta description” or it’s too short or too long.

To see the complete article, go here.

Getting ranked high on the search results is only step one – then you need to make people want to click your link!

What you put in your meta description is for that purpose and that purpose only.  It does you no good for SEO, but can do you a lot of good with the real people who see your listing!

So, make sure to include a call to action and give people to click your link.  Offering something free can be good.  Think of it like a classified ad in a newspaper where you only have a set number of characters/spaces.

Write your meta description as though it was an ad, because that’s what it is!

If you have a WordPress blog, it’s easy to fix – just go to your admin login and look for the section called, you guessed it, “meta description”.

Any easy way to count characters is by using Word, Pages or any other editor that does it for you.  That way, you optimize your use of the available space.

It’s amazing to me that only 34% of the listings that show up in search do this right.  If you do, you can leapfrog over your competitors.  This is a lot easier to fix than page authority, quality backlinks or any other issues to get you ranked higher – at the end of the day, it’s all about clicks and leads.

The best training for learning all this stuff is here.  Or, get ranked on Google and get more clicks the easy way by calling me and I’ll do it for you!  720-890-8760.

Please “like” this post on Facebook, Google + or Tweet it if you find this info helpful!  I will stop posting this “geeky” stuff if no one wants it;)

 

A few posts ago, we discussed 4 things that affect the way you get ranked better on Google.  Here are two more you probably didn’t even know about.

Get Ranked Better On Google – Using Google Authorship

You have seen examples of this whenever you do a search.  Google authorship is the term for having your photo show up next to your post in search results. You will get ranked better on Google if you use it.  See the examples below.

There are two separate reasons that this helps you. First, Google likes people to identify content that belongs to them that they created, and second, people are more likely to click on a search engine result with a photo. It seems more personal and people can feel more like they know you.

So, how do you get this done?

1. You need a clear headshot type photo.
2. You need a Google + account.  If you don’t have one yet, they are free.  Go to plus.google.com  to set one up
3. Next, you will need an email address at the same domain as your site/blog.  This is easy to set up by going into your hosting account and creating it there.  I already had joe@joemcvoy.com
4. You need your “author byline” to match your name on your google plus account.  I found this to be confusing as how to make it happen, so I recommend you install the free WordPress plugin called “Google+ Author Information in Search Results (Free Version)“
5. Once you install the plugin, your getting close to done.
6. You need to link your email from your site to your Google + page and also do it the other way too.  The Google site explaining this is here:  https://plus.google.com/authorship
7. Now, to check to see it works go to the “rich snippet” Google web site tool and put in the complete URL of one of your posts and you should see it.
8. Understand it can take a couple weeks for Google to get it going, and when you are good to go, they send you an email with the subject line: “Welcome To Google Authoriship”.

Get Ranked Better On Google – Using Google Circles

The next thing that helps a lot is your Google circles count. Not so much how many people are in your circles but how many people have you in theirs.

Google sees this as essentially third party endorsements of you so ranks you higher.

You can use the tool in your Google + account to show you people in your gmail to invite. You can also go on fiver and find people to get you Google circle followers. BUT, big warning, do not go and buy lots of followers all at once because Google will see that and probably penalize you.

Your circle growth needs to seem naturally occurring, not overnight so if you are going to buy some, I’d suggest adding 10 – 20 at a time and then wait a bit before adding more.

Do all these things and you will get ranked better on Google!