Complete Local SEO Checklist

Hey in this blog I’m going to guide you through my complete local SEO process so you can rank at the top of Google’s Local SEO and read until the end because I’ll share the one thing that 99 percent of people are not doing to increase their Local SEO rankings. Let’s dive right in.

We have personally led 100 successful SEO campaigns since 2018. So before I can guide you on how to do local SEO, you need to know the core ranking factors and many of the factors that determine traditional organic rankings also influence Local SEO rankings. However, ranking within the local SEO does have some unique variables. According to Google, there are three core variables that determine Local SEO rankings, so the first local SEO ranking factor is number one relevance. We must aim to be the most relevant result given the search, query, or in Google’s words.

Relevance refers to how well a local business profile matches what someone is searching for. We can control this ranking variable through proper on-page SEO and by building topical geotargeted relevance now. The second local ranking factor is number two. Distance now. According to Google. Distance considers how far each potential search result is from the location term.

Used in a search. If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, we’ll calculate distance based on what we know about their location. In other words, if you want to rank in a given location, you need to have an address that is central to that location. For example, if I want to rank for Coimbatore LOCAL SEO. I need an address in the heart of Coimbatore city if my address is in one of the surrounding cities like Chesterfield.

Then it would be detrimental to my Local SEO performance the third Local SEO ranking factor is Prominence. According to Google, prominence refers to how well-known a business is and you can perform well in Local SEO if you nail the first two variables with low-competition keywords. However.

If you’re in a highly competitive vertical, you’ll need to optimize for prominence and there are four core actions that will improve a local brand’s prominence. First is the review count plus score on your Google My Business listing. So there should be an active initiative to land more five-star reviews on your Google My Business listing. Ideally, these reviews should come from people who are located in the target area. The next are backlinks. Getting more niche, relevant, and geotargeted backlinks from quality sources is one of the most important ranking factors. Next is citation accuracy so focus on increasing your NAMPW which is name, address, phone, and website accuracy across the Internet. You need to focus on increasing your NAMPW which is name, address, phone, and website accuracy across the internet. And once that’s accomplished, then build more citations on relevant and high-quality directories.

Next are organic rankings so performing well in Google’s organic search results can actually lift performance in the local SEO more on this in a second. Now that you know the core Local SEO ranking factors, let me guide you seven ways to improve your rankings. Number one, optimize your Google My Business listing, so go into your Google My Business listing and benchmark your performance which means looking at all the data and setting the benchmarks to approve upon.

Then go through and optimize the info section and then respond to every single review that you currently have. This is the easiest action that most businesses never do and it actually adds depth to your GMB listing so just keep it simple reply to all good and bad reviews. Then add at least ten unique images to your listing. Once again, do everything in your power to add depth to your listing because most competitors won’t do it and the key is to use unique images. Ten is the minimum, but more unique images are a good thing. The next thing to do is create product listings, so services are also considered products. So take advantage of this section to add even more depth to your profile. Inject your primary keyword where it makes sense. Then if you can create frequently asked questions. So first, brainstorm some frequently asked questions about your products and services. Second, have your friends, family or co-workers go on to Google and ask these questions on your listings. Ideally, the question should be asked by people who live in the primary location or who are close by.

Number two create a GMB posting schedule so GMB posts aren’t a direct ranking factor. However, they can indirectly improve the performance of your listing because they can lead to more engagement. So GMB posts expire in seven days, so you should aim to publish at least one new post a week. First. I recommend reviewing Google’s guidelines for GMB posts and this will make sure you don’t violate any guidelines that could jeopardize your listing. Second. Google has a free tool you can use to create assets for your local business that’s worth checking out. However, you should create content on your GMB that hits each part of the sales funnel. So at the top of the funnel, you might have blog posts, YouTube blogs, or even podcast episodes. At the middle of the funnel you might have webinars or white papers and then at the bottom of the funnel which are the most important pieces of content to produce are going to be review posts, which simply report your Google. My Business reviews, testimonials, case studies, company updates, local charity events that you’re involved in, new products and services that you’re launching, new team members that you’ve added upcoming quarterly or annual promotions, and sales.

Product or new feature launches, company updates, or annual holidays. The list goes on and on.

Number three clean up your citations so go to Sem Rush, click on local SEO, and go to their listing management tool. Then just enter your company name and Smash should populate the location and then run the scan.

We will then guide you through all of your existing listings and other opportunities that you’re missing out on right now. SEO also gives you the ability to clean up your listings, which I recommend taking advantage of because it’s super time-consuming number four get more reviews now. There’s overwhelming evidence that reviews are critical to local SU, but they’re critical for business reasons as well. In fact, according to Review trackers, 63 percent of consumers say that they are likely to check online reviews on Google before visiting a business, and more than six and 10 consumers look to Google for reviews, lastly, customer reviews can increase conversions by 200 and 70 percent.

So reviews are super important and the first step to getting more reviews is to establish a target. So open up Google and enter your most important local keyword. In this example, I’ll use LOCAL SEO Coimbatore. Now get the average total reviews for the top three competitors. This becomes your low-end review count target. Ideally, you should aim to beat whoever has the most reviews. Now the question is, how do you get more reviews? Well? The most obvious way is to do great work and that will produce the most organic reviews. For example, in Coimbatore, there’s a local pizza place called Burger Kings that’s only open two days a week and I heard some hype about it and decided to give it a shot.

Little did I know that this was literally the best pizza I’ve ever had, so I went out of my way to lead them to a Google review praising it and they didn’t tell me to. I was inspired to leave a review because it was so incredible that I wanted other people to experience it.

So what I just described is how you can generate reviews at scale now. The second way is to simply ask.

First, you’ll need to generate a GMB review link, so go to the target GMB listing, click on the share review form, and copy the link. You can now send this link to your happiest clients. Here’s a simple template that you can use, but at the end of the day, your review collection process needs to be a part of your company’s culture and processes, seek feedback from your customers, and ask for reviews that will put you ahead of most local businesses.

Number five optimize your existing pages. So at the most basic level, your primary keyword should be in your URL title, hone tag, first sentence, and last sentence. But to take things up another notch. I recommend using Semrush on-page SEO checker. So go to the page and Tech SEO section. Click on the on-page SEO checker and start a new project.

Click on import keywords and pages and then select your preferred option. In this example, I’ll use it manually.

Enter your target keyword and the keyword phrase you want to rank for, then click Collect Ideas. SEMRush will then guide you on how to optimize the target page from a strategy content semantic. Technical. UX and even link-building perspective. So just make sure you benchmark your performance today and then execute it on all of these recommendations. In addition to that, you should also prominently place your address on the target page and Scheherazade a markup. There’s some evidence that it may help to embed a Google map on the target page as well. Number six is to Create geotargeted content. So creating content for local SEO is one of the most misunderstood topics of all. And at the end of the day, the best type of content to create will be topically and geotarget irrelevant. So my favorite method is to find ideas on the national level and then use them for inspiration for localized content. So for example.

Let’s say I was trying to build topical relevance for a LOCAL SEO. I’d go into SEMRush, go to the Keyword overview tool, and enter a broad topic like LOCAL SEO. Then go to the question section and look for ideas that may have different answers based on the location. For example. How much does a LOCAL SEO cost well? This keyword is super competitive on the national level. However. I could change it too.

How Much Does a LOCAL SEO Cost in Coimbatore and create a Data-driven piece of content?

Then I would do the same thing for the seed idea when was LOCAL SEO invented, but instead, I would create an asset for the history of LOCAL SEO in Coimbatore. Now the key to the strategy is to avoid slapping a location on a topic that isn’t variable based on the location. For example, a keyword like How do you spell LOCAL SEO? Won’t change based on the location. Therefore, creating a page like How do you spell LOCAL SEO in Coimbatore? Would be Sammy and wouldn’t make sense. Number seven is acquiring local backlinks, so using a content-centric approach is the best way to acquire local backlinks. However.

There are some push methods you can use like local donation or sponsor links so go to Google and Search list of donors plus Coimbatore or the city that you’re targeting or Coimbatore plus sponsors and you’ll have to dig through these opportunities to find pages that actually link out. However, these are golden opportunities and you should also tap into local bloggers who want to cover local businesses you can collaborate with these bloggers and score some decent links so just go back to Google and search city Plus blogger and add these to your prospecting list and then send them a very simple email like this so keep one thing in mind the perfect local backlink would be topically and geotargeted relevant however getting links that are.

Just geotarge relevant is helpful as well and getting links on the national level that are just niche relevant will also help you build website authority and increase SEO performance. So the ultimate goal of link building is to make page and website authority which will increase rankings.