How to Do Local SEO: Complete A-Z Tutorial

This video will show you how to do local SEO to get free traffic from organic search and Google Maps listings using Google My Business and search engine optimization.

Optimizing your website for Google local search is different than for a global company. While there is some overlap between traditional SEO techniques like on-page optimization and keyword research, there are additional tactics that apply specifically to local business marketing.

This video is a complete A-Z tutorial. Even if you’re a complete beginner, by the end of this video, you’ll know how to rank your website higher and get more visitors from local searches on Google.

Here’s a breakdown of the step-by-step process to do SEO for your local business.

Step #1. The one thing all local businesses should do for their website.
Step #2. How to setup and optimize your Google My Business (GMB) listing.
Step #3. Local keyword research techniques.
Step #4. On-Page SEO (slightly different for local websites)
Step #5. Building local citations (both structured and unstructured)
Step #6. Link building specifically for local SEO
Step #7. Ongoing activities you can’t ignore

Timestamps:

0:42 What is Local SEO
2:17 Optimize your local website for mobile
2:37 Optimize your Google My Business listing
5:20 Do some keyword research
7:45 On-Page SEO for local websites
11:28 Build local citations
15:03 Build quality editorial links
17:09 Take care of ongoing activities

Transcript

00:00
Fact:
00:00
46% of all Google searches are local, yet 56% of local retailers haven’ t even claimed
00:07
their Google My Business listing.
00:09
If you’ re not gaining visibility and customers from local search, then you and I, we are
00:13
gonna solve that problem right now with a jam-packed local SEO tutorial.
00:18
Stay tuned.
00:19
[music]00:22
Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research
00:27
your competitors and dominate your niche.
00:28
So, I’ve got quite a complete tutorial for you on how to do local SEO, so even if you’re
00:33
just starting out, this video should simplify the process for you quite nicely and help you
00:38
gain visibility in local search.
00:40
Let’s dive right in.
00:41
So first, what is local SEO?
00:44
It’s the process of optimizing your online presence to attract more business from relevant
00:49
local searches.
00:50
For example, if I type in best Mexican restaurant Toronto, you’ll see that the top of the search
00:54
results are dominated by a box of local listings on Google Maps, which is called the “Snack Pack”.
00:59
And below that are your typical organic search results.
01:02
It’s super important that you can gain position in the “Snack Pack” because they generate
01:06
33% of clicks on the search results page.
01:08
But it’s equally important to rank in the organic search results since they attract
01:12
40% of clicks.
01:14
So bottom line?
01:15
It pays to rank in both spots, which is where local SEO comes in.
01:19
Now, Google has an estimated 87% market share, in the US, which means that most people are
01:24
using Google to search for local businesses.
01:27
So in this tutorial, we’ll be focusing on local SEO in Google only.
01:31
Now, let’s get on the same page and draw out an example scenario.
01:34
Let’s say that I’m opening up a new coffee shop in downtown Toronto for cool, hard-working
01:38
people like SEOs and entrepreneurs.
01:41
We’ll be open 24/7 because our target audience tends to work around the clock.
01:45
And of course, there will be fiber internet because there’s nothing more frustrating than
01:49
slow public WiFi.
01:50
To differentiate ourselves from other coffee shops and build some nice recurring revenue,
01:55
we’ll be offering virtual office services for a set monthly fee, which includes bottomless
02:00
coffee, your own private cubicle, and incoming mail service.
02:04
I’ve invested in this concept, I’ve dropped a lot of coin, but no one knows about my business
02:08
because they’re finding other coffee shops like this in Google search.
02:12
Alright, so we’re going to start with step zero, and it’s something all local businesses
02:16
need to do.
02:17
And that’s to ensure your website is optimized for mobile.
02:20
According to Bright Local’s study, 61% of mobile users are more likely to contact a
02:25
local business if they have a mobile site.
02:28
You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
02:30
Just enter in your domain or URL and shortly after, Google will tell you whether your page
02:34
is mobile friendly, or if it’s not.
02:36
On to step one, and that’s to claim and optimize your Google my business listing.
02:41
This is arguably the most important part of local SEO.
02:44
And it’s actually quite easy to do.
02:46
Just go to google.com/business, sign into your Google account, and the first thing you’ll
02:51
need to do is enter in your NAP, which stands for name, address, and phone number.
02:56
If you have a business with multiple locations or you purchased a franchise, then you can
03:00
start typing in the business name, and you’ll see a list of businesses that are already
03:03
registered in Google’s database.
03:06
My coffee shop is called High Speed Coffee, so that’s all I’ll write and click next.
03:11
It’s important to note that your business name is not meant for keyword stuffing.
03:14
So I wouldn’t write something like “Coffee Shop Downtown Toronto 24/7 – High Speed Coffee”.
03:20
It’s not going to help you rank, so don’t bother.
03:23
Next, we’ll enter in our address.
03:25
Now, since we’ re a coffee shop, we’ll obviously have a physical location, but if you’re an
03:30
independent service provider like a photographer or a work-from-home consultant then your typical
03:35
client meetings might happen in their office, or in a coffee shop like High Speed Coffee.
03:40
If that’s the case, then you can enter in your home address, select the “I deliver goods
03:45
and services to my customers,” then choose to hide your address since it’s not a store.
03:50
Now, when your business shows up in Google search, it’ll just show the city and province/state
03:55
where you work from.
03:56
Since that doesn’t apply to our business, let’s move on to the next step, which is to
04:00
pin the marker on the map.
04:02
Google’s pretty good with this, but you’ll want to examine the map and make sure it’s
04:05
in the exact position where your store is located.
04:08
Just drag and drop it and click next when you’re done.
04:11
As Google recommends, don’t add multiple categories to list all of your products and
04:16
services.
04:17
Instead, you should focus on this statement:
04:19
“My business is a blank.”
04:21
Rather than “My business has blank.”
04:23
So in the case of High Speed Coffee, our business is a coffee shop, even though it has virtual
04:29
office space.
04:30
Just start typing in a description and select the most appropriate one from the drop-down.
04:35
Let’s go to the next step, which is to enter in your phone number and website, which is
04:39
pretty straightforward.
04:40
This step is optional, but I recommend including both.
04:44
Now, we’ll need to finish off the process and verify the website, which can be done
04:47
by phone or mail.
04:49
You just need to follow the instructions from Google and your My Business listing should
04:52
be active in no time.
04:54
Before you continue, you should add a few more optimizations to your listing.
04:58
You can click on the info menu in the sidebar.
05:00
Then you can click on the pen icon to edit different parts of your listing.
05:04
So you can add more relevant categories, for example.
05:07
Other things you should do is to set your hours of operation, add specific URLs to important
05:12
pages, add a description of your business, and photos of your actual location.
05:16
Now that we have the foundation set up for local SEO, let’s move onto step 2, which is
05:21
to do some keyword research.
05:22
There are some obvious terms you’d want to rank for like “coffee shop near me”, “high speed
05:27
coffee”, “what time does high speed coffee open or close”, and “high speed coffee phone number”.
05:32
With these kinds of local search queries, Google pulls the information from the Google My
05:35
Business listing.
05:36
For example, if I type in “what time does Starbucks close”, Google will pull up the Starbucks in
05:41
my vicinity and show the hours of operations for all locations on the map.
05:45
And if I specify a location or use a single location business, then you’ll see a quick answer
05:50
box like this, which is pulled directly from Google My Business.
05:54
So rather than going deeper into the “Snack Pack,” or Google Maps listings we’ll be talking about
05:58
keyword research for the organic search results.
06:01
First, we need to brainstorm your SiLs, which stands for “service in locations”.
06:05
As a coffee shop, I’d want to rank for queries like these:
06:08
“Coffee shops in Toronto”
06:10
“24/7 coffee shops in Toronto”
06:12
“24 hour coffee shops in Toronto”
06:14
“Virtual office in Toronto”
06:16
And we’d want to rank for synonymous variations like “cafe in Toronto”.
06:19
A photographer, on the other hand, might want to rank for
06:22
“photographer in Toronto” or “photographer in a nearby city.”
06:25
Here are a few ways you can generate solid keyword ideas.
06:29
First is to use Google’s autocomplete.
06:30
Just type in the main query you want to rank for, and you’ll see a few good suggestions
06:34
here like “open late”, “financial district”, and “Toronto Canada”, which may likely come from
06:40
tourists or travelers.
06:41
If you’re in the services industry, then you can look at local classified sites like Craigslist.
06:46
So I can search in their services category and use a seed keyword like “photographer”,
06:50
and you’ll see some cool ideas here like “experienced”, “freelance”, “engagement shoot” and more.
06:56
But in my opinion, the absolute best place is to find the keywords that your competitors
07:00
are already ranking for.
07:02
And the reason why this is so effective is because this is basically telling you which
07:07
keywords that you can also rank for.
07:09
You can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, and enter in the domain of one of your search
07:13
competitors.
07:14
Next, go to the organic keywords report.
07:17
And this report will show you all of the search queries that the domain is ranking for.
07:20
You’ll see that they’re ranking for a lot of branded queries, so you can use the exclude
07:24
box, and type in the brand name, which will give you a nice list of relevant keywords
07:29
to target.
07:29
And just from a quick scan of this list, there are a couple of keywords that I would have
07:34
never thought of like “coffee places near me” and “coffee shop near Eaton Centre”, which is
07:39
a large mall in downtown Toronto.
07:41
You should have a solid list of keyword ideas now, so it’s time to move onto some on-page
07:46
SEO.
07:47
If you’re familiar with SEO, then you’ll find that a lot of the typical on-page SEO best practices
07:51
apply here.
07:53
For example, it can be advantageous to include your keyword in your H1 tag, add your target
07:57
keyword in the title tag, set the URL slug to your keyword, and use short URLs.
08:03
But there are a few other things you should specifically do for local SEO.
08:07
Now, these optimizations will vary depending on if you have a single location versus multiple
08:11
locations.
08:12
So I’ll cover both.
08:13
The first thing you’ll want to do is optimize your homepage.
08:16
In general, most single location businesses should optimize their homepage around their
08:20
primary location.
08:22
So as a Toronto based coffee shop, I would probably target keywords like “coffee shop
08:26
Toronto,” rather than just coffee shop.
08:28
Here’s why:
08:29
If you look at the organic keywords report for that Toronto coffee shop we were looking
08:33
at before, you’ll see that nearly all of their keyword rankings revolve around their homepage
08:37
And you can see that they rank in the “Snack Pack” for that keyword phrase.
08:41
But if I do a search just 30 miles away from downtown Toronto, you’ll see completely different
08:46
results for the same keyword phrase.
08:48
So here are a few on-page optimization tips for your homepage.
08:51
First, show NAP information, which again is name, address and phone number on the
08:55
homepage.
08:56
In fact, you can add this to the footer of your entire website if you operate from a
09:01
single location as you can see in this example here.
09:04
And it’s absolutely critical that your name, address, and phone number match exactly or
09:09
as close as possible to what you’ve submitted to Google My Business.
09:13
You can also add testimonials or reviews of your business here and use Schema markup,
09:17
which we’re going to attack right now.
09:19
Schema markup is code that you add to your website to improve the way search engines
09:23
read and represent your page in the search engine results.
09:27
You can use Google’s structured data markup helper to eliminate a whole mess of complicated
09:32
coding.
09:32
Just select a data type, so in this case, we’d choose local businesses, then enter in
09:37
the URL of the page you want to markup and click the “start tagging” button.
09:41
Next, just click on the elements that you want to tag.
09:44
So if I click on the logo here, I can set it to the name.
09:47
Then I’ll scroll down to the footer of the page and add a few more markup elements.
09:52
So here, you can see that they have two phone numbers, so you’d want to choose the one that’s
09:56
submitted in their My Business Listing.
09:58
And the last thing I’ll add is the address.
10:01
You would need to select all of the different parts of the address and choose the correct field.
10:07
Also, you’ll see that they include their address here, but left their postal code out, so in
10:11
this case, if I were this business, I would include that in the footer too.
10:15
Once you’re done, you can click on this button, and a piece of code will come up which you
10:19
can add to your website.
10:20
Now, if you’re a business that has multiple locations, then you’re exempt from the rule
10:24
of optimizing your homepage around your primary location.
10:27
And by multiple locations, I’m not referring to a couple brick and mortar shops 10 miles
10:31
from each other, but bigger companies like hotels or car rentals where they might have
10:36
hundreds or even thousands of locations.
10:38
Instead of the home page, you would want to optimize local landing pages by including
10:42
key elements like the location’s NAP, operating hours and sprinkle in related keywords targeted
10:48
at that location.
10:49
Let me show you how Enterprise Car Rental does it
10:51
and pay attention to the URLs too as we go through this process.
10:55
If you want to rent a car in the US, then you’ll start at their location directory where
10:59
you need to select a state where you want to rent a car.
11:02
Next, you’ll need to pick a city within that state.
11:05
Then you’ll be brought down to the branch level.
11:07
Finally, you’ll see the local NAP information that’s actually designed to convert visitors
11:12
into customers.
11:13
Scrolling down, you’ll see the operating hours for this specific location.
11:17
And if we look at the organic traffic for these 4 pages, you’ll see that they all get
11:22
a good amount of targeted search traffic on landing pages, which I’m sure is quite profitable.
11:27
The next step is to build local citations.
11:30
And citations are online mentions of your business.
11:32
There are two main types of citations.
11:34
They are structured and unstructured.
11:36
Structured citations are mentions that include your NAP information and it’s usually presented
11:41
in a visually-structured manner.
11:42
So this would include places like business directories and social profiles.
11:47
Unstructured citations are mentions of your business that don’t follow a structure.
11:51
So this might be in blog posts, preferred vendors pages or on other websites.
11:55
And building local citations is super important.
11:58
According to a 2017 study done by Moz, citation signals were one of the top local ranking
12:04
factors, which was true for both Google’s “Snack Pack” results and regular organic search
12:08
results.
12:09
And this is likely due to having consistent NAP information from all over the web, which
12:14
verifies that the data Google has in their My Business listing is accurate.
12:18
On the other hand, inconsistent NAP information can confuse or mislead both Google and potential
12:23
customers.
12:24
So your job is two fold:
12:26
First, you need to make sure that your existing citations are correct and consistent.
12:30
And second, you need to build more relevant citations.
12:34
So to handle the first part, you need to perform a citation audit.
12:38
More often than not, some of your citations will be incorrect and/or incomplete.
12:42
And you can run a quick search using Moz’s local search tool.
12:45
Just enter in the name of your business, and choose one from the auto select options from
12:50
the best results.
12:51
From here, you can see a breakdown of the complete, incomplete, inconsistent, and duplicate
12:56
citations, which you can then manually fix.
12:59
You can also do a manual audit using Google search operators, which I won’t get into now,
13:03
but you can check out our local SEO blog post.
13:06
The link’s in the description.
13:07
After you’ve completed your audit, you’ll want to build more citations.
13:10
Now, if you’re a new business, I would start with a list of core structured citations.
13:16
Whitespark.ca has a great resource on places to build these structured citations, which
13:20
I’ll leave a link to in the description.
13:22
Just choose a country, and you’ll see a list of places to add your mark.
13:25
You can then branch out to other relevant local directories like your local chamber
13:29
of commerce, other local business associations and then expand to niche specific websites
13:34
like TripAdvisor, HomeAdvisor, Findlaw and more.
13:37
Another great places to find citation opportunities is to let your competitors do the work for you.
13:43
So using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, look up the homepage URL of one of your competitors since most
13:48
citations will lead to the homepage.
13:50
Next, go to the anchors report.
13:52
In here, you can use the search box to look for any of these keywords:
13:56
These are common anchor texts that you’ll find in directories, which make them easy
14:01
citation opportunities.
14:02
So if I search for “website,” then I’m gonna click on “details” and “referring domains,” then you’ll
14:07
see a bunch of places where we can build both structured and unstructured citations.
14:12
Another hyper-effective tactic you can do is to use the Link Intersect tool.
14:16
In the top section, enter in the name of a few of your organic search competitors.
14:20
So I’ve already entered in a few domains of top-ranking Toronto coffee shops.
14:24
Then, I’ll set the top dropdown to show websites that link to any of these sites.
14:29
And you can enter in your domain in the bottom box, which will exclude links that are already
14:33
linking to your website.
14:34
But since we don’t have a real website, I’ll leave the bottom section empty and run the
14:38
search.
14:39
Now, when you’re looking through the results, just scan these 3 columns and look for referring
14:43
domains that link to at least a couple of your target websites.
14:47
In general, the more sites a domain links to, the better the chances of it being a legit
14:52
place to create your own citation.
14:54
So dinehere.ca would be a solid one that we can add our coffee shop to.
14:58
With these citation hunting methods, it should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
15:02
But we can’t stop here because we still need to build quality editorial links.
15:06
According to Moz’s 2017 survey, link signals were the most important ranking factor for
15:12
local organic results.
15:13
For the local “Snack Pack,” links were the second most important factor.
15:17
Rather than focusing on a full-out link building tutorial, I want to leave you with two tried
15:22
and true tactics that work.
15:23
The first is to create and promote a useful resource.
15:27
In this case, a local resource related to your niche would be ideal.
15:30
I know I say it all the time, but people are more willing to link to helpful articles over
15:34
salesy content like product and services pages.
15:38
So a couple ideas would be to create local “best of” guides or content that would appeal
15:42
to your target audience.
15:44
So for example, we could create content on how to make the best cup of coffee, where we can
15:48
plug our own products.
15:49
We could also create content targeted at coffee drinking solopreneurs on the best and affordable
15:55
local places for office space, since we offer virtual office services.
15:59
The second tactic would be to guest blog.
16:02
Even though guest posts normally come with a link back to your site, I want you to look
16:05
at this as an opportunity to build yourself up as an industry expert.
16:10
This is particularly important for people in the services industry.
16:13
People want to hire professionals they can trust and know will do a good job.
16:17
And often times, they’re willing to pay a premium to have the peace of mind that the
16:21
job’s gonna get done right the first time.
16:23
And you can look for local blogs that accept guest posts by googling any of these queries.
16:29
So looking at the search results for “Toronto “write for us”,
16:32
you’ll see some very relevant local websites that are seeking writers.
16:36
You can also do this in Content Explorer to expand your list of potential guest posting
16:40
prospects.
16:41
Just type in a topic related to your niche.
16:43
So I’ll type in “coffee beans” and I’ll also set the search to a title search for more
16:47
relevant results.
16:48
Next, click on the “one article per domain,” filter, since we don’t need to contact the
16:53
same website multiple times.
16:55
Scrolling down a bit, you’ll see this post on The 12 Best Coffee Beans to Buy.
16:59
From here, you could easily pitch yourself as a pro barista that runs a cafe in Toronto
17:04
and share some actionable or interesting insights on something like roasting beans.
17:08
The last and final step is to take care of ongoing activities.
17:11
Even though you’ve set up your Google My Business and built a bunch of citations, these are
17:16
all things that you want to have well-documented.
17:19
In business, things change.
17:20
That might be you moving to a new location, changing your phone number, or even changing
17:24
your business name,
17:25
in which case, you would need to update all of your citations.
17:29
So the first thing you need to do is ensure that you keep your Google My Business account
17:33
active.
17:34
There are 3 important regular tasks that you need to
17:36
take care of.
17:37
First is to consistently respond to customers and client reviews.
17:41
This includes both positive and negative comments.
17:44
Next is to be on the lookout for inaccurate edits to your Google My Business listing.
17:48
Anyone can click on “suggest an edit” on your My Business listing and sometimes Google will
17:52
accept these suggestions without notice to you or the business owner.
17:56
In fact, scammers have even swapped phone numbers with legit businesses for a quick
18:01
payday.
18:02
So it’s your job to ensure that your listings are up to date and correct at all times.
18:06
Finally, is to use Google Posts to keep your customers informed and engaged.
18:10
Google Posts is a micro-blogging platform within Google My Business.
18:14
And all of these updates are visible in the Knowledge Panel and accessible with the click
18:17
of a mouse.
18:18
This provides an opportunity to attract more attention to your listing, connect with your
18:23
audience and ultimately boost conversions.
18:25
You can create a Google Post from within Google My Business by going on the posts menu, click
18:29
“Write your post” and then add an image and up to 300 words of text.
18:34
This is a great way to share your promotional offers or teasers for your blog posts.
18:37
You can also choose a call-to-action button from a list of preset options to bump click-throughs.
18:42
I recommend all local businesses play around with this feature and stay active with Google
18:47
Posts.
18:47
It doesn’t take any more time than a tweet and there’s a ton of potential to garner attention
18:52
from Google searchers.
18:53
Now we’ve covered a lot here, so what I recommend doing right now is putting these techniques
18:58
into action, and watching some of the video suggestions in the cards, which will dig deeper
19:02
into some of the topics we’ve talked about like link building, SEO for blogs, and on-page
19:07
SEO techniques.
19:08
So hit the subscribe button for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials, go and get your
19:12
local website ranked, and I’ll see you in the next tutorial.

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