Local SEO Made Easy: Here’s How to Do it in 2021

Used to be you could find a great product or service that everybody wanted, pick a popular spot with a lot of foot traffic, and hang out a sign that said “open for business.”

Well, to be honest, maybe it was never that easy… But things sure feel a lot harder now, don’t they? After all, it seems like more competition pops up every week.

And these days, fewer and fewer people are out walking around. That is, of course, if they’re even WILLING to shop local. The pandemic has driven lots of people online, which means your competitors now stretch across the internet.

In other words, it’s more important than ever to have an online strategy to get you more local customers.

So in this episode, I’ll show you all the major strategies that are guaranteed to move the needle in your favor. And I’ll teach you not only how to get started for local SEO 2021

Transcript

00:00
being found by your community who needs
00:02
what you can offer them
00:04
is critical to your success as a local
00:06
business
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especially right now right with fewer
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people out and about
00:10
for obvious reasons your online strategy
00:14
for funneling people into your business
00:17
is more important than ever before
00:19
so this video is going to be your
00:21
ultimate guide telling you
00:22
every major step that you need to focus
00:25
on
00:26
so you can show up in local search
00:28
making you
00:29
way more visible and of course more
00:31
visibility
00:32
leads to more customers this is all
00:34
stuff that’s guaranteed to move the
00:36
needle in your favor
00:37
and let’s face it your competition’s
00:39
probably already doing some of this
00:42
whether it’s intentional or not so if
00:44
you want to outrank them
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you just need to do slightly more of it
00:48
than they are
00:49
so let’s get into what you can do
00:51
starting today
00:52
and i should say right off the top that
00:54
when i say local seo
00:55
i really mean two different places you
00:58
can be found
00:59
first is in the map pack as one of these
01:02
three featured businesses
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and second in the organic search engine
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results
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just underneath the map there’s one
01:09
really important difference between
01:10
these two placements
01:12
the map results change pretty
01:14
drastically based on
01:16
the physical location where your
01:18
prospective customer is searching from
01:20
basically google’s always trying to show
01:23
them
01:23
the closest results to them the organic
01:26
listings underneath that however
01:28
are pretty much the same across the
01:31
board no matter what
01:32
which is great whether you’re centrally
01:34
located
01:35
or not so what i’m going to show you
01:37
here today is going to work together
01:38
so you can ideally show up in both
01:41
places
01:42
especially for those customers who
01:45
happen to be
01:45
close to you which you know puts you in
01:48
a pretty great position over your
01:49
competitors
01:50
and the first thing you need to do here
01:52
is find your keywords
01:54
that your local customers are going to
01:55
use to find you and there are a ton of
01:58
keyword research tools out there
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but my favorite one can be found at
02:02
ubersuggest.com
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and it just happens to be free and i’ve
02:06
got a whole video
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that i did a while back about how to use
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ubersuggest to do your keyword research
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and i’m going to link to that right
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under this video if you’re interested in
02:15
learning that step
02:16
okay so next you need to set up your
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google my business profile
02:20
for success now according to moz.com
02:23
the signals that you send out with your
02:25
google my business profile
02:27
is the single most important factor for
02:30
ranking in the map pack
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and you probably already have a listing
02:33
if you’ve been around for a bit
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but there’s a right way and a wrong way
02:37
of filling that out
02:38
if you really want to stack the deck in
02:40
your favor so first off
02:42
make sure that yours is filled out
02:44
completely 100 percent
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and you’ll know how filled out it is
02:49
because they actually tell you
02:51
with a completion score but even if
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you’ve got a perfect 100
02:55
i still recommend going even further
02:57
than that
02:58
if you really want to dominate so i want
03:00
to tell you about a few above and beyond
03:02
measures you can take
03:03
starting with the categories that you
03:06
choose to describe your business
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now they make you choose your top level
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category and that’s actually where most
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businesses stop
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but you’re not going to do that right
03:14
you’re going to want to also choose
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a few secondary categories that’ll help
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you rank for even more keywords
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just make sure they fit at least one of
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your services and you should be good to
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go
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and you also want to pay close attention
03:27
to
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the services and product sections on
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the left sidebar this is going to give
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google some extra content
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about what you offer not to mention that
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these are just really fantastic places
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that you can naturally work in some of
03:42
your keyword phrases
03:43
for you know extra seo power now this is
03:46
a fairly new development when it comes
03:48
to google my business
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it’s really the first time that we’re
03:52
seeing that reviews
03:53
are directly impacting rankings so what
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you should be doing is making a strong
03:58
push this year
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to get more of those five star reviews
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from your customers
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and here’s the thing you should be
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replying to
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every review you get because it’s really
04:08
likely that having
04:09
your desired keywords in the text of
04:12
your reviews is going to help
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to strengthen your seo scores so not
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only
04:18
does replying to a review help your
04:20
customer service
04:22
but if you can work in a keyword phrase
04:24
in your responses
04:26
it definitely couldn’t hurt just don’t
04:28
be obvious about it right the main
04:30
emphasis
04:30
here should always be either thanking
04:32
them for a rave
04:34
five star review or trying to smooth
04:37
things over
04:38
and make things right in the case of a
04:40
bad review
04:41
so once google my business is an optimal
04:43
shape for you
04:44
we need to focus on what your website
04:46
says
04:47
right it’s super important to understand
04:49
that what google is really looking for
04:51
here is a lot of consistency
04:53
across your google my business profile
04:56
and your website and together it should
04:59
all paint a really clear picture
05:01
about what you do and that your
05:03
legitimate business
05:04
in the area that you’re trying to rank
05:07
for so even if you can’t realistically
05:09
rank in the map
05:10
pack across your entire service area
05:12
like
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let’s say you cover a tri-county area
05:17
or something you can create location
05:20
pages on your website
05:22
for each individual city and do the work
05:24
and hope to rank each of those pages
05:27
in organic search it doesn’t matter if
05:29
you have a physical location there or
05:31
not
05:31
but there’s a right way to do this too
05:34
and most people do it completely wrong
05:36
so
05:36
if you want to do it right a few things
05:38
to keep in mind
05:39
first off do not treat these pages like
05:42
an afterthought
05:43
right if these location pages are how
05:46
you’re planning on getting actual
05:48
customers you need to design them
05:51
and write the words on them like actual
05:53
human customers are reading them
05:55
in other words treat them like home
05:57
pages with actual
05:59
persuasion based copy and benefit
06:02
sections and testimonials
06:04
much more like this than this
06:07
and while this isn’t necessarily an seo
06:09
tip it kind of is
06:10
right think about it this way if you
06:12
create these pages
06:14
purely for search engines and then you
06:16
turn off all your human site visitors in
06:18
the process
06:20
they bounce and guess what google is
06:22
going to notice that and now
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whose page are they less likely to show
06:26
to the next person
06:27
who makes the same search yeah yours so
06:30
you gotta make pages appealing to the
06:33
human visitors
06:34
or you know all of your seo work is
06:37
eventually
06:38
just going to burn itself out due to
06:39
lack of interest so design the pages to
06:42
look more like
06:42
well thought out home pages and then
06:44
just turn that into a reusable template
06:47
where you can change the text on each
06:49
individual
06:50
city location page now i’m not just
06:53
saying change the city names
06:55
right you need to change all the text
06:56
because unique content
06:58
is extremely important because if you
07:01
reuse the same copy from page to page
07:04
google’s only gonna count one version of
07:06
that
07:07
the rest of the pages are never gonna
07:09
hope to rank for anything
07:10
so make sure you’re using your most
07:12
desired keyword phrase
07:14
along with each city’s name in your h1
07:17
header
07:17
which is just what we call that main
07:19
heading on the top of the page
07:21
then use it in one or two secondary
07:24
headings
07:24
and a few times in the body copy as well
07:27
then go ahead and sprinkle in some of
07:28
your secondary keywords
07:30
into subheadings and body copy where
07:34
they read well
07:34
and make sense and if you have videos
07:37
you can make those work for you here too
07:39
by uploading them onto youtube and then
07:42
titling them
07:43
with that same keyword and city name
07:46
combination
07:47
right and then you take that video and
07:49
you embed it on your most
07:51
important pages that you want some extra
07:54
ranking power on
07:55
since google owns youtube having that
07:57
kind of keyword crossover
07:59
is just a really powerful extra signal
08:01
that you might as well take advantage of
08:03
finally give each page a great title and
08:05
description
08:06
using that same keyword city phrase in
08:09
the title
08:10
along with a little something extra
08:11
right this could be a benefit of working
08:13
with you or
08:14
just something that makes you unique in
08:16
any way then your description underneath
08:18
the title
08:19
should include a few more uh really
08:22
solid benefits
08:23
and the reason you want to do this is
08:25
because you want your listing
08:27
to pop out from all the rest of them so
08:30
you can get more clicks
08:31
than the other listings above you and
08:34
beneath you so
08:35
because if you get more clicks than
08:36
google thinks you should be getting
08:38
in your current position you start to
08:40
climb up the rankings
08:42
then when you have all your location
08:43
pages live and online
08:45
you just want to create a really simple
08:47
footer menu
08:48
and title it something like locations we
08:50
serve
08:51
and list them all out using your local
08:53
seo keyword phrases
08:55
as that actual link text and of course
08:58
for any actual
08:59
physical locations you have even if it’s
09:01
just one
09:02
you you probably want to embed a google
09:04
map on
09:05
the page for the city that you’re
09:07
located in so
09:08
just for an example let’s say you’ve got
09:11
location pages
09:12
for every city in boulder county
09:15
in colorado but you’re actually
09:17
physically located
09:19
in the town of louisville let’s say well
09:21
then you do
09:22
all your city pages as normal like we
09:24
talked about
09:25
but then on your lewisville page you
09:28
just want to add your map
09:29
to the page with your complete business
09:31
name address
09:32
and phone number so doing that’s going
09:34
to give you some extra
09:36
power to rank in the map pack within
09:39
your actual physical location
09:41
okay so remember when i said that google
09:43
likes to see consistency
09:45
across your google my business profile
09:48
and your website
09:49
well the plot thickens here because they
09:51
also want to see consistency
09:53
between those things and across the
09:56
entire internet
09:57
um specifically any mention of your
09:59
business to be exact
10:01
and we call these mentions of your
10:03
business citations
10:04
a citation appears on your social
10:07
profiles
10:08
on business directory sites review sites
10:11
anything like that the goal is to not
10:14
only have as many mentions
10:16
or citations as possible across the
10:19
internet
10:20
but they also need to be super
10:22
consistent too i mean consistent with
10:24
each other
10:25
and with what your website and your
10:28
google my business says
10:29
so what exactly am i talking about what
10:32
needs to be
10:33
so consistent well it needs your
10:35
business’s name
10:37
address and phone number otherwise known
10:40
as
10:40
the nap so when you’re building your
10:42
citations and listing your address on
10:44
your website for that matter
10:46
i do recommend starting with the format
10:49
that they give you that’s listed on your
10:51
google my business profile so
10:53
you’ll put in your address and then
10:55
they’ll take what you give them
10:57
and they’ll put it into a very specific
10:59
format and that’s what you want to copy
11:01
and paste you want to paste it exactly
11:03
as it’s written out there
11:06
and write it just that way on your site
11:08
and all your citations
11:09
i’m talking about if it says rd don’t
11:12
spell out road on your citations
11:15
if it says number 4c don’t start using
11:19
sweet 4c so you can either start
11:21
building citations manually yourself
11:23
by you know doing some research on all
11:25
the different directories
11:26
that cover your industry and your local
11:29
area
11:30
and then submitting them one by one but
11:32
honestly this is the kind of thing that
11:34
i would recommend outsourcing
11:36
um to a company that just specializes in
11:39
this kind of thing because
11:40
it’s not that expensive and that way you
11:43
can really
11:44
concentrate your efforts on the stuff
11:46
only you can do right
11:47
the location pages making sure those are
11:49
as good as they can be
11:51
and making sure your google my business
11:53
profile
11:54
is as good as that can be too okay and
11:56
that brings us to something that’s good
11:58
for any businesses seo
12:00
even you local businesses and that’s
12:02
link building right
12:03
having a lot of good links to your
12:06
website from
12:06
other sites has always been a key
12:09
ranking factor
12:10
and honestly it’s not any less important
12:13
today than it
12:14
was 10 years ago and not only do lots of
12:16
good backlinks help you rank your site
12:18
organically
12:19
they also can help you in the map
12:21
listings now too the thing to remember
12:23
here is you want to make an
12:24
extra special effort for local seo to
12:27
get links not just from any site out
12:29
there
12:30
but if you can get them from other local
12:32
businesses that’s even better because
12:34
these links
12:35
are going to further tie you to your
12:38
local area
12:39
so just make a list of all the local
12:41
businesses that you
12:42
maybe have a relationship with and then
12:45
reach out to them
12:46
especially if they already have a
12:47
section or a page on their site
12:50
where they have links to businesses they
12:52
work with you can also really easily get
12:54
a link from your local chamber of
12:56
commerce
12:56
and your better business bureau chapter
12:59
uh you can also
13:00
sponsor local events and get some really
13:02
powerful backlinks out of that too
13:04
still with me alright cool now i know
13:06
this is a lot so
13:08
if you need to dive any deeper into any
13:10
of these tips i put together
13:11
this playlist of all my best videos
13:14
for ranking a business locally so just
13:17
click right here
13:18
and then choose the video topic that you
13:20
want to learn more about
13:22
whether it’s getting more five-star
13:23
reviews uh doing keyword research or
13:26
getting backlinks
13:27
i’ve got you covered so click right here
13:29
and i’ve got
13:30
way more to show you