Got a crawling, indexing, or site-wide ranking problem?

SEO traffic isn’t just about having the right content.

One wrong technical SEO setting can bring your entire site down.

And many technical errors are so obscure that they go unnoticed for years.

Even small problems can add up, slowing you down and resulting in less traffic.

Technical SEO audits require specialized skills and in-depth expertise. Google is constantly changing it’s algorithms. If you want the audit done right, you’ll need someone that really knows that they’re doing. 

Well, I have good news. 

Step-by-step, I’ll walk you through how to choose a technical SEO agency that’s right for your business.

Whether you’re a small business that just needs an audit done right, or a major corporation that needs a complete SEO program, there’s an option for you.

Know Your Goals and Desired Outcomes

Most people only give technical SEO a second thought when things have gone south. It shouldn’t be this way. 

Why? 

Technical SEO is the backbone of every successful, long-term SEO strategy.

Here’s a few examples of when it’s worth making technical SEO a priority. 

Example #1: Traffic Drops After Publishing More Content

Let’s say you started your content push to get higher Google rankings.

You created, published, and promoted in-depth blog posts. 

After a while, Google rewards your efforts with higher rankings for some keywords. Your site traffic starts to increase. 

Things are going well.

So you keep publishing more content. And that’s when things go bad. 

Your traffic tanks. 

More content doesn’t always yield more traffic. Sometimes, it shrinks your organic traffic from.

I know it sounds crazy but this happens all the time.

Bloated sites with duplicate content make it really hard for Google to figure out which pages of yours to rank.

What does Google do when they’re not sure what to rank? They usually rank nothing.

Duplicate content on your blog, a ton of similar pages that were created automatically, or telling Google to index internal URLs can all lead to problems.

If you see anything like this, get a technical SEO to help you.

Example #2: An Abrupt Traffic Drop

If you play the SEO game long enough, one of your sites will fall off a cliff overnight.

Years ago, our blog at KISSmetrics saw traffic drop by 40% in less than a month.

That dropped our monthly traffic by hundreds of thousands of visitors. The team scrambled to fix that.

Everyone goes through one of these.

And the first thing you want to do is reach out to a technical SEO.

Hopefully, it’s a simple fix like a bad robots.txt file. Even if it’s a bigger problem, you want a serious expert to pinpoint the issue and chart a course to get that traffic back.

4 Characteristics That Make a Great Technical SEO Company

Not all agencies can develop, let alone implement, advanced technical SEO strategies. A reason for this is that it requires specialized skills and vast experience. 

So, how do you recognize those who can not only develop a technical SEO plan unique to your business but can also implement it for maximum results?

Such agencies work with a team of experts and the other characteristics I’ll discuss below.

1. Experience With Massive Sites

Smaller websites rarely have issues with technical SEO that are difficult to fix. In most cases, any problems can be solved by checking the robots.txt file, making sure the site is on a good platform (like WordPress or Shopify), and upgrading to a good web host.

If a small site struggles to rank, it’s usually because they need a lot more content and authority. Rarely is there a quick fix.

Large sites, however, are completely different.

When a site has millions of URLs, all sorts of insane problems come up. There can easily be thousands of junk URLs that never should have been indexed to begin with. Or terrible canonical errors that cause rampant duplication problems. Not to mention keeping everything clean between dozens of languages.

For sites like this, make sure you’re working with someone that has tons of experience working on larger sites.

Otherwise, they won’t have the experience need to spot your technical problems quickly.

2. A Holistic Process that Includes Technical SEO

As I’ve mentioned earlier, technical SEO is the backbone that gives your site structure. Occasionally, you will see some quick technical SEO fixes bring you traffic.

But what then?

After you fix your technical SEO, what’s your plan for growing SEO traffic over the long term?

We’ve seen lots of folks work on quick fixes and then never take the next step to growing their site by 2X, 5X, or 10X what they have now.

If it was me, I’d want to work with someone that could keep growing my site year in and year out. That’s where the real impact comes from.

If you have a gnarly technical SEO problem, work with a specialist. But an agency with deep SEO expertise across content, technical SEO, and promotion will take your business to an entirely different level.

3. Thought leadership

It takes patient experimentation to develop, plan, and implement technical SEO strategies.

And to show their processes and how they achieve results, exceptional technical SEO agencies publish their findings from experiments.

That’s one of the easiest ways to look for a top tier technical SEO agency. Find the folks that product the best content in the space.

After all, if they’re already doing great SEO, they can likely help your business too.

4. Been in the SEO Game Long Enough to Spot Patterns

Technical SEO can move really fast.

Google is always releasing new features, shutting down others, and changing their priorities.

It’s a shifting landscape.

Getting a great technical SEO that knows the rules today isn’t enough. Ideally, you’ll want to work with someone that knows where SEO is going in the coming months and years. Or at least can take a good guess at it.

The last thing anyone wants is to restructure their site and then have Google go in an entirely different direction.

How to Work With a Technical SEO Agency

Once you’ve picked an agency, then what?

How do you work with one? What should you expect when you hire technical SEO specialists?

Typically, the process looks like this. 

1. In-house Team Alignment

Most technical SEO agencies work as an extension of your in-house marketing team.   

To ensure the partnership between both parties starts smoothly, you should:

• Hold an in-house stakeholder meeting to align your teams.
• Communicate why you need to work with a technical SEO agency and how their work would impact your site and business.
• Make sure everyone is truly onboard with getting help. The agency may help find problems but internal teams need to be motivated to fix them.
• Appoint front-facing employees that’ll work directly with the agency. 

When you do this, it ensures there’s team alignment between your company and the agency. It also keeps the agency in sync with your goals. 

2. Discovery Session

The first task to expect when you contact a technical SEO agency is an invitation to share your business problems and needs relevant to technical SEO. 

A reason for this is to understand your business situation better and get ideas from their vast pool of experience on the best approach to take. 

This process starts with a discovery session.

The best technical SEO agencies are first there to help organizations develop customized strategies that drive business growth. But for them to help you, expect to share your needs via a discovery session.

3. A Paid Audit

For a lot of marketing agencies, they’ll do a bunch of research for free and pitch you a proposal on how they’ll accomplish your goals.

This usually makes a lot of sense. The marketing agency gives you a taste of what they can do, they charge for the execution of the plan itself.

Technical SEO agencies rarely work like that.

In their case, the value is the research. You’re hiring them to do a ton of digging on your site and surface every problem they can find.

So don’t expect free audits.

The agency usually has a standard rate based on the size of your site.

4. Audit Results

Once the audit is finished, expect a document that goes into every issue that the team found. You can also expect a call to go over all the results.

Have your team ask followup questions, get clarification, and get as much advice on implementation as possible.

Because after this call, you’ll have a choice.

Some technical SEO agencies will help with implementation too. They’ll go over what that looks like. Many will have a proposal ready to go just in case you want to move forward right away.

If you want to implement everything in-house, make sure that this work doesn’t get neglected. It’s easy for it to get lost in the hand-off. Break up the work as necessary and get all deliverables assigned to individuals that can carry them to completion.

5. Ongoing Work

If you’ve decided to work with that agency on an ongoing basis, you’ll get into a regular cadence of status updates, invoicing, and execution.

Since you’ve already completed an audit with the agency by this point, there shouldn’t be any surprises in how they work.

As long as they keep delivering great work, keep working with them. 

How to Find The Right Technical SEO Agency For You

To choose a technical SEO agency that’s right for you, I recommend you start with these steps: 

1. Know your desired outcomes for technical SEO. 
2. Make sure the agencies on your shortlist specialize in these goals.
3. Pick the one with the best track record in that area. 

To make the selection process much easier for you, below you’ll find the best technical SEO companies below. 

The 5 Top Technical SEO Agencies

1. Neil Patel Digital – Best For Technical Content Structuring

No doubt, content is king. But content without a strong technical SEO foundation doesn’t yield long-term SEO success.

Ideally, you’d have both. Great content and smooth technical SEO.

At Neil Patel Digital, we excel at developing and implementing SEO-optimized content structuring that meets the necessary technical SEO requirements.

I truly believe we have one of the most comprehensive SEO programs in the world. We’d be a great fit if you really want to go for it.

Quite a few Fortune 500 companies have picked us to do just that.

2. Webris – Best for Technical SEO Audits

Let’s say you feel really good about your SEO strategy. But something on your site is a little off. Or you just want to double check and make sure nothing’s missing.

In that case, a technical SEO audit would be a great fit for you.

The company I recommend for this kind of work is Webris. 

Their entire process is published here, take a look before you decide to contact them.

Led by Ryan Stewart, Webris boasts a talented team of advanced technical SEO experts trusted by government agencies and enterprise companies. 

3. Salt.agency – Best for Technical Organic Optimization

Salt.agency’s core differentiator is how they blend industry-leading technical expertise with organic growth strategies to drive organic optimization.

They’re a good option for business that need more than just a technical SEO audit. If you know that you have SEO problems but aren’t sure where they are, they’ll be happy to dig in and give you guidance on your strategy.

They have offices in Leeds, Boston, and London and  customers that include Travel Supermarket, Cloudflare, Hartley Botanic, and many others.

4. Ayima – Best for Enterprise Technical SEO

Ayima positions itself as the technical SEO agency for enterprise companies. And this agency’s minimum project size is $25,000. 

This may seem on the high side from afar, but it only reflects Ayima’s vast experience and expertise, working with huge companies like eBay and British Airways. 

Ayima didn’t become the technical SEO agency for enterprise brands overnight. The company earned its stripes after transitioning from a search engine technology startup into a technical marketing agency.

In any space, the best agencies have people that have built products in that exact space. They really understand how it all comes together.

If you’re looking for hardcore technical SEO expertise, reach out to them.

5. Orainti – Best for eCommerce Brands

Orainti, a Spanish-based SEO agency, works mostly with ecommerce brands selling globally. 

This agency is excellent for developing SEO-optimized multilingual domains and a robust site structure for category pages and products.

Ecommerce sites have a lot of technical SEO problems that are completely unique for them. If you have a large ecommerce site, I’d definitely recommend working with an agency with deep ecommerce experience.

Most importantly, most of Orainti’s services is around technical SEO.

Founded by Aleyda Solis, a veteran SEO practitioner, author, and speaker, Orainti has an impressive portfolio of premium brands likeUnder Armour, Zillow, Sage, Eventbrite, and others.

Have a Plan for Technical SEO from Day One

Most businesses make the mistake of relegating technical SEO to the backseat.

Why?

Because from the onset, it doesn’t have much impact on rankings and traffic. 

A little time invested today could gain you thousands of extra visitors without any extra work later.

Don’t wait for things to go south. Make it easy for Google to find, index, understand, and rank your content.

No sense in jumping on the SEO treadmill while trying to carry a bunch of extra weight that will only slow you down.

Get a solid plan for technical SEO from day one. 

And if you need help, reach out to an agency that specializes in technical SEO.

The post How to Choose The Right Technical SEO Agency appeared first on Neil Patel.

Posted by BritneyMuller

Last week, we took you into the future with SEO expert Britney Muller to explore link prospecting in 2021. This week, we’re going back in time — all the way to 2017 — for her concrete advice on an important part of building links: image link building.

Image link building is a delicate art. There are some distinct considerations from traditional link building, and doing it successfully requires a balance of creativity, curiosity, and having the right tools on hand. Let’s dive in! 

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going to go over all things image link building, which is sort of an art. I’m so excited to dig into this with you.

Know your link targets

So first and foremost, you need to know your link targets:

I. Popular industry platforms – top pages

What are those top platforms or websites that you would really like to acquire a link from? Then, from there, you can start to understand who might be influencers on those platforms, who’s writing the content, who might you contact, and also what are the top pages currently for those sites. There are a number of tools that give you a glimpse into that information. Moz’s OSE, Open Site Explorer, will show you top pages. SEMrush has a top page report. SimilarWeb has a popular page report. You can dig into all that information there, really interesting stuff.

II. Old popular images – update!

You can also start to dig into old, popular images and then update them. So what are old popular images within your space that you could have an opportunity to revamp and update? A really neat way to sort of dig into some of that is BuzzSumo’s infographics filter, and then you would insert the topic. You enter the industry or the topic you’re trying to address and then search by the infographics to see if you can come across anything.

III. Transform popular content into images

You can also just transform popular content into images, and I think there is so much opportunity in doing that for new statistics reports, new data that comes out. There are tons of great opportunities to transform those into multiple images and leverage that across different platforms for link building.

IV. Influencers

Again, just understanding who those influencers are.

Do your keyword research

So, from here, we’re going to dive into the keyword research part of this whole puzzle, and this is really understanding the intent behind people searching about the topic or the product or whatever it might be. Something you can do is evaluate keywords with link intent. This is a brilliant concept I heard about a couple weeks back from Dan Shure’s podcast. Thank you, Dan. Essentially it’s the idea that keywords with statistics or facts after the keyword have link intent baked into the search query. It’s brilliant. Those individuals are searching for something to reference, to maybe link to, to include in a presentation or an article or whatever that might be. It has this basic link intent.

Another thing you want to evaluate is just anything around images. Do any of your keywords and pictures or photos, etc. have good search volume with some opportunities? What does that search result currently look like? You have to evaluate what’s currently ranking to understand what’s working and what’s not. I used to say at my old agency I didn’t want anyone writing any piece of content until they had read all of the 10 search results for that keyword or that phrase we were targeting. Why would you do that until you have a full understanding of how that looks currently and how we can make something way better?

Rand had also mentioned this really cool tip on if you find some keywords, it’s good to evaluate whether or not the image carousel shows up for those searches, because if it does, that’s a little glimpse into the searcher intent that leads to images. That’s a good sign that you’re on the right track to really optimize for a certain image. It’s something to keep in mind.

Provide value

So, from here, we’re going to move up to providing value. Now we’re in the brainstorming stage. Hopefully, you’ve gotten some ideas, you know where you want to link from, and you need to provide value in some way. It could be a…

I. Reference/bookmark Maybe something that people would bookmark, that always works.

II. Perspective is a really interesting one. So some of the most beautiful data visualizations do this extremely well, where they can simplify a confusing concept or a lot of data. It’s a great way to leverage images and graphics.

III. Printouts still work really well. Moz has the SEO Dev Cheat Sheet that I have seen printed all over at different agencies, and that’s really neat to see it adding value directly.

IV. Curate images. We see this a lot with different articles. Maybe the top 25 to 50 images from this tradeshow or this event or whatever it might be, that’s a great way to leverage link building and kind of getting people fired up about a curated piece of content.

Gregory Ciotti — I don’t know if I’m saying that right — has an incredible article I suggest you all read called “Why a Visual Really Is Worth a Thousand Words,” and he mentions don’t be afraid to get obvious. I love that, because I think all too often we tend to overthink images and executing things in general. Why not just state the obvious and see how it goes? He’s got great examples.

Optimize

So, from here, we are going to move into optimization. If any of you need a brush-up on image optimization, I highly suggest you check out Rand’s Whiteboard Friday on image SEO. It covers everything. But some of the basics are your…

Title

You want to make sure that the title of the image has your keyword and explains what it is that you’re trying to convey.

Alt text

This was first and foremost designed for the visually impaired, so you need to be mindful of visually impaired screen readers that will read this to people to explain what the image actually is. So first and foremost, you just need to be helpful and provide information in a descriptive way to describe that image.

Compression

Compression is huge. Page speed is so big right now. I hear about it all the time. I know you guys do too. But one of the easiest ways to help page speed is to compress those huge images. There’s a ton of great free tools out there, like Optimizilla, where you can bulk upload a bunch of large images and then bulk download. It makes it super easy. There are also some desktop programs, if you’re doing this kind of stuff all the time, that will automatically compress images you download or save. That might be worth looking into if you do this a lot.
You want to host the image. You want it to live on your domain. You want to house that. You can leverage it on other platforms, but you want sort of that original to be on your site.

SRCSET

Source set attribute is getting a little technical. It’s super interesting, and it’s basically this really incredible image attribute that allows you to set the minimum browser size and the image you would prefer to show up for different sizes. So you can not only have different images show up for different devices in different sizes, but you can also revamp them. You can revamp the same image and serve it better for a mobile user versus a tablet, etc. Jon Henshaw has some of the greatest stuff on source set. Highly suggest you look at some of his articles. He’s doing really cool things with it. Check that out.

Promotion

So, from here, you want to promote your images. You obviously want to share it on popular platforms. You want to reach back out to some of these things that you might have into earlier. If you updated a piece of content, make them aware of that. Or if you transformed a really popular piece of content into some visuals, you might want to share that with the person who is sharing that piece of content. You want to start to tap into that previous research with your promotion.

Inform the influencers

Ask people to share it. There is nothing wrong with just asking your network of people to share something you’ve worked really hard on, and hopefully, vice versa, that can work in return and you’re not afraid to share something a connection of yours has that they worked really hard on.

Monitor the image SERPs

From here, you need to monitor. One of the best ways to do this is Google reverse image search. So if you go to Google and you click the images tab, there’s that little camera icon that you can click on and upload images to see where else they live on the web. This is a great way to figure out who is using your image, where it’s being held, are you getting a backlink or are you not. You want to keep an eye on all of that stuff.

Two other tools to do this, that I’ve heard about, are Image Raider and TinEye. But I have not had great experience with either of these. I would love to hear your comments below if maybe you have.

Reverse image search with Google works the best for me. This is also an awesome opportunity for someone to get on the market and create a Google alert for images. I don’t think anyone is actually doing that right now. If you know someone that is, please let me know down below in the comments. But it could be a cool business opportunity, right? I don’t know.

So for monitoring, let’s say you find your image is being used on different websites. Now you need to do some basic outreach to get that link. You want to request that link for using your image.

This is just a super basic template that I came up with. You can use it. You can change it, do whatever you want. But it’s just:

Hi, [first name].
Thank you so much for including our image in your article. Great piece. Just wondering if you could link to us.com as the source.
Thanks,
Britney

Something like that. Something short, to the point. If you can make it more personalized, please do so. I can’t stress that enough. People will take you way more seriously if you have some nugget of personal information or connection that you can make.

From there, you just sort of stay in this loop. After you go through this process, you need to continue to promote your content and continue to monitor and do outreach and push that to maximize your link building efforts.
So I hope you enjoyed this. I look forward to hearing all of your comments and thoughts down below in the comments. I look forward to seeing you all later. Thanks for joining us on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Local SEO is important.

In fact, 46% of all searches on Google are local.

That means if you’re a local business and you don’t have your local SEO in order, you’re missing an opportunity every time someone searches for your products or services online.

And there’s a lot of people searching.

About 89% of people search for a local business on their smartphone at least once a week, with 58% searching daily.

And from that search, 72% will visit a store within five miles.

These searchers are unlikely to find you if your local SEO is poor.

What, Exactly, Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the practice of increasing the online visibility of local businesses. It’s similar organic SEO, but with an added geographical component.

Specifically, you’re aiming to rank high in the search engine result pages (SERPs) for local searches.

There’s no point in a New York restaurant ranking high in Houston’s local search results. They want people searching for restaurants in New York to find them.

So it’s imperative to improve your local SEO if you want to increase your organic local traffic.

According to Moz’s 2018 local search ranking factors, Google My Business Signals, including proximity, are a top ranking factor.

These are the signals that help local businesses rank in Google’s three-pack.

But what’s the “pack?”

The Google three-pack is the collection of the top three results for your local search.

This used to be a 7-pack, but it was truncated to be a better fit for mobile searches.

That’s where you want your business to sit.

So how do you get it there?

Here’s some local SEO tips that will get your business noticed.

1. Optimize Your Website for Local SEO

If your website isn’t properly optimized, it will be hard for you to climb the SERPs.

Check your website’s SEO now to see how it could be improved.

For local SEO, in addition to standard SEO best practices, you need to do the following:

Create a Dedicated Contact Page

These days, people want more detailed information about your business.

On your contact page, make sure you clearly show your “NAP:”

• Name
• Address
• Phone

I would also recommend that you display your email, like Seattle’s Velo Bike Shop has done on their site:

Include All of Your Business Addresses

If you have 10 or fewer locations, include the complete name, address, and phone number of each in the sitewide footer element on your website.

Make Phone Numbers Clickable on Mobile Devices

Some 30% of mobile searches are location-related.

So it’s vital that your site is optimized for mobile devices.

Also, 76% of local searches result in a phone call.

So make sure your phone number is clickable.

If someone finds your website on their mobile device and wants to call you, they might be annoyed to find they have to switch between apps to type in the number manually.

Here, Barrio Restaurant has ensured their phone number is clickable when viewed on mobile devices.

When the user clicks the phone number, their phone will prompt them if they’d like to call the number.

Google has a post that walks you through how to make a phone number clickable on your website.

Add a Map or Your Locations

The whole point of local SEO is to make it easier for people to find you, right?

So it would be silly not to add a map, especially when 86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps.

In this example, Starbucks gets it right, including an interactive map of all their locations.

Add Testimonials

Google considers testimonials a trust signal, and it helps people feel confident that you are a real business.

And that’s why Local SEO Guide has a whole page dedicated to these types of reviews.

Collect and prominently display testimonials from local customers on your website for an added local SEO boost.

Add Schema

Schema.org was invented to create a common language between major search engines Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

It makes it easier for search engines to understand what your website is about.

By adding the appropriate Schema markup for local businesses to your website, you’re telling Google you’re a local business and not some big brand.

In turn, this can help to boost your local rankings.

To make this process easier, Hall Analysis has created a tool to help you create your Schema markup.

Just fill in your information, then copy the code on the right-hand side of the page.

Next, paste the code in the <head> section of your HTML document or website builder.

After you’ve added your Schema markup, you’ll want to test it with Google’s structured data testing tool.

This tool should pull out your information, and show it on the right-hand side:

Once you’ve optimized your website for local SEO, you should be in a better position to improve your rankings and increase local organic traffic.

2. Claim Your Online Profiles – Especially Google My Business

Your website isn’t the only place you need to be online.

You need to make sure your business is properly listed on the main review platforms, like Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Facebook.

And don’t forget any popular local-review sites.

Why?

Because when it comes to local searches, Google’s 3-pack is often followed by these review sites:

Google My Business

Filling out your profile on Google My Business is a good place to start.

This profile allows you to manage your presence on Google’s search engine.

By filling out your profile completely and collecting reviews (which we’ll talk about in a minute), you’ll improve your ranking.

Google Maps will also show searchers a detailed profile of your business, like Seattle Coffee Works.

This is huge. So huge I wrote an entire post on how to optimize your Google My Business page.

Especially when you remember that 86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps.

Any Local Listings

You’ll often see the occasional local review site among the heavy hitters, like TripAdvisor and Yelp.

You can find the sites that are relevant to your business and location by searching keywords like:

• [target location] reviews
• [industry/niche] [target location] reviews

Claim Other Social Profiles to Improve Local SEO

You’ll also want to set up profiles on the social media channels relevant to your target demographic.

Be sure to follow social media best practices.

When setting up your profiles, it’s very important to make sure your information is identical on each platform.

Remember, consistency is key.

By setting up these profiles, you’ll become more visible to potential customers. You’ll also provide search engines with more information about your business, which will help to boost your ranking.

3. Create Local Content

Blogging is essential to SEO.

Just in case you haven’t already, create a blog on your website.

If possible, host your blog on your business’s domain for optimal SEO benefits.

For example, “www.website.com/blog” instead of “blog.website.com” or “websiteblog.com.”

Here’s Stonyfield’s blog:

This way, as you acquire links to your blog, you’ll also gain links to your business’s main site.

And if you remember the pie charts at the beginning of this article, links are the second most important localized organic-ranking factor.

So, as your blog’s search engine rankings increase, so do the rankings of your website.

When writing the posts, make sure to include local city and neighborhood names wherever you can.

Not everyone will use your city name when searching, so be sure you also include neighboring towns and cities, neighborhoods, and unofficial terms that locals may use.

Include local news and happenings, which will not only boost your SEO but will also provide useful information to your audience.

Capitalize on the popularity of an upcoming community event, election, fair, etc.

Or, sponsor local events, teams, or organizations, and write about them.

Try to cover local events from the perspective of a local business owner.

You can also interview local experts within or outside your company.

Here, Stonyfield gets involved in a local charity initiative.

But don’t write about your business.

David Meerman Scott, an online marketing strategist, says it perfectly:

“Stop talking about your products and services. People don’t care about products and services; they care about themselves.”

Write posts that help and benefit your reader in some way. Aim to become a trusted source in your industry.

Here, none of Stonyfield’s most popular blog posts are about their business or products directly.

Instead, they are aimed at helping the reader in some way.

Build Links

While you build your blog audience, you also want to collect inbound links.

A good way to start is to join conversations in other local business blogs.

You might want to avoid direct competitors, but are there any complementary or related business blogs in your community?

Participate by leaving thoughtful comments or mentioning (and linking) their posts on your blog.

Building relationships with other businesses is a great way to establish your website and attract links back to your blog.

Another thing you can do is conduct a backlink audit of your top competitors. You can use Ubersuggest to do this. Here’s how.

Step #1: Enter your competitor’s URL and click “search.”

Step #2: Click “backlinks” in the left sidebar to conduct your audit.

The final section of the results page lists every backlink, along with:

• Domain score: Measures the overall strength of the website, from 1 (low) to 100 (high)
• Page score: Measures the overall strength of the page, from 1 (low) to 100 (high)
• Link type: Text or image
• Anchor text: The clickable text that leads to your website
• First seen: The first time Ubersuggest robots identified the backlink
• Last seen: The last time Ubersuggest robots confirmed the backlink

So, if Monteverde Restaurant & Pastificio is one of your competitors, you should review every backlink with an eye toward two things:

• Quality (measured by domain score)
• Your ability to secure a link

Reach out to the same sites and tell them why they should link to your site, too. It’s hit or miss, but even if you only pick up a few backlinks it’s a step in the right direction.

Know Who You’re Targeting

If you don’t know who you’re writing for, it’s extremely difficult to create valuable content that hits the mark.

So once you’ve created your reader personas, you need to understand your target neighborhoods and their demographics.

Nielsen created an excellent tool called Zip Code Lookup to help you do just that.

Simply input your zip code, and you’ll receive information like the median income, age, and consumer spending.

The tool also provides a title summing up the area, like “Urban Elders” or “Aspiring A-Listers.”

Local Content Mistakes to Avoid

Be sure to avoid common mistakes as you focus locally.

Don’t take content from other websites — even from your manufacturers — unless you’re using it as an attributed source or quote in your own original content.

Be wary of the multi-website approach for your business.

Many experts agree that it’s almost always better to build a single, strong website for your brand, its services, and branches, rather than splitting resources between multiple websites.

4. Get Reviews for a Local SEO Boost

Before the internet, it was easier for bad businesses to spin their branding and dupe customers.

Thankfully, the internet has put more power into consumers’ hands.

Now, everyone can instantly see whether you’re as good as you say you are.

Research shows that 81 percent of people read reviews and check ratings, and more than one-in-three consumers comment on blogs or contribute to online forums.

What’s more, 97% say customer reviews factor into their buying decisions.

So, basically everyone.

What’s the state of your online reviews?

If you have anything other than a four- or five-star rating on the major review sites, you might be in trouble.

Poor ratings turn potential customers off. And a lack of ratings may not instill trust and confidence in your brand.

However, a Harvard Business School study found that even bumping up your score by one star can help boost revenues by almost 10%.

Reviews also stand out to prospects as they’re often featured in local search results.

They actually make up 15% of the local pack-ranking factors.

Acquiring reviews is an ongoing process and one you’ll be engaged in for the life of your business.

Every business will receive negative reviews at some point along the way.

When you do, be sure to respond professionally and personally.

The best way to prevent negative reviews is to provide an incredible product or service.

By delighting your customers, you’ll limit bad reviews and encourage good ones.

So now that you’ve gotten your business properly listed on the main review platforms, it’s time to fill them with positive customer reviews and photos, like The Station:

According to Moz, Google reviews are believed to have the greatest impact on Google’s local rankings.

You can create a shareable Google review link to promote to your audience here.

Things to Avoid When Asking for Online Reviews

Before you start asking for reviews on any platform, make sure you know its guidelines and terms of service.

For instance, Google doesn’t permit you to offer incentives in exchange for reviews, and Yelp forbids businesses to request customer reviews in any way.

You want to channel your customer’s positivity to influence new potential customers.

What goes around comes around, right?

So don’t do anything pushy, like set up a review station or kiosk to ask for reviews.

Make sure to have local customers leave reviews using their own devices and under their own accounts.

Also, don’t ask for too many reviews at once. A sudden influx of positive reviews can look suspicious and may result in filtering on some platforms.

Once more, acquiring reviews should be a steady, ongoing process for your business.

5. Build Citations for Local SEO

What exactly are citations?

They’re mentions of your business name, address, phone number, or website (NAP+W) anywhere on the web, even if there is no link to your website.

Citations are important to your local SEO efforts because its signals make up 11% of local pack-ranking factors.

Make sure you only build citations for real physical locations, as P.O. boxes and virtual offices are not acceptable.

You can build a unique set of citations for every physical location you have.

But make sure the name, address, phone number, and website URL are correct and identical on each citation you build.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, mismatched NAP account for 41% of the total ranking issues.

So once again, consistency is key.

That said, search engine algorithms are clever enough to understand most abbreviations.

It’s important to check whether your abbreviation will be picked up and read correctly by search engines.

For a full list of acceptable abbreviations, check out Whitespark’s complete table.

Here are some ways to build citations.

Local Search Engines

Search engines like Google or Bing crawl the web for citations to validate or update the information in their own indexes.

You can help the search engines do this by listing your businesses on sites like Yelp, Hotfrog, and Foursquare. (Though it’s worth noting that FourSquare’s city guide is much less popular these days.)

Dedicate some time and resources to making sure your business is listed in as many relevant, quality local business directories as possible.

Local Blogs

Local blogs are a fantastic place to get your business listed to boost your local SEO.

These blogs are well-indexed by search engines and are highly associated with a particular city, region, or neighborhood.

As you acquire links from these blogs, search engines will increasingly view your business as trusted and relevant in the local search engines.

Local blogs will be different for each location, but you can find ones relevant to you and your business by searching terms like:

• [target location] [niche/industry] blog

Often, the top local blogs will have the name of the city or region in their title or domain, like Seattle Theatre.

Locally Focused Directories

Like local blogs, local directories are strongly associated with a geographic area and they’re well indexed by search engines.

Directories edited by a human are preferred.

This is because they’re less susceptible to spam, so they tend to be more trusted by the local search engines.

To start with, add your business to Best of the Web’s Regional Directory.

Then you can search for specific local directories by using search terms like:

• [Target city] directory
• [State] directory

Industry-Focused Directories or Blogs

You can also gain citations from industry focused blogs and directories.

These websites are focused on the topics and keywords related to your products and services.

Although these sites don’t always have a local focus, they may be counted as citation sources by local search engines.

Do you have a membership directory for your trade organization or a blog that’s popular among readers in your niche?

Both are likely to be crawled by the local search engines for citations.

Porch is a directory of local contractors like painters, plumbers, and electricians.

You can find industry directories and blogs relevant to your business by searching terms like:

• [your industry] directory
• [your keyword] directory
• Top [your industry] blogs

Conclusion

Fighting to climb the SERPs can be tough for businesses, especially if you’re a small business with limited resources.

But local SEO is critical to your business success.

As people rely more and more on search engines and reviews to find what they need, you’ll need to boost your local rankings to be found.

So climb the local SERPs by optimizing your website, producing great local content, acquiring citations, and earning reviews.

But, don’t limit yourself to technical local SEO practices like citations and web optimization, though.

Build relationships with other relevant local business, participate in community events, and join local organizations.

Local SEO isn’t a stand-alone endeavor. You also need to use SEO and social media marketing to boost your rankings.

Online efforts are always a reflection of offline realities. If your business is bad, your reviews will be, too.

So, focus on building the best business you can.

What local SEO techniques have produced great results for your business?

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