Spork’s Guide To Local SEO (And Why We Don’t Offer Local SEO Services)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of our agency’s areas of expertise. But there are several types of SEO, and we don’t work on all of them:

• Ecommerce SEO is our specialty
• B2B SEO is an area we know
• International SEO is not our area of expertise and not something we would consult on
• Blackhat SEO is not something we do
• Enterprise SEO is something we have experience in
• Etc. and so on…

Another area that we have a lot of knowledge in (but don’t do) is local SEO. While we don’t offer local SEO services, it still comes up a lot, especially for our clients with brick-and-mortar. So, this guide will explain both:

1. How business owners can do local SEO themselves
2. Why most businesses probably don’t need to hire a local SEO expert

The Five Keys To Local SEO

There are five keys to local SEO:

1. A great system for collecting reviews from customers
2. Accurate name, address, phone number, and website address data
3. A complete and optimized Google Business Profile
4. Tagging the pages on your company website correctly
5. Local links to your company’s website

While most local SEO experts would dispute the order we’ve provided here, these five items are generally considered the top local SEO ranking factors that business owners can control (as determined by a survey of experts). Do these five things, and your business will rank higher on local searches.

Key Concept – Local SEO Is Very DIY Friendly If You Have The Time

There are a lot of things in marketing that business owners should not try to do themselves, but local SEO isn’t one of them. If you have the time, local SEO is pretty simple and a great DIY marketing project.

Don’t get us wrong: If your market is super competitive or you’re too busy to DIY, hire an expert. And if you’re an auto parts store or auto repair shop, check out Auto Shop Solutions. (They’re great and super affordable and not affiliated with Spork,) But if you’ve got some spare time, DIY!

Step 1 – Put A Review System In Place

A good review system:

• Makes it easy for you to collect data from your customers
• Automatically asks every customer for a review
• Monitors reviews so you can respond to negative reviews right away and – hopefully – get the bad reviews updated/revised
• Tracks overall ratings on several sites

Please note: Great reviews won’t guarantee top rankings in local search. They help, but there are other factors that are more important in terms of rankings.

Still, we say reviews are #1 because they’re critical to your business. Great reviews change the way customers interact with your company. Local service companies that have great reviews will close more leads and can charge more for services. Local retail stores with great reviews get more walk-in business.

For review tools, we’d recommend checking out BrightLocal or GatherUp. Both systems can facilitate reviews, track your business ratings, and more.

Step 2 – Make Sure All Your Business Data Is Accurate

Ever wonder how Google, Apple, Yelp, and Bing got your business name, address, phone number, and website URL? It turns out, they get this data from lots of different places. This data – known as “citations” – is surprisingly valuable.

According to the experts, there are several large entities that collect and share business data (aka “citation data”) with entities like Google, Apple, and Yelp. There are also hundreds of small entities that collect data, and who may or may not share that data.

Check out this ridiculous chart:

Please note: The details of the chart don’t matter. The reason we’re sharing it is to show you that there isn’t just one place where your business data is kept, but several. And if any of the data in any of these places is wrong, it can hurt your local rankings.

The solution? Work with a “citation auditing service” to fix them. We recommend citation audit and cleanup from Whitespark. It’s relatively affordable, we’ve used this company dozens of times over the years for miscellaneous projects, and they do great work.

You can also get citation auditing and cleanup from BrightLocal, only we don’t have any experience with that.

NOTE: Local SEO experts would say that citation auditing is less important than other tasks, but we’re recommending this as step #2 because it’s easy. When it comes to marketing, doing the easy stuff first is always a good idea.

Step 3 – Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Optimizing a Google Business Profile can get nuanced. If you’ve already done the basics, you either want to do a deep dive (start here) or hire an expert.

However, the odds are good your company’s Google Business Profile is incomplete. That’s because ~75% of business profiles are incomplete, inaccurate, or both. Fixing it will boost local rankings.

• Fill in every box you can, and take the time to do it right: business description, hours of operation, frequently asked questions, etc.
• Upload images and videos following Google’s recommendations
• Check every detail and make sure it’s accurate
• Don’t skip or half-ass anything

While a professional can “tune” your company’s Google Business Profile to maximize rankings, any business owner can get 80-90% of the way to optimized simply by making the profile as complete as possible.

Step 4 – Tag The Pages On Your Site Correctly

Now we’re getting into traditional, technical SEO, right? Title tags! Meta description tags! So exciting!

Meta tagging sucks. It’s repetitive, it’s boring, and Google rewrites a lot of your meta tags anyway. But it’s got to be done, and it’s also not hard.

Still, it’s beyond the scope of this guide. We’d recommend reading this article from Wix for advice on writing title tags. For meta description tag advice, check out this article from Yoast SEO.

Finally, if you hate the idea of tagging your website (and who could blame you), a professional can help. Just know that this is a task that might only take a pro a few minutes and that it doesn’t need to be done often. We’d suggest finding a local SEO person to do a paid site audit, ask them to provide a list of recommended changes (including new tags), and then ask them to quote the changes on a one-time basis. Often you can get your site a full “tune-up” for a couple of grand.

Step 5 – Get Local Links

The easiest way to get links is to sponsor local events. We’d suggest sponsoring a local car show (more about that in this Spork blog post), sponsoring a local school club (college or high school), or sponsoring a local sports team (could be affiliated with a school, could be local). What you want to look for:

• A decent website that’s updated regularly (decent meaning it can’t look like it was built in the early 2000s)
• Easy to find information about sponsors on the group website, with links to the sponsor’s websites
• This BrightLocal article has more details

Sponsoring local groups is usually pretty cheap. Most local SEO firms charge $1000 a month plus for basic services, and you can sponsor several local groups with that same budget. Just make sure you get some website links when you do it.

One Last Thing – When It’s Time To Hire a Pro

As we’ve explained, most businesses don’t need professional local SEO help. Most of the time, local SEO success means doing the basics, and no one needs to pay for the basics.

Still, there are some industries where local SEO is much more complex – plumbing, locksmithing, legal services, medical services, and restaurants, for example. There are also some large markets where local SEO has become very challenging. In these situations, experts are usually pretty helpful.

Likewise, if you’re looking for someone to take your local rankings to the next level, there’s no substitute for an expert. Our advice:

• Hire someone who specializes in your industry. If you’re an auto parts shop, for example, hire Auto Shop Solutions. If you’re a restaurant, look for local SEO firms that specialize in restaurants. Don’t just hire someone because they’re local.
• Avoid long-term commitments. A lot of local SEO work is a one-time task with a little follow-up (like meta tagging). There’s no good reason to commit to a contract longer than six months, and if you don’t see growth after six months you should probably cancel.
• Ask about reporting. Before you hire a local SEO firm, make sure you understand what success looks like and how they measure success. Then ask to see an example of a report…if the info they’re sharing doesn’t make sense, you need a different report or a different provider.

Finally, please note that Spork does NOT provide local SEO services. It’s not something we enjoy. If you ask us, we will politely decline.

Good luck!