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Local presence management is a cornerstone of modern SEO for brick-and-mortar businesses. By leveraging listing management services and other complementary techniques, agencies can build a lasting search presence for their clients. The best of these strategies will ensure that businesses improve local search rankings, increase visibility, build trust and credibility and enhance the customer experience overall.
Best Ways to Boost SEO With Local Presence Management
Local presence management refers to the tools and techniques that combine to increase the visibility of a business’ location. As Google and other search engines have improved their ability to recognize local intent, companies have more opportunity than ever to stand out on a city, regional or neighborhood level. Today let’s explore a simple strategy you can apply to business clients.
Optimize Google Business Profiles
Consumers searching for businesses will often look no further than the Google search results. From the Local Pack or Maps, people can directly find name, address and phone number (NAP) details, opening times, primary services, images, customer reviews and more. So whether they want to check if the location is open, get directions or book online, it’s all possible through a Google Business Profile (GBP). By optimizing this key pillar of local presence management, your clients can reach consumers who are ready to make a buying decision.
Claim and Manage Listings
A GBP needs to be optimized and managed, but there’s more – you also need to work with a comprehensive network of directories, review sites, mapping apps and other listing platforms. Essentially, local presence management succeeds or fails based on the accuracy of data. This is the reason why you need to work with a citation service that can claim and manage listings to ensure exact, consistent business details. And if you’re looking for the best local listing management provider, take a look at this comparison of citation services.
Localized On-Page Optimization
If location-based searches are a vital component of your clients’ SEO strategies, using a local on-page optimization approach is essential. Creating dedicated location pages will help satisfy Google’s goal of delivering highly targeted results and provide a relevant landing page for consumers. Even if a business has just a single branch, creating pages for surrounding cities allows you to target a broader range of locations.
It’s important to note that Google aims to deliver results that satisfy three factors – relevance, distance and prominence. However, if not enough local businesses meet all three criteria, Google may prioritize positively reviewed, relevant companies over hyperlocal results.
Reputation Management
Local businesses increasingly rely on a positive reputation to maintain a consistent SEO impact. With consumers being less likely to shop with a brand with a low star rating and a lack of fresh reviews, monitoring and responding to reviews is now an important factor in local presence management.
Apply E-A-T to Business Listings
Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness) framework evaluates the quality and value of online content. Factors like creating authoritative content, getting citations from quality platforms, plus maintaining accurate data across the web all help to meet Google’s content guidelines. For detailed insight on this subject you can read our report on applying E-A-T to a Google Business Profile.
We Are Local Presence Management Specialists
At Advice Local, we help agencies and local marketers with a comprehensive set of digital marketing services. Speak with our team today for help with local presence management, listing distribution and review monitoring. Call (214) 310-1356 or request a demo now.